Double Duplex consists of twin buildings, each combining a two-storey upper unit and two-storey lower unit. A slight assymetry in the design integrates the buildings into the streetscape.
PROJECT Double Duplex, Toronto, Ontario

ARCHITECT Batay-Csorba Architects

TEXT Javier Zeller

PHOTOS Doublespace Photography
Since moving their firm from Los Angeles to Toronto in 2012, Batay-Csorba Architects has established a reputation for balancing research and building, and challenging assumptions implicit in the city?s built fabric. This interest in the transformative possibilities of playing with architectural typology has resulted in two Canadian Architect Awards and a spot on the OAA Awards shortlist in quick succession.
In the upper unit, X-shaped columns to either side of the kitchen island maximize structural efficiency while adding minimalist flair. Toronto?s character is embodied in the carpet of houses that stretches across the inverted T-shape of the old city, testament to a speculative boom at the end of the 19th century. The condominium wave currently consuming much of downtown has left large swaths of these low-rise residential neighbourhoods untouched. An eye-watering rise in real estate prices has done as much as any planning controls to limit the insensitive block-busting that characterized downtown development in the 50s and 60s. Now, developers are instead buying oversized, undervalued or vacant lots to construct small-scale speculative infill projects.
These low-...