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A Tasteful Reno Redefines a Once-Sparse King West Loft

Turns out you can have too much of a good thing, even open space

By Matthew Hague
Photography by Arash Moallemi and Andrew Snow

It is possible. Sometimes a space can be too open concept. This homeowner in this story, Omar, knows the feeling. Two years ago, when the project manager bought his King West loft – a 1990s addition to a converted 1930s perfume factory – he liked the amount of space he had: about 110 square metres, spread over two floors. But the space was devoid of personality, and other than the enclosures around the bathrooms, there were no walls. His whole abode was revealed from the front door, and the lone, large bedroom on the enclosed mezzanine, an area accessed by an open-riser staircase with a skimpy bannister, was fully exposed to the ground floor. “I had no privacy,” says Omar.

The slatted screen continues into the living space via a conjoined bench and storage unit sheathed in concrete-look porcelain slabs. Engineered white oak flooring from Stone Tile was used throughout.

To redefine his space, Omar worked with Tura Cousins Wilson (in collaboration with Andrew Chung), who’s in the process of launching his own firm, Studio of Contemporary Architecture (SOCA) to create an enclosed loft. Luckily for Habbal, Cousins Wilson comes equipped with a master’s degree in architecture from the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands. “The Dutch are very pragmatic,” Cousins Wilson says. “It’s a small country, so everything has to have multiple purposes.”

Tura Cousins Wilson
One of Cousins Wilson’s major moves was to replace a skimpy bannister with a new wooden stair guard and buttress this with a porcelain tile–clad storage unit.

Cousins Wilson infused this functional philosophy into the loft, keeping his interventions to a considered, purposeful minimum. After deciding to keep the kitchen as is, he picked a simple, unfussy but highly textured palette – concrete-look porcelain and light woods, as in the storage unit under the stairs, and the white oak guardrail that turned the once barely there banister into a sculpture. To reinvent the entry, he built a triple-use bench, storage unit and a slatted wall screen, handy for allowing enticing peeks inside without revealing too much from the front door. He enclosed the mezzanine with a wall of glass and broke the master bedroom into two, giving Omar a now much-used home office–slash–guest room, as well as two upper bathrooms.

Enclosed loft - Tura Cousins Wilson
Cousins Wilson defined the entrance and provided the loft with a semblance of privacy by adding a slatted wall screen in white oak, which matches the walls.

To offset the minimalist Northern European aesthetic, Omar incorporated touches that reflect his Lebanese heritage, and this mash-up suits Cousins Wilson’s approach. “I designed the backdrop but Omar has added the personal layer,” says Cousins Wilson. “That’s exactly how it should be: well-proportioned spaces that balance airiness with intimacy and actually get lived in.” SOCADESIGN.CA

Carrara hexagons in the shower and large-format porcelain for the flooring
In the ensuite, Cousins Wilson used white Carrara hexagons in the shower and large-format porcelain for the flooring (both from Centura Tile).

Originally published in our 2020 Reno Issue as “Going Dutch”.


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