Before they even found the site where they would build the understated family dream home to live with their five- and seven-year-old children, a Vancouver couple reached out to Clinton Cuddington, principal architect at local studio Measured Architecture.

“They came to us because they heard that we were collaborative, that we didn’t force an architect’s vision down someone’s throat. They wanted to understand how we worked,” recalls Cuddington. “So, we had dinner together and they sat in my backyard against a green wall and started to see the way I lived.”

This informal gathering revealed their like-minded visions and spawned a relationship grounded in trust and communication, with Cuddington helping his clients—who already knew the elements they didn’t desire for their future home—fine-tune their needs. Privacy, for example, was essential to the couple. They wanted to “engage the street on their own terms and didn’t want to create a house that was too much of a spectacle,” Cuddington explains.

Determining the right location—where the structure would be bold, yet “also sympathetic” to the surroundings—was vital as well, Cuddington points out: “Where do you deploy pioneering architecture in a neighborhood that doesn’t have a lot of that stock?” The answer was the east side of the city, where Cuddington clad the facade in a hushed Western red cedar tongue-and-groove stained gray, and nestled the front door behind the primary wall so that it is concealed.

Despite the cool exterior, it’s the interior—a melange of colors and textures—that makes the home, dubbed the Veil House, feel warm and lived-in, she adds. Here, such simple materials as whitewashed plywood, subway tile, blackened steel, felt, linen, and concrete are elevated in their compositions, creating a certain ease and softness throughout the dwelling.

"We had done a medium-sized renovation on our previous home and loved the outcome of having a house suited to the way we lived. When we outgrew that, we were intrigued by something on a bigger scale,” says one of the owners.

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On the main floor, the kitchen is the epicenter, opening onto the living room with sight lines to the rest of the house and the outdoors. In the dining room, a Danish-inspired table designed by Cuddington and built by local fabrication studio Caliper commands attention below a recycled chandelier by Castor Design that, like other dramatic light fixtures in the various rooms, intentionally serves as artwork to boot.

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The bedrooms are located down one of the home’s two staircases. Placing them in the basement is admittedly an unusual move, but the couple love the quirky arrangement because of the sense of seclusion it provides. “When people come over and want to see the mountain views upstairs, they are not traipsing through our bedrooms to see them,” points out the other owner.

In the master suite, an immense window illuminates a gabion retaining wall that teems with rubble concrete accrued from the demolition of the structure that once stood here. Now, it doubles as an art piece imbued with textural, industrial beauty.

While the main floor is defined by functionality—“cooking dinner and hanging out with kids in the living room,” as the owners put it—enhanced entertaining unfolds upstairs in the media/play room, which can be accessed by another staircase. Some days the couple simply unwind with tea on the Bentsen Canyon sofa; on others the kids are parked in front of the floating white pavilion that houses the media closet. Plywood, also found in the built-ins and the kitchen below, dominates this space. “It feels so cozy, like we’re in a cabin in the middle of the city, where we have everything we need,” says one of the owners.

The office, with its high ceiling and picture window illuminating snippets of greenery, is another serene space on this level. The layout of the house was influenced by Cuddington’s time living in San Francisco, as well as his visits to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hanna-Honeycomb House in nearby Stanford, which highlights deft room conversions.

With this versatility in mind, Cuddington asked the couple questions that explored the future when they first started talking about the project—how many rooms would they need? Might an aging parent ever move in?

Basically, Cuddington asked: “How are you going to grow into this house?,” remembers one of the owners. “When the kids get older we have options, we don’t have rooms sitting by and collecting dust. They are transformable.”

Related Reading:

A Designer Couple Build a Dream Home That Takes Indoor/Outdoor Living to the Next Level

In a Remote Norwegian Forest, a Family Home Is Sheltered Inside a Luminous Greenhouse

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Clinton Cuddington, Measured / @measuredarchitecture

Builder/General Contractor: Patrick Powers, Powers Construction / @powersconstruction

Structural Engineer: Julien Fagnon, Entuitive / @entuitive

Landscape Design Company: Clinton Cuddington, Measured / @measuredarchitecture

Landscape Installation: Owen Black, Aloe Designs / @aloedesigns

Lighting and Interior Design: Clinton Cuddington, Measured / @measuredarchitecture

Sound Engineer: Tavish Macdonald, La Scala

Cabinetry Design: Clinton Cuddington, Measured / @measuredarchitecture

Cabinetry Installation: Willms Architectural Millwork / @wam_works

Salvage Experts: Adam Corneil, Unbuilders / @unbuildersdeconstruction

Fabrication Studio: Mark Aseltine, Caliper / @caliper_vancouver

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