Craven Road Studio
Toronto
ON
Award Category:
Governor General’s Medals in Architecture
Shim-Sutcliffe Architects Inc.
Lead design architect(s):
Brigitte Shim, FRAIC
Howard Sutcliffe, MRAIC
This urban studio building was designed for study, display and storage. The bright space receives indirect illumination through a system of narrow light coffers surrounding the building’s perimeter. This project is part of a series of building and landscape interventions on the same site as the Craven Road House completed ten years earlier for the same client.
Click for full version:
photo: Bob Gundu
photo: Finn O'Hara
photo: Bob Gundu
photo: Bob Gundu
photo: Finn O'Hara
"In a modest project like the Craven Road Studio it can be too easy to give away tectonic rigour to the banalities of typical construction. Here, however, the architects have ensured that every surface and detail becomes a conceptual proposition. The particularly inventive juncture of wall and roof creates coffers that sculpt the changing conditions of light to create a sublime daylighting condition and test a proposition that could be applicable to larger scale work."
"This project captured our attention at both the detail level and at the urban scale. The inside perimeter walls are washed with light thanks to a brilliant sectional detail which also sets off the floating ceiling and disguises the fact that the walls are often housing deep storage cabinets. The studio site completely rethinks the realm of the tight inner city block off the lane– creating a sanctuary of inside and outside spaces."