By Brian Libby

When is a roof more than a roof? When Vancouver architect Marko Simcic made the top of the Ridge House, a cliff-hugging vacation home on British Columbia’s South Pender Island, into a breathtaking angular sculptural form. With perpendicular lines zigzagging up and down, it resembles an Etch-a-Sketch drawing. The roof’s Torchon silvery steel mesh cladding matches the rocky gray outcroppings on which the house is perched. Yet for all its mass and presence, because the base of the building below is mostly made of glass, the roof seems barely tethered to the cliff below. “The client was interested in a kind of dramatic sense that you were floating over that ridge rather than being anchored to it,” the architect explains. “We were interested in exploring how this roof as one singular element could configure the project. It developed into one big folding form that did a number of things.”

The roof isn’t just an aesthetic move. It extends beyond the house’s interior spaces to provide a covered awning, allowing the husband-and-wife clients to relax on a slate-covered patio even during the island’s frequently rainy weather. Inclusion of floor-to-ceiling glass on both sides of the house not only created the floating-roof effect, but also helped to bring daylight deep into the interior. Inside, the white walls and ceilings give way to the exquisite light and views, with wood-festooned columns and window frames adding a textural connection to the natural landscape outside.

This bold yet thoughtful architecture isn’t something Simcic can rush. His firm consists of only two to three people, usually just the architect and colleague Brian Broster. “I stay small and try to only take on work I want to take on,” Simcic says. “I’ve been lucky that way, I guess. Things have been relatively stable in the building industry here compared to the States and, because of the scale and scope and size of my practice, one project like that is all you can basically do. For about five years, we were pretty much dedicated to that one project. I like to defer starting points as long as I can and spend as much time as possible beforehand figuring out what the design can be.”

Simcic graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1990. Although he worked for numerous Vancouver firms in the ensuing years, he obtained licensure in 1996 and twas quick to form his own firm, “despite the fact that I didn’t really have work,” Simcic laughs. “I guess I was kind of interested in autonomy early on.” Eventually, small projects came Simcic’s way. He renovated a small church and collaborated with his wife, a landscape designer. Simcic is also an accomplished artist, with acclaimed projects like “Park,” a sculpture on wheels that resembles a car covered by a tarp that was placed in a series of curbside locations. Ultimately, though, he turned toward architecture—or, rather, folded the lessons of his artistry into making buildings.

Simcic’s first project was the Metchosin House, an 8,300-square-foot residence on the southern edge of Vancouver Island overlooking a grove of oak trees and the water behind. One could call the project “Houses,” as the structure encompasses separate buildings, united under one soaring roof plane. As with the Ridge House, Metchosin’s interplay of lines and angles, wood and concrete gives the building a kinetic energy, enhanced by water features outside that reflect light inside. Despite how large the house is, Simcic’s design draws the eye to where the form has been cut away; one corner of the house is set back like a missing pie wedge and the wood façade gives way to glass, revealing the kitchen as the heart of the home.

“The results are always somewhat of a surprise for the clients. They’re excited about the result but they also say, ‘We had no idea this was what we could wind up with.’” Even so, Simcic resists the notion of having a signature style. “I would never want to say, ‘Now I have this bag of tricks, and I execute these projects with it.’ I like the notion of open-ended possibility.”

by Lauryn Allison Lewis

Michael Leckie and Javier Campos founded Campos Leckie Studio, an interdisciplinary design firm based in Vancouver, BC. They founded the company in 2008 after previous collaborations on architectural projects “in the margins” since first meeting in 2003.

Today, the duo’s business philosophy revolves around the notion that good design can change lives. Both agree, “Design can play a transformative role in the way that individuals carry on their daily activities–through a process of support, enrichment and appreciation of space and the objects of daily life. To that end we believe that the process of design in an intimate and collaborative process that requires care and attention to detail. We strive to create a rigorous design logic in all of our projects that results in a simplicity that is meaningfully understated.”

