5468796 Architecture proposes four courtyards for the Arthur residence, one at the entrance, one sunken, a main garden and a garage, thus creating a path around the house that separates it from the nearby buildings, providing it with greater privacy and offering more garden and relaxation spaces, creating for the owners a game between full and empty spaces and activity and rest.
With two main theoretical territories marked, solidity and lightness, the spaces of the house intersect in the living room and in the double-height dining room, creating a material contrast with the smooth contoured white plaster that rests on the in-situ concrete that makes up the structure of the project, which gives rise to different sensory qualities that make up the essence of the house.
Arthur Residence by 5468796 Architecture. Photograph by James Brittain.
Project description by 5468796 Architecture
The Arthur Residence is a two storey home for a finish carpenter and an emergency room doctor situated in the Cathedral neighbourhood of Regina. Originally from South Africa, the owners longed for a private sanctuary that would provide ample space for gardening and infuse inspiring views into a modest forty foot infill site. Where required side yard setbacks typically result in unconsidered or left over space, the residence is designed to encompass the entire width of the lot. Conceived as a secret garden, the ground floor is surrounded by a concrete fence at the property edge. Beyond the wall, four courtyards – an entry court, a sunken patio, a main garden and a carport – define three interior spaces: the foyer, the combined living and dining room, and the linear kitchen / utility wing. The house is then divided vertically into living and sleeping quarters.
While the main floor is a protective shell punctured by internal garden views, the second floor is an airy refuge providing secretive, more discrete lookouts over the neighbourhood and existing tree canopy. White plaster walls curve inward like curtains drawn in by the breeze, resulting in triangular voids that allow daylight to softly wash the interior. These two distinct territories – of solidity and lightness, of activity and repose – intersect in the double-height living and dining room. Smooth, contoured plaster rests on raw, cast-in-place concrete, reinforcing the tactile and sensory qualities of material, space and light that form the essence of the house, one which is simple but not strictly minimal.
