Minimal and modern scandinavian style home in windsor, ontario

Welcome to ‘J’ Residence

The ‘J’ Residence was fun to design. A real challenge, but a lot of fun.

The young (and super cool) family that reached out to us was in an interesting situation. They had their property already, they had a set of drawings from another designer already, they had a contractor, and they even had their building permit already too. Yet something didn’t feel right to them.

At our initial getting-to-know-you meeting, we spoke for a while about perhaps creating a new design that was a downsized version of what they had. Then we spoke more, and more, and towards the end of the meeting (or what we thought was the end of the meeting) he said, “Dory, can we show you what we REALLY want?”. Highly intrigued, the reply was “of course”.

They then proceeded to open their folder and slowly pull out some loose pieces of paper, revealing the images one at a time. What they showed us was VERY different from what they had a permit for. These were images of minimal, modern, Scandinavian homes.

Through our conversations they conveyed to us that they had a real passion for this style and wondered if we could create a design for them in Windsor that embraced their lifestyle yet echoed those Scandinavian design principles. The answer was an enthusiastic “Yes!’.

The form is comprised of two long legs that run parallel to the length of the property, connected by a perpendicular mass. The composition of these creates a ‘J’ shape in plan. The long leg contains the sleeping areas and play room. The shorter leg contains the garage. The perpendicular mass contains the living spaces.

The plan contains three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a play room, and a modest loft with an indoor balcony overlooking the play room. Polished and heated concrete floors extend throughout most of the home, and the absence of a basement or crawlspace reinforce the minimal lifestyle as it limits the potential to hold on to “stuff”.