Home Sanctuary: Passiv(doppler)haus in Search of the Sublime, Toronto, Ontario

PROJECT Passiv(doppler)haus in Search of the Sublime, Toronto, Ontario

ARCHITECT EDGZ Architecture & Design Studio

PHOTOS doublespace photography

“My first experience of a Passive House’s interior was an entirely different feeling of being in a building. It was so temperate, so comfortable,” architect Eric Tse of EDGZ explains of a visit to the home of friends in Austria. Known for their highly insulated envelopes, Passive Houses have the side benefits of having fastidiously clean air and being exceptionally quiet, creating a sense of retreat even in busy urban settings.

The desire for a high-performance, sustainable home—as well as the sanctuary-like qualities of a Passive House—inspired Tse’s own home in Toronto’s Riverside neighbourhood. The duplex replaces an 1867 cottage on a 25-foot-wide urban lot, steps from the shops and restaurants of Queen Street East. Meeting the stringent requirements of Passive House certification often results in box-like forms with straightforward interiors. But here, Tse prioritizes the sustainability measures alongside a meticulous consideration of massing, narrative, tectonics and materiality. The result is an innovative and peaceful home, paired with a lower rental unit.

The home’s mysterious quality begins with its sculptural form—a volume both familiar and strange in its massing, materials and blank street-facing wall. Grounded in its surroundings, the main form aligns with the awning heights of its neighbours, and materials also draw from the local context of brick and wood construction. But rather than the typical red-brick façade, the home uses horizontally striated white brick to mark the lower unit, and 1-1/2” vertical wood slats to clad the upper unit. The wood screen is set at an angle to create an awning and a single street-facing window is out of view from the sidewalk, set back from a small upper balcony.

Stepping inside is like entering another world, with a Zen-like interior that is amplified by the home’s clean, well-tempered air and quiet. The main unit ascends from a darker, grounded office level, surfaced in soft grey microcement, to a second-storey bedroom level planned around an internal garden, to an uppermost living and kitchen area finished primarily in pale oak.

Along the way, transitions are echoed by careful detailing. A slender sill with built-in storage separates the compact office from the entrance; microcement stairs with soft, earthy lighting lead upwards. The second-floor landing includes a small internal garden surrounded by four microcement-coated doors, set on invisible SOSS hinges that render them flush with the walls when closed. When the doors are ajar, streaks of daylight hint at the rooms beyond—a main bedroom, children’s bedroom, playroom and bathroom.

Tse’s design is informed by consideration for the inhabitants’ daily lives. The children’s bedroom and playroom are fitted out with whimsical light fixtures; the kids’ bedroom includes a pop of colour on the ceiling and a customized bunk bed with playful peek-a-boo openings. The bathroom on this level, intended primarily for use by the children, continues in a lighthearted mood with sculptural fixtures, towel rails and spherical water knobs composed with the care of a Miró painting. Even the microcement landing floor acts as an expansion to the play spaces—it’s an easy clean after art projects with friends. 

The main bedroom is a space of calm, with a fabric-covered light fixture and minimalist wood furnishings. The ensuite is clad in earthy microcement, complete with a sunken tub that is seamlessly integrated flush to the floor, creating the feel of a high-end spa. 

Continuing upwards to level three, the stairs switch from microcement to pale oak, and the detailing of the walls simultaneously transitions. At the top is a great room—a sanctuary for simple moments of living, eating and playing among the family. Despite its relatively modest width, the room feels airy and spacious thanks to its high, wedge-shaped roof and expansive windows to the exterior overlooking greenery, neighbours’ rooftops and the Toronto skyline.

Toward the front yard, a cozy built-in dining space includes a table and benches of the same white oak. A ladder leads to a half-concealed perch above. Front and centre, the kitchen consists of a linear counter and an island, the cabinets clad in white oak and backsplash lined with handmade concrete tiles. 

While effortless on the surface, the combination of Passive House performance and exacting minimalism—all on a tight urban lot—made the project a challenge at every step. The project has thick walls to allow for sufficient insulation; the inset windows maintain the required distance from property lines. The asymmetrical roofline is optimized for photovoltaics and cleaves tightly to zoning regulations, with the glazing above the interior courtyard set at a shallow-enough angle to qualify as a skylight rather than a window. The adjacent parapet is designed to accommodate planting, such that it could be classified as a green roof. 

As part of the certification process, the Passive House Institute requires calculations and a third-party review of details at each potential thermal bridge. To simplify this process, Tse designed the main house envelope as a rectilinear box with the wood screen set at an angle from it, fastened along select datums. To achieve this detail, the wood is carefully aligned and pieces mitred at the corner. Inside, details requiring extra attention included the microcement finish throughout the ground and second floor and the sunken bathtub, which is supported by carefully considered structure to manage deflection.

For Tse, the work was ultimately worth it, yielding a home that embodies his firm’s goal of exploring awe in architecture. He believes that the experience of awe in a project is deeply connected to its detailing. Rather than designing for aesthetics alone, Tse aims to pair comfort with a sense of wonderment, created through a careful attention to each material selected and detail drawn, and every step of the design and construction process. For Tse, this care opens possibilities for moments of surprise and delight: an indoor garden, a sunken bathtub—and, ultimately, a home with the feel of a monastic retreat that starts from cloistered darkness and works its way up toward the light.

Maya Orzechowska is a project architect at Kongats Architects, and has completed Passive House training.

CLIENT Withheld | ARCHITECT TEAM Eric Tse | STRUCTURAL Withheld | MECHANICAL ZON Engineering | PASSIVE HOUSE CERTIFIER RDH Building Sciences Inc. | CONTRACTOR Withheld | AREA 208 m2 | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION April 2024

THERMAL ENERGY DEMAND INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 14.6 kWh/m2/year | AIRTIGHTNESS 0.6 ACH | PRIMARY ENERGY RENEWABLE (PER) 53  kWh/m2/year

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