Square footage isn't everything. Denis Liboiron and Brian Stonehocker held fast to this design doctrine during the five years it took to create, construct and decorate their mid-sized home, which presses from the edge of its Mill Creek neighbourhood into the treetops of the ravine.
About six years ago, they left their downtown loft for a leisurely walk along Mill Creek. Inspired by the area's natural landscape, they began pondering the possibility of ever living in a residential neighbourhood. But any home purchase, regardless of area, had to meet their strict, self-imposed regulations.
"I made a list," says Liboiron, an interior decorator and the owner of Doubletake Visuals. "It would have to be an end lot, no yard maintenance, close to downtown and modern." And two weeks later, just like magic, a lot on the edge of the ravine came up for sale. They jumped on the purchase and have never looked back.
Of course, the project wasn't without some tribulations. The double-wide lot needed to meet strict community and city requirements. So they joined forces with Chris Lemke, lead designer of Calgary-based Alloy Homes, to bring expertise to their imagination.
"By far, this was the most complicated site Alloy Homes has worked on," Lemke says. "But it is such an amazing lot. It's not just on the edge of the ravine - it's in the ravine. This made for big challenges, but the home is above and beyond anything we could have hoped for."
After the blueprints became bones and the bones became a home, the end result is a structure like nothing else in the city.
The back of the home employs a wall of glass that is not too dominant, but rather it works in relation to the the streetscape and forest on various levels. Simple and clean are the key phrases when describing the building's design. From its shape to its windows, to its boxy chrome faucets and its staircase railings - wrapped with sheets of metal pierced with minute rectangular holes - rectangles and simple lines are a recurring motif throughout the West Coast-modern home.
"Working with Denis and Brian was amazing," enthuses Lemke. "We were all on the same page, pulling out all the stops."
Liboiron's experience as an interior decorator combined with Stonehocker's enthusiasm for art, antiques and iconic furniture, which he enthusiastically collects, make for a home that is truly a work of art.
"Brian loves reading art history and design books and remembers the detailed traits of a piece and what makes it valuable. He has always wanted to be an antiques dealer," Liboiron says, sitting at his quartz kitchen island. "I have an inherent love for modern. We decided that these two could be meshed. We were striving for warm modern - it's not about jarring or clinical surfaces. This really is the hardest way to decorate because it involves unpacking our collections from the past eight years and then making it all gel."
The interior esthetic is pared-down and absent of mouldings, trim and ornate finishing. Instead, their original art and furniture collections form the mood.
If you're looking for details, they're under your feet, in limestone floors with imprints of fossils, shells and small creatures.
A fireplace separates the main floor dining and sitting areas looking out to the ravine. Stonehocker had individual wood planks sandblasted to remove the negative space between the grains, and then he individually wrapped the wood in thin sheets of copper, to form a fireplace that few could duplicate.
An open-tread walnut staircase, which allows light to move freely throughout the area, leads to the upstairs bedroom, where the most unique feature lives - the chair collection.
"Brian follows the chair market like people follow the stock market," explains Liboiron. "It's hard for people to understand the draw, but chairs are tangible and have a unique value." The chairs are displayed adjacent to the bed, some on pedestals and others below, all at off angles. These are not ordinary chairs, but are examples of how design has evolved over decades.
A private balcony extends from the bedroom and overlooks the ravine. It feels like a tree house for the luckiest kids in the world.
The bedroom and upstairs living areas are connected to a private library by an interior "flyover" that's partially suspended in air like a downtown pedway, and looks west to the driveway and east to the ravine. This practical and playful feature was created to allow their vehicles enough space to perform the three-point turn necessary to reverse into the detached garage.
The pedway leads to the library - a place of contemplation and hidden treasures, including a hand-loomed Turkish rug and a portrait wall of melancholy individuals posed in silent contemplation. The faces staring from the library wall were collected during international travel and represent a wide cross-section of locations, histories and ages, each telling its own silent story. "Somebody once asked why we have all these macabre portraits. But I don't see it as distressing. If you have portraits with smiley, happy people, it doesn't show the true history of a particular time. These portraits show the reality of the age they come from," says Liboiron.
Esthetics aside, some would question their decision to build such a grand house within the confines of only 2,800 square feet. "As a designer, I often see clients perceiving square footage as a sign of wealth. But to the rest of the world this notion is a bit askew. With a smaller footprint you can put special things into it." And so they have, evident in a solid slab dining room table that was extracted from an old-growth California walnut tree - hewn, sawn and oiled to perfection - and their art collections, which include original pieces from across the globe. "That's what I strive to do - create that education and intelligence in homes rather than just size."
In contrast to sprawling suburban "starter-castles" (how Liboiron describes many Edmonton homes), the pair wanted to lead a shift into thoughtful design. They wanted to gesture that Edmonton is a new and untapped haven for creative minds.
"We hope that one day Edmonton will have a design museum," dreams Liboiron. "I think that going to see the history of chairs or the evolution of the telephone is more interesting than viewing an art gallery. Our dream is that one day we could donate our collection to a museum."
"We are very pro-Edmonton. This city has always been great to us and we would love to leave that sort of legacy. We aren't the type of people who say ‘it's all in New York.'" He adds, "We are investing in this city and putting our money where our mouths are."
