| architecture |
YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN
Written by RENSKE WERNER : Photographed by JANIS NICOLAY
ONE MORNING ELEVEN YEARS AGO, MYRIAM FREEDMAN WOKE UP WITH A JOLT. She and her husband, Mason, had
always been fans of modern architecture, but they had a sudden chance to move into Mason’s childhood home—a 4,000-square-foot 1957 traditional ranch house in Vancouver—and Myriam realized they needed to jump on it. “The residence was already on the market, with an interested buyer to boot,” she recounts, “so while the purchase seemed impulsive, with a future renovation as part of our calculated budget, it made complete economic sense in the crazy Vancouver housing market.” Nine years later, the Freedmans were still happy with the house—they’d fallen in love with the functional master suite on the main floor and the semiseparate kitchen—but the couple was ready for a modern update. “I started planning all this a decade ago,” Myriam confesses. “I even trained my family to not use
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the back door because I knew it would be gone eventually.” When the time came to upgrade the house, they knew that remodeling rather than rebuilding was the wisest choice. “There is a lot of sentiment here,” Myriam notes, “but the real reason for choosing a renovation over new construction was our desire to preserve the practical layout. We also didn’t need any additional square footage; the house was big enough as is!” Architect Allison Holden-Pope, principal at One SEED Architecture + Interiors, understood and fully embraced the homeowners’ approach. “Functionally, the layout of the three-level house worked, so we focused on preservation of the footprint and reintegration of the structure with its site,” she explains. The home was stranded in the middle of the lot, with a humble garden and a simple strip of concrete running up to the door. The homeowners wanted to reclaim their underused front yard and redevelop an area in »
