Location: Halifax, Canada

Design Team: SUPRBLK Studio

Area: approximately 317 m²

Year: 2024

Photography: Doublespace, James Smith

Design Features: The Turquoise House stands in Halifax's North End, where SUPRBLK Studio has fitted a family home, an architecture studio and a self-contained townhouse apartment onto a narrow double lot. Living, working, rental use and possible multigenerational occupation share the site, while retaining distinct entrances, daylight and degrees of privacy.

Two gabled volumes extend along the depth of the lot and are joined by a central circulation spine. The street-facing volume contains the studio, placing the practice in direct contact with neighbourhood life; family spaces withdraw toward the rear garden, and the apartment occupies a zone able to operate independently. The programmes remain clearly separated without being compressed into one sealed block.

Courtyards make this arrangement possible. Instead of filling the parcel, the project carves a sequence of openings between the volumes so that daylight, air and planting reach deep into the plan. Entrance, studio, family rooms and garden are joined by alternating interior and exterior thresholds, while concealed doors allow work and home to separate or reconnect as daily routines change.

Turquoise is not an arbitrary signature. The architects documented saturated house fronts, painted details and weathered maritime colours across Halifax's historic neighbourhoods, then tested different hues on corrugated metal against changing weather and adjacent buildings. One gable is wrapped in turquoise and the other remains silver, while warm yellow marks doors, stairs and service cores, turning colour into a system for distinguishing volumes, directing movement and mediating the new building's place in the street.

Inside, vaulted ceilings, multi-directional daylight and carefully framed views enlarge the compact footprint. Pale timber joinery integrates kitchens, storage and window seats; terrazzo surfaces withstand the overlapping demands of domestic and studio life; concentrated yellow rooms sharpen the circulation sequence. Courtyard planting, neighbouring houses and openings at varied heights keep vertical volume connected to the surrounding city.

Prefabricated metal cladding addresses fire-rated construction along property lines as well as durability and low maintenance in a coastal climate. A highly insulated airtight envelope, passive stack ventilation, multi-aspect daylight and solar-oriented massing reduce operational demand, while planned photovoltaics are intended to generate about 65 percent of energy on site. The house treats density as a design of relationships, using courtyards, colour and adaptable programmes to make compact urban occupation more connected rather than more constrained.

Design Team: SUPRBLK Studio was founded in 2018 by Sara L’Espérance and Michael Putman and is based in Halifax. Both architects studied architecture in Canada and completed professional practice training at the Bartlett in London. Before returning to Canada, they contributed to housing, cultural and adaptive-reuse work with practices including Ian Ritchie Architects, Fletcher Priest Architects and Haworth Tompkins.

The studio works across housing, interiors, cultural space and adaptive reuse, looking for precise responses to place and everyday use that can support delight, flexibility and long-term value. L’Espérance and Putman led the architecture and interiors of The Turquoise House, with structural engineering by Andrea Doncaster Engineers, civil engineering by SDMM, landscape architecture by Plants for People and construction by Bruno Builders.