Modern Interior Design and Furniture

Lux Spa, a manicure and pedicure bar, occupies 800 square feet in Toronto’s tony Yorkville district. The focal point is the long, white, communal manicure table visible from the street. In the pedicure area, built into the long sidewall, a stretched-out, white, biscuit-tufted banquette lends a wry, sophisticated, retro touch. Read the rest of this entry »

This new, 7,000-square-foot home backs onto a conservation area in Toronto. The client requested a contemporary, open-plan residence that would take advantage of the spectacular views.

The rich palette of natural materials was carefully detailed, inside and out. These include a rubble stone base of Ontario limestone, custom mahogany windows and stucco. Flashings, canopies and the garage door are zinc. The interior combines dark and light colours, walnut floors and custom-designed millwork, sandblasted glass screens, polished plaster and limestone for the foyer paving and fireplace. Read the rest of this entry »

In creating Blowfish Restaurant and Sake Bar, a renovation of a heritage bank building in Toronto, interior designer Johnson Chou set several goals. He wanted his design to help the 3,300-square- foot eatery establish a strong brand, to give his client an edge in the competitive King Street West restaurant district and to restore the existing masonry facade of the vintage building with minimal intervention. Driven by the concept of fusion cuisine, the space, Chou says, is “a dialectic of opposites,” resulting in a “hybrid aesthetic that is at once modern and classical, spare and opulent, precious and commonplace.” Read the rest of this entry »

Fresh from its triumphant renovation of the Roy Thomson Hall audience chamber, a 2011 Best of Canada Competition winner, Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg went on to create a brand new space at Roy Thomson Hall, the Lexus Lounge. The space was carved out of the building’s little-used southwest corner, where the doughnut-shaped lobby meets the rectangular building envelope.
A window discreetly inserted into the existing wall along Simcoe Street signals to concert-goers that there are new perks to be had in exchange for more remunerative patronage. Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto’s annual Interior Design Show invites design firms to create a theme-based concept space. The 2004 theme posed the question “What makes you wealthy?” Toronto-based Core Architects responded that wealth can be found in the essentials of life: eat, sleep, bathe and play.

Visitors walked along a corridor that divided two, not-quite-mirror-imaged display pavilions that portrayed introverted (bathing, sleeping) and extroverted (eating, playing) activities. Walnut flooring wrapped the ceiling, floor and sidewalls of the “extrovert” pavilion. The bathing space’s black slate cladding alluded to ancient bathhouses; beanbag chairs in the play area evoked a basement rec room. Read the rest of this entry »