ARMOURY
Armoury is a Granville Island penthouse designed for a couple ready to downsize without sacrificing the swanky, sophisticated feeling they loved about travelling. Massive slabs of Patagonia quartzite, an entirely floating kitchen and architectural storage create a bold juxtaposition of weight, lightness and precision.
The
Challenge
The clients had reached a new stage of life.
Their children had moved out, and they were ready to trade the responsibilities of a larger family home for something easier, more central and completely turnkey.
They purchased a large condo near Granville Island with plenty of potential—but it needed a full renovation.
As frequent travellers, they had become accustomed to staying in beautiful hotels around the world, and they wanted to bring some of that experience home. The brief wasn't simply to create a beautiful condo. They wanted something swanky, sophisticated and a little unexpected—a place that could feel calm and effortless when it was just the two of them, but equally ready for a night of entertaining.
Function was equally important.
Everything needed a place. Storage needed to be generous but visually quiet. The bathrooms were limited in square footage but needed to accommodate everything required for daily life. And throughout the home, the clients were willing to embrace bold design gestures—as long as the finished space still felt effortless.
That last part is where things got interesting.
Some of the home's biggest design moments required a significant amount of engineering to make them appear as though they required none at all.
They purchased a large condo near Granville Island with plenty of potential—but it needed a full renovation.
As frequent travellers, they had become accustomed to staying in beautiful hotels around the world, and they wanted to bring some of that experience home. The brief wasn't simply to create a beautiful condo. They wanted something swanky, sophisticated and a little unexpected—a place that could feel calm and effortless when it was just the two of them, but equally ready for a night of entertaining.
Function was equally important.
Everything needed a place. Storage needed to be generous but visually quiet. The bathrooms were limited in square footage but needed to accommodate everything required for daily life. And throughout the home, the clients were willing to embrace bold design gestures—as long as the finished space still felt effortless.
That last part is where things got interesting.
Some of the home's biggest design moments required a significant amount of engineering to make them appear as though they required none at all.
The
Process
The kitchen became the project's most ambitious architectural gesture.
Rather than treating the island and cabinetry as a collection of separate elements sitting on the floor, we wanted the entire composition to feel suspended. Massive slabs of Patagonia quartzite wrap the countertop, backsplash and waterfall peninsula, creating one continuous and undeniably heavy stone composition.
Except it doesn't look heavy.
The kitchen is structurally suspended, with the plumbing, sink, dishwasher, cooktop and other functional components integrated into the engineered volume. Getting all of those elements into a kitchen that genuinely floats required careful coordination between design, engineering, construction and fabrication.
We then introduced integrated LED lighting beneath the kitchen, allowing the volume to shift in feeling from day to night. During the day, the stone reads as a dramatic architectural element. At night, the lighting reinforces the fact that this enormous mass is genuinely hovering above the floor.
It's a pretty significant engineering feat disguised as a very cool kitchen.
Across from it, we tackled another challenge: storage.
The clients had previously been using a closet near the entry as both a pantry and an entry closet. Functional? Sure. Particularly beautiful? Not so much.
We wanted to turn this highly practical requirement into something that felt more like an art installation.
A series of integrated panels, arranged as a composition of stacked squares and rectangles in varying sizes, creates a Mondrian-inspired artwork while concealing the pantry and entry storage. The negative space between the panels creates shadows that shift as you move through the home. Integrated pulls allow the doors to be opened from different locations without interrupting the composition with visible hardware.
What could have been a wall of doors became an architectural feature—and a lot of storage disappeared in plain sight.
The same approach carried into the rest of the home.
In the living room, a central fireplace was finished in a warm beige-toned microcement, giving the space texture without introducing visual clutter. Custom white oak millwork flanks the fireplace, creating places for books and collected
objects, while closed storage below keeps electronics tucked away and out of sight.
The bathrooms required a different kind of creativity.
Square footage was limited, but storage was not optional. Custom millwork allowed us to use the available space precisely, including a custom medicine cabinet with integrated LED lighting that makes everyday routines like makeup application considerably easier.
The guest bathroom was designed to feel almost spa-like. We curved the walls and combined microcement with mosaic tile in closely matched tones, creating a largely monochromatic space. Keeping the palette visually continuous prevents the small room from feeling broken up, allowing it to feel larger while the changing textures provide the interest.
For the couple's individual bathrooms, we worked from the same material language but allowed the details to shift.
One leans into softer lines and brass finishes. The other is more structured, with straighter lines and black detailing.
Feminine and masculine, without becoming literal about either.
Massive slabs of Patagonia quartzite wrap the countertop, backsplash and waterfall peninsula, creating one continuous and undeniably heavy stone composition.
Except it doesn't look heavy.
The Solution
Armoury became a home built around the idea that good engineering should rarely announce itself.
Massive slabs of stone genuinely float. Storage reads as architecture. Highly functional rooms feel like retreats rather than utility spaces.
The result is a home that delivers the ease the clients wanted from downsizing without sacrificing the experience they loved about travelling. It can feel calm and effortless on an ordinary Tuesday, then transform into something moodier and more dramatic when the lights go down and guests arrive.
Everything has a place. Nothing feels overworked.
And underneath all of that apparent ease is an enormous amount of design, engineering, construction and custom fabrication working together to make it possible.
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