Photographer: Scott Norsworthy | ArchDaily

Deep Tones and Natural Roots: 22 Shou Sugi Ban Homes Across the US and Canada

Hadir Al Koshta — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Shou Sugi Ban is a traditional Japanese technique for wood preservation that involves charring the surface of timber to create a protective layer. While its origins are rooted in practical durability, the method has been widely adapted into the modern built environment and shapes a unique and distinctive aesthetic. It is a material of contradiction: it remains bold in its visual language due to its dark tones, yet it simultaneously borrows from and complements its natural surroundings, allowing houses to settle quietly into their sites.

ABC K-Town / Steven Fong Architect

Hana Abdel — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000

K-Town offers an architectural solution to the financial precariousness of small businesses in diasporic communities. You know those kinds of small businesses, where little restaurants, or little retail stores, with store frontages that are about 4.5 metres (15 feet), sometimes with a couple of storeys above them and other times with nothing above them. There are perhaps a dozen diaspora communities in Toronto, and so we thought this is applicable to Koreatown, but is also applicable to any of these communities, as well as many low-rise main streets in Toronto that are adjacent to residential neighbourhoods.

Ravine House / OrangeInk Design

Hana Abdel — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Commissioned as a 'forever' home for a local couple, a key priority was to design a space that was comfortable and intimate enough for the family yet flexible and inviting for entertaining guests and extended family. The vision was to transform a low-slung, inward looking, dark space into a warm, welcoming light filled modern home that respects its context.

North York Ravine House / Denegri Bessai Studio

Hana Abdel — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 15:00:00 +0000

When a young family with three children moved into a mid-century modern bungalow on the edge of a North York ravine, they were excited about the house's natural surroundings and its modernist style. However, the house was ill-suited for the contemporary family's needs. Its interior was cramped, dark, and disorderly, and it lacked connection to its surroundings. They hired Denegri Bessai Studio (DB Studio) to improve the house's functionality and experience while preserving and enhancing the best of its modernist bones.

Forest Retreat House / Kariouk Architects

Valeria Silva — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 16:00:00 +0000

A Family Retreat in Rural Ontario. This home’s clients live abroad but sought a Canadian homestead for their large family and guests. During summer and winter holidays, the parents wanted their children immersed in an Ontario landscape like the one in which they were raised. They asked for a generous home to allow young teenagers, extended family (and large dogs) to be comfortable in a remote area for long stays, and that would encourage activities like hiking and snowshoeing. Historically, the Canadian identity has been defined by our relationship to the land. Fulfilling the client’s mandate, the home honors that emotional connection through visual and material harmonization with its surroundings, but moreover, through responsible material sourcing and site adaptation, as well as energy-saving systems. A key contribution of the project to the area is that it preserves almost the entirety of the landscape that it occupies: an existing rocky area overlooking a wildflower meadow, which avoided cutting trees. Almost all of the natural habitat of the 100-acre property was preserved, including its wetlands.

Churchill Meadows Community Center and Sports Park / MJMA

Pilar Caballero — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 03:00:00 +0000

This project is situated within a rapidly growing neighborhood in Mississauga, a suburban city west of Toronto, Canada. It converts a 50-acre agricultural field into a richly textured parkland with a 75,000 sf Community Centre as its focus. The park connects to an existing multi-use trail system, making it a new destination in the network.

Weldon Library Revitalization / Perkins&Will

Valeria Silva — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 17:00:00 +0000

Originally designed by John Andrews in 1967, the D.B. Weldon Library has been Western University’s central library for more than 50 years. Prior to renovation, however, the Brutalist building reflected an outdated vision of academic libraries: the building was designed as a repository for print collections with limited study space, low access to daylight and fresh air, and a distinct shortage of the programs and spaces that support 21st century learning. Western and Perkins&Will have collaboratively reimagined Weldon as a modern academic library—a place to support a diverse range of activities, collections, and users—and enable innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship. The first phase of Weldon’s transformation celebrates its original architecture and introduces a variety of dynamic learning environments, prioritizes the health and well-being of users, promotes exploration and discovery, and drastically improves operations and building performance.

Toronto Architecture City Guide: 25 Modern and Contemporary Landmarks in Canada's Largest City

Hana Abdel — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 06:30:00 +0000

Whether rain or shine, Toronto is a yearlong bustling city, the largest in Canada and the fourth largest in North America. It’s become a cosmopolitan center with its renowned business district and cultural venues/ events that come alive during the summer and early fall nights. Toronto suggests a beautifully diverse urban setting between shimmering high rises and smaller brick houses, intertwining residential and vibrant commercial areas, public parks, and even beaches. All become part of the city's striking skyline, crowned by the iconic CN tower.

Regent Park Aquatic Centre / MJMA

Cristian Aguilar — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Located in downtown Toronto, Regent Park is Canada’s oldest and largest social housing project, built in the late 1940’s. The community has historically been viewed as a transitional community for new immigrants, but due to social and physical planning ills, has contributed to the concentration of a socially marginalized population. 41% of the population living in Regent Park are under 18, and over 70% of the population lives below the Low-Income Cut-Off Rate.

