Award-winning transformation of Yaletown penthouse suite

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Designer Laurel James sums up the mix of modern and traditional finishing on a recent condo project as “cheeky”—with design twists that defy convention. Homeowners Ioana and Matt Hastings view the style more as Paris-inspired.

But both agree it feels distinctly theirs. “We wanted to make the space more ‘us,’ so that when you walk in, you feel like you’re transported somewhere else,” Ioana says. “Rather than a builder-basic Yaletown condo, we wanted it to feel like a contemporary Parisian apartment…with a juxtaposition between the old and the new, which is very much what Parisian interior design is all about right now.”

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James, director and principal of Novell Design Build, had overseen renovation of the couple’s previous home—another Yaletown condo—so she knew their tastes going in. “These are young professionals, and they’re sort of self-described old souls. They really wanted a designer to appreciate that about them, and work with the constraint of this really modern shell, but try and give them something unique inside,” she says.

Off the top, that meant looking critically at the condo’s layout. “It was a lot of asking: ‘What does the space want to be? What does the architecture say?’” she adds.

One less-than-ideal trait of the old floorplan was its tight hallways. “The first time we walked the space, there was a very distinct hallway with doors to all the private spaces—a hallway full of doors,” she recalls. To address this as part of the redesign, James reoriented the whole space, giving as much square footage as possible to the main rooms.

Access to a secondary bedroom moved to off the dining room, for instance, and a bedroom closet opened up to allow more direct access to the primary suite. “It became a challenge of turning over hallway space to usable space, and reducing the number of doors,” James says.

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But there were still several doors off the entry hall that they wanted to downplay. James and her team managed this by “forgetting the doors were there”—visually speaking—and running trim and baseboards right over top.

“We’re not trying to trick anyone that the door is not there. We just didn’t want to draw attention to [them]. So we sort of ignored traditional conventions,” James says.

The result is surprisingly subdued and gallery-like. “When you walk in with all those hidden doors, and it’s very minimalistic and there’s a couple of art pieces on the wall, it kind of has a moody gallery effect,” says Ioana. “I think that’s probably my favourite design aspect.”

Similarly, in the living room, decorative wall trim runs behind a set of floating shelves, breaking with traditional convention in the name of expression. “It almost gives it this little pinstripe, a little refinement to the edge,” says James.

Another cheeky twist is a ceiling alcove in the entry, originally square and utilitarian. James and her team reworked it into a circular focal point with a disc-shaped light fixture, then played off the shape with an orb-shaped chrome wall sconce. Streamlined mechanical systems also allowed for higher ceilings and cleaner lines throughout the apartment.

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Now located off the dining room, the home’s second bedroom is a combined office and guest room, with a double-wide desk, a Murphy bed to sleep guests and full-height reeded glass doors. New motorized shades drop down in the office and living room to filter direct sunlight that pours in through floor-to-ceiling windows on the unit’s southern and eastern exposures.

A modernized kitchen retains most of its original footprint, with cabinets in Farrow & Ball Card Room Green adding a playful punch of colour against backlit glass cabinets. James worked with Pacific Rim Cabinets to add a slim trim detail, in an offbeat fusing of modern and traditional style.

And where most open-plan kitchen designs would incorporate a waterfall-style island, the homeowners wanted something chunky. So James and her team went for a Caesarstone quartz box top that gives the illusion of a heavy slab, but is actually made out of five pieces with precision-mitred corners. “We were a little nervous about potential deficiencies, but it turned out flawlessly because our vendor did a great job,” James says.

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The couple moved in shortly after construction wrapped up in 2022, and the project has since won a Homebuilders Association Vancouver award for Best Townhouse or Condominium Renovation under $300,000. It’s a point of pride for Novell.

But so are the happy clients. When James returned to the space for a photo shoot, she was flattered to see a keepsake book Novell had created to commemorate the couple’s previous renovation on their bookshelf. “It was a proud moment,” says James. “We were just tickled that they’d bring that with them.”

Design and construction: Novell Design Build

Millwork: Pacific Rim Cabinets

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