Twelve Tacoma

Twelve Tacoma by Toronto-based Aleph-Bau, stands in a line-up of typical 19th century workers’ rowhouses in the city’s central Summerhill neighbourhood. Renovated using white paint and corrugated aluminum cladding, the house is juxtaposed to the coloured brick facades of the neighbouring houses.

  The aluminum upper level goes almost unseen from the front of the house. From the laneway in the back, the full vertical mass comes into view, bringing the nearby foliage into the home and the inhabitants to the outdoors. To construct the third-floor addition without burdening the party walls, a new steel structure was introduced to the original wooden building from the ground all the way to the upper roof.

An upstairs bathroom is fitted with a wall of plants, overhanging the bathtub, with the whole space set in slightly by a balcony. Large windows running all the way down the rear exterior wall of the house open up the space to sunlight and reflect an energizing brightness in the interior. The staircase in the center of the home acts as a pivotal force in the design, giving the space a playful character, while the basement living room is slightly sunken, making the concrete bench seating feel like a small, personal amphitheatre.

Twelve Tacoma, Toronto, Canada
Program: house renovation and addition
Architects: Aleph-Bau (Delnaz Yekrangian)
Team: Gina Gallaugher, Golara Jalalpour, Joseph McBurney, So Tadachi, Fabiana Todescan, Leila Sadri, Kazem Yekrangian
Structural engineering: Blackwell
Area: 114 sqm
Completion: 2016