This $2 million Toronto home is known as the 'Origami House'
When Greendot Architects' Titka Safarzadeh and Saied Mahboubi were approached by their client to re-imagine 269 Coleridge Ave. in Toronto, they had their work cut out for them
The shared driveway of what used to be a small two-bedroom bungalow needed to be bigger, as the homeowner wanted more parking spaces, and the garage couldn't go either. They also wanted to have the second storey be the same size as the main floor used to be.
So tasked with this challenge, Safarzadeh and Mahboubi started thinking about how they could "squeeze" the house at the bottom but "blow it up" on top, all while still making it look nice.
The two architects then turned to the Japanese art of paper folding for inspiration, and thus 269 Coleridge Ave. became the "Origami House."
And while the concept is genius, executing it definitely wasn't easy.
"The challenge was all the beams and the structure to go with the building since it is an unconventional shape," he told blogTO.
The triangular shapes and the cantilevered rooflines require extreme attention to detail.
You'll notice all the lines and angles follow each other, even the drain pipes, which is a testament to how painstaking the build was.
But now that the Origami House is complete, it is a work of art.
The unique design combined with the meticulous build create an incredibly stunning ultra-modern house.
And as cool as the outside of the house is, the interior is also a feast for the eyes.
"When you look at the house, you say, 'This is a super modern house', and we wanted people to get the same idea when they entered the house as well," explained Safarzadeh.
Inside the three-bedroom, four-bathroom home, you'll find a large open-plan main floor with a simple black-and-white palette.
This black-and-white theme is consistent throughout the home.
There's also a ton of bespoke touches throughout, such as the custom millwork and all the doors were custom designed by Safarzadeh and Mahboubi.
But perhaps the most stunning feature of the house is the staircase.
Mahboubi explained the various challenges of creating these cantilevered stairs that are actually outside the house's main structure in order to follow the angles of the origami shapes.
Another feature Safarzadeh is particularly proud of is the amount of light they were able to bring into the middle of the home.
The roof couldn't have skylights, so they worked around this by creating balconies that bring in natural light.
Now, 269 Coleridge Ave. is listed for $1,950,000.
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