In 2019, Sara L’Esperance and Michael Putman’s nearly 10 years in London were coming to an end. With plans to grow their family, and feeling nostalgic for their nature-filled childhoods in Canada, they accepted an offer for Michael to teach at a university in Halifax, Nova Scotia, relocating to the small but lively maritime city on Canada’s Atlantic coast.

Sara L’Esperance and Michael Putman, cofounders of the architecture firm SUPRBLK Studio, designed a flexible forever home in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with three distinct programs: a rentable town house, an office for their architecture studio, and their family home." layout="" credit="Photo by doublespace photography" photoUserId="7059566029314134016"/>

After a few years in a rental, where they had their daughter, the couple, who founded the architecture firm SUPRBLK Studio in 2018, were ready to create a more permanent home, one that ideally was flexible enough to support them for decades to come. The result is two buildings with three distinct programs: the structure along the street contains a 680-square-foot town house the family rents out and uses to host guests, but also has an office and bedrooms that make up part of the main home; these spaces connect with the structure at the rear via a landscaped courtyard, which has a kitchen and living and dining rooms. Between the front and rear structures, the family’s space amounts to 2,485 square feet.

The city’s gridded streets are lined with colorful timber homes dating to the late 1800s. An influx of residents post-Covid created a flood of new buildings that, to Sara and Michael’s eyes, desaturate the historic vernacular. “You’re starting to see a loss of color, more gray and beige and things that are trying not to stand out,” says Michael. “They’re just trying to disappear.” With a turquoise, yellow, and silver facade, the house they designed certainly does not disappear, yet its bold moves aren’t just for fun—they are also rooted in Halifax’s traditional architecture.

Placed horizontally, the facade’s corrugated steel reinterprets the area’s long-standing shingled and wood-board homes. Sara and Michael realized the striated material would add highlights and shadows, changing the appearance of any color they applied—and they were certain they would apply color. At times, research for the perfect hue meant hours-long walks studying candy-colored homes around town. “You have turquoise buildings that are a hundred years old and then you have graffiti in turquoise from teenagers,” says Michael. “The color is speaking across generations.” That breadth of color application, along with hours spent experimenting with steel and paint samples, helped the couple make a final decision on the exact right shade of turquoise.

The playful and pragmatic color approach, a theme in much of SUPRBLK’s work, continues inside, where yellow moments function like wayfinders. “It’s a little like following the yellow brick road,” says Sara. They mark circulation points like the front door and, in the front portion of the house, a volume containing the staircase, complete with a yellow-stained handrail.

“We had to really rethink and bake in a lot of ingredients to make the house feel familiar yet new.”
—Michael Putman, architect and resident

The sides of the house are just two inches from the property line, but large windows, floor-to-ceiling glass, and a landscaped courtyard and backyard bring in light and a sense of the outdoors. As you pass from the street to the backyard, the house becomes increasingly open to the surrounding greenery. “We wanted to demonstrate urbanity and density with delight,” says Michael. “You don’t need to move to a lake to feel connected with nature.”

A form that kept with the neighborhood was also important to Sara and Michael. They designed the three-level, street-facing volume with a gable roof that mirrors those of other homes on the street. “When you’re walking down the sidewalk on our side of the street you actually don’t see the third floor,” says Sara. The dormer windows at the front and rear of the property, however, are more noticeable. In Nova Scotia, dormers vary by town and range from simple to ornate; Sara and Michael were inspired by the historic “Lunenburg bump,” a style of dormer belonging to Victorians in Lunenburg, about an hour from Halifax. “They’re light scoops,” says Michael. “The one on the front catches the morning light and the one in the back catches the evening light.”

The couple imagine one day using the town house as a pied-à-terre, if they ever decide to leave the city. Its interior follows the same architectural language as the family’s spaces. “We didn’t want it to feel secondary in its quality,” says Sara.

As far as making friends in their new city, it turns out living in a turquoise house is a great conversation starter with your new neighbors. “It’s nice to get feedback about how they love the color of the house and it feels like it fits in, but they don’t know why,” says Michael. “We didn’t just build a duplicate of something. We had to really rethink and bake in a lot of ingredients to make the house feel familiar yet new.”

More from SUPRBLK Studio:

£25K in Adaptable Millwork Gives a Tiny London Flat “Rooms Within a Room”

Project Credits:

Architect: SUPRBLK Studio / @suprblk

General Contractor: Bruno Builders

Structural Engineer: Andrea Doncaster Engineering

Photographer: Doublespace Photography / @2spacephoto

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