Changing the Game – a PREFAB HOME Like Nothing Else Available!

With two dedicated living spaces, a modular interior, a bathroom, and a kitchenette, Happier Camper’s 2020 Traveler is ready for life on the open road.

Located on a small lot in Downtown Toronto, the owners of this new three storey residence desired a peaceful urban retreat, purposefully tailored to nurture and enhance a close communal family life and their enjoyment of the outdoors. The response is a highly personalized expression of one small family’s particular lifestyle. At ground level, a back-split condition responds to the natural slope of the site. An adventurous sectional arrangement continues vertically upward, with additional split levels arranged around a 3-storey light well, drawing sunlight (and moonlight) deep into the house. A home office occupies the light well, with views to the living room above, and a library space below. What would typically be the dark middle of the house is bathed in sunlight and enjoys a feeling of expansive vertical space. The various regions of the home are all closely knit together across this interior light well, creating an interesting balance between separation and intimacy: While the family may be individually occupied with remote activities (cooking, lounging, working, playing), they are always quickly and easily engaged with one another. The three principal living spaces (Living room, Kitchen/ Dining area, Library) also expand outwards, into separate exterior areas, each with its own unique and complementary character. At ground level, an arrangement of subtle level changes and low partitions gradually increase the degree of privacy as one moves from the street, through the interior, and into a secluded, forested back garden. The third floor living room – an urbanized version of a cabin in the woods with wood stove and cedar ceiling – nestles intimately into tree tops at one end, and opens widely toward the sky at the other. An upper level outdoor terrace offers easy enjoyment of the city skyline, urban tree canopy, sunsets, and the night sky. The house is thus organized around three principal axes which connect the interior with the outdoors: a ground level Garden Axis, a third level Sky Axis, and a vertical Sun Axis.

Surrounded by 250 feet of ocean frontage, this three-bedroom retreat is one of the most expensive properties currently for sale on the East End.

A self-initiated, architect-led design-develop-build project, Tesseract house was not designed with a specific client in mind. Rather, it was conceived as a business case to prove that one can create great contemporary architecture that fulfills a demand in the marketplace, while demonstrating that unbridled creativity generates innovative and artful spaces, using conventional and readily available construction methods. All of this was accomplished without breaking the bank and with a typical budget for a house of this kind Located in Toronto’s western lakeside streetcar suburb, this single-family residence proves contextual while owing little to convention and serving as the antithesis to recent vernaculars. By simply and unconventionally engaging the immediate context this contemporary alternative has an impactful, yet unimposing outward presence. This geometry and the depth of experience from which the house derives its name is not provocatively innovative but nuanced, both simple and complex, revealing itself over time. All of this within the constraints of conventional local residential construction, the Tesseract House unapologetically desires to be more than just a place to live.