This philosophy is one Campos Leckie Studio extends to each and every one of their clients., Both partners feel, “Our approach is based on the development of relationships with our clients that transcend the provision of services to a place where we, along with the client, can push together toward a common goal that is rooted in an architectural solution to their requirements and the site –space, light, form and tectonic. At the end of the day our litmus test for the fit of a project with our office is not based on budget or profit, but on the ability of the project to ultimately create something that has architectural integrity, interest and meaning.”

It’s an approach that sparks further creativity. “We feel that our projects are not formally derivative of each other but rather evolutionary in terms of the ongoing development of ideas. Ideas that prove to be successful and relevant carry forward and give rise to novel responses to new circumstances,” Leckie says.

The Vancouver RS-1-002 project was an attempt to create a modern space within Canada’s ubiquitous RS-1 zoning district. “The project explored the development restrictions of the residential regulations as well as the limitations of building within an urban context,” says Leckie and Campos. “The process was meant to generate a set of guidelines for what we have termed a ‘flexible prototype’ that could address the contextual differences of individual sites in a way that allows for a customized integration of passive environmental strategies, the incorporation of exterior space as part of everyday living, and the provision of an affordable and flexible live/work space.” The RS-1-002 is 2,560 square feet, with a 540-square-foot detached studio. The basement and garage of the project could be easily converted from work areas into rental spaces, reflecting lifestyle changes, such as working from home, to starting a family. “In this iteration of the guidelines we were able to implement meaningful cross ventilation, natural lighting throughout, and accommodate passive heating and cooling strategies,” says Campos. The project also incorporates exteriors and landscapes as an integral part of everyday living. “A large part of the second floor was integrated as deck space that runs the length of the house and is accessible from both upper floor bedrooms,” says Leckie and Campos. “The floor space made available as a result of this organization was redistributed to the basement. The resulting bedroom/office/flex room incorporated a desirable south-facing patio.”

Certain commonly held beliefs are consistently applied to everything Campos Leckie Studio undertakes. “We always endeavor to approach each project without preconception, and are committed to a rigorous process of examination and discovery. It is the process that is important for us, always leading to unexpected outcomes,” says Leckie and Campos. In a world overrun with cookie cutter architectural design, Campos Leckie Studio is as dynamic as the sea, meeting desert sand.

Crosstown Loft
Located on the east side of downtown Vancouver in the Yaletown district, the Crosstown Loft was completely remodeled for a young couple looking to start a family. “The existing building at 550 Beatty St was Vancouver’s first ‘New York style open plan loft’ – originally a 1907 warehouse that was retrofitted in 1981,” says Michael Leckie and Javier Campos. “In this new third iteration of the life of the building, the renovation is programmed with 1000 square feet of living and entertaining space upstairs and 1000 square feet of sleeping and play space downstairs.” The partners exposed and refinished the original timber structure and created a space inspired by a minimal palette. “The design goal was to create a functional interior that would maintain the original open plan feel of the loft typology, while also supporting the requirements of a growing young family,” says Leckie and Campos.

By Isabel Eva Bohrer

Maric Homes holds a distinguished position in Manitoba’s homebuilding industry. For 40 years, Maric Homes has pioneered advanced building techniques and ground-breaking aesthetics that have allowed them to become the most-respected and historically innovative custom home-building firm in the province.

Founded in 1973 by Steve and Cathie Maric, the company prides itself on being a truly custom home builder. From their elaborate show homes to each dream home they build for private clientele, all Maric Homes’ projects are varied and unique. Special projects include lakefront cottages in Manitoba’s Whiteshell Provincial Park and homes of stunning scope and beauty on Winnipeg’s distinguished Wellington Crescent. Maric Homes has also engaged in effective partnerships with established local architects. “Lloyd Secter, one of our province’s most prominent architects, has proven to be an especially successful collaborator – Mr. Secter even conceptualized the design for our future head office, currently under construction,” adds Dan Rolfe, Project Manager of Maric Homes.

“Maric Homes was founded [...] on the principles of integrity and passionate attention to detail,” Rolfe explains. “[The legacy of Steve and Cathie Maric] is a strong motivator for the subsequent generation to become stewards of the Maric name and carry it to new heights. The fact that a family business has access to unique ingredients provides a competitive advantage to our clients.”

