The owner’s tour | Stage life in the Plateau

Owners open the doors of their exceptional residence to us, offered on the resale market.

Valerie Simard
The Press

A few steps from Avenue du Mont-Royal, a single-family residence designed by the architect-owner shakes up our traditional conception of the sacrosanct square foot. A life in vertiginous levels, this is what this award-winning thirty-year-old house offers which has not aged a bit.

Unconventional in its volumetry and staggered level structure, this house was designed by Montreal architect Marc Blouin at a time when the single-family model was less present in the Plateau Mont-Royal than it is today with the many plex conversions. “It was presented as an interesting alternative to city life for families, as a form of urban house prototype, recalls the co-founder of the firm Blouin Orzes architectes. We went to daycare centers in the Plateau and we saw everyone leaving after the first or second child, for lack of space, of a yard. »

So parents of two children themselves decided to leave their apartment located in the duplex they had built in 1984 in the same street, De Bullion. The opportunity to purchase another duplex with adjoining vacant land presented itself, which laid the foundation for a new chapter in their life as a young family.

The light in the center of the house

It is therefore on this sloping ground – “casually, we are on the side of the mountain”, remarks the owner -, 6.4 m wide, that they erected their home (on the rock) by inserting it between the two existing buildings. Space, volume and light guided the architect’s gestures. In the center of the house stands a skylight framed by an opening that pierces all the levels and half-levels, from the basement to the upper floor where the three bedrooms are located.

The sloping topography of the land — lower at the front than at the back — dictated a split-level layout (seven in all!) which communicate with each other, for many, through open areas or openings. The ceilings are high (15 ft in the living room, 11 ft in the kitchen and more than 8 ft in the basement), which gives a lot of volume to the rooms and a spacious character, despite the simplicity of the materials.

Isn’t it a bit daredevil for young children, all these landings and stairs?

On the vertical, the house is also separated in two by a service block comprising the front and rear entrances, the staircase, the kitchen, the bathroom and shower room as well as the office on the mezzanine. This block can also be transposed outside, cantilevered above the entrance. It is covered with fiber cement panels, which contrast with the classic red brick that covers the rest of the facade.

A living house

The originality of the proposal earned the project the award of excellence from the Ordre des architectes du Québec, in the Residential-single-family category, in 1993. With its modern and rather timeless style, the residence has adapted well to the passing of years. Since construction, only the kitchen has been transformed and the doors and windows replaced. “All in all, it’s very very close to what the house was like 30 years ago. »

The children have grown up. They went through adolescence, then left the family nest.

“This functional and dynamic layout allowed us to experience the house at very different stages of our lives,” says Mr. Blouin. When you have children aged 1 and 4 and when you are a couple who no longer have children at home, these are two completely different ways of living. My spouse is crazy about Île d’Orléans [d’où sa famille à lui est originaire] and she spends a lot of time there. The fact that it’s quite fragmented in space, I don’t feel lost if I’m alone here. »

Nevertheless, the couple chose to sell the house to return to their old duplex, in bigeneration mode. “We had a family council last year. They [les enfants] are in the visual arts and in photography. No doubt their career path was influenced by mine and by the physical environment in which they grew up. They have a good attachment to the house. »

For the architect, this rupture is softened by this new project that is beginning. His “youth project” which he will come to complete in order to return there better.

A free visit is scheduled for July 17, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.