This Vancouver house is all about the art of playful contrast and hidden details
When a client approaches an interior designer, they often come armed with a few ideas—be it styles they like, factors to be considered, trends they despise—to inform the brief. Rarely though, does a client request a structural element inspired by Scooby Doo be incorporated into their new home.
Unless, of course, you’re the owners of this three-storey mountainside home in West Vancouver’s desirable suburb of Altamont. With five children to appease, ranging in age from five to 21, the homeowners sought a space that would accommodate their busy family-centric lifestyle, balancing their penchant for tradition with their desire for relaxed, easy-to-live-in spaces. What began as a brief that named Parisian minimalism as the primary inspiration for the home’s design quickly evolved into something rather different, courtesy of Vancouver-based interior designer Kelly Deck and her team.
“When a client uses whoppers like ‘Parisian’ and ‘Minimalism’ one has to take a great deal of time unpacking what exactly they imagine these words to mean to them and how this translates into the design elements that are important in their home,” Deck explains. “Further investigation revealed that style and function are very important to this family. They wanted an interior that was high contrast—ivory and ebony but they wanted it to be relaxed and easy to live in for their five kids.” Armed with a re-evaluated brief that valued the design of the home and its practicality in equal measure, Deck and her team dove in.
But back to that non-negotiable Scooby Doo-inspired aspect requested by the homeowners. “There was one critical structural element—a hidden staircase. From our first meeting with the client, this was fondly referred to as the ‘Scooby Doo Staircase’,” Deck recalls. “After several iterations of floorplans with the architect we were able to locate the stair behind a bookcase in [the] office…to connect the principal suite to the main floor.”
This hidden staircase is, one might argue, a microcosm of the home’s overarching sentiment. Hidden details that are both playful and practical are peppered throughout the three-storey home, strategically employed to imbue the abode with personality —a notoriously challenging task when it comes to new builds. “Material and finishing carpentry selections are everything in the pursuit of making something new have warmth and character,” says Deck. “When designing the mouldings and millwork throughout, we used traditional details and strong profiles so that the home would look detailed and interesting and not austere and generic,” she says.
This pursuit of personality in the home’s design was inspired in no small way by the home’s majority occupants—the children. “The age range of the children in this family is so broad that we had many needs to meet. The entire lower floor is really for the teens and their friends,” Deck admits. From the theatre room to the pool deck, the focus on family living is paramount, with the children’s personalities reflected throughout the spaces. So much so, in fact, that “their personal interests—skateboarding, snowboarding, vintage vinyl and fashion—were all taken into consideration when selecting the furnishings and decor,” Deck reflects.
As influential as the children’s personalities may have been in the furnishing of the bedrooms, it was the homeowners’ desire for “eclectic furnishings, modern art and ease”, as Deck puts it, that determined the home’s overall atmosphere. Delicate materials and high-maintenance furnishings were put on the back burner, with Deck instead opting for “imperfect materials to pepper throughout the interior.” Walking the fine line between refined elegance and laid-back living, Deck sourced high quality materials with unexpected finishes. “The checked marble floor, for example, is not polished but honed with tumbled edges. The kitchen backsplash is a handmade, hand-glazed tile that has a mottled finish, and the brass fixtures are unlacquered so that they’ll tarnish over time,” she says. There are those hidden details again.
Inspired by the homeowners’ affinity for contemporary art, Deck furnished the home with the owners’ personal collection, juxtaposed by unique antique pieces of her own curation. This high-low, elegant yet relaxed, traditional yet playful approach is at the very core of the home’s design. It is a space of contrasts; a brave and clever manipulation of expectations that is wholly reflective of the home’s inhabitants. “We started with two words and a hidden staircase and evolved the vision for this home into something that is entirely unique unto itself—it has references of where we started but it is by no means thematic or predictable,” Deck concludes. After all, for a home that drew on Scooby Doo as inspiration for one of its key structural elements, unpredictability was always going to be par for the course.
Image Credit: Ema Peter
Source: www.vogue.com.au