Drains and a panel that could not move. Now a full gut the board approved.
The clients wanted a full gut. What the design had to work with was everything that could not move: the drain locations, the electrical panel, the plumbing stack, and the coordination that comes with neighbours upstairs, downstairs, and next door.
The drains stay where they are. The electrical panel stays where it is, because the incoming service arrives at that point. The columns are where they are. Water shutdowns run three mornings a week, the city requires asbestos abatement, and every inspection happens with the contractor, the plumber, and the electrician present.
None of that is negotiable, and all of it is workable. Knowing the requirements going in is what lets the work happen without friction, and lets you stay on good terms with the people you live above and below.
A poche spine runs parallel to the corridor down the centre of the unit. It contains the storage, and it buries the concrete columns, the electrical panel, and the plumbing stack inside it.
Burying the structure erases the grid, which is why the space reads as clear and open. The spine also divides service from public: bathroom, closet, pantry and wine storage on one side, living on the other.
The building is a piece of mid-century modern design, and the intent was to bring the unit closer to that language without imitating it. Clear planning, quiet materials, and light carried the full depth.
And a hidden wine room behind the refrigerator, entered through a cabinet door.
Sliding glass at both ends means cross-ventilation when both are open, which matters on an upper floor. The view was the obvious reason to open the unit end to end. The cooling was the other one.
The palette is deliberately quiet so the through-view, the art, and a furniture collection assembled over years are what you notice.
A cluttered, dark hallway with doors all over it. Now an open storage wall that runs the length of it, one piece of art that gets to breathe, and a long view.
Two rooms behind two arches, dark and boxed in. Now one bright room, opened straight through.
A big space with the kitchen walled off behind arches and pass-throughs. Now one continuous space, bright and open.
"Both bathrooms were accessible only through the bedroom. The renovation completely changed how we live in the space - we even found room for a laundry in a two bedroom apartment. What we had not expected were the custom touches: a large wood block print now sits in a niche in the axis hallway, against the wall of cabinets opposite. Friends who come now say they cannot remember how the old floorplan worked."
Margaret M. · Co-op renovation, SW Waterfront
What does a co-op or condo board actually approve?
Less about taste than most owners expect, and more about what cannot move. The rules are knowable before you start.
Read what a board controls →Rather talk it through? Start with one question.
"The columns did not go anywhere. They went inside the wall, and the room stopped being about them."Luis Boza · On designing around what cannot move
