Concrete Concepts
By Andrea Cox
Photography By Bruce Edward
Styling By Paul Jaras
The southwest Calgary neighbourhood of Roxboro is the very essence of established inner-city urbanity. Chock full of the elegance of a bygone era, the area overflows with tasteful early 20th Century architecture, towering century-old trees, plentiful park space and the beauty of the Elbow River, which meanders past the back lawns of many of the properties.
Sprinkled amongst these stately homes are a few contemporary buildings, but none grabs the attention as strongly as Marc Boutin’s distinguished design.
The property, which took almost two years to build, is a beautifully built and carefully composed work of intelligence.
CTV Calgary news reporter Lane Fraser-Sims and her husband, Chris Sims, commissioned the home.
The couple and their two children moved to Calgary four years ago and were living in a pretty 1930s character home in Mount Royal. While they loved the home, they soon realized the location wasn’t quite right.
“We were looking for a neighbourhood with a little bit more of an urban feeling, where we could walk to get our groceries,” says Sims.
Nine months after moving to Calgary, they found what they were looking for. Fraser-Sims was running with her sister and the two serendipitously took a new route through Roxboro.
“I fell in love with it,” says Fraser-Sims. “I knew immediately that it was the area that I wanted to live in. It felt more like a Toronto neighbourhood than anywhere in Calgary, except for maybe Kensington.”
Soon after, the couple purchased a one-and-a-half-storey 1930s home within walking distance of the local school. “We initially thought about renovating the house, and then it just didn’t look like it was going to be cost effective,” says Sims. “But we decided that if we were going to build, then we wanted something distinctive.”
The couple interviewed several architects to assist them with the design, but when they met with Prix de Rome-winner Marc Boutin, they instinctively knew he was the one.
“My brother, who is an architect in Toronto, helped us to find Marc and we really connected with him. He was just so non-pretentious,” says Sims.
The initial premise of the home was developed around the fact that the couple were on a set budget, but wanted to get the most modern elegance possible out of their home dollars. Thus, the main key to the home’s design was to keep the footprint modest, while creating a grand and expansive living experience. Boutin then turned the concept into reality with extreme elegance.
“What came out of this premise was the notion of a high level of transparency between the inside and the outside,” says Boutin. To this end, almost the entire main level, which contains the kitchen, dining and living areas, is glassed-in from floor to ceiling. “From the inside, the edge of the garden becomes the edge of the living room. You are sitting in a home of modest size, but spatially the living room becomes 50 feet wide, which is really interesting.”
The second premise of the home is all about light and it evolved as an extension of the indoor/outdoor living concept. “The home really grew out of a site-specific reflection on how to capture the light,” says Boutin.
On the southern edge of the property, the neighbouring contemporary home extends two storeys, creating a wall and a screen to the sun. “We were concerned that if we situated the house in a very conventional way that there would be no natural light,” says Boutin. And, in fact, the original 1930s home on the property enjoyed shade for most of the day. So Boutin and project designer Jerry Hacker designed the home’s footprint as an elongated rectangle that sits flush on the northern edge of the property. The second storey is then cantilevered out to the eastern edge, giving increased square footage to accommodate the two children’s bedrooms and bath area.
In the dining area, the upper storey was eroded to create a 20-foot-high ceiling. Above, skylights allow streams of glorious light to envelope even the farthest recesses. Along the south wall of the dining room, a stunning two-storey slatted fir wood screen separates the dining room from the outside, creating a moment of privacy in an otherwise very open home.
Opposite the screen, an abstract painting by K.M. Graham covers almost the entire 20-foot floor-to-ceiling expanse. When asked if the painting was commissioned for the home, Fraser-Sims laughs: “No, the home was commissioned for the painting. It was a painting that I loved. My mom acquired it in the ’80s and she said to me, ‘When you get your dream home, you can have the painting.’ So, when we were building, we photographed it and measured it and Marc created the space for it.”
Throughout the home, the walls are coated in pure white paint to reflect the natural light. Boutin also utilized a Le Corbusier technique and highlighted sections of the wall around the uppermost skylights with distinctive blocks of high intensity blue. “It creates a better aura for the natural light to flow down into the spaces,” says Boutin.
The effect of the windows and paint treatment is a bright and open space. “It is a hard house to feel depressed in,” says Fraser-Sims. “It is so bright. At almost any time of day you have sun.”
And, with a rooftop deck and several sheltered and covered outdoor patio spaces, it is easy to enjoy the warmth of the sun on those fair winter days.“We wanted the option, regardless of the weather to have areas outside,” explains Fraser-Sims.
With two kids, a dog and both parents with busy schedules, it was important that the home be functional as well as elegantly modern. It abounds with materials that are durable but also rich in their design experience, and in their natural palette — the grey/greens of the concrete, the natural reds and auburns of the fir, the grey of the steel and the rich black, red and ochre of the granite. “We are not knick-knacky, precious-stuff people,” says Fraser-Sims. “With the dog and the kids, we wanted an indestructible feel to the place and I love the floors because I don’t have to get people to take their shoes off.”
The family has been living in their new home for just over seven months and Sims says the family is loving it and the neighbourhood. “Here I only drive my car a couple of days a week,” he says. “I cycle along the river to work at the Rockyview Hospital. We walk to Safeway. It’s what we did in Toronto. It was a little harder to find in Calgary, but we managed to create it.”
