Toronto home | YaBu Pushelberg | 2025 | 加拿大
George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg’s Toronto home, which they purchased on a whim 25 years ago, is an homage to the pair’s disarming spirited nature and affinity for collecting.George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg, who founded their revered multidisciplinary design practice in 1980, split their time between Toronto and New York City. They have studios in both locations and three residences, including their home in Bennington Heights, an apartment in a Richard Meier-designed building in Manhattan’s West Village and a beach house in Amagansett.
Each of these homes was bought on impulse; the couple purchased the apartment after a site visit to the restaurant they were designing on the ground floor of the same building, and their home in Toronto was bought after browsing properties for fun one afternoon with a real-estate agent acquaintance. “It’s bad, but we really weren’t intending to buy anything until we saw this beautiful house,” says Yabu.Located along a quiet street in Bennington Heights – an exclusive neighbourhood to the north of the city – the house is a charming brick dwelling built in the 1950s. Set back from the street on a sloping site, it presents as a modest single-storey cottage with heritage features. This contradicts the drama at the rear, where the home unfurls across three levels towards a leafy ravine. “There’s a magic to this house because it starts as a little cottage and ends with these framed views of the valley,” says Pushelberg.
The locale was also a significant drawcard; despite being a short drive from the centre of Toronto, it feels almost rural, thanks to the forested valley that surrounds it. “It takes eight minutes for us to get to work, but you feel like you’re in Northern Canada with deer, foxes and all kinds of flora and fauna around you,” says Yabu.Before moving in, the duo completed a significant renovation. They restored the facade, installed a new cedar roof and repurposed the staircase’s deco-inspired steel handrail. The interior received Yabu Pushelberg’s deft treatment with new wide-plank timber floors, warm white walls and custom millwork throughout crafted from rare Irish bog oak, its ombre finish the result of being submerged underwater for 4,000 years.
They also replaced the small bay windows at the rear with expansive floor-to-ceiling glazing that frames views of the valley – russet tones abound during fall, and Yabu favours the “fresh, sweet celery green” hues that flood the interiors at springtime. Pushelberg says, together, these interventions “gave the home just enough character, because it’s really the furnishings and art that bring personality to the house”.
The home served them well for two decades – the two guest bedrooms were used often, and the interior became a canvas upon which they built their ever-growing collection of furniture and art. However, by 2020, their lifestyle had changed, and they gave the dwelling another minor renovation, reimagining the middle level as a space dedicated to hosting and entertaining.
“All our friends that used to stay with us were grown up and had their own places,” recalls Yabu. “We would just bypass that level to go up to our bedroom or down to the main living areas, and I thought that was just ridiculous – we weren’t using 30 per cent of the house.” While on a Zoom call with a client, he sketched a plan to remove the third bedroom – there’s still one guest bedroom – and transform the space into a large living room and a bar that can accommodate 100-person parties.
Within the warm, neutral interiors, the duo’s museum-worthy collection of art, objects, furniture and lighting creates an immense magnetism – from the brightly coloured Yayoi Kusama painting and vintage mirrors to endless curios that reflect their shared affinity for assemblage. Products they’ve designed for the likes of Ligne Roset and Avenue Road feature on a revolving basis, and each piece tells a story, like the saffron-coloured carpet found in Marrakesh that makes Pushelberg smile every morning, or the jaunty cluster of “forest animals” sourced from Brazil and Japan that stand together, surveying the ravine.
Impressive in its breadth and dynamic in its provenance, their varied possessions not only enliven the home’s pared-back framework, but they “keep our thinking fresh”, says Pushelberg. “We always believe that, in your studio, you want a blank canvas without many influences, but where you live and where you travel to, you should be touching and feeling and looking at all kinds of things in order to draw inspiration.”
Worth noting is that their proclivity for collecting surpasses blue-chip art and designer furniture; for a period, they were fixated on toaster ovens and, most recently, they’ve turned their attention to cars, the latest addition being a vintage Mercedes called Oskar, “because he’s German and a bit of an old geek,” jokes Pushelberg.This curious attitude and reverence for how and where things are made culminates in their home, and the effect is anything but contrived; rather, Bennington Heights feels like a natural extension of the duo – warm, sincere and a little gregarious.
“We’re conscious of making sure it doesn’t look overthought,” says Yabu. “Sometimes there’s a tendency to theoretically intellectualise something, and you can really feel that, like when you go to someone’s house and you have the feeling it was all set up before arrival. I love it when people come over and they feel so good that they put their feet up without asking.”
This notion speaks directly to the duo’s idea of home, which is indisputably enhanced by – though not defined by – their personal possessions. “People often ask us which is our favourite home, and we say all of them, because they all express who we are,” says Pushelberg. “I think that the longer you live in a place – and the more you tinker with it and invite people into it – the more it feels like a part of you. To me, that’s what home represents.”
Interior design by Yabu Pushelberg.
- 项目文案：Millie Thwaites
- 项目摄影：Clément Pascal
- 转载自：The Local Project
- 图片@The Local Project
- 语言：英语
- 编辑：序赞网
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