Woodland Ridge House Toronto, Ontario Midcentury Modernist-inspired house design, Canadian property photos

Woodland Ridge House, Toronto, Canada home

December 16, 2025

Design: FrankFranco Architects

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Photos by Bob Gundu

Woodland Ridge House, Ontario, Canada

Woodland Ridge is a Midcentury Modernist-inspired house atop a nature preserve near Toronto showcases the owner’s skills as architect, interior designer and cabinetmaker. While the Toronto Region Conservation Authority prohibits new builds here, the two-acre property included a 60-year-old cottage whose footprint was grandfathered, enabling construction of the new family home.

The building is C-shaped in plan, its elevation asymmetrically balanced with a two-storey volume on the north leg and a one-storey volume on the south. The long horizontal roof planes and the massing of minimalist grey boxes punctuated by curtainwall windows framed in black metal evoke Midcentury Modernism as do the pilotis at the front and rear comprising back-to-back U-channel steel sections.

Inside, slender metal features in the dramatic interior stairway featuring slim open treads (made of oak harvested from a tree cut down on site), a parapet or inner stringer seemingly too delicate for its load and Starphire glass-floored landings lacking visible support.

The parapet is made of folded quarter-inch-thick hot-rolled steel; the outer stringer, buried in the wall, provides hidden support. The custom brass handrail is offset in a continuous configuration rather than breaking at the landings to laterally stabilize the parapet.

Brass inlays outline the stylized, origami-like tulip relief sculpture on the clear-sealed high-density cement fiberboard panels cladding the exterior. Inside, the abstracted-tulip motif recurs in walnut along the kitchen’s skylit wall segment and above the upper stairway landing.

The opulent palette of natural materials, including walnut paneling, titanium black leather granite countertops and ocean black slate flooring, was deployed with an eye to economy and sustainability in grid patterns that look elegant while minimizing waste.

Eramosa limestone was repurposed from the existing retaining wall, its eight-inch-thick blocks split lengthwise to double the available linear footage.