The team at Maric Homes is “constantly seeking ways to transform and invigorate the familiar,” says Rolfe. “We’ve managed to separate ourselves from our peers by following this maxim.” And with success; Maric Homes is by far the most award-winning custom-home builder in Manitoba.

“We specialize in realizing our client’s dreams,” Rolfe affirms. As such, the company’s design process certainly begins with the ideas and goals of their clients. But more than merely being present at an initial meeting, clients of Maric Homes are involved in every single aspect of the home’s design and execution.

While always keeping the needs and desires of the client as their core guiding principle, Maric Homes’ company motto is ‘We build to astonish’. “This is more than a tagline; we look at it as an obligation to our clients and the public’s expectations,” Rolfe explains. “We seek to exceed every conventional benchmark in our industry – design, attention to detail, craftsmanship, and service.”

The company’s own ongoing evolution is regarded as its most rewarding project. “We are particularly proud of how we continue to separate ourselves from our peers,” Rolfe says. Homebuilding in Manitoba is necessarily rigorous – homes must be attractive, while also able to stand up to the harsh prairie climate. Regarded as leaders in design and execution, Maric Homes has managed to make a singular name for itself in the industry. “There is a distinct sense of accomplishment when we hand over the keys to new homeowners,” notes Rolfe.

In every home that they build, the company tries to achieve balance between the effective use of space and beauty. Their success is a result of recognizing that one is usually a product of the other. “Broadly, our aesthetic goal is classic prairie luxury guided by our client’s taste.”

In fact, the client guides the company’s inspiration first and foremost. The landscape and surroundings play an absolutely integral part in the design process as well. “Beyond the pragmatic, though, inspiration comes from anywhere: the quilting on the inside of a briefcase, the design of a bridge, a painting seen in a cottage, the colour saturation of a photograph or movie.” Maric Homes seeks to draw inspiration from everywhere and contextualize it into the firm’s design approach.

As for the future, Maric Homes will continue to try to innovate aesthetically and technologically while being guided by the firm’s traditional design direction. They look to continue to seek balance between remaining a tastemaker for the broader direction of home design in Manitoba while keeping consistent with the home-buying public’s high expectations of Maric Homes.

by Brian Libby

Brian Mackay-Lyons of the Halifax-based firm MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Limited vividly remembers a family trip to Rome at the age of four, when he decided to be an architect. On a visit to the ancient Forum, “My brother and I were each reaching around a baroque column, hugging it to see if we could touch our hands on the other side. Where I grew up, no one had heard of an architect. But for some reason, right then and there I told everyone that was what I’d do. It sounds hokey. But, I’m a great believer in fate.”

After founding the firm in 1985, McKay-Lyons (who was joined by partner Talbot Sweetapple in 2005) has spent the last quarter-century as both architect and academic, teaching in Nova Scotia as well as American universities like Harvard and Syracuse. His approach to design is thoughtful yet passionate, reducing forms, materials and sites to their bare essentials yet celebrating the craft of building.

In addition to his firm and teaching, MacKay-Lyons has operated for more than a decade from his farm, an annual “Ghost Lab,” functioning as a kind of life-sized research lab in which his students and employees are able to get involved experimenting with building their designs. It started out with what the architect calls “a frustration the unwholesome separation between the academic world and the world of practice. I wanted to make an example that re-integrated the two: the hand and mind.”

Yet a good architect is also part motivator. “My best friend tells me I could convince his grandmother to pose for Playboy,” MacKay-Lyons laughs. “It’s not salesmanship, though. It’s about enlisting the energy of other people. I always tell my students that to be an architect you’ll have to be content to be the dumb one in every conversation. The carpenter knows the wood better than us. The surveyor knows the site. We’re not the best at anything, really, but we get other people’s energy going in a cohesive direction, developing and finding that point of departure for a project—finding its soul.”

Since Sweetapple joined the firm, they’ve designed numerous public buildings such as the Canadian Chancery in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the School of Business at the University of Prince Edward Island and the Plaza Building at Brock University in St. Catharines. Yet, houses remain at the heart of their practice, displaying both simplicity and, at times, even whimsy.

