Northern Enclosure (continued)
When a prominent Toronto designer built a home of her own, her palette included light, space, her own firm's furniture and infinitely versatile Corian used in highly inventive ways.
Cecconi, half of Cecconi Simone, one of Canada's most respected interiors firms, loves this edgy West End neighborhood of Toronto. "This area is one of the last places to be developed in the city," she says. "It is unapologetically honest and working-class, and the people here have no pretensions." It is also just four minutes from her office.
Cecconi describes her new house as a sandwich. The main living quarters are up above street level, on the second floor. This allows for more light to flood into the public part of the interior and for a stronger separation between the master suite and adjacent studio on the top floor and the guest bedrooms, gym and laundry on the first, which is partly below grade.
The house was Cecconi's first residential architecture project and took two and a half years from start to finish. "The exterior wasn't that important to me," she says. "The project was all about how it feels on the inside." A great deal of design attention went into the manipulation of light and views. The main windows face south and are set back two feet; the sense of privacy inside is so complete, she almost never uses the window treatments.
Cecconi used to live in a converted furniture warehouse, where she developed a passion for large, open-plan spaces. "I love the minimalist aesthetic, but I don't live like a minimalist," she confesses. "If you look in my pantry or my closets, you know I am not a minimalist."
For someone with a lot of stuff, living an uncluttered life in a boldly designed open space with two large dogs requires great planning and storage. Fortunately, Cecconi, who has designed many an expensive hotel room, is an expert at configuring space with the efficiency of a ship's cabin.
In the kitchen, all the cookware and utensils are stashed out of sight in a walk-in pantry and under the counter cupboards. So spare is the look that there aren't even any visible outlets. "I'm crazy about things like that," says Cecconi, who tucked all the outlets into a recess next to the undercounter fluorescent strip lights.
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