Thank you for reading The Glen Eclipse Case Study

“It’s always wonderful to work with clients who really understand how they want people to experience the space."

“With The Glen, what started as a simple addition above a garage grew as a labor of love for the homeowners and became a place to create joy and togetherness with their family and friends. And with our clients approaching retirement age, it was also important for them to be able to stay in this home that they loved and age in place, so it also needed to be accessible,” says Vanessa Fong, Principal Architect at VFA Architecture, a Toronto-based firm known for using innovative approaches to arrive at beautiful, practical and finely crafted solutions.

“We were able to amalgamate with the adjoining property in order to shift construction to the far side of the house,” says Fong. “With that, the property slopes down steeply to the conservation land, providing these panoramic views of lush greenery in summer, vibrant colors in autumn and pristine snow cover in winter. It’s quite beautiful.”

Finding alignment

Because of the slope on that side of the property, they had to make a decision: design and build to the topography and have an extension that was a half-level lower at each floor than the main portion of the house, but with a true walk-out to the garden, or raise the addition and have to have steps down to the garden.

“My clients knew what they wanted people feel and experience when entering the extension, whether from the original part of the house, coming up from the pool, or arriving for a party. And we didn’t want the barrier of steps at the garden entrance. That made the choice easy.”

An easy choice, maybe, but a bit of a trickier design challenge.