For example, the Slide House was built along a sloping rural site—taking its inspiration from an old barn nearby that leans like the Tower of Pisa—with a façade that deliberately slants. It is clad simply and uniformly: in corrugated metal outside, and in poplar on the interior walls, floors and ceilings. McKay-Lyons likens it to a watermelon that’s merely green on the outside and pink inside. The continuous band of glass, contrasted against broad swaths of a windowless wall, is like an angular interpretation of a bite taken out of said melon.

But the simplicity of just one opening in the façade also has practical applications. “Certainly in this one there’s a conscious attempt to make it pure like that, like drawing in a single stroke,” MacKay-Lyons says. “But here [in Nova Scotia] we also have the highest weathering rate in North America: hot-cold, freeze-thaw, wet-dry. It favors a skin without many connections to maintain that tight envelope. I think of the houses we do as helmets, how it frames your experience and your understanding of nature.”

When working on a house project, MacKay-Lyons explains, “I go to the site with the client and sketch, trying to create the seminal sketch: the road map for purposeful action.” “You can do it with a pencil and paper or with a stick in the dirt. But you do it with the client, informed by their engagement.”

by Tricia Despres

LineBox Studio owner Andrew Reeves fulfilled the dreams of a family living in Ottawa, CA, who were on a quest for a home that offered the privacy of the country and the excitement of the city. What came of those desires was the creation of a 4,500-square-foot, one-of-a-kind dwelling that is both modern and inexplicably comfortable.

“Building a home in the middle of a downtown area always has its challenges,” says Reeves. “In essence, we were given the responsibility to recreate the privacy they had in their previous homes via the use of the existing nature found throughout the kidney shaped property. Indeed, it was a strange find for us, since both sides of the property were lined with trees.”

Other challenges included a nearby, south side parking lot situated close to the property and would possibly hinder their desires for privacy.

“It became a technical exercise for us, since it looked as [if] we would have to turn our back on the southern parking lot, but still find a way to have the sun shine into the home,” he says. “We wanted to focus on creating something with both form and function that would also react to environmental changes. And looking back on it, I would say it turned out to be one of the cleanest and most geometrically simple homes we have every created.”

In the end, the house would encompass all of the homeowners’ desires. Reeves and his team work from a quaint, collaborative design studio in Toronto, and take on a wide variety of job types throughout the year. Their main goal is to connect a client’s needs and desires, budgets, contexts and artistic expressions with a truly unique sense of place.

For this home in particular, designing a home with clean and simple lines fit perfectly into the lifestyle of the family of five. “It was built to be a social home,” says Reeves, “The family loves to entertain, and then they have the activity of three teenagers. Their goal was to purchase a new house, but they could never find something that truly fit their lifestyle.”

And right from their first meeting, Reeves and the homeowners seemed destined to make a great team. Often, Reeves said that those initial consultations with prospective clients are one of the most important moments in the entire building process.

“Many clients just seem to gravitate to us,” he says. “We have a certain European and more progressive style than many other builders in the area. Often, when we first meet with clients, I do this exercise in which I want them to take the nouns we use to describe rooms, and change them to verbs. Once they do this, the discussion changes drastically. What it means for me to bathe could be different from how they bathe.”

Fulfilling the homeowners’ goals of creating a social dwelling were met via the interconnectedness of many of the rooms in the home, from the kitchen to the basement. “The home is set up in a pinwheel of sorts, with all of the rooms connecting in one way or another,” says Reeves. The home is also made up of a number of natural materials, including Canadian western cedar, limestone, polished concrete and an ashen color hardwood that went far in bringing more warmth to the space.

“The land with which this home was built had been basically forgotten about for the past 40 years, so creating what I think is an amazing structure on it is extremely rewarding,” says Reeves. “I remember the city being fairly hesitant when they heard we were working on creating a ‘modern’ dwelling. People can get nervous just upon hearing the word. I think now that they have seen how well it looks, perhaps the city can be open to accepting more of these kinds of houses in the future.”

by Frederick Jerant

Paul duBellet Kariouk came to Ottawa in rather a roundabout way. “My family emigrated to New York City from France in the late ‘50s,and many of their friends settled in Montréal. For that reason, I traveled to Canada frequently and loved it.”

