COTTAGE LOFT.

In the heart of Toronto, this compact house combines living and work spaces in an elegantly economical form.

The Hill House is located in the heart of Toronto -- a city that confounds the specialized landscapes typical of so many North American cities. Its busy streets are lined by new and old buildings which mix housing and shops with small scale industry and offices and are linked by parks and public transport. Emphatically different from Atlanta, Denver or Detroit, it is no surprise that this is the adopted city of Jane Jacobs.

This new house, built on a slither of vacant land on a former service lane with houses along one side and garages and workshops on the other, is a place to both live and work. It is planned for a researcher and an archivist -- a client of modest means -- who asked that the architects create an airy light-filled space for work, with warm intimate rooms for day to day living. As Toronto's city planners have sought alternative urban models, so the architects of this house looked across the landscape of the city for inspiration. As a result, the design is rooted in two quite different yet familiar building types - the cottage and the loft. On the ground floor are living and dining spaces, planned alongside an open kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, with a library, office and second bathroom occupying a tall, airy space upstairs.

Designed as a free-standing two-storey block aligned with its neighbours along the street, the house was sited with a nominal setback to the north to provide a generous south-facing entrance garden. Planned as a simple box, it is clad with a taut skin of wood. This skin has been detailed to underline the contrasting character of the spaces within. At the lower level, facing the street, narrow horizontal softwood boarding provides a delicate rainscreen which returns to define the main entrance on the south. This gives way to larger panels of Douglas fir plywood cladding above. While windows at the ground floor recall the small openings of the cottage, the more generous openings and cladding above suggest the workaday loft.

In details of cladding and fenestration, the house also acknowledges the significance of the street as a major focus; a move which enables it to take its place alongside its neighbours without slavishly mocking their gabled forms. Yet at the same time, by referencing both the domestic and the industrial, it also notes surrounding buildings in this particular neighbourhood.

Internally, the more compact cellular cottage-like rooms on the ground floor have a 2.25m ceiling height, and are simply detailed and finished using a strong polychrome colour palette. The upper floor, by contrast, is a 3.6m high space painted white and flooded with light from both large windows on the street and generous rooflights above. Floor to ceiling book shelves and storage cabinets, specially designed to house the client's collections, line the library and stair, emphasizing lofty spaces within this tiny jewel-like dwelling.

The figural qualities and distinct frontality of the Hill House acknowledge its place on this inhabited city street, while its considered modesty matches the everyday with a particular domesticity that reflects the life of its urbane owner.