Centre-court challenge for a midtown Toronto house

In the design of architect Winda Lau’s own family home, the key measurement turned out to be 18 feet.

That was the ceiling height she needed to place a basketball court at the centre of a new contemporary residence.

The principal at Toronto-based Studio Lau had mused about tearing down her three-bedroom red brick detached for years.

When she occasionally ran ideas past her husband, he was open to rebuilding some day but hesitant to take the leap. Then the COVID-19 pandemic upended the lives of people everywhere.

“Everyone had to re-examine how they use their homes,” Ms. Lau says of the prevailing spirit in 2020. “It had to be a sanctuary.”

The upheaval of the health emergency reignited their discussion: Ms. Lau juggled working and shepherding their six-year-old son’s home schooling while her husband was missing his frequent workouts during lockdown.

“He joked, if you can design a house with a basketball court in it, I would be on board. Well, that’s kind of the wrong thing to say to an architect.”

Ms. Lau took a deep dive into the dimensions, materials and specifications of basketball courts. A couple of months later she had come up with a few different schemes.

It’s not all that uncommon for a private residence to include a basketball court, the architect points out, but it’s usually in the wing of a palatial home.

The challenge for Ms. Lau was to fit a court into a family home on a 35- by 140-foot lot in midtown.

As plans began to take shape, Ms. Lau brought in senior associate Andrea Yeatman, who was also excited by the project.

“This is what we want for our clients,” Ms. Yeatman says of the firm’s aim to custom tailor each project.

In this case, the basketball court would be a half court, with a ceiling high enough to allow players to shoot from the three-point line. Once Ms. Lau had those dimensions in place, the duo designed the rest of the house around that space based on their usual principles of maximizing light and carefully planning the connection between spaces.

The architects believe houses need rooms for shared experiences and more secluded nooks where each family member can do their own thing. They are also accustomed to designing dynamic spaces which can work for lots of different activities instead of a dedicated use.

Ms. Lau’s design got the green light from her husband and soon the family began packing for the move to a rented condo nearby.

Two-and-a-half years of construction followed before Ms. Lau, her husband and son were moving into the finished house.

Today residents and guests arrive to a front entrance with a large window overlooking the tree-lined street and a spacious foyer with built-in closets and a bench that doubles as hidden storage.

A light well through the centre of the house illuminates the interior from skylights above.

“The middle of the house is often the darkest” – especially in traditional Toronto houses, Ms. Lau notes.

The ceiling height from the basketball court carries across to the kitchen at the rear of the house, which has a double-height wall of glass overlooking the backyard. Two-thirds of the glass slides away to open up the room to the outdoors in the warmer months.

“It really extends our living space out onto the patio,” Ms. Lau says.

Ms. Lau’s own preference was for a spacious, bright kitchen – not because she spends a lot of time cooking – but because she likes lots of room around her when she does prepare meals or entertain guests.

The room includes a large round table for gathering the extended family. The island also works well for setting out a buffet, she adds.

The couple decided to eliminate a formal dining room and living room, Ms. Lau says, because in their previous house they so rarely sat in the dining room that it became a place for extra storage.

“Very often these are spaces that people don’t use,” Ms. Lau says. “We don’t have adults sitting in a stuffy living room.”

From the kitchen, stairs lead up to a comfortable family room and lounging area. Ms. Lau has played piano since she was a child, so she created an elevated area to accommodate her baby grand. It also serves as a stage when the musicians in the family – including a concert pianist – gather for an impromptu performance.

In keeping with her aim of making dynamic spaces, the area also doubles as a home studio; Ms. Lau often works at a long built-in desk along one wall while her son does his homework nearby.

Ms. Lau and her husband plan to stay in the house forever, the architect says, so they have an elevator shaft with reinforced walls already built in so they can add an elevator in the future.

At the front of the home, stairs lead to a guest room that’s set a half-floor below the family bedrooms.

On the upper level, a spacious primary suite has windows overlooking the backyard, a built-in window bench and a bathroom with a large stand-alone tub and a wet area for the shower.

“It’s carefully designed so the spray of water stops right here,” says Ms. Lau, placing her hand at the edge of the doorway.

A gentle slope in the floor leads to a hidden drain.

Open wet areas are increasingly popular, Ms. Lau says, because they eliminate the need for glass enclosures.

“You don’t have to squeegee. It’s easier to clean. It’s engineered and designed so everything drains away.”

For her son’s bedroom, Ms. Lau created a room at the front of the house that will provide more privacy as he grows into his teenage years. A pocket door can be closed, for example, to create an ensuite bathroom.

Ms. Lau leans toward minimalism, so she chose to use oak with a light, natural stain throughout the house. The black accents of the window frames and stair rails, for example, tie the interior to the exterior.

In the kitchen, large scale porcelain tiles on the radiant heated floor resemble natural limestone.

“It’s a very uniform look,” she says.

Ms. Lau also prefers a sense of organization and uncluttered surfaces. She creates lots of storage so everyday items can be hidden away.

“Life is messy and we like to contain that in our projects,” she says.

Designing her own home allowed Ms. Lau to push boundaries and experiment with ideas she hadn’t tried before.

She clad the exterior in black metal, for example, and played with varying widths.

“It’s bold, but it’s also standard commercial cladding.”

Now that the family has spent some time living in the house, Ms. Lau is planning to incorporate more of her innovations into future projects.

The basketball court is also turning out to be as versatile as she had hoped.

Devoting a significant chunk of real estate to shooting hoops may sound surprising to some, she says, but the soundproofed space is also great for home gym equipment, a playroom and large family gatherings.

When her son turned 10 recently, the family invited seventeen of his friends for a combined basketball tournament and birthday party.

Throughout the design process, there was lots of push and pull, Ms. Lau says, looking back. In making one space bigger, another becomes squeezed.

These are decisions she and Ms. Yeatman often walk their clients through with the help of 3-D rendering.

“We were able to be a little bit more generous with the spaces we do use,” says Ms. Lau. “As an architect and a homeowner, that makes me happy.”