The founder and principal of Kariouk Associates, based in Ottawa, ON goes on to explain, “I was working as an architect in Manhattan when I secured a teaching position at Carleton University—so I moved to Ottawa and opened my own practice there in 2001.” The firm offers residential and commercial new construction, interior renovations, additions, landscapes and museum installations, but its niche is custom residential design.

Kariouk Associates often attracts a certain type of client; highly professional and discerning. “Typically, they’re in their 50s,” Kariouk says, “and they want a home that will serve their needs for their entire lives. They’re the exact opposite of people who buy and flip houses.”

Stylistically, Kariouk uses a modern vocabulary tempered by specificity and pragmatism. “Every project has limitations and challenges, ranging from the site itself to zoning restrictions to the budget…those challenges actually serve as catalysts for my designs.”

Because of Kariouk Associates’ painstaking design process, it’s not uncommon for three years to pass between penciling the first sketches and hanging the last picture.

While three years my seem like a lengthy stretch, Kariouk insists, “My clients are thoughtful, and not extravagant. There’s an incredible amount of soul searching and many decisions as the design evolves. It can take a year just to work through the various construction and design iterations.”

The process begins with a series of client meetings in which Kariouk strives to be upfront regarding what is realistic in terms of budget and amenities He then walks with them through a study of their daily and weekly habits, exploring how they live today, and how things might be different in twenty years or when grandchildren come to visit.

Kariouk uses the Hurteau-Miller Residence, in Val-des-Monts, Québec, as an example. “This getaway cottage was designed for a couple with a young son, but it will someday be their primary residence. By situating the master bedroom suite on the ground floor, we’ve addressed future accessibility issues.”

Client interaction is essential to a successful design, and Kariouk says that quite often his clients, “…have never worked with a designer or architect before and are a bit timid to get involved in the process. But as months go by, we become an effective team.”

The main bedroom of the Echo House, in Ottawa, overlooks the historic Rideau Canal, but “the windows were too small to permit enjoyment of the view,” Kariouk explains.. His plan was to increase the windows’ size and remount them using cantilevers. “If I had suggested that at the outset. I’m not sure they would have accepted it, but as the project and our working relationship developed, they agreed it would be the best method to achieve the intended results regarding views and light.” Illustrating Kariouk’s philosophy that strong partnerships are built through time and trust.

The firm uses hand sketches, computer animation, physical and computer modeling and other user-friendly techniques to help clients fully understand their proposals and ideas. The various iterations are incredibly detailed, right down to the specific placement of light switches.

“We often go through a dozen models, and just as many estimates,” Kariouk reveals. “ Every aspect of the home is an opportunity to do things from scratch.” He compares the process to buying a dress off the rack, versus having the fabric woven and then perfectly tailored to custom specifications

At the end of the process Kariouk says that his clients are confident that the money they’re spending will result in great value for them and not merely as a financial investment but as a lifetime quality-of-life investment.

“Responsible design isn’t about imposing pre-determined solutions,” Kariouk concludes. “I could design a house in a week and have it engineered in another week, but the result would not be an incredibly special, intensely personal home. Design that does not yield a quality, unique project is, by definition, not design.”

Opening Softwall and Softblock is a playful, engaging experience as the tactile honeycomb material expands to create a completely freestanding structure that is hundreds of times larger than its compressed form. The efficiency of the structure allows for an incredible economy of material. The flexibility of the structure is pragmatic for compact portability and reshaping environments for living and working. You can choose to open any Softwall or Softblock element to the maximum 4.5 meter length, or you can open it a shorter length to suit a particular occasion. For storage, every Softwall and Softblock compresses to less than 50mm in thickness and a stainless steel wall hook is provided to hang the Softwalls. Softwall and Softblock modular system includes a variety of standard and custom heights up to 3 meters tall.

The large kraft paper fanning lounger has a generous 210cm (84″) diameter. As paper loungers are used, the edges of the paper gently soften and crush, creating irregular facets that catch the light and form a unique organic pattern within the crisp honeycomb geometry of the structure. Although the surface of the paper softens, the lounger maintains its structural integrity. It is the honeycomb geometry that lends the paper great strength with an economy of material resource. kraft paper is a stiff, robust, unbleached paper that is 100% recyclable and made from 50% recycled fiber.

