When the home inspector jokingly said he’d be doing them a favour to burn the house down, Hoyu Hsu and Nathan Martell were forced to confront a difficult question: What was it they loved so much about this particular property — and were they willing to make it work?
Burnt-out from life in Vancouver, the young professional couple was preparing for a move to Victoria, where Martell, now a furniture designer, had grown up. For Hsu, a designer raised in Taipei before moving to Vancouver in her early twenties, however, the BC capital was a marked shift from the buzz of city life. That tension was exactly what drew them to an unusual, 454-square-metre lot on Fernwood Road, just steps from the neighbourhood square — where a church turned theatre, a pub, a wine bar, a coffee shop and a community centre were clustered within walking distance of downtown.
It felt like a version of the walkable urban life they thought they were leaving behind. After the inspector’s proclamation, their real estate agent suggested more practical options nearby. But Hsu and Martell were captivated by the high-street site and its potential. Renovation was out of the question. A new build felt daunting — expensive, uncertain — but Hsu encouraged Martell to entertain the possibility.
It was 2016, and Martell had been following the work of a Vancouver architecture firm making a name for itself with modern, unpretentious interiors shaped from concrete, plywood and other resourceful materials. He knew the owners of the former Bestie restaurant, one of the firm’s early projects, and admired what they had accomplished on a tight budget. So the couple rang Scott & Scott Architects. “We tried to pitch them on us,” Hsu recalls, laughing. “We were like, ‘We’ll be good clients. We want to do cool stuff. We’re coming to you because we want what you’re doing.’”
David and Susan Scott had launched their practice only a few years earlier with their own renovation — adding a studio to their East Vancouver home above a former corner store. They saw something of themselves in this potential project, and they loved the idea that the home would combine commercial and residential uses. “We were excited for them,” says Susan. “Having that sensibility and design understanding and open-mindedness…that was very refreshing, and certainly they were the kind of clients we had in mind when we started our practice.”
Hsu and Martell gave the architects free rein creatively, but the brief was clear. The house would need a two-bedroom rental suite, a street-facing studio for Martell, three additional bedrooms and a deck generous enough to function as an outdoor room — all within tight financial parameters.
A single round of revisions produced the final layout: It introduced an additional loft level of bedrooms and swapped the kitchen and living areas. The kitchen overlooks the street, while the living space enjoys the quieter residential context behind. “The shape of this house was a product of the program and working within this zoning,” says Susan of the angular facade, with its two distinct sections set just feet from the sidewalk. “It responds to the neighbourhood. It’s so close to the commercial area — so that’s the higher side, and we brought it down on the lower half, into that residential context.”
The live-work ambition also influenced the design. Moving the house forward on the lot required a city-approved reduced setback; the architects also successfully sought a variance to raise the slightly sunken ground floor closer to street level — bringing light into both the studio and the rental suite — and allow a three-storey house in a 2.5-storey zone.
Looking back on the project, which was completed before the pandemic, the architects recognize early expressions of what would become signature elements in their work: a larger-volume living space with double-height plywood millwork; bedrooms aligned to one side; and expansive, precisely placed windows. In Hsu’s west-facing office, a tall rectangular window frames the church steeple and draws in midday light. The open-plan kitchen and living area is flanked by two large windows and punctuated by skylights overhead. Simple, “ubiquitous” tile lines the bathrooms. Locally sourced materials — including yellow cedar cladding that would cost significantly more today — run throughout.
“We like materials that weather in,” says David of the upper facade. “The yellow cedar took many more years to weather than we expected. We would drive by it quite often and check to see if we wanted to photograph it, waiting for it to have a nice grey tonality. It’s interesting because our work is a balance between projects in the wild and renovations and rehabilitation projects in the city, but waiting for this new home to patina took more years than expected.”
In an asymmetrical house, balance emerges in subtle repetitions. “All the bedrooms have the same window, with the same dimensions, so there’s this rhythm to the space,” says Martell, noting that other window heights were adjusted to restrict views from the street. “And those simple, understated materials that I noticed at Bestie speak for themselves.”
Martell works from the ground-floor studio, its glass facade and hardscaping opening directly onto a small patio that steps up to the sidewalk, while inside, an open doorway connects the studio to the entrance stairs that lead up to the home’s expansive main room — a floor that also has a bathroom, storage and guest bedrooms tucked above the studio. It’s a short commute for Martell, who is currently working on a piece for Established & Sons.
“When I’m in the studio, the connection to the street makes me feel like I am at work, and not just working from home,” says Martell. “Opening the blinds in the morning has become like a small ritual for me, and the slight fishbowl effect seems to act as a cue to shift into a different mode for the day. But I also embrace the overlap where I can. I am constantly moving prototypes upstairs into the living space to see them in context, to photograph, to live with and reflect on them. Furniture, for me, is all about how things relate to the space and objects around them, so having a sandbox right there to play in and experiment with feels really special.”
The finished structure is a stark contrast to the more traditional homes and commercial properties around it. At the time, Susan and David recognized the risk of introducing such a contemporary form into Fernwood, where, coincidentally, David’s great-grandfather had once lived and worked as a carpenter. It wasn’t without its challenges: The nearly year-long build elicited a lot of conversation and some hesitation from the neighbourhood, and, to keep costs down, Hsu was heavily involved in project management, which included a switch in contractors partway through.
Years into living in their streetside contemporary home, more than just the cedar has worn in. The initial shock has since faded, and the house has settled into the street’s evolving vernacular. A pine tree now fills the rear-facing window. Furniture — including Martell’s own designs for Part & Whole — animates the minimalist interiors. What was once a stretch of the imagination for the young couple is now a familiar backdrop to their eclectic daily routines and a reminder that taking a risk can pay off.
“Building during the construction boom was so intense we swore we’d never do it again,” says Hsu. “Nearly a decade later, we know we made the right decision and have become unapologetic homebodies. Given our professions, one of the most meaningful things for me has been simply living and breathing in a space that aligns with and embodies my values.”
Scott & Scott Architects Craft a B.C. House that Fills a Void
In Victoria, in the space where a derelict structure once stood, Scott & Scott Architects has crafted a modern expression of living for a designer couple.