Dave LeBlanc of the Globe & Mail House resulted from a perfect meeting of the minds From Friday's Globe and Mail July 6, 2007 at 12:00 AM EDT The Architect is talking about how we got here. Not how we arrived this afternoon — that was via a series of bumpy, twisty dirt roads near Shelburne, Ont. — but how sitting in this magnificent dining room was made possible by one of those rare cases in which architect and client are in perfect synchronization. Standing within earshot and rolling a sushi lunch on the ample kitchen island, the Client listens as the Architect speaks of the genesis of this rambling Prairie-style house with an endless view of the Boyne River Valley. I ask: "At the outset, did you use freehand sketches to generate ideas? As the Architect answers, the Client leaves her task, rummages for a few minutes and then spreads two slightly wrinkled ink drawings out on the table. A smile spreads across the Architect's face: "I can't believe you saved these!" he says, truly surprised. I'm not. If I'd just been through the process of building a custom home and was as pleased as clients Evelyn Fotheringham and husband Craig Gutowski were with the work of architect Alexander Temporale and intern architect Huy Truong, I'd have saved those drawings, too. "How can you say no to a house like that?" Ms. Fotheringham asks rhetorically, referring to the five-year-old sketch. It was the first step of a journey that ends here with us eating sushi under custom star-shaped light fixtures that dangle from the real star of this home — a complicated and beautifully executed timber roof. We'll get to that in a minute; first, there's that business of synchronization to explain. As most architects — including Mr. Temporale — will tell you, once a house is finished, so too is the relationship between architect and client. Decisions on light fixtures, paint colours, countertops and, sometimes, even furniture are given over to interior designers or decorators, often with disastrous results. Not here. After it was decided to use Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Pennsylvania house, "Fallingwater," and its neighbour, "Kentuck Knob," as inspiration, Mr. Temporale consulted again with his clients. They said the plans for the house were looking good, but he said something to the effect of, "Yes, but we can do better. Let us have at it again." The clients, who lived in a trailer during the excavation and then in the basement that first year before the rest of the house had risen above them, came back to the Architect and said something to the effect of, "What do you think of this stone for the walls? What do you think of this type of wood for the roof?" Phrases like "team effort" and "collaborative" roll easily off tongues around here. "He bought into the design and you can see some of the light fixtures that he selected, the small little details; it's his own touch," the Architect says of Mr. Gutowski's commitment. "He picked up on the design that we started and he never parted ways from that." To wit, things such as the handsome cherry wood doors with a horizontal band of inlaid teak or the gently angled, mullion-less corner windows speak of the love lavished on this house by both parties. Pointing to the staircase, Mr. Temporale says, "That was hand-built on the site, so everything they've looked at they've tried to continue in the same vein as the original design intent." As another piece of sushi disappears off the plate, another fact emerges: "We decided to use a non-rectangular, six-sided planning module to do the house so that it flowed along," Mr. Temporale says between bites. "We don't have any rectangular rooms as such." Indeed, all rooms are vaguely honeycomb-shaped, and they slip and slide past each other as they shuffle languidly along to the prow-like ends of the house. Along the way, woodstoves and fireplaces abound, which is as it should be, since Mr. Gutowski is president of The Foundry, an Orangeville, Ont.-based manufacturer of such items. At 5,000 square feet (10,000 if you include the basement), it's a big house, but it still manages to feel intimate. Others might be confounded as to how to contain a meandering, mostly two-storey house (with a little pop-out, third-storey "crow's nest" for Mr. Gutowski) under one roof without resorting to big, boxy McMansion proportions. But Mr. Temporale, with 37 years of experience since getting his University of Toronto degree, deftly contained it all under a sculptural roof system that bends, curves and offers interior vistas of crisscrossing wood worthy of Daniel Libeskind's Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. "These rafters," notes Mr. Truong, looking up, "each one has a different angle, so the guy who framed the roof … basically said, 'Who designed this thing?' " Kidding aside, Mr. Truong goes on to explain that many 3-D models were necessary to make the roof puzzle fit together. Mr. Temporale adds: "Because there are a number of angles that are radiating and they come to, say, the stair tower or the other tower, they all have to come to the same point and as they meet different ridgelines, the roof, actually, is warped … but you cannot see that because it's all shingled." What you can see, beyond the empty plate of sushi, is a perfect meeting of the minds: the Architect's, the Client's and the Craftsman's. Dave LeBlanc hosts The Architourist on CFRB Wednesdays during Toronto at Noon and Sunday mornings. Send inquiries to dave.leblanc@globeandmail.com.
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