Our Design Philosophy: How We Approach Every Custom Residence
After more than 25 years of designing custom homes in Toronto and across Ontario, certain principles have proven themselves consistently — across every project type, site, and client. This is how we think about what we do.
One approach, many forms
We work in a contemporary idiom, but we don’t arrive at a project with a fixed look in mind. The form a house takes is dictated by its place: a tightly constrained infill on a Toronto street and a low, open house on a Muskoka shoreline may share almost nothing visually, yet each is the honest outcome of the same way of working. What stays constant is the method, not the result — a close reading of the site, and a contemporary response particular to it. Style, in our work, is an outcome of the process, never its starting point.
Connect the inside to the outside
The boundary between a house and its setting is something we treat as permeable rather than fixed. Where the site allows, we organize the principal rooms around what lies beyond them — a ravine, a garden, a stretch of water — and then work to dissolve the visual distinction between the two: large-format glazing aligned precisely to a framed view, floor materials and levels that carry from interior to terrace, a plan built around a courtyard that draws the outdoors into the centre of the home. The result is a house that feels larger than its footprint and seasonally alive, where the landscape is part of the daily experience of the rooms rather than something observed through a window.
Celebrate daylight
Natural light is one of the most powerful tools in residential architecture. In our work, light is never incidental. Skylights, clerestory windows and the careful orientation of glazing all serve to bring the changing quality of daylight into the interior throughout the day and across the seasons. A stair washed from above, a living room that with perimeter windows on 3 sides, an overhang that protects the interior from direct sun — these come from decisions made early, in plan and section, because the way a house meets the sun is one of the few things that can’t be adjusted once it is built.
Honour the craft of architecture
We choose materials for what they will become as much as for how they look the day they are installed, and we work them honestly — a junction left legible rather than hidden, a surface that shows the hand that made it. Much of this is resolved twice: once in our detailed drawings, and again in the shop and on site, alongside the fabricators and trades whose work brings it into being. It is exacting and often goes unremarked, but it is what gives a house its substance — the quiet sense, underfoot and in the hand, that it was built to be lived in for a long time.
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About Michael Taylor Architecture + Design:
Michael Taylor Architecture + Design builds on the legacy of Taylor Smyth Architects and continues its commitment to client service, attention to detail and design excellence.
Since 2000, Michael and his team have developed an international reputation for creating elegant architecture and interiors in Canada and abroad. Each project is cultivated from the spirit of its location and the distinctive tastes and unique vision of our clients.
