Designed by Johnson Chou, 142 Kenilworth is a contemporary home located in Toronto, Canada. This project is about a contemporary renovation of a beautiful tiny house! The project is about creating volumes of flowing spaces in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions and the kinaesthetic experience of framed views from within and without. Built in the early 1930s, maintaining the integrity of the scale and form of the original building was a priority. The original structure was a two-storey 1,250 square foot building renovated into a three-storey 1,950 square foot residence achieved by converting the existing attic space into a master bedroom with ensuite and adding a two-storey rear extension. There was a desire to allow for modern interior elements to percolate to the exterior creating a juxtaposition of old and new.
The design concept was two-fold: to perforate the volume of the building with openings to provide visual access throughout the space on a horizontal and vertical dimension; and to develop a motif that redefines the existing building as a series of overlapping ‘frames’ that function either as portals or apparatuses for viewing. The original 3 bedroom house had the main stair positioned perpendicular to the length of the house, effectively dividing the house into two – front and rear. Further exacerbated by the profusion of tiny rooms and the relatively narrow width of the building, the house felt cramped and imparted a sense of claustrophobia. Our functional strategy was to demolish the interior of the existing building, eliminate all interior partitions on the ground floor; reposition the main stair parallel and against the side wall of the building; remove the exterior wall facing the backyard and replace it with a 4.5 m deep 23m2 two-storey addition. The staircase is made up of a series of frames – 13-millimetre-thick steel plates welded into rectangular boxes – that float up one side. Further, aluminum bookshelves appear to burst through the glass floor of the second creating an unexpected transparency between floors.
