Dane Jensen and Hilary Goss's home in Toronto.Doublespace Photography
Designing a house to raise kids can be tricky. Good sight lines are essential for keeping an eye on little ones. Having enough space – and separation – is just as crucial for everyone’s sanity.
About five years ago, Dane Jensen and his partner, Hilary Goss, realized they were outgrowing their home. They were raising three kids in a 1,300-square-foot house in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood, and Jensen, an author and motivational speaker, was also working from home in less-than-ideal conditions. “I worked in the basement for nine years,” he recalls.
Upsizing, however, proved to be a challenge. They lost out in multiple bidding wars. Eventually, they bought a house off-market in the upscale Leaside neighbourhood – but it came with drawbacks. “We fell in love with the corner lot and the location,” says Jensen. “The house was still too small, though, and definitely needed updating.”
The home – a stately, red brick neo-Georgian with shutters on the windows – fit in with its tony surroundings. But even with 1,800 square feet, it still didn’t have a suitable office. “During the pandemic, I worked in the kitchen while the kids were home from school,” says Mr. Jensen. “The house was crowded.”
“And there was a garage between the end wall of the house and the yard,” adds Ms. Goss. “We wanted to be able to see our kids when they were playing outside, which we couldn’t.”
To reimagine the house, Mr. Jensen reached out to a childhood friend, architect Anne-Marie Armstrong. The two had grown up together and were once figure skating partners – before Armstrong went on to study architecture at the University of Waterloo and Yale, work at Frank Gehry’s L.A. office, and co-found AAmp, a studio with a growing list of impressive projects across Canada and the U.S.
“Our families are friends and we’ve been close for a long time,” says Mr. Jensen. “I’ve also watched Anne-Marie’s career take off. So it wasn’t just the friendship – it was the quality of her work, her portfolio and her team.”
Ms. Goss’s top concern was space. She also worried about how an addition would integrate with the original structure. “I really dislike when people do additions on older buildings and it’s obvious,” she says. “They try to match the brick. It doesn’t quite work. I was looking for something that would blend but still be beautiful.”
Ms. Armstrong and her design partner, Andrew Ashey, proposed a 2,000-square-foot addition – what they call “stealth” modern. “It’s stealth in the sense that it’s in conversation with the historic,” explains Ms. Armstrong. “Like the neo-Georgian structure, the window spacing is symmetrical, the roofline is pitched and matches the original height. We also wanted to add something new to the conversation, with the line of glass that connects the two halves, as well as the modern black cladding.”
Inside, the transition between old and new is seamless. Once chopped into small, compartmentalized rooms, the home now flows through a series of open, connected spaces – including vertically. A skylit, double-height atrium wraps around the central staircase, visually linking the kitchen and living area with the upper level.
“I love the staircase,” says Ms. Goss. “I love being in the kitchen and seeing the kids come down. Or I love walking down myself and seeing the big room open up in front of me, with light pouring in from above.”
Mr. Jensen is equally thrilled that his office is no longer underground. Located in the addition, it sits at the end of the house with windows on three sides. “I spend 10 hours a day in there,” he says. “It’s amazing to have so much natural light. It’s a wonderful place to host meetings.”
Other touches also delight, such as the arched openings that carefully frame each room, including the double arches in the primary ensuite, each encircled with glazed tiles. “We took a softer approach as opposed to a true minimal-modern one,” says Ms. Armstrong. “There are lots of curves. Even the nosings on the stairs are rounded. To us, that was important to integrate into the historic home.”
According to Mr. Ashey, one reason the project succeeded was that the clients were willing to be bold. “In our first meeting, we were tiptoeing around the idea of preserving the original house,” he says. “It was wonderful to hear Dane and Hilary say: it’s okay to go for it, it’s okay to be adventurous.”
One of the more daring decisions the team made was to ditch the garage – something that’s almost taboo in a more suburban area like Leaside. “It was really more of a storage shed than a functional garage,” says Ms. Goss. “But it completely blocked the view to the yard. It was much more important to us to be able to see the kids.”
Now, the family parks their EV on a pad in front of the new addition. And no, they don’t miss the garage. “We didn’t have one in Riverdale,” Ms. Goss adds. “We can’t miss what we never really had.”
“When people ask us about the garage,” says Mr. Jensen, “the only argument we ever heard was that it would add [$50,000] to the resale value. That’s an economic argument, not a livability one. We’re much more oriented toward enjoying our home as a family. When we bought the house and committed to the renovation, it was with the intention of being here for the next 35 or 40 years. That’s still the plan – and we want to love it the whole time.”