Once in a long while a house is built that defies expectation. It changes our understanding of how private dwellings can work and how living spaces interact with lives. This is such a house; the fact that the designer, Omer Arbel, had never designed a house before just underlines the achievement.

Arbel's no stranger to success, of course. (In fact, in September he was named Western Living's Industrial Designer of the Year.) His Bocci lights have become synonymous with modern luxury; we see them dangling in constellations above dining tables at covetable residences. But the recently completed Project 23.2—this home just east of White Rock, British Columbia (all of Arbel's works are given numbers)—is still the result of a very lucky set of circumstances.
The family who own the home approached Arbel in 2006, and gave him three restrictions for his design—and it's those restrictions that brought out his particular genius.

Using beams creatively

Rule 1: The house must be built using 100-year-old Douglas fir beams salvaged from a warehouse in Vancouver. These mammoth beams are a full metre deep. This kind of wood simply doesn't exist on the market anymore. "Most people would mill it down, I guess," says Arbel, "but we decided the beams were too sacred. We didn't want to manipulate them at all. So the question became, How do you make an intelligent structure from beams that are all different lengths?"

Traditional cubic rooms were impossible. Arbel took their various lengths and sketched out a series of triangles instead. The triangles, then, made up this house's highly unorthodox framework.

Rooms without corners

Rule 2: All interior spaces should have a profound relationship with the land. That parcel of daring triangular rooms is, after all, situated on a spectacular clearing and bordered by forest. Arbel tested his engineers by removing one corner from each room—to spectacular effect. Uninterrupted panoramas of forest, sunset and hay field are available from the main living space, where windows accordion back to allow easy access to a generous concrete patio. In lieu of the ordinary corner beam, a single crutch, positioned in the middle of the room, supports that imposing ceiling. "I enjoy the tension there," says Arbel. "It's structurally counterintuitive."

Designer ranch-level house

Rule 3: The house can exist on one level only. Unlike a lot of clients, Arbel's wanted a place they could grow old in, not just a real-estate investment. A scarcity of stairs will make old age easier. And the single-floor plan also allows Arbel's intricately folding roof (the result of all those triangles merging) to play out in one serene gesture, almost like rolling hillocks.

Clearly, Arbel finds plenty of play within the rules of the game. Even the interior decoration, also managed by his firm, is whimsical. Vintage glass jars live in the entry room; soaps from the oh-so-chic Ace Hotel line are stocked in the master bath; and yes, a vast constellation of Arbel's latest Bocci pendants hovers in the living room.

But it would be a mistake to call the design anything but serious work. The renowned architect James Cheng, viewing images of the project, raved about Arbel's "great ability to deal with geometric form and spatial procession." We're inclined to agree. The house is a marvel of freshness, finesse and sophistication. The mind reels to consider what Arbel might achieve on his second try. wl

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