In Leslieville, Toronto’s east end, Dollhouse Loft revisits a former toy and bottling factory with a strategy grounded in spatial recalibration. The early 1900s industrial building, converted into live-work lofts in the early 2000s, carried generous volume but dated finishes and fragmented interior logic. StudioAC approached the renewal as both spatial refinement and structural clarification, using architectural insertions to reorganize daily life within the existing shell.
INTERIOR DESIGN
Entry into the unit establishes the project’s central tension. A compressed threshold gives way to a soaring double-height volume lit by four skylights and south-facing windows. The transition from tight to expansive frames the experience of the loft and sets up the primary design question: how to define zones of intimacy within an open field without reducing clarity. Rather than subdividing the plan through conventional partitions, StudioAC introduced architectural objects that operate as both infrastructure and spatial mediator.
The most decisive gesture is a custom platform that separates the living area from the kitchen and dining zones. Elevated yet visually permeable, it organizes circulation and creates a shift in posture, encouraging sitting, gathering, and pause. The platform draws on the logic of the Japanese Engawa as a transitional edge and the Greek Agora as a site of exchange. In this context, it functions as both quiet enclave and social hinge, extending into the kitchen through an integrated raised surface that connects directly to the island. The intervention reads as landscape within the loft, reshaping relationships between floor, furniture, and body.
Above, the mezzanine introduces a bath pod that operates as a compact architectural core. Positioned between the primary bedroom and ensuite, it houses a secluded soaker tub and shower while simultaneously dividing and connecting adjacent zones. Corrugated metal cladding references the building’s industrial lineage, translating warehouse language into a refined interior scale. The pod becomes a spatial anchor on the upper level, balancing privacy with continuity.
Integrated open shelving lines the mezzanine edge, accommodating the owner’s extensive library while filtering views toward the loft office. The shelving softens the transition between work and rest, allowing light to pass while maintaining separation. This layered approach replaces walls with calibrated thickness, reinforcing the project’s commitment to legibility through mass rather than enclosure.
Material selection reinforces the dialogue between past and present. Exposed brick and timber ceilings retain the memory of the building’s factory origins. White oak introduces warmth and tactile consistency across floors and millwork. Concrete-toned stone in the kitchen and bath grounds the palette, maintaining continuity with the industrial envelope. The corrugated metal of the bath pod punctuates the interior with texture and reflectivity, activating light as it shifts across surfaces throughout the day.
Dollhouse Loft succeeds by resisting excess intervention. StudioAC refrains from overwhelming the original volume and instead inserts precise architectural elements that recalibrate proportion, circulation, and social interaction. The project treats the loft not as a neutral container but as an active framework, where compression, elevation, and material thickness define experience. Through platform and pod, the studio establishes a renewed hierarchy within the open plan, transforming an aging interior into a cohesive and spatially articulate dwelling.
