These considerations prompted 5468796 to come up with an ingenious solution for the tight site. The long, rectilinear plan of the main floor evokes the theoretical court-house schemes drawn up by Mies van der Rohe in the 1930s. These typically single-story structures, bound on the perimeter by enclosing walls, contained paved or grassy open courts inserted by Mies to be easily accessible from the houses’ glazed interior spaces. For a Canadian reprise, 5468796 swerved from the Miesian typology and responded to the Arthurs’ brief by adding a second floor for bedrooms, as well as a below-grade apartment for family members or renters.

In manipulating the Miesian plan, the architects designed the second floor so that the open courts were unobstructed yet could still accommodate two discrete bedroom suites, each with its own stair. A sunken court allows the level belowground to receive daylight for its two bedrooms and a living/dining area. “The plan is the magic of the design,” says principal Colin Neufeld about the 3,450-square-foot house.

The plan also calls for visitors to zigzag to the main entrance: you follow a path from the street along the south edge of the site, then veer left at a freestanding concrete cross wall. Finally, you walk through a dusky red-painted wood door crafted by David Arthur. Inside a small vestibule, you immediately turn to the right, where you find the living/dining area expansively opening up, enclosed on both sides by glass walls with black fiberglass frames. The glazing on the south wall reveals a linear slot of space open to the sky; on the other side, it overlooks the sunken court.

To enhance the spatial drama of the living/dining area, the architects pushed the flat ceiling up to double height and wrapped the upper portion of this volume with curved plaster surfaces, warped to create an eccentrically shaped overhead vault. (Thoughts of Hans Scharoun’s interiors mingle with memories of Miesian planimetric experiments as one takes this in.) Another indoor court opens off the living/dining area and the kitchen, enclosed at the rear by the concrete wall of a one-story garage. Adjoining the garage, a carport for extra vehicles and gardening equipment is, in turn, protected by a 24-foot-high stucco over wood-frame canopy that forcefully extends the roofline of the second floor. Also here, an entrance path to the lower-level apartment runs along the northern edge of the house, ending in a stair down to the sunken court.

Varied materials give this volumetric entity its distinctive character. The first floor, cast-in-place concrete, was executed in two pours: the first created structural walls 8 inches thick; the second, composed of 2½ inches of self-consolidating concrete, gives the exterior surface a smooth sheen with little spalling or air pockets. Neufeld remarks that the concrete has survived the weather well, particularly since embedding insulation between the two pours helped eliminate exposure problems.

On the second floor, the structure changes to a timber framework surfaced with acrylic stucco. The shift from a concrete to a wood structure enabled the architects to create a sophisticated solution for the bedroom windows. In working with the carpenter client, they calibrated the curve of an array of 2-by-6-inch wood studs, 8 inches on center, and then increased the spacing to 16 inches on center where it becomes a straight wall. Triangular openings created by the interstices between the arc and the straight-wood formation provide the only glazed apertures on this level.

The supple dexterity with which these window structures are fabricated allows daylight to softly suffuse the bedrooms without the need for blinds, curtains, or shades. At night, the interior light seems to seep out through these crevices, much like an abstract jack o’ lantern.

The design process involved several revisions, yet the collaboration between the client and the architects sparked invention not only in the development of the concrete structure and fabrication of the intricate wood windows, but in the crafting of furniture by David Arthur, and the landscaping carefully cultivated by both clients. The result is as requested—a house nestled into its surroundings that is indeed quite different and very surprising.