Escarpment House revisits a fundamental modernist strategy, using a minimal palette of stone, glass, and metal to make a statement about the relationship of building to context. Inserting a singular built form into an extraordinary landscape encourages contemplation and allows one to appreciate both more clearly.
A multigenerational retreat for a Toronto family, the 6,028 sf home is located on a 20-hectare site within the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. The house is programmed with interior and exterior family gathering spaces, bedrooms and en suites, and flanked by terraces that extend down a 30% slope to a bathing pavillion and spring-fed pond. Garage, mechanical, storage and amenity rooms are concealed within the slope.
The house is rendered in a simple palette of locally quarried Algonquin limestone, honed and cleft-finished, narrow anodized aluminum fascia that emphasize the slenderness of floor and roof slabs, and fully glazed 60-meter long walls that merge interior and exterior space and frame views through the house and into the surrounding landscape.
Bio a—A is a design practice based in Toronto engaged in the act of city building, providing full architectural services across a wide range of contexts, scales and building types—from schools, galleries and cultural centres, to affordable housing and mixed-use developments, to urban parks and civic precincts. We work with clients and collaborators in Canada, the United States, and Europe. We are designers, researchers and urbanists who care about the city, and take care to create spaces that give meaning and invention to the ways we live and work.
Other prizes 2024 Gold Nugget Grand Award for Best Custom Home: Escarpment House 2023 Architecture MasterPrize Award for Conceptual Architecture: Don Mills Jamatkhana and Ismaili Community Centre 2023 Architecture MasterPrize Award for Adaptive Re-Use: The Museum of Contemporary Art_Toronto | Tower Automotive Building 2023 Canadian Architect Magazine Award of Excellence: Don Mills Jamatkhana and Ismaili Community Centre 2023 P/A Awards - Religious: Don Mills Jamatkhana and Ismaili Community Centre 2023 Chicago Athanaeum Green Good Design Award: Loblaws Groceteria Warehouse Adaptive Re-Use 2023 Toronto IES Illumination Section Award for Outdoor Lighting Design: Loblaws Groceteria Warehouse Adaptive Re-Use 2022 Faith & Form Magazine Award for Religious Architecture - Unbuilt: Don Mills Jamatkhana and Ismaili Community Centre 2021 Architizer A+ Awards Finalist: Harbour Plaza 2021 City of Toronto Urban Design Award of Merit: Loblaws Groceterial Warehouse Adaptive Re-Use 2021 Canadian Brownfields Network Brownie Awards of Excellence: Museum of contemporary Art_Toronto Canada 2021 Canadian Brownfields Network Brownie Awards of Excellence Finalist: Loblaws Groceteria Warehouse Adaptive Re-Use 2020 Canadian Architect Magazine Award of Excellence: West Don Lands Block 8 [Maple House at Canary Landing] 2019 Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals Award of Merit: Museum of Contemporary Art_Toronto Canada 2019 Ontario Concrete Awards Material Development and Innovation Award: Tower at Pier 27 2017 Urban Land Institute Global Award of Excellence: West Don Lands, including Canary District | Pan/Parapan American Games Athlete’s Village 2017 City of Toronto Urban Design Award of Excellence for Building in Context Private/Mid-Rise/Residential: 383 Sorauren 2017 City of Toronto Urban Design Award of Excellence for Public Spaces: ÏCE Condominiums at York Centre 2016 Canadian Brownfields Network Brownie Awards of Excellence: Canary District
