Modular Cedarvale Ravine House - A Connection between Town and Nature
The modern Cedarvale Ravine House was especially designed by Drew Mandel Architects for a family of four in Toronto, Canada. The infill project has a privileged location in its mid-town residential neighborhood, as it opens up to protected woodlands.
The design of the building enhances light through its floor to ceiling glass walls, placing into advantage the views surrounding and making the transition between sub-urban street and nature. The house is built on modules, offering many intimate spaces or expansive ones. The large generous windows make the connection between inside and outside and the main materials are wood and sandstone, used alternatively inside, thus providing coziness and elegance to the interior spaces. The interiors are large, enjoying natural light which is enhanced through vivid and warm colors as orange, red, green, colors that bring inside the autumn from outside. The living space, prolonged with the kitchen, is the real heart of the house. A cantilevered second story volume frames views, gestures to the landscape and allows the re-naturalized ravine planting to be drawn farther into the site.
The building is very well organized, providing spaces for relaxation, spaces for playing, reading, admiring the beautiful landscape surrounding or even for working. Wood offers intimacy and warm, transforming the house into a perfect home.
