Design Prowess

David Coulson is a man of many interests. From furniture design to international travel, theatre production to sustainable technology, it’s rare that he meets a subject he can’t sink his teeth into. As the president of David Coulson Design, a design-build firm in Duncan, British Columbia, he puts that versatility to excellent use, doing historical restorations, cutting-edge green retrofits, and custom residential and commercial projects of every shape and size.

Coulson describes his style as a combination of old-world craftsmanship with a strong sense of individualism. Of the 10–20 projects his firm does every year, Coulson says it’s the big, complex renovations that excite him the most. “There’s something about turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse that’s really fun,” he says. And with more than 30 years of experience, the 57-year-old designer has become an expert in silk purses, whether they start from sows’ ears or from scratch.

What started out as a straightforward basement renovation for the architecture- and sustainability-conscious owners of 222 Vancouver Street, wound up as one of the most technologically advanced, historically accurate top-to-bottom retrofits in all of Western Canada.

When looking at the Arts & Craft walk-up, you’d never suspect that below the raised-bed front garden lurks a geothermal well, or that the original single-pane windows are treated with super-efficient glazing, or that beneath the restored fir floors run fiber-optic, Cat-6, and whole-house audio cables as thick as your arm. That’s because for Coulson and his firm, owning a vintage home doesn’t mean one has to sacrifice sustainability. “I wanted to show the marketplace that you don’t have to tear these places down,” Coulson says.

The house scored within the top one percent of energy-efficient buildings in Canada. Balancing green technology with historical preservation was sometimes a challenge, but in the end, dozens of cutting-edge systems are hidden within the home’s faithfully restored interiors.

“What makes the house special is that you cannot see any intervention,” Coulson says. “The house looks like it was perfectly restored, but it’s modern at the same time.”

In 2009, the Stewarts, a couple in North Cowichan who’d spent decades running the family holly farm, decided to retire and sell the family estate. The house had always felt more like the family’s house than their own, and so the Stewarts contracted Coulson to build them something new.

“They wanted to build something woodsy, something more West Coast,” says Coulson, who was happy to oblige.

Coulson, inspired by a recent trip to Hawaii, started his design with a sloping Dickey roofline, tucking beneath it a ranch house replete with eco-friendly features, loads of natural light, and expansive outdoor living spaces. “They can step out onto deck from any room in the house,” Coulson says.

In addition to a down-to-earth aesthetic, the Stewarts were also committed to using local materials—really local. The site for the house had “an incredible stand of very uniform Douglas-fir trees,” Coulson says. These were cleared, milled, and used in the framing, flooring, siding, soffits, trim, and more. The home not only earned David Coulson Design an honourable mention in the 2010 North Cowichan Community Planning Awards, but it also gave the Stewarts a home they can finally call their own.

When Coulson first drove out to Maple Bay to look at the house his clients wanted to renovate, what he found was a one-storey shack clinging to the side of a cliff with a dingy crawl space beneath it. In other words, “dozer bait,” he says. Looking at the finished home—a glass-walled, Italianate triumph—you’d never imagine such humble beginnings.

The house only has a 900-square-foot footprint, but with three floors, vaulted ceilings, and a spacious cantilevered deck, it feels open and airy. Standing in the living room, taking in the panoramic ocean views, it’s easy to forget the massive technical feats holding the house up.

“There is more engineering in that 900-square-foot footprint than any commercial building in the valley,” Coulson says. The “postage-stamp-sized” site, as Coulson calls it, was a major challenge, boasting a 60 percent grade that drops 70 feet from a hairpin turn to the rocky shore below. During construction, everything had to be craned in—not just materials and machinery, but lunch boxes and tools as well. Coulson’s crew needed their hands free to climb down to the jobsite safely. The project’s dramatic location was certainly a challenge, but it also makes the finished home impressive to behold, inside and out.