Cecconi Simone, also known as Oni One, are designers known
for clean lines, good textures and interesting materials. They are the last people you'd
think would have a new approach to one of Toronto's most abiding and destructive
difficulties: sprawl. No matter what you may have heard in Alberta or New
Brunswick, Toronto is actually not dense enough. Fly into or out of the city
and you'll see what I mean.
The recent spate of condo erections has done a lot to
improve the situation, but stroll down any street in Riverdale, the Annex or
the Junction and you'll see single family dwellings on 20 x 100 foot lots (or
thereabouts). That's a lot of space for a very few people.
When Elaine Cecconi and Anna Simone decided they wanted to
branch out into architecture and building, they had capital, but not
developer-level capital, so they thought small. With a couple of partners they
bought a lot on Lippincott in what's commonly known as the South Annex (but is
on the city books as "University"). The former site of the Chicago 58 salami
factory, it is slightly larger than a double lot, but not out of line with
its mostly semi-detached neighbours. Instead of building a house, or a
couple of townhouses, they turned things on their side and built 8 houses with architect Brad Netkin,
facing south on a north-south street, quadrupling the utility of the space.
Following in the footsteps of architect Alan
Littlewood's project at
Queen and Givens, six of the eight infill houses on Lippincott, with
their open
concept back-to-front spaces have already sold in the $800,000 range.
Each has front patio barbeques and glass ground-floor front walls that
slide
entirely open in good weather.
Though the lot is bigger than most, the design is
perfectly
suited to replace run-down single family dwellings with similar
sophisticated
densities, offering greater access to desirable neighbourhoods and
potentially
higher profit margins for investors and developers. And as
the desire for laneway housing increases, variations on Ceccone
Simone's solution may be one of the things that keeps Toronto's
downtown neighbourhoods vibrant through their
next several decades of growth.
Writer: Bert Archer