An Exposed Steel Skeleton Revived This 115-Year-Old Vancouver Home

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Project Details:

Location: Vancouver, Canada

Footprint: 4,000 square feet

Architect: D'Arcy Jones Architects / @darcyjonesarchitects

Builder: NRT Development

Structural Engineer: Aspect Structural Engineers

Envelope Engineer: CSA Building Sciences Western

Photographer: Sama Jim Canzian / @silentsama

From the Architect: "The 3789 Redo carefully restored and strengthened a 115-year-old house, undoing many odd additions and awkward previous alterations. The building was originally a rooming house before transitioning to a community hospital in Vancouver’s Riley Park when the area was still surrounded by farmland on the city’s edge.

"The dilapidated house was disconnected and lifted from its existing crumbling base, allowing a new reinforced concrete foundation to be built underneath. After it was lowered, the existing wood-framed structure was retained and seismically reinforced with an exposed steel frame and bent steel stair. The steel structure’s apparent indifference to interior spaces and spatial demarcations results from the existing house’s joists and beam locations. Preserving them in place meant the steel was not always in ideal locations. Still, this strategy highlights that the project is a renovation and shows where the interior walls used to be, so the house’s original plan and proportions live on like a map on the ceiling. A new central stair of the same steel was rebuilt in the exact location as the original, modernizing the symmetry and planning of this historic building. Instead of feeling industrial, the steel gives the interior a more casual character than the exterior suggests.

"Modern tray ceilings further reinterpret and abstract the moldings of the house’s past. Two existing bay windows were replaced as pure glass vitrines with no mullions or operable fresh air windows. These vitrines were shaped into two cozy living room window seats. To bring fresh air into these nooks and every bedroom on the floor above, mini operable screened ‘doors’ act as the house’s fresh air vents. The small ‘doors’ are clad with cedar shingles like the building’s exterior. Opening and closing, they flap like fish scales, showing off the residents’ activity on the inside.

"A basement with a suite for an aging parent and an attic with an open office space sandwich the two main living floors. In the basement, lowered grades in a playroom and the suite’s living areas bring in as much natural light as the floors above. A soundproof attic suits one of the client’s night-owl work schedules. This office opens onto a roof deck with a city view hidden within the existing house’s hipped roof and cornice.

"Spindle railings and an oversize pivoting gate at the exterior have a modern feel in galvanized steel. A custom angular gutter transforms the roof into an idealized and abstract shape, emphasizing faithfully restored rafter tail soffit brackets. Even though the doors and windows are still located where they used to be, the old building is given new relevance and stature through refinement, exaggeration, and modern detailing."