{"id":183056,"date":"2025-10-01T17:39:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/183056\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T17:39:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:39:10","slug":"a-handsome-multiplex-thats-ahead-of-the-curve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/183056\/","title":{"rendered":"A handsome multiplex that\u2019s ahead of the curve"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A lot that once held a single-family home now has five units in total between the main house and the laneway.Doublespace Photography<\/p>\n

Architects Janna Levitt and Dean Goodman, partners in life and business, have always been ahead of the curve. <\/p>\n

Two decades ago (almost to the day), The Globe\u2019s John Bentley Mays visited the intrepid duo at their sparkling new residence at 328 Euclid Ave. and gushed that it was \u201ctough and proud \u2026 without being at all noisy or uppity\u201d since it deferred to its elderly architectural neighbours. Praising its innovative, sustainable features, Mr. Mays was taken aback in the upstairs bedroom, where he encountered a \u201ctour de force,\u201d a corner window that \u201calmost seamlessly joined\u201d to a \u201csunny private garden\u201d on a flat roof. <\/p>\n

Curve, you\u2019ve been conquered again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWant some raspberries?\u201d asks Ms. Levitt in 2025, to which this berry-greedy writer thrusts out his hand. <\/p>\n

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The raspberries in question come not from a sunny rooftop this time, but from a corner-lot garden made possible by entering into an easement with the city to \u201cbasically double the width of [the] garden.\u201d And it\u2019s not just a garden: here, the semi-retired Mr. Goodman and Ms. Levitt (LGA was founded in 1989) have created a trellis-covered, inner-city oasis with a shipping-container sauna, an outdoor dining area, and a heated walkway between the wedgelike, three-storey building fronting Ulster Street and the two-storey laneway house situated off Lippincott Street.<\/p>\n

And to get the project built, the pair performed another tour de force, but this time vis-\u00e0-vis planning and legal. A few years before the City of Toronto amended bylaws to allow \u201cfour-plus-one\u201d multiplexes to be built \u201cas-of-right\u201d in single-family neighbourhoods, the veteran architects were presenting a plan for just that, and then jumping through bureaucratic hoops for the green light to create, And to start construction with a healthy bank balance, the duo condo-ized the five units and presold three of them, the two on the second and third floors and the single lower-level unit, while keeping the two ground-floor units for themselves.<\/p>\n

A Toronto multiplex that tests the limits of urban density<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite all of that chopping-up of space, the building presents itself in much the same way as their former residence: tough yet quiet, a single artistic piece, and one that\u2019s unassuming except for, perhaps, its slightly taller stance than the immediate neighbour to the east. However, the breathing room the corner lot provides and the bespoke suit of rusty-coloured brick tile from Denmark give it a pass. It\u2019s a handsome, understated and elegant prototype that should be repeated elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019d be really great for the city,\u201d says Mr. Goodman. \u201cIt\u2019d be like those British mews houses, which [are] in lanes.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Inside, the Levitt-Goodman residence shines just as brightly. As Ms. Levitt tends to some squash, Mr. Goodman leads me to the foyer while describing the next hurdle the couple had to face, the COVID-fueled construction delays and price increases that reared their ugly heads in 2020 and 2021, but credits Vlad Berezovskiy of Desar Construction Studio for running a tight ship.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the \u2018front\u2019 door to their unit has been spun around to the side because \u201cit works for the layouts. \u2026 You only have so much frontage, so you play around with it as an architect,\u201d says the affable architect. No matter \u2013 with enormous windows facing front, the foyer is a joy, and it leads visitors down a tiny corridor that opens up to the formal dining area and kitchen. <\/p>\n

Similar to the Euclid bedroom and roof garden that pleased Mr. Mays so much, in this house, Mr. Goodman can turn a handle and slide a wall of glass aside to reveal a Juliette balcony that gives diners the impression they are seated in the woods. And if it looks as if the dining table and matching bench \u2013 designed by architect Omar Gandhi and Mj\u00f6lk \u2013 fits perfectly under the massive sliding doors, that\u2019s because it was planned that way.<\/p>\n

The long kitchen island is reminiscent of the Euclid house as well, with its big, stainless steel-covered island \u201cthat we live on,\u201d quips Mr. Goodman, although here the necessary twin stairwells overhead have been turned into a feature wall\/ceiling curve clad in warm wood panels. \u201cIt\u2019s part of when you live in a building with other people, you\u2019ve got to [say], \u2018Okay, there are things that are different than having a private house, you\u2019re in an apartment, [so] we have to accept that,\u2019\u201d says Mr. Goodman.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The twin stairwells over the kitchen have been turned into a feature.Doublespace Photography<\/p>\n

Walk into the tidy living room, and one is drawn, moth-to-flame, to the oasis outside and, beyond it, to the little building \u2013 unit five in this five-condo building if one is counting \u2013 that the couple uses as their bedroom and home office; with the addition of a small kitchen it could easily be turned into an independent house \u2026 or \u201ccottage\u201d as Mr. Goodman calls it.<\/p>\n

With heaters under the path, in the winter months, the couple can walk (quickly) with slippered feet from the main house to the bedroom. To get the couple up with the sunrise, there is a greenhouse-like window over the bed and a cool, blue-tiled bathroom (with tiles on floor and ceiling) is a lovely place to perform morning ablutions. Up a curved stair is an office with a massive desk, couch, and postcard-perfect view of housetops on Lippincott Street. And if an overnight guest needs to use the big bathroom in the laneway building (there\u2019s a tiny powder room in the main building), a hidden wall can be utilized so \u201cguests don\u2019t feel like they\u2019re walking through our bedroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that the curve has caught up with Ms. Levitt and Mr. Goodman, it would be nice to see a forest of these multiplexes pop up, and especially owner-occupied ones, since those face less opposition: \u201cWe went and knocked on I don\u2019t know how many doors,\u201d finishes Mr. Goodman with a smile, \u201cand the neighbours were incredibly supportive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A lot that once held a single-family home now has five units in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[967,76,354,355,49,48,356,75,968],"class_list":{"0":"post-183056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-architourist","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-real-estate"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}