{"id":147264,"date":"2025-11-22T15:27:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T15:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/147264\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T15:27:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T15:27:15","slug":"a-passive-house-by-edgz-architecture-design-transcends-building-constraints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/147264\/","title":{"rendered":"A Passive House by EDGZ Architecture & Design transcends building constraints"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Tse\u2019s house in Toronto<\/a> brings together sustainability and sanctuary. The 2,400-square-foot duplex meets the Passive House<\/a> standard, achieving robust insulation and clean interior air. Yet Tse\u2019s design also pushes back against the discipline\u2019s boxy orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

Located in Toronto\u2019s Riverside neighborhood, two miles from downtown, the house combines a rental suite with a bespoke home for Tse, his wife, and their two children. The secondary unit, entered from a back door, occupies part of the main floor and basement.<\/p>\n

To meet the Passive House standard, Tse had to sacrifice some personal space. Each of the house\u2019s side walls is approximately 2 feet thick, so the building consumes a significant part of the lot\u2014which is only 25 feet wide.<\/p>\n

\"InteriorA stair ascends to a second-floor landing surrounded by a bath and three bedrooms. (DOUBLESPACE)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a strong idea of sanctuary in the house,\u201d said Tse. \u201cWhen you walk in, it\u2019s completely a break from the world. It feels very grounded and a bit dark. And then as you walk through the house, you ascend towards the light.\u201d<\/p>\n

The architecture compensates for this tightness with a clever sequence of spaces that become brighter and more generous as you ascend. The front facade is windowless on the first floor; as you pass through the door, you enter a foyer and compact home office where Tse runs his practice, EDGZ Architecture & Design<\/a>. This area introduces the house\u2019s vocabulary of whitewashed white oak millwork and walls finished in a lustrous gray microcement.<\/p>\n

\"InteriorThe source of that illumination, upstairs on the third floor, is a grand window that tilts upward along the side of the house. (Doublespace Photography)<\/p>\n

A stair ascends to a second-floor lobby surrounded by a bath and three bedrooms, one of them now repurposed as a playroom. In the middle, a black-olive tree reaches up toward distant sunlight. The source of that illumination, upstairs on the third floor, is a grand window that tilts upward along the side of the house. This is angled at 60 degrees, so that it is technically a skylight. \u201cThere were some wildly complicated zoning and code decisions that shaped the space we had to work with,\u201d Tse noted. More importantly, that slanted pane floods the top floor with north light. It is joined by strip windows that connect the kitchen, at the east end of the space, to the living room at the west.<\/p>\n

\"diningThe creamy hue of white oak makes an appearance in a dining nook. (Doublespace Photography)<\/p>\n

Tse acknowledged that the upside-down plan is unusual, but \u201cit gives light and graciousness on a narrow urban lot,\u201d he said. This top-floor living space is in fact uncommonly generous: Three exposures link it visually to the thick tree canopy that lines the street and dots the area\u2019s backyards. Tse\u2019s interior design deploys extensive cabinetry (fabricated by local shop BL Woodworking) in the same creamy hue of white oak.<\/p>\n

\"InteriorThe building is now Passive House certified, a process that Tse called \u201cvery rigorous\u201d\u2014it demands third-party review of drawing sets and energy models. (Doublespace Photography)<\/p>\n

The cladding subtly expresses the volumes of the two units. White brick is laid in a horizontal bond across the first floor, while wood covers the second and third floors. The wood, a heat-treated bamboo, is served two ways: Protruding 1\u00bd-inch slats on the front nod to Aalto; on the side wall, flush siding sits back modestly. The slatted front facade is in fact a screen that stretches away from the house itself, concealing a rectilinear building form. \u201cWhen you design with Passive House, you usually end up with a box,\u201d Tse noted. \u201cHere the forms on the outside look complicated, but they are superficial to the building.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"houseThe cladding subtly expresses the volumes of the two units. (Doublespace Photography)<\/p>\n

The building is now Passive House certified, a process that Tse called \u201cvery rigorous\u201d\u2014it demands third-party review of drawing sets and energy models. Tse is now working on houses for clients who have not decided to seek certification because of the extra hurdles; all the same, he suggested, it was worth learning. \u201cFor me, the house is a showcase,\u201d Tse said. \u201cI can tell clients, \u2018I can make your house much tighter than a normal building.\u2019\u201d What\u2019s more, the house shows that sustainability doesn\u2019t have to mean sacrifice.<\/p>\n

Alex Bozikovic is the architecture critic for The Globe and Mail and the author of three books including Toronto Architecture: A City Guide. He teaches in the Master of Urban Design program at the University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eric Tse\u2019s house in Toronto brings together sustainability and sanctuary. The 2,400-square-foot duplex meets the Passive House standard,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-147264","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}