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Fabrication Studio is a new architecture practice based in Toronto that is focused on Garden Suites and Laneway Suites. Our goal is to provide beautiful housing at a compact scale to improve yards, lanes and neighborhoods while also densifying the city. We also want the design process to be as accessible and as straightforward as possible.

We are now accepting new projects for spring/summer 2026.

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COPPER HOUSE DOC 2025 - GARDEN SUITE

COPPER HOUSE 2025


Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Architect: François Abbott
Builder: SevernWoods Fine Homes
Engineer:  Kieffer Structural Engineering  
Photography: Alex Lesage
Completion: 2025
Size: 60 m²

DESCRIPTION


On the edge of Sunnybrook Park, a quiet Toronto neighbourhood gives way to an expanse of ravine and trees. After two decades in the same family home, the client wanted to evolve within familiar surroundings — to create a place where their grown children and partners could stay close yet independent.


Copper House is a self-contained guest house that extends family life into the garden. The structure sits against a screen of deciduous trees separating the private lot from the park beyond. The client wanted to preserve this veil of greenery rather than compete with it. Copper became the natural choice — a material that begins bright and reflective, then softens through exposure to rain and sunlight, shifting through browns and cloudy greens. The façade is meant to change with the landscape over its lifetime.


To protect the trees’ root systems, the building avoids a traditional foundation. It rests instead on helical piles that lift it slightly above the ground, allowing air and water to circulate freely below. The raised base draws the underside into shadow, giving the volume a sense of lightness.


That shadow is echoed above by deep roof overhangs that shelter the walls from snow and sun. This separation from both ground and sky allowed the use of wood for the openings, completing a restrained, two-material palette. Both copper and wood will weather together — their most interesting expressions still to come.


Each façade has a single, deliberate opening. The garden-facing walls slide open entirely, turning the interior into a covered terrace. The more private rooms use deep frames to focus views of vegetation and capture the play of light and shadow.


Inside, a single-storey plan is organized around a monolithic wooden core that holds all services — kitchen, bathroom, and storage. Living space lies on one side, the bedroom on the other. A narrow opening within the dark core reveals a luminous bathroom open to the trees above.


The design allows subtle flexibility: continuous ceiling tracks let curtains shift to control privacy, light, and acoustics. Lightweight furniture can be reconfigured by hand; benches tuck beneath the table when counter space is needed. The bi-folding doors stack outward beneath generous overhangs, allowing the living room to extend seamlessly into the garden when weather permits.


Copper House recedes quietly into its setting — a deliberate and modest structure that supports the landscape and the lives unfolding within it.




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