Urban Home Remodeling Ideas – Bernier-Thibault Home

Placed in the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood of Montreal, Canada, Paul Bernier smartly designed the Bernier-Thibault home by renovating and expanding it to accommodate his family of four. He started with the concept of adding two rooms: one for the kids and one for the adults. For this, he attached two boxes made of glass and wood to the original house. One was placed on the roof and the other one in the garden under the big maple. A wood structure wall replaced a vertical slice of the original garden side that allocates for openings on the garden and also that functions as a formal link between the two boxes. The original house is layered with brick and all new interventions are made of wood. The box in the garden acts as a playroom for the children. This is connected to the interior living spaces and opens up on the courtyard with wide glass doors as a gazebo in a garden. On the other hand, the box on the roof accommodates the room for the parents. It’s more such a tree house for the adults. It is actually a space lined with wood and what’s so special is that the parents can see the city and the sunrise from there. Besides acting as a parent’s room, the box on the roof also acts as a light well for the house below. The bedrooms can be spacious and bright when the long wall made of sliding wood panels that separates the bedrooms from the rest of the house at night opens up in the morning. The family can also see the living room through the semi-transparent floor and interrelate with the people below from the bridge.
In the kitchen, the person preparing meals has a 270 degrees overview of what’s going on through a horizontal opening. It enables you see the living room, the garden and a peek in the play room. The garden is another uniqueness of the house. It is basically an interior courtyard under the shade of trees, and is defined by three buildings and a tall fence. It is a green room, the walls are covered with ivy, and the ground is wrapped with shade plants, river stones and a flat stone path that directs to an outdoor shower. It is the area that is always cool in the summer. Its green surfaces absorb the urban buzz. Last but not the least, it operates as an impression of an oasis in the city.