Dove in The Globe and Mail 2022
Dove in the Globe and Mail
Next Level: In an Old Thornhill home, architects Agathom create a playful respite from open concept.
The talented husband-and-wife team behind Agathom embrace walls that shield in places and soar in others.
Dave LeBlanc—Open concept is so over. From the mid-1990s to, perhaps, the late-2010s did it reign. But, thankfully, it will now step back to where it belongs: hard lofts. During that quarter-century, millions of interior walls were sacrificed. Good walls. Shielding walls. Walls that created nooks and coziness. Walls that kept the visitor (and even occupants) guessing as to what might be around the corner. Too many houses and condominiums erased their secrets: Open the front door and everything, just everything, was laid bare. What a bore. What a chore to keep clean.
Agathom Co., that talented husband-and-wife team responsible for international superstar Molly’s Cabin, would like to reintroduce walls to the world of architecture. Not the walls of Victoriana, mind you, which created a rabbit’s warren of dark spaces, but walls that shield in places and soar in others, walls with slots that offer peek-a-boos into other spaces and half-walls to create circulation.
Choose the highway and you’ll get there faster; choose the country lane and you’ll meander a little. Or choose to stand still and one is still able to swivel one’s head to consider a half-dozen possibilities as to where one might end up. And the eye will encounter oodles of rough, board-formed concrete, smooth golden wood, creamy-white drywall, polished concrete and the twinkle of sunlight bouncing off of pebble-filled water outside.