RAVINE RESIDENCE

Words :: J. Lynn Fraser // Images :: Tom Arban

"Meaningful place making" that is "visceral, emotional, and connected" defines Toronto architect Drew Mandel's approach to architecture. ‘Ravine House' is a recently completed renovation of a 1970's house Mandel undertook for a professional couple and their two daughters. The architect created a comfortable three-storey, 4400 sq. ft. home, on a 50 by 165 ft. lot adjacent to a Toronto ravine.
"Each client has a ‘peculiar', and I mean that in the best sense of the word, need or accommodation they want for a project," Mandel observes. At Ravine house the couple wanted a family home that would give proper attention to their art collection and the owners required a residence that provided the "gravitas" necessary to fit in with the well-established homes of their Humewood-Cedarvale neighbourhood. As the clients were not "hard core modernists" Mandel designed the home using a palette of mostly natural materials. Wenge wood was utilized for the cabinetry, millwood, and flooring. Jotoba wood flooring was used for the ceilings.
The family room, characterized by soaring verticals, contains the "cast concrete heart of the house" a gas fireplace clad in a custom stone panel created from 1 ½" thick Owen Sound Ledgerock. Distilled to its essentials it is an elegant stone column that provides the room's focal point. The ledgerock, a favoured material of Mandel's, was also used in the exterior cladding, the customized sink and kitchen countertop, as well as in some flooring. The result is a warm, tactile, and approachable modernism.
The glass used in the windows and glass panels of Ravine House act as a counterbalance to the solidity of the natural materials. Internally the home is bathed in light. The master bath is bordered by glass walls that fill the room with light and opens it to a view of the ravine and green roof. A glass balustrade, made from 5/8" tempered glass panels, a skylight, and glass walls allow light to penetrate through the home's core. Externally, the home is reminiscent of Piet Mondrian's neo-plasticist paintings. The squares and rectangles of glass are a balanced composition of line and light.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudoph Schindler as well as John Lautner are influences for Mandel. Ravine House's cantilevered rooms recall Wright's Fallingwater. The home's dark, geometric windows and ravine setting echo the ‘Schindler-Chace' house in California. Mandel's wide open interior spaces and use of industrial materials, such as structural steel painted with (Volvo) car paint, honour Lautner's architectural philosophy. Thematic to all of these architects as well as to Mandel's private and public buildings, is a desire, Mandel states, to "capture excitement for a connection to a place."
Mandel has a number of signature motifs that define his work and are echoed in Ravine House. The 99 Scollard street project, a private office building in Toronto's Yorkville district, shows his use of dark woods as a graphic design element. The building's two storey staircase dramatic ‘zig zag' against the white interior walls. "It's meant to be pared down", Mandel comments about the staircase, "as a focal point it stands out on it's own. I like the architecture to speak for itself." Mandel won a Toronto Architecture and Urban Design Award 2007, Award of Excellence for this project.

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