Craven Road Cottage / Anya Moryoussef Architect (AMA)

Pilar Caballero — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 16:00:00 +0000

The complete transformation of this unassuming single-story worker’s cottage in Toronto’s historic "Tiny Town" turned a run-down house into a luminous and ethereal pandemic refuge. The client, Laurel Hutchison, is a retired schoolteacher living on a fixed income, with a budget earmarked for basic renovations to rescue her 112-year-old home from disrepair. The result is a 720 sqft, delicately proportioned, light-filled home, built on its original foundations while re-envisioning every other aspect of the worker’s cottage vernacular – a turn-of-the-century housing typology that has almost completely disappeared from the city.

Dundas Square Barbers / NIVEK REMAS

Valeria Silva — Sat, 05 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Spilling directly onto Toronto’s Dundas Square, this unique and highly coveted location was acquired by our client to build the dream barber shop he always imagined having since the beginning of his career. In January 2020, the client and barber, Tony Sadiku, contacted NIVEK REMAS to help him realize this dream.

Tom Patterson Theatre / Hariri Pontarini Architects

Paula Pintos — Fri, 27 May 2022 03:00:00 +0000

The new Tom Patterson Theatre at the Stratford Festival is a highly anticipated addition to the Canadian cultural landscape. Designed by Siamak Hariri, founding partner with Hariri Pontarini Architects, this shimmering, state-of-the-art venue embraces its riverside park setting.

Forest Retreat / Kariouk Architects

Bianca Valentina Roșescu — Thu, 05 May 2022 02:00:00 +0000

A Family Retreat in Rural Ontario. The clients for this project live abroad and sought a Canadian homestead — an anchor — for their large, young family. During the summer and winter holidays, the parents wanted their children immersed in an Ontario landscape like the one in which they were raised. To this end, they requested a “rustic, modern retreat” for their 100-acre property of forest, wetland, and meadows.

m.o.r.e. Cabin / Kariouk Architects

Andreas Luco — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 18:00:00 +0000

The paradigmatic North American cottage is romanticized as a wilderness log cabin. Nonetheless, typical cottages are “woodsy” versions of suburban homes with every modern convenience. These buildings sustain the myth that appearing to be one with the land equates to a reduced impact on the environment. The m.o.r.e. Cabin inverts this idea through a separation from the landscape that is more sustainably constructed than other cottages. This unraveling of eco-fictions is not cynical, but optimistic: while organic environments are being degraded, what remains can be engaged more responsibly. To this end, m.o.r.e. Cabin touches the land lightly through:
- Interpreting the law creatively to uphold its principles.
- Reducing foundation size through a steel mast.
- Low-waste cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure.
- Achieving greater tensile strength through a “folded” structure.
- Off-grid power and high-efficiency heating.
- Creating a home for endangered bats.

Sommerhus / Wanda Ely Architect Inc.

Paula Pintos — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 03:00:00 +0000

Located on a spacious farmstead in Mulmur, Ontario is a collection of homes owned by our clients’ tight-knit extended family. Year-round, the beautiful rural property acts as a family gathering place for vacations, celebrations, and quiet moments alike. Inspired by the family’s Danish heritage, the goal was to build a brand-new holiday home, or “sommerhus,” for the couple and their 3 children to use as an escape from the bustle of city life. By blending the core Danish design principles of simplicity, functionality, and restraint, with touches of Ontario rural vernacular, this project is a contemporary interpretation of the traditional Danish Sommerhus that is rooted in both its local context and the clients’ family history.

Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe win the 2021 RAIC Gold Medal

Andreea Cutieru — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 05:30:00 +0000

The Royal Architecture Institute of Canada awarded the 2021 Gold Medal to the architectural duo Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe. The distinction is a recognition of the architects' long-lasting and pivotal contribution to Canadian architecture.

Single-Skin Metal Panels: Construction Tips and Details for Building Envelopes

Sponsored Post — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 04:30:00 +0000

The façade is one of the most important elements in an architectural project. In addition to being the building's first barrier against heat, rain, snow, or wind, it also largely determines the appearance of a building. It can make the project stand out, blend into urban context, or even manifest, at first glance, values of transparency, lightness, or simplicity that the architect seeks to convey. Accordingly, the façade also constitutes a significant portion of the total cost of the work and, therefore, must be specified very carefully, taking into account aesthetics, functionality, maintenance, and long-term behavior.

Bata Shoe Factory / BDP Quadrangle + Dubbeldam Architecture + Design

Andreas Luco — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 20:00:00 +0000

The late Sonja Bata pursued her passion for architecture and the built environment through the revitalization of the town of Batawa, the former factory town located 175 km east of Toronto on the Trent River. In 1939, at the onset of WWII, the Bata family transplanted their shoe empire, including 120 workers and their families, from Czechoslovakia to Canada, establishing a company town that would become a prototype for subsequent Bata operations around the world.