Text description provided by the architects. When a young family with three children moved into a mid-century modern bungalow on the edge of a North York ravine, they were excited about the house’s natural surroundings and its modernist style. However, the house was ill-suited for the contemporary family’s needs. Its interior was cramped, dark, and disorderly, and it lacked connection to its surroundings. They hired Denegri Bessai Studio (DB Studio) to improve the house’s functionality and experience while preserving and enhancing the best of its modernist bones.
The architects began by opening up the interior and replacing a series of small disconnected rooms with an airy living, dining, and kitchen area that spans almost the entire length of the main floor. By replacing the rear wall with a floor-to-ceiling glass curtain wall, the architects opened the house to light and created a virtually seamless connection between the interior and the ravine beyond. To enhance the depth of this space, DB Studio also replaced the existing flat ceiling with a new vaulted ceiling treated with a warm Douglas Fir finish, introducing the motif of the house’s distinct roof line inside.
Through this subtraction work, the designers were left with a structural pier in the center of the room that became an artistic focal point within the space. DB Studio clad the column with TATA tiles, handmade in Mexico City where their client was born, and laid sections both vertically and perpendicularly to create an array of projecting shelves and ledges for both decoration and display. Towards the front of the house, the architects also incorporated an existing skylight into the second-floor addition, creating a soaring two-story cutout that channels light into the dining room through an irregularly shaped opening – another creative reference to the exterior roof-line worked into the interior.
The unimposing second-floor addition accommodates two children’s bedrooms, each with an ensuite bathroom. The plan is organized around the skylight cutout at the center, creating a ‘peek-a–boo’ lookout with a glass guard from where the children can playfully engage with the spaces below. The addition also extends outwards over the side of the house and down to ground level, to house a double-height mudroom with cubbies for each member of the family and a Pirelli rubber floor – a DB Studio signature material for its combinations of stylishness, durability, and ease of maintenance.
From the outside, the addition rises discreetly above the existing structure. Its narrow bridge-like footprint creates valuable floor space without compromising the quintessential modernist form of the split-level bungalow, and its prominent angles again echo the house’s distinct asymmetrical roof-line. Its set back position from the house’s front elevation also helps it layer into the background – a concept inspired by the image of mountains at different distances in a landscape painting. Out back, sprawling rear patios extend the household activities outdoors towards the ravine.
The resulting house appears modestly changed from the street, while on the inside, its design feels even more connected to its original modernist vision: clean, light-filled, and highly functional. What really makes it a DB Studio project though are the playful elements, designed for the joy of a young family, that bring new life to the house for the next generation.
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Cite: “North York Ravine House / Denegri Bessai Studio” 03 Mar 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed .
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