Favorites

Ana Smud’s studio is in downtown Buenos Aires, yet she also has a home office with built-in bookshelves and a long narrow desk.

The glass-walled ground level has an open layout that includes a kitchen and dining area, a living space, and a home office that can be closed off from the rest with hidden sliding doors. The central structure holds the staircase and a powder room.

A dining area where Eric and Jeffrey are known to host friends at monthly Shabbat dinners. The Mira Nakashima dining table is paired with Risom dining chairs and an Angela Adams rug. Overhead hangs a Brian Richer for Castor LED light and an Arturo Alvarez "Tina" feather pendant.

The TV does not dominate the living room space. Instead, it is hidden behind a red glass screen and there is also a pull-down projector screen for family movie nights.

Every inch of the home is designed to accommodate the family's needs with ample hidden storage keeping spaces clutter free, complemented by open storage with those items more frequently reached for such as books to read and ingredients to cook with.

"I grew up in one of Dublin's traditional Georgian house with a renovated roof, so maybe because of that, i just thought it would be lovely to have light and space at the top of the house."

"I believe that if there’s a place for everything then nothing is out of place, and I’ve tried to incorporate that into a lot of the furniture design and functionality,

To pick a site for the buildings, Matt used his drone to scan the site and then Daybreak created a 3D model to test out options for placement.

The steel roofing is from Hamilton in Southern Ontario. The doors were reclaimed from a local hotel. The windows are from a Mississauga company. The trim and cabinetry is milled from oak trees that they cut down to build the driveway. “It’s as local as it gets,” says Liz.

Liz and Matt had to drill a well to provide water to the property. Wastewater is captured and treated with a gravity-fed septic system—this will serve the main dwelling when it’s completed, too.

The biggest savings here were found in labour: Liz and Matt got hands on with almost everything, and called in favors for the electric work.

The new prefab unit is located just a few meters from the main home—a thatched-roof cottage that dates back to the 1950s. “The dark color of the cladding blends into the dark hedges in the garden, so the unit doesn’t attract too much attention,” says Vriesema.

The Oosterbeek Prefab, like all Manta North prefabs, is built from Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), which was chosen for its sustainability and strength. The houses are well insulated, and the facade cladding is made of thermally modified wood for durability and water resistance.

At the heart of the open-plan living space is a great room that opens outward beneath an expanse of laminated Douglas Fir beams and western red cedar soffiting.

The custom breakfast nook brings natural light in from above and frames the surrounding landscape, allowing the family to appreciate the play of morning light over the meadow.

The cantilevered studio space is designed to facilitate two of the clients’ passions—yoga and painting. A floor-level window captures the sunrise during morning practice, while the views from the platform take in the surrounding landscape. “With one window positioned on the glazed living platform, and the other on the floor below, each partner has a window that encourages them down to the floor for their practice,” says architect Meelena Oleksiuk Turkel.