Architecture: Flexible to the Max
Originally published in the Globe and Mail. Read the full text here.
A Montreal duplex proves to be a thoroughly adaptable home for a modern couple
When Sophie Pellerin and Serge Carpentier, a couple from Montreal, moved in together, they’d been dating for five years. At first, co-habitation seemed to them more trouble than it was worth. “My condo was too small for Serge,” Ms. Pellerin said. “My house was not contemporary enough for Sophie,” Mr. Carpentier said.
They considered living apart and sharing a weekend getaway in the Laurentians, but in November, 2016, Mr. Carpentier found a Montreal property too good to pass up: a two-storey “plex” in the Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie borough, steps away from Little Italy and the Jean-Talon farmers market. The building had a footprint of 1,000 square feet and contained three flats, two up top and one below. Mr. Carpentier bought it for $750,000 and hired Microclimat, a young architectural firm, to convert it into a single dwelling. He’s a professional contractor, so he managed the build himself. (Ms. Pellerin is a television producer who worked on the hit Quebec procedural 19-2.)
From the beginning, the couple were clear about their needs, even if the needs themselves seemed hard to reconcile. They wanted a lofty, cozy home, conducive to both togetherness and solitude, with large windows and a strong sense of privacy. If the brief sounds contradictory, well, that’s humans for you: We like sunlit rooms but hate to feel exposed. We’re introverted and extroverted depending on our moods. And having descended from cave dwellers and soil turners, we crave both open spaces and hidden nooks.
The classic Montreal “plex” is adaptable enough to meet these demands. In its purest form, it is a brick box with an exterior stairway leading to a second-floor walk-up. Inside, a load-bearing wall runs lengthwise, like a spine, through the centre of the structure, which is vastly longer than it is wide. The plex is to Montreal what the gothic cottage is to Toronto or the dingbat house is to Vancouver: a form so basic it is easily overlooked, yet so common it defines the streetscape. You see it often, even if you rarely notice it, and you’d miss it if you moved somewhere else. “The typology is versatile because it’s simple,” said Olivier Lajeunesse-Travers, a Microclimat co-founder who led the design alongside his colleague Maggie Cabana. “There are just so many things you can do with a two-storey box.”
This is an excerpt. Read the full text here.