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Tucked away on a quiet street in the exclusive community of Mount Royal, a visually stunning and architecturally significant home has hit the market for an astonishing $10 million.
Named Montreal House for its location on Montreal Avenue, the 4,052-square-foot, five-bedroom home has garnered plenty of recognition, including being named a finalist at the 2020 World Architecture Festival and receiving honours at the 2019 Prairie Wood Design Awards and Alberta Steel Design Awards of Excellence.
An onsite fireside chat with the home’s designers and builder group revealed layers of details. The team, comprised of Jeremy Sturgess, visionary and concept design, Kevin Harrison, current principal at Sturgess Architecture, Dalton Kaun, project lead, and Jakob Winkler of Copperstone Homes, all agree that the home is both expressive in its design and contextual to the historical community in which it resides and where many of the neighbouring homes are well over a century old.
“This is a project of great originality,” says Kaun.
Montreal House presents as a narrow, linear form that runs north to south with the front entrance facing Montreal Avenue and the garage extending to 12th Street. The structure nudges the east side of the lot, opening up the west side to a large and private side yard.
“I was interested in how to maximize sunlight on the lot and how to create an outside space that would be in harmony and in sync with the inside space. I chose to run the house north-south on the east side of the property to open up the west side to the garden, and in so doing, the sunlight comes in from the south all day,” says Sturgess.
What really stands out in this home is the architecture and the thoughtful juxtaposition of space. Kaun says that it was really about staying true to the honesty of the materiality.
Clad in Corten steel that folds in and extends upon itself creating layers of volume, the two-storey structure presents as a piece of modernist sculpture. Generous use of glass, steel, concrete and wood add to the textural qualities. The entrance defines the first layer, a gentle ramp that zig zags across the facade, takes the viewer on a journey — one can see directly in to the great room and beyond through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Entrance through the front door encases one in a small enclosed foyer, which then opens to the expansiveness of the home, creating an immediate visceral response of astonishment.
Exposed steel beams, a 25-foot floor-to-ceiling Corten steel fireplace and a double-height curtain wall of glass that reveals private gardens beyond, define the home’s originality and encapsulate its surreal vision.
The clients, a creative couple with young children, approached Sturgess Architecture brimming with ideas.
“They are really inventive people, and for me, designing a house for clients is like making a portrait of them,” says Sturgess.
The home is an expressive structure that reveals many moments of visual pleasure. Kaun says that the use of steel beams really drove the form of the home.
“It was the materiality that took those urban ideas to the next level,” says Kaun.
The steel beams retain their original character, including stamped lettering. The walls are clad in raw concrete. The use of angles and irregular geometric forms are inherent throughout. The kitchen island is in the shape of an isosceles trapezoid, a form that is then mirrored in the shape of the staircase, which narrows as one ascends. Pot lights nestles in square casings, rather than round.
Upstairs, a catwalk spins around the second-storey perimeter, providing access to the secondary bedrooms, which hang like pods from the steel structure. The catwalk overlooks the great room space below and structurally creates a gallery type of feel, highly conducive to displaying the couple’s extensive art collection.
The primary bedroom is cantilevered over the west garden, apart and distinct from the linear structure of the home. Layered in floor-to-ceiling glass, it’s a private escape in the canopy of the trees, with visual vantage points that look into the main home’s public living spaces. It is at this place that the steel beams meet — like an explosion shooting in every direction, a sculptural artform in itself.
A quiet library area with cork flooring encapsulates the rear of the upper level, and accesses a large outdoor terrace with a hot tub.
“This is the counterpoint to the great room. The family wanted a place to come and be comfy at night,” says Kaun.
The home’s lower level houses a glassed-in wine cellar, a recreational space and wet bar, a guest bedroom and a separate storage area for the couple’s art collection with custom-designed millwork cabinetry.
Completed in 2018, Montreal House took three years to design and another three years to build.
“It was a process and a collaboration,” says Sturgess.