Photographer: Felix Michaud | ArchDaily

East River Residence / Omar Gandhi Architects

Pilar Caballero — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Omar Gandhi Architects, the Canadian architecture studio, completes a stunning suspended coastal residential project. Set along the rugged Atlantic coastline of Nova Scotia, East River Residence is a house suspended within its environment—a quiet settlement on the shoreline that responds closely to the land, the weather, and the shifting horizon.

Mobility Justice: Urban Equity in an Era of Innovation

Olivia Poston — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Every city contains two transportation systems. One is the visible network of roads, rail lines, sidewalks, and bus routes mapped in planning documents. The other is the invisible geography of privilege and exclusion embedded within it: the neighborhoods that received highways instead of parks, the communities whose bus routes were cut, the sidewalks that abruptly end at the edge of a district. For many years, built-environment professionals have treated infrastructure as a technical challenge. Mobility justice insists it is, fundamentally, a political one.

Dollhouse Loft / StudioAC

Pilar Caballero — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Located in Leslieville, in Toronto's east end, this loft renewal project set out to enhance the interior both aesthetically and functionally. Once a toy and bottling factory throughout the 1900s, the building became live/work lofts in the early 2000s. As time wore down the quality of finishes and fixtures, a new opportunity emerged to rework the loft's spatial dynamics.

From the Shore Residence / MAJ - Mise à Jour

Pilar Caballero — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

On the banks of the river in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Montreal, Mise à Jour Studio undertook the
comprehensive transformation of a heritage home. Formerly divided between a residence and a medical office occupying nearly half of the ground floor, the intervention opens up the spaces and enhances visual connections to the river, while bringing new light into the heart of the house.

Morning Rituals: Architecture of Breakfast Spaces

Olivia Poston — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Breakfast nooks emerged in the early twentieth century in response to increasing domestic density and shifting ideas about everyday life. Rooted in the American Arts and Crafts movement and popularized through bungalow housing of the 1910s and 1920s, they evolved from the more formal Victorian breakfast room into compact, built-in spaces embedded within the kitchen. As houses grew smaller and more economical, architects and millwork companies used fixed benches and tables to occupy corners, alcoves, and bay windows that might otherwise be inefficient. These light-filled enclosures provided an affordable means of concentrating daily activities while preserving comfort and spatial clarity.

The Illusion of Level: Detailing for Water in “Flat” Architecture

Jonathan Yeung — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 07:30:00 +0000

We walk on "flat" ground every day and rarely think twice—but how flat is it, really? In the city, curbs are chamfered, sidewalks pitch toward grates, and roadways are crowned to shed water into shallow gutters. In suburbs and on unpaved paths, irregular terrain is the norm. Inside buildings, by contrast, we pursue near-perfect horizontality—structural frames, slabs, and finishes are all disciplined to create level walking surfaces in the name of safety and accessibility. Yet flatness is inherently at odds with water. A closer look reveals a quiet repertoire of accommodations: slight falls at entries, thresholds raised a few millimeters, wet areas with barely perceptible pitches. The floor is read as flat, but it is in fact carefully tuned—micro-topographies masquerading as plane—to manage water without calling attention to themselves.

Rathnelly House / Studio VAARO

Hadir Al Koshta — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Studio VAARO's Rathnelly House is a comprehensive and formally expressive renovation of an Edwardian-era semi-detached house in midtown Toronto. The project not only enhances functionality and spatial fluidity but also expands the home significantly from within while respecting its existing footprint. The clients, a professional couple with a young child, sought both a pragmatic and aesthetic transformation: to increase usable floor area, raise ceiling heights, and expand storage, all within a welcoming and distinctive design mediating between openness and seclusion. Extensive structural interventions enabled a fundamental reordering of space. The result is an expansive plan that adds 140 m² (1,500 ft²), increasing the functional area of the home by almost 60%.

Transforming Row Houses: Heritage and Modernity in Montreal’s Historical Neighborhoods

Moises Carrasco — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Montreal, the second largest city in Canada is home to a wide array of heritage residential architecture, most of it dating to the 19th and early 20th-century. These are particularly abundant in some of its central neighborhoods like the Plateau Mont-Royal. Interestingly, their preservation is not accidental; it is the result of decades of advocacy by influential figures who recognized the value of the city's built environment, such as Phyllis Lambert and Blanche Lemco Van Ginkel. Efforts like theirs were instrumental in landmark preservation battles that helped to ensure current municipal support. Today, the city has implemented a set of comprehensive heritage protection laws designed to safeguard the integrity of the city's historic neighborhoods.

