Canadian designer Diego Burdi of BURDIFILEK has crafted an interior of exceptional refinement located in a Toronto residential neighbourhood characterized by its winding streets and majestic trees. While the firm is globally renowned for luxury retail and unique residential developments, this private residence marks a return to a single-family home.
The 25,000-square-foot contemporary house was imagined for a philanthropic family that regularly hosts events, concerts and dinner parties in support of various charities. More familiar with a traditional design style, they sought out Burdifilek to redefine their sensibilities toward a bolder contemporary expression.
One of the main challenges was ensuring the home maintained a level of warmth and comfort with or without guests. When moving between rooms, a visual fluidity is revealed through a harmonizing palette of natural woods, quarried stone, milky hues and soft textures, many of which derive from the world of fashion. As a result, the entire house offers a regal yet inviting sensibility. Understated tones are countered with dramatic sightlines that lead toward particular works of art, and custom finishes give each room its own mood and uniqueness.
The primary entryway features a minimalist fireplace clad in the same French limestone used on the hallway floors. Matching base moulding is, in itself, eye-catching, with a pregnant curve integrated into its profile. Fourteen-foot portal doorways lead to the grand room where three groupings of custom soft furnishings allow for even small gatherings to feel intimate. Warmth is felt in the cashmere-covered walls and a silk-thread carpet that covers most of the hardwood flooring. Designed by Burdi, the expansive rug reveals a gradual tonal shift from silver to deep charcoal at the edges.
Monotones are picked up in other details, found in the blackened bronze door frames and a mantel-free fireplace harbouring a sculptural work of art in its firebox where flames shoot up between a series of jagged bronze shapes that read as a small mountain range. While the grand room is intended for sophisticated entertaining, any undue formality is loosened with such grounding touches as stacks of wooden logs beside the hearth and glass doors that open to groupings of casual outdoor living spaces.
A secondary entrance leads to a solarium where four potted trees visually connect to a vine-covered wall beyond. Providing a seating area for arriving guests, this all-glass room is highly curated with limited-edition furnishings sharing space with 20th-century works of art by such familiar names as Donald Judd and Vincent Dubourg. It is among the most artistically expressive rooms in the house and speaks to the trust the clients had in developing a new visual language. To inspire and deepen their understanding of contemporary design and art, Burdi travelled with his clients to London, Paris and New York to visit galleries and furniture showrooms specialized in functional art objects.
Adjacent to the solarium is a minimalist dining room with padded silk walls that help to dampen ambient sounds, and four custom china cabinets that are intended to visually recede into the room’s overall simplicity. Rather than a chandelier serving as the focal point, Burdi chose to turn the gaze toward two adjacent features, one being a set of cast glass doors custom-made by Toronto's Jeff Goodman Studio, and which separate the dining room from the solarium. When closed at night, they create a lantern effect, and provide a theatrical moment when rolled to the side, signalling the start of dinner.
The other feature visible from the dining room is a hand-carved stone staircase that spirals between three floors. Its sinuous curves are countered by a cut-glass pendant light that hangs from the ceiling for 30 feet. Burdi’s vision was realized with Canadian lighting designer Matthew McCormick who developed the light’s bijou presence by adopting a gemstone cutting technique customarily used by jewellers. The craftsmanship behind each piece of convex glass enables the fixture to cast dazzling patterns of refracted light.
With catering a common occurrence, the kitchen and an equally sized pantry can accommodate plating up to 40 servings at once. Multiple sinks offer places for various activities to coincide, including one used daily for cutting and arranging fresh flowers. A similar palette of natural wood, black-stained Baltic pine and marble found in other areas of the home reappear here, in the cabinetry and on the walls. The entire kitchen is brought into visual harmony with a countertop made of translucent quartzite.
Private realms are found on each floor, including an indoor lap pool and a family room clad in brushed and black-stained Baltic pine panels. The principal bedroom, which faces onto a structured garden, is awash in French blue walls, seating and linens, and is flanked by his and hers dressing rooms. A tiny cubby area has been carved out, too, for making a morning espresso without going to the kitchen. Finally, the den captures the quiet solitude of a library experience with open shelving made from Mozambique wood and an expansive leather-bound desktop.
Every room expresses the firm's commitment to detail, composition and beauty. The result is a powerful visual statement that is also highly functional.
Team:
Interior Design Firm: BURDIFILEK
Founder and Creative Director: Diego Burdi
Founder and Managing Partner: Paul Filek
Project Manager / Studio Director: Tom Yip
Design Team: Michael Del Priore -Senior Concept Designer, John Seo -Senior Concept Designer, Sean Li – Intermediate Designer, Tom Yip - Design Development, Anna Nomerovsky – Senior CAD Specialist & Production, Anna Jurkiewicz – Senior CAD Specialist & Production, Yoonah Lee – CAD and Material library Specialist.
Architect & Builder: Brennan Custom Homes Inc.
Stone Fabricator: EDM Canada
Millwork: Erik’s Cabinets Ltd.
Lighting Consultant: Marcel Dion lighting Design
Specialty Item - Staircase Custom Pendant Light: Design vision By Burdifilek and realized with Matthew McCormick Studio.
Specialty Item – Dinning Room Glass Door: Jeff Goodman Studio
Photography: Doublespace
