Hidden gem in West Van
I normally write about unaffordable homes that you can buy, but today let's mix it up: here's a remarkable home that is far less expensive than you may think... but you cannot buy it.
I had a chance to explore the Carmichael Residence, a house designed by architect Ron Thom in 1957, as a preview to the West Coast Modern Home Tour. Thom described the Carmichael Residence as "fun and games with three-dimensional space", and this applies to dweller as well as designer.
Honeycomb, honeycomb!
I park against the wall supporting the freeway and walked down a steep driveway to meet Jan Pidhirny and Jim Ferguson, the owners of the Carmichael Residence. Their dog, Oakley, rushes to greet me and we became instant friends.
We walk into the house via the somewhat-hidden entryway; Jim remarks, "You need a flashlight and roadmap to find the front door" to a Thom house. The door itself is a stand-in: the original is down the hill at the West Vancouver Museum.
The Carmichael Residence's rooms are hexagonal, so there are no right angles to any of the structure. Each corner is either a 30- or 120-degree angle. The result is a feeling of spaciousness: the current floorplan boasts roughly 1,844 square feet on a single floor, but it feels much larger. Sort of like stepping into the TARDIS.
The house was built by hand from old-growth wood (this was 1957, remember), and I'm told that the knots were stolen during the course of the construction job.
Jan and Jim bought the Carmichael house from the original surviving owner in the summer of 2011 for $1.275 million, which seems like an unusually low price for anything in this area, particularly for one that looks like a post-modern beehive. By comparison, Mayor Gregor Robertson's new pad, supposedly half a duplex in Point Grey, cost a rumored $1.57 million.
Jan tells me, though, that the Carmichael Residence was a diamond in the rough. While ahead of its time, the Carmichael was also a prisoner of its era: cracked linoleum floors, shag carpeting, bamboo blinds, track curtains... the sorts of things a new homeowner would want to rip out with her teeth and spit to the curb on bulk-garbage day.
Also, the commanding view of the bay was obscured by rampant rhododendrons and tough-as-nails trees, which had conspired to enclose the then-narrow back deck.
Jan and Jim have been remodeling ever since, echoing Ron Thom's design aesthetic as they go. Part of the carport was enclosed to create the new entryway, and the back deck was ambitiously extended. Overall, the new owners added around 200 square feet to their home.
Oakley showed me the spacious back deck, which is made of Brazilian Ipe, an ultra-dense hardwood used back in the day to build the hulls of icebreakers. It's the kind of wood that doesn't float.
Each plank follows the 120/30-degree angle motif, and a narrow footbridge crosses a burbling water feature. I barely even noticed the hot tub, what with the view and the tiny waterfall and the dog.
House party
Turning around, I beheld the ultimate kitchen, which was the most radical change Jan and Jim had wrought upon Thom's original design. What was once a galley kitchen has been transformed into an island... an island with 120/30-degree angles. A series of sliding single-pane glass sheets can form a solid wall or individual barriers against the ocean breeze, depending on weather and mood.
I'm beginning to see why Jan calls it "the consummate party house". Interestingly, the original owner of the house had lived there alone since her husband had passed away in the eighties, and didn't even know her neighbours.
The Carmichael Residence only has two bedrooms, and those bedrooms might seem small on paper. The master bedroom is 14'2" by 12'5", though the honeycomb shape serves it well. Originally the room had a window in the closet: cool though that may seem in theory, Jan and Jim thought better of it in practice, and that was one feature that they changed. The bedroom's glass door opens out onto the deck. The vanity has a flip-up mirror, and two hexagonal drawers; those drawers are currently at the museum as well.
Ron Thom was inspired to design the Carmichael Residence by Frank Lloyd Wright's Hanna House, a hexagonal home designed in 1936 for a Stanford University professor and his family. The Carmichael Residence won the Massey Medal in Architecture in 1960, and the house's plans were featured at Expo 67.
Born in Penticton and a graduate of the Vancouver School of Art, Thom headed east midway through his career. He designed Massey College for University of Toronto, as well as the Prince Hotel and the Metro Toronto Zoo.
The Carmichael Residence is Thom's only full foray into hexagonal house design; Jim notes with a laugh that Thom "realized his mistake."
All in the timing
Jan and Jim knew what they wanted when they found this place: they were shopping for Ron Thoms. They put an offer on the house at the same time as another couple, a couple that wanted to tear the house down and presumably to replace it with something more... rectangular. That offer fell through, and so Jan and Jim moved in and got to work.
And get to work they did. The combination of construction difficulty and attention to design detail required to get the Carmichael Residence to its current state is way beyond normal weekender DIY work. Jan and Jim, though, are not DIY weekenders. Jan is an interior designer and women's fashion retailer by trade, and Jim works in road construction and asphalt paving. I didn't ask which of them had to tame the trees and rhododendrons, but I bet it was Jim. He just has those I-can-tear-down-a-tree hands. The couple often teams up on home-reno projects for fun and profit, having worked on 17 other houses.
This house, though, is all theirs. As mentioned above, the couple has no plans to move, and Oakley seems really comfy in that obtusely-angled corner by the fireplace. That spot is warm in summer and cool in winter, I'm told.
Says Jan, "We wanted to bring [the house] into the new millenium, basically, but didn't want to take anything away from the original plan."
The second bedroom and office look out onto a water feature in the front yard, installed to mask the noise of the nearby freeway.
The office has a built-in desk, which also rocks the honeycomb motif. As for the desk drawers, yes, you guessed it: your junk drawer is not this cool. That's okay, neither is mine.
The bathrooms have been gut-renovated, their floors laid with... waitforit... hexagonal tiles. The rain showerheads, though, are square. Hah! Busted.
It belongs in a museum!
- Indiana Jones
The Carmichael Residence is one of five architectural wonders featured in the West Vancouver Museum's West Coast Modern Home Tour. The tour is sold out, but you can see aspects of Ron Thom's other work, as well as Jan and Jim's front door and drawers, at the West Vancouver Museum.
After thanking Jan, Jim, and Oakley for their time, I swing by the museum to see that front door.
As I scope an early version of the West Coast Modern home Tour brochure, two other houses stand out in this year's architecture crawl: the Dowling Residence, because it was built in 2012 and is thus a departure from the Tour's traditional focus on mid-century architecture; and the Grinnell Residence (another Thom), because its open house is hosted by two cats.
Kiriko Watanabe, Assistant Curator at the museum and one of the West Coast Modern Home Tour's organizers, tells me that 17 different Vancouver-area restaurants, as well as 50 architecture-mad volunteers, contribute to the event.
Did you want to take the West Coast Modern Home Tour on July 13? Sorry, you can't! It's sold out! The next best thing, though, would be to check out the Ron Thom and the Allied Arts exhibition at the West Vancouver Museum. catch it before it heads to Toronto in September.
See? The city isn't all glass towers, cookie-cutter apartments, and soulless McMansions. Even if they're not within reach, sometimes it's just nice to know that houses like the Carmichael Residence are out there.