In Toronto, a Townhouse and ADU by JA Architecture Studio Recast the Victorian Vernacular

The “bay-and-gable” house is a staple of Toronto architecture. The city’s 19th-century neighborhoods are filled with such dwellings—long and skinny, often joined into pairs or rows—whose fronts are gussied up with polygonal bay windows and steep, Gothic-style gables.

JA Architecture Studio, which occupies an old house in the city’s Queen West neighborhood, has drawn on this tradition to build a series of nearby house-and-accessory-dwelling-unit combinations that blend parametrically inspired formal explorations with Victorian frippery. The 2022 Design Vanguard firm recently completed 44 Foxley, a three-story house, with a basement suite and ADU facing a back alley, that continues this dialogue.