Charting A New Course

Breaking down walls and physical barriers give new life to an outdated house

Its location, on a lot with a clear view and north-south orientation, in one of Montreal’s most exclusive municipalities – a garden city with some 32,000 trees– won the hearts of the young newlywed's residents. Inside, however, the house had serious issues.

Brought in to consult, designer Martine Brisson from MYTO Design identified the main problems immediately. Wasted space from the convoluted layout; a dated layout, with overly small rooms connected by narrow hallways; a central zone with inadequate natural light. It was clear that the only sensible option was to tear down all the walls and start from scratch.

That being the case, the house’s structural soundness needed to be protected. This major constraint was overcome with long steel crossbeams and two full-height vertical modules. In the absence of load-bearing walls, these elements distribute loads to the centre of the T-shaped layout and to the southern wing.

Brisson always approaches the design of an interior by paying special attention to how people move. “That is the most important starting point for a project. In my view, traffic should determine a space’s volumetrics,” she says. Being able to move about freely means having a choice of different paths from room to room, secondary routes within rooms, the ability to detour easily around service areas.