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Sylvan Living

Toronto, Canada

ewson Architects present Sylvan Living, a mid-century split-
level home in North York with a new and sustainable lease
Don life. Building anything in a city like Toronto is well known
to be a challenge. The cost of land, the regulatory environment, and
inflated construction budgets make delivering a quality product on
time, and on budget, a tall order.

Throw a whole list of regulatory requirements into the mix to
appease the client's desire to build a home that is both gentle on the
environment and reflective of their taste and personalities. All of that
comes together on a very unique site abutting protected parkland,
providing a recipe for a complex, challenging project that would
make lesser architects run for the ravines.

But not Dewson Architects, a firm very much used to complex,
challenging projects with numerous stakeholders, with equally
numerous regulatory requirements. After renovating multiple
centenarian, heritage-protected homes in Rosedale, and building
a new house on a 100-year floodplain in Etobicoke, designed to be
both viably sustainable and to last for generations, they were up to the
challenge of renovating this mid-century, homely split-level in North
York, near Bathurst and Sheppard.
Entrance detail
The architects’ focus on this project was fourfold: Photo credit: ©2021 RVLTR / A. Marthouret
1. Renovate a pedestrian, nondescript home that blatantly failed
to capitalise on its exceptional site bordering a ravine, into a
comfortable and luxurious home connected to nature. Rooftop deck
2. Fulfill all regulatory requirements, including satisfying the Photo credit: ©2021 RVLTR / A. Marthouret
TRCA (Toronto Regional Conservation Authority) which has
jurisdiction over the site.
3. Make the renovated home as sustainable as possible while
staying within the budget constraints.
4. Give the house another 100-year lease on life by designing a
home that is meant to last.

Design-wise, the architects functionally flipped the programme to
de-emphasise the original design's orientation and connection to the
street. Instead, they opened the living spaces to the side yard, giving
the interiors an unparalleled view and functional connection to the
ravine landscape beyond the property lines.

All principal living spaces were relocated on the main floor to take
advantage of this connection to nature, while the master suite was
designed as a small second-floor addition, giving the impression
of living in a luxurious tree house, thanks to large floor-to-ceiling
sliding doors blurring the indoor-outdoor boundary. Lastly, the
architects fought for permission to add a rooftop terrace that expands
the house’s space outside in the summer, while taking in breathtaking
views onto the surrounding landscape.

From a regulatory standpoint, the design was constrained by the
requirement to build within the existing home’s footprint, and to reuse
its preexisting foundation. That required extensive underpinning,
shoring, and slope stability work in order to ensure that the renovated
home would last for another 100 years, while keeping up with the

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