Renovation of century-old home adds space for family

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During the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, Savtaj Singh Brar started to worry about his mom. Dr. Brar and his wife, Jaspreet Dhaliwal, were planning a renovation of their downtown Toronto house. Meanwhile his mother, Simerjeet, was isolated in her suburban home in Brampton, Ont. “We got a call one day,” Dr. Brar recalls, “and she said to me: ‘I’m feeling really sad. Can I move in with you?’”

The answer was yes, and the couple changed their renovation plans completely. The couple asked Omar Gandhi Architects to redesign their century-old house and accommodate Ms. Brar, who, partially paralyzed by a stroke a decade ago, uses a wheelchair. Four years later, the 2,500-square-foot house includes an elevator, a fully accessible bedroom and bath, and an interior language that balances modernist details with Punjabi architectural tradition.

At first, the design seems to be a typical – albeit extremely tasteful – renovation of an 1905 Arts-and-Crafts house. From the front porch, visitors move through an off-centre corridor, a mazy leftover from the original house, to a back kitchen flooded with light. Mr. Gandhi’s team, led by associate Stephanie Hosein, expertly detailed the space with wood-framed windows, white oak millwork, walls coated in a supple lime wash and greige stone countertops.

But the oak panelling also conceals an elevator. Tucked in beside the stairs at the side of the house, this custom elevator is just big enough to hold Ms. Brar’s motorized wheelchair; it travels up one floor to her private bedroom and bathroom. Another lift on the back porch goes down to ground level and provides a path to the garage and the laneway beyond.

Achieving this degree of accessibility demanded clever space planning and some compromises. (And expense: the elevator was about $60,000, a small but meaningful part of the budget.) There was no space to put a ramp at the front of the house, Ms. Hosein said, and the 1905 house’s complicated plan and irregular geometries made it tricky to rebuild. The family did not want to expand the house significantly. “The house had lots of quirks and lots of character,” Ms. Hosein said. “But even here, it is possible to fit in an elevator to adapt to a multigenerational family. It’ll look different for every family based on their needs and the size of the house. But it’s possible.”

This thinking came naturally not just to Dr. Brar but to Mr. Gandhi. Now among Canada’s leading architects, Mr. Gandhi has been a close friend of Dr. Brar since high school, and he grew up in a family of immigrants from Gujarat. “He and my mom always had a warm relationship,” Dr. Brar said. “I think she was a bit surprised that he’s doing so well.”

Mr. Gandhi, Ms. Hosein, architect John Gray and builders Ripple Projects took a soft touch to the 1905 house’s interior, including two stained-glass windows on the side elevation. They also added two perforated steel window screens that recall jalis, the intricate stone screens that are ubiquitous in Indian architecture. Here, their floral motifs recall phulkari, the embroidered fabrics that are emblematic of the Punjab region where both Dr. Brar and Ms. Dhaliwal have roots.

Multigenerational households are relatively rare in Canada, but have increased in number and proportion over the past 20 years. According to 2021 census data, 6.4 per cent of Canadians live in such households.

For many people of South Asian descent, multigenerational living is a cultural norm. Though Dr. Brar grew up in the suburbs in a “very white” context, as he says half-jokingly, he did not hesitate to welcome Ms. Brar into the house; nor did Ms. Dhaliwal. In fact, Dr. Brar and his brother – also a surgeon – both offered to take in Ms. Brar a decade ago. She suffered a stroke in 2013, losing some of her mobility. “And at that time, she said: ‘No, I’m good,’” Dr. Brar said. “She always wanted her independence. That is something that almost everyone in that generation will go through. The Baby Boom generation has done so well, accumulated so much wealth and security and independence – and now the world is changing for them, right?”

After a few months in the house, Dr. Brar said, everything is going smoothly. “The first thing our daughters do in the morning is go and say hi to their grandma,” he said while preparing coffee at the island one recent morning. “They love having her here. We all do.” Ms. Brar has a place at the head of the dining table – and, Dr. Brar complained jokingly, her wheels have put some scuffs on the wall. “You know, we had our own life. We have kids. My mom had a parallel life, and now we’re trying to enmesh those together. And this is not a 14,000-square-foot mansion in the suburbs. It can be a challenge. We’re figuring it out.”

They are not the first on their block to do so. Their neighbourhood, near Bloor and Bathurst streets, was built in a period when the “family home” was dominant in Toronto’s Anglo culture, but in which the family often included grandparents and also boarders. Such crowded houses remained common as waves of European immigrants moved through the area in the mid-20th century, and then declined. The family’s census tract housed more than 1,000 people in 1971; in 2016, it was 594.

Now this particular house is home to five people. “We’re glad to help bring it back,” Dr. Brar said. “In this area, there’s lots of rooming houses and apartments that are getting turned into single-family homes – and homes for a family of three. People with money. We’re like those people, but we’ve decided to integrate. We’ve made a different choice.”