South Bay House / StudioAC

Pilar Caballero — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 06:00:00 +0000

South Bay Residence is situated on a flat, rural site in Ontario, a few hours east of Toronto. Positioned on a north-facing expanse, the site offers a vast open field bordered by a delicate grove of trees and a shoreline with unique, varied trees that became integral to the architectural concept.

Junction Semi House / StudioAC

Pilar Caballero — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Located in Toronto's west end, this project transformed a church into a multi-generational home for a growing family and their parents. The church, spanning the entire site depth, offered a unique opportunity to carve out space, allowing light to penetrate deep into the interior. Over its history, the church served various denominations but always remained a gathering space at its essence.

BINÔME Multi-residence / APPAREIL architecture

Hana Abdel — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Binome stands as a bold project offering a contemporary and sensitive approach to urban densification. Unique in its kind, this five-unit residential building provides an enriched living experience through thoughtful architectural quality and respectful integration into its context. The clients—owners of a vacant lot between their duplex and a multi-unit building—envisioned a forward-thinking infill project: to offer high-quality collective housing that would promote cohabitation and intergenerational diversity within the neighborhood. "We dreamed of a building with a different kind of architecture—made up of two volumes and a central courtyard—allowing for more housing, ideally affordable", Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse, co-owner of Binome.

La Cache Modular Residences / DELORDINAIRE

Andreas Luco — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 16:00:00 +0000

Nestled along the shores of the vast Lake Saint-Jean in Quebec, Delordinaire Architects in consortium with Annie Sylvain Architects has unveiled The Cache, a signature project that encapsulates their distinctive architectural philosophy. This endeavor builds on Delordinaire's exploration of residential typologies, which began in 2020 with High House— a stilt house that had already made an impression with its innovative approach.

Duplex Clark Residence / Table Architecture

Hadir Al Koshta — Sat, 31 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Clark Residence is conceived as a living gallery that constantly evolves and adapts to a variety of daily needs. This thoughtful design creates a peaceful environment, where each room offers a new perspective on the surrounding urban context. Throughout the residence, views are carefully highlighted and framed by the architecture, both outwards and inwards, inviting residents to engage with each element in a unique and intimate way. This dynamic approach transforms the house into a living, breathing space, encouraging exploration and discovery of traces from the past.

Cherry Valley / StudioAC

Paula Pintos — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 02:00:00 +0000

StudioAC presents Cherry Valley, a residence situated in Prince Edward County, two and a half hours east of Toronto. Characterized by an intricate coastline and a burgeoning wine-making industry, the landscape and sense of place can be distilled into fields and shorelines.

Virgin Vineyard House / LAMAS Architecture

Paula Pintos — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 03:00:00 +0000

Situated between an old logging road and a working hillside vineyard, the Virgin Vineyard House derives its name from a farm whose ruins once stood above the site. The client was interested in building a new residence on the land, with minimal disturbance to the vineyard, that would capture views overlooking Lake Massawippi in Quebec's Eastern Townships. The new building will house the client and provide the ability for her to age in place, as well as to accommodate her daughter’s growing family.

Devils Glen House / StudioAC

Paula Pintos — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Devil’s Glen is located on the Bruce Peninsula, a few hours north of Toronto. The design process began with an on-site picnic, where a discussion focused more on the natural elements of the site rather than the building. That conversation inspired the ethic of the project to come.

Rolo House / Atelier Carle

Paula Pintos — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 03:00:00 +0000

In a natural setting at the limits of constructability, Rolo offers a landscape approach to an architectural project. Located in the Laurentian region of Quebec, and situated on a steep slope, the property is characterized by large, rocky outcrops and offers clear views of the Laurentian horizon. Before the intervention, the owners had created a variety of scattered and fragmented amenity areas on site, linked together by winding hiking trails that skirt along the steep cliffs of the mountainous terrain. Due to the organic and temporary nature of these initial site uses, their specificity informed the beginning of the project.

Is Minimalism Dead?

Dima Stouhi — Fri, 27 May 2022 07:30:00 +0000

The visual aesthetic of the past few decades could be defined as designing with the principles of ‘nothingness’. Whether it’s through art, lifestyle, fashion, industrial, or interior design, there has been an alleged need to keep things at a bare minimum, promoting the globally-loved-yet-highly-criticized trend of minimalism. Minimalism is this notion of reducing something to its necessary elements, but who is deciding what is necessary, and who is deciding what is too much? With those questions in mind, combined with radical changes in consumerism and the way people live seen during recent years, current trends have shown that minimalism might be here to stay, but with a twist.