Cloud Softlight is the most recent addition to the family of flexible honeycomb structures that Molo creates from paper and textiles. Cloud Softlight can create a luminous overhead canopy, hung in clusters, tailored to the individual space they are shaping. Alternately, individual pendants in four different sizes can be suspended. The hollow cloud forms are internally lit by LED light, making the sculptural three dimensional forms mysteriously radiant when viewed from any direction. You decide the topography of your own cloudscape, positioning how it rises and falls through and over a space.

Visit Molo to see additional information about these and other products.

Castor is a multi-disciplinary design studio based in Toronto. From conception, fabrication to installation the studio combines technical knowledge, craftsmanship and design sense to create uncommon objects.

Parts & Labour is the ultimate Castor-designed space and is the bigger more sophisticated brother of Oddfellows, the studio’s first restaurant project. Decked out in an array of recycled lights, shattered windshields and long communal tables on an expanse of well worn hardwood the spacious restaurant and bar invites large crowds to mingle and smaller parties to dine more exclusively at the chef’s tables.

Text and Photos from Castor and Parts & Labour.

story by Brian Libby
photos by Ben Rahn and Steve Tsai

Before becoming an architect, two experiences shaped Paul Raff in a way that affects his design sensibilities today: growing up on the Canadian prairies of Saskatchewan and being an artist.

“I can’t help but feel that’s important: the power of light and sky, atmospheric conditions, the landscape,” Raff says of his early years in Canada’s grassy heartland. “Buildings have a more powerful effect when you drive across the prairie: grain silos, barns. It allows you to sort of mediate your body with the landscape.”

In later years, as he worked at architecture firms in the dense, diverse and energetic cities of New York, Barcelona and Hong Kong, he never lost this sense of how buildings relate to the landscape. In fact, it drives Raff’s embrace of sustainable design and its way of relating to the landscape.

By the time he founded Paul Raff Studio in 2003, Raff was a sought-after installation artist and sculptor for whom architecture was central, like Gordon Matta-Clark. For example, Raff’s installation “Unbuilding Ways” staged the demolition of a historic but condemned cottage in downtown Toronto. “I became more familiar with questioning what is possible than what one gets going to architecture school or walking through even the most wonderful house,” he explains. “I think that helps make our house designs more original, unique and surprising.”

Today Raff’s firm has designed projects from Toronto to Argentina and Peru. Houses are his favourite type of commission. “It’s more personal than the other type of work we may do,” he explains. “It’s an intimate part of your life. It’s not just the place you live. I think anytime someone phones me, it’s because they have an understanding that we can do something that’s really for them, something special that will be very much a part of their own life.”

The clients for one noteworthy Raff project, the Cascade House in Toronto’s tree-laden Forest Hill, were moving from sunny Arizona and asked for as much natural light as possible. Appropriately, a distinctive feature of the house is a cascading glass wall in the front.

“We wanted to do some sort of privacy screen, something that allows light but privacy,” the architect explains. “I found a way to take standard sheets of three-quarter-inch glass and to break it into little pieces and laminate it together with silicone, to create this beautiful translucent, slightly greenish, glowing screen. Every time a tree shimmers in the wind or someone walks by, that effect is sort of multiplied in these vertical streaky pixels. It also adds some colour and vitality on grey, dark days.” The wall is made with glass cut into 475 narrow pieces joined with standard silicone.

On the south side, an expansive window allows the low winter sun to penetrate and warm the house with the help of a large internal slate wall that captures and stores available solar energy to heat the house during evening hours. Smaller apertures within the wall dapple adjacent rooms with light, making a kind of art installation born of function—the work of an architect who is also an artist.

“The summer sun can never hit it, and the winter sun hits it all day,” Raff says of the slate wall. “Light is important in a number of ways. It has poetic qualities, it brings warmth, and it connects you to the outside. Cascade House is about that connection to the outside.” The master bedroom, occupying the entire third floor, is set back from the first two levels to give privacy; its view through the adjacent treetops makes it feel almost like a treehouse, as do the bamboo floors and built-in cabinetry. In the back of the house, a terrace adjacent to the pool encourages outdoor dining.

