Reza Aliabadi, Arman Azar, Sebastien Beauregard, Aziza Asat. Photo by Borzu Talaie
Reza Aliabadi sometimes conveys the sizes of his four-person studio?s projects in vehicular terms. Shaft House is barely two London double-decker buses wide (16 feet), for example, while Opposite House is as long as an Airbus A321 commercial jetliner (146 feet).
The vertical Shaft House is organized around a central light well flanked by stairs. Level changes, rather than walls, are used to separate rooms. The shifted section results in a ground floor canopy and ?a south-facing roof terrace. Photo by Borzu Talaie
Shaft House, a 1,400-square-foot spec project for a developer, was one of the first buildings Aliabadi designed after closing a successful studio in Iran, completing a second Masters of Architecture at McGill University in Montreal, and founding atelier rzlbd in Toronto in 2010. In a city where ?affordable modernism? was an oxymoron, he demonstrated that
a smart little machine for living could be built for not much more than the going per-square-foot rate for mass-market residential development.
He describes Shaft House as ?a fortified castle open to the sky.? Its vertical circulation winds around a central light shaft, with one room on each floor, in an offset arrangement that provides views into adjacent spaces half a storey above and below.
Located to the east of downtown Toronto, Opposite House presents a low, dark brick profile to the street. Facing the water, its south side o...