What is Being Subverted?
1 Exterior architectural design
2 Contemporary asymmetry
3 Finished/unfinished bias
4 Snowbanks
5 Modern detailing
6 Modern materials
Nonfiction Case Study Questions
How can a laneway house look the same age or older than the main house?
Is a new building modern if its palette is dated?
Can a laneway house have prospects and refuge when it has four exposed sides?
Can a laneway house seem special even if it is finished with inexpensive commonplace materials?
Can a laneway house turn the qualities of a rental basement suite into something more artful?
How can the messy realities of winter and snow be design features?
Does symmetry make a building feel older or newer?
Dictation
This project is a real commission for a repeat client. Four years ago, DJA designed a house and a small guest cottage that is half an hour outside Nelson, British Columbia. There’s not enough housing for young people in the area, partly because of the seasonal student population at the local Selkirk College. This client recently bought a house in the old town of Nelson and asked us to design a rental laneway house in its backyard.
The site is downhill from the main house, backing onto a lane. The new building’s footprint is nestled on a low slope, enclosed by a round concrete patio and mature Sumac trees. The main house from the 1940s has clapboard siding and a distinctive storybook roof. These roofs are characterized by oversized and rounded fascias, with roofing shingles installed as a soft edge as if the house is a toy or a gingerbread house. These roof details are now out of fashion, considered quaint and dated. The main house has a wide shed dormer facing the laneway house with the same storybook roof detailing.
When designing a new building behind a traditional one the knee-jerk modernist reaction is to design the second building to contrast as much as possible. In the past this is how our studio approached additions or infill buildings. This new proposal is an opportunity to intentionally try the opposite of what we typically do.
The first design decision was what to do with the laneway wall that faces the main house. The main house has two suites, so two households will now have their privacy impacted by any new construction. A wall feels awfully blank without windows, yet a blank roof always seems just fine, even neighbourly. We imagined the new laneway house’s form looking like it sunk into quicksand, with only its fibreglass roof shingles visible. The human mind often negatively reacts to blank walls. But you don’t expect to see doors or windows when you see a roof, making complete simplicity more palatable. We realize this DDes research has been critical of the aesthetic abstraction creeping into modern design everywhere. We think this laneway house will have the formal simplicity that abstraction satisfies but in a historic and old-fashioned way. We don’t want any gutters on this project because when melting snow runs off in the spring, prominent icicles will emphasize the storyboard roof’s gingerbread house personality.
Gravel lanes aren’t pleasant to look at. To compensate for this, we carved a courtyard from the middle of the floor plan so every major room would look towards a private garden and patio. This courtyard is like an “innie” belly button, opposite of the main house’s “outie” rear dormer. This private outdoor space faces south, bringing light deep into the plan all day. Even the parking space on the east side is concealed, improving the main house tenants’ views. In the cold winters, plough trucks will shove snow up against this project’s low bedroom windows and the glass railing at the patio. As the snow melts and goes brown in the spring, the glass will show off the stratification of the winter’s snowstorms behind the glass. In winters with less snow, the occupants can shovel snow against the same glass guard to preserve privacy in their living spaces all winter until new Sumac trees leaf out each spring. This proposal transforms regular snowbanks into useful art.
It’s not conventional for our studio to design projects with heritage details or to specify historic colour palettes. This applied case study was chosen to explore how invisible our involvement or influence can be. It could be considered lazy to copy another building, but it could also be seen as respectful. We will paint the laneway’s clapboard siding and roofing shingles to match the main house.
Like other DDes case studies, this new model of practice and its experiments continue to frustrate some people. Critics could ask why we only copied half of an older building. Or they wonder why we copied the parts most people consider outdated or even ugly. Some wonder, if we must copy parts of the main house, why we didn’t replicate more engaging elements, like mullioned windows, stone or brickwork, or decorative trim. This proposal started with a respectful and quiet new building in the backyard of a nice old house. The proposal became an oddity, familiar yet strange.
When money is tight, many people rent basement suites, even partially finished ones. Before most Canadian kids grow up to rent their own place, they experience the pleasures and rusticity of an unfinished basement. Nelson is known for its wood industries and outdoorsy people. The normal Nelson way is to use wood as much as possible, cliché or not. This proposed laneway house has a tight budget. Any exposed wood in the building must have a job, creating walls or the roof.
This project tries to make a virtue of the texture of any unfinished basement aesthetic. The walls are finished in drywall, but only to 7’-0” above the floor. This white skirt absorbs doors, utilities, cabinets, wiring, and plumbing. Everything else above it is exposed, but it’s just regular framing that’s exposed, not fancy timber or glulam beams. The interior is an honest essay on how 2 x 4 and 2 x 6 wood framing works. This has been done before in the history of architecture, but less literally. The white wainscotting “liner” sets up a contrast that emphasizes the unfinished top half.
This project’s ideas aren’t fake modesty. The proposal draws attention to how things really are. Nothing is idealized or fetishized, yet the exterior and interior have cultural value. This Nelson laneway project is the modest start of a new direction for our studio. It could not have happened without everyone in the studio going through the case study process. This project is an evolution of other renovations DJA has designed, but it paradoxically became more radical than many past projects by not trying as hard to be modern or original. In some ways, it doesn’t even try to look architect-designed. Its symmetry is not conventionally modern, so it will appear older than it is, even when new.
Super Short Criticisms
D’Arcy
When you can do anything why did you choose to do almost nothing?
Kelsey
Ran out of money to finish the top half.
Jonny
Exposing things like conduit and ducting seems nice until you realize it would be nicer if it aligned with something and would have been better off hidden.
Jesse
Inflation hit the construction industry hard.
Alex
Because walls can be roofs too.
Mary
The OG versus The Dupe.
Shane
This project dares to ask the question: what if we took the ugliest detail of all time and made it an entire house?
Breana
The suburban finish-it-yourself basement, custom laneway house edition.
This exploration is part of an ongoing speculative project that began as doctoral research. The collaborative case studies test ideas that will inform future built work. A new design methodology using unconventional techniques explores how to delay aesthetics and form in a search for utility-driven, human-focused projects. Architecture’s status quo is questioned through an optimistic but contrarian lens.