The house has also been designed to adapt to the family’s needs as they change over time “It’s a principle of sustainability,” the architect adds, “the flexibility to meet future needs.”

See more work from Paul Raff.

story by Romy Schafer
photos by Roger Brooks

For nearly 30 years, Patricia Gray of Patricia Gray Inc. has been creating one-of-a-kind residential installations for individuals too time-pressed to contemplate their design wants and needs, much less deal with the inherent challenges of renovating a room or entire home. “Most of the clients I work with are busy professionals, so I handle all the details for them,” says Gray, principal of the Vancouver-based design firm, which has executed projects in the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore and Africa.

“All the details” typically range from ascertaining a client’s needs and wants to designing custom furnishings to arranging amenities. “I offer a complete service for my clients—everything that’s required in making a space personalized for them,” she says, noting that she also does full design-build project management.

Gray’s recent installation at Vancouver’s The Erickson—a 17-storey residential tower designed by and named for world-renowned architect Arthur Erickson—illustrates her complete-service approach. When a busy San Francisco couple commissioned Patricia Gray Inc. to turn their spacious two-bedroom, three-bath condominium into a second home for impromptu visits, the designer looked to a luxury, five-star hotel for her inspiration. “They wanted a home that they could come to on the spur of the moment and everything would be ready for them,” she explains. “I set up flower delivery, maid service, laundry service and concierge service, so the clients can just send emails [to these service providers] when they decide to come to Vancouver. When they leave, the maid service cleans everything up.”

So how does Gray, an award-winning designer who studied at the Parsons School of Art and Design in Paris and the University of Ferrara in Italy, determine clients’ design preferences and needs—something they often don’t know themselves? “I arrive at that through my extensive interview process,” she explains. “I ask them how they’re going to live in their space, what their entertainment requirements are, what their family requirements are [and so on]. Then, I get to know them, and the style evolves by osmosis.”

Thoroughly acquainting herself with clients’ lifestyles at the project’s onset enables Gray to develop a complete design concept for them, “so they know exactly what their home is going to look like when it’s finished, before we even start,” she says. “Everything’s designed and priced. Then, they approve the concept and the budget, and I proceed from there,” ultimately handing over a completed, customized new home.

But, as every experienced designer knows, the journey from the initiation of a project to its completion can be filled with challenges. “There’s a lot of coordination to do with all the different suppliers and sub trades involved,” Gray explains. “It’s one thing to be able to design something very beautiful, and it’s another thing to be able to execute it. The great challenge is in the execution—it’s like putting together a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces have to fit together, and everybody’s got to work together to bring it to fruition.”

For Gray, working with high-level tradespeople and artisans is key to a successful, problem-free renovation. “I have quite a wonderful group of people that I’ve built up over the years that can execute my designs,” she says. “I think that’s one of the bonuses my clients have in me—my intellectual knowledge, all the years of experience I’ve had and having the right people working with me. I have a wonderful contractor who I can totally count on. Everyone I work with shows up when they’re supposed to and completes their jobs on time and on budget.”

Creating custom-designed furnishings like tables, seating, media and wall units, pillows and artwork further enables Gray to create personalized spaces for clients. “I have a millwork company, an upholstery workroom, a drapery workroom,” she explains, adding, “What I do is very unique and very specific for each client. I like to think of my design as couture. Everything is custom-designed and made specifically for each client.”


This penchant for designing home furnishings has led to a new business venture for Gray: a line of custom furniture based on some of the limited edition, custom pieces that she’s created for past projects. At press time, possible manufacturing partners and marketing initiatives for the line were still being worked out, according to Gray.

Creating elegant, personalized spaces will no doubt continue to be Gray’s métier. When asked what she considers the most rewarding part of her job, she quickly responds, “When I hand over the completed project to my clients—when all the months of work are finished, and they see everything in its beauty and perfection.”

Discover more about Patricia Gray.