Vancouver Special: After Renovation – Pechet & Robb

The house above at centre, a lowly style known as a Vancouver Special, is shown here prior to its renovation about six years ago by Vancouver architects Pechet and Robb. This renovation was one of the earliest of a current spate of Vancouver Special overhauls, and it’s probably still the most famous. See Canadian Architect magazine and also here. As the previous post explains, the Vancouver Special is a generic, mass-produced contractor’s house design unique to Vancouver. A great number of these houses were built between about 1965 and 1985 until finally the City of Vancouver began to actively suppress them. Now, thanks to their lower prices and the fact that their simple shapes lend them to easy modernization, they are undergoing a revival. Their boxy shape makes them feel surprisingly large, especially when interior walls are removed. You can see from the interior shots below how easily the exteriors and interiors can be switched over from cheesy 70s suburban to something almost midcentury modern. The Pechet and Robb house has an almost Scandinavian modern feel – you’d have to be familiar with Vancouver Specials to know how different this feels from the original. The bottom photo shows the garage. Photos are from pechetandrobb.com, where there is also a description of the renovation. See also more photos of this house on Flickr.

PS. As you’ll see in the next post, it seems to be almost standard practice with Vancouver Special exterior makeovers to go with a combination of dark charcoal-grey paint with unpainted Douglas fir wood facing. It may have been Pechet and Robb who started that trend with this much-publicized house.