What makes a ‘smart home’? Paul Dowsett and his team at Sustainable.To are dedicate to creating affordable, healthy and energy efficient homes, because that’s what Paul believes is ‘the right thing to do’. I think that a pretty good definition for a ‘smart home’. And the best way to achieve it? Keep it simple

This spring, Toronto management consultant Ali Lila and his contractors will begin work on a residential project he and his wife have dreamed about for years – a four-bedroom house constructed to achieve ambitious energy efficiency goals using innovative technology and smart design. Lila, 43, also wants their new home to be socially and financially sustainable, suited to both an evolving family and rising hydro prices. He expects to move in by Christmas, 2017. A year later, he plans to take it off the grid.

I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of knowing Paul Dowsett, the founding Principal Architect at SUSTAINABLE.TO Architecture + Building, for the last two years. Since we first met, I’ve been impressed and awed with his professional and personal passion for sustainability. His work with Passive House and Net Zero principles on both urban and rural projects shows that the implementation of sustainability is not only possible, but practical.

Unlike the vast majority of families who move into new digs, Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire, almost certainly didn’t get a home inspection in anticipation of taking possession of the house that comes with the job.

What is perhaps the foundational definition for sustainable development—referenced in the United Nations’ Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report—is a broad concept reconsidered and reinterpreted since it first informed the building industry in 1987.

Of the 40+ strategies listed on our website, all of them share the common goal of achieving three things: reducing the overall energy demand by selecting highly-efficient products and materials, reusing energy that nature provides for free through passive techniques, and recycling renewable energy sources through active means, resorting to fossil fuels only as a last resort.

A former police station that people once avoided is now a sustainable building where people of all ages can find community resources.

Once upon a time, the only things usually called smart were people, fashions, investments and dogs.

Lots of other items, however, have become smart in the past few years. We now have smartphones, smart cars, smart thermostats, smart television sets. The adjective commonly means that the product, thanks to cybernetic engineering, can do more tricks than your smart dog ever could. Such smartness, of course, is widely considered desirable. It is said to make our lives interesting, easier to manage – and, to a degree, it probably does so.

Sustainable is honoured to have received a 2014 Bhayana Family Foundation Award for Community Partnership, along with our friends at archiTEXT, CAPREIT, East Scarborough Storefront, ERA Architects, and locale. Bhayana awards recognize the extraordinary staff working at United Way-funded agencies who are at the root of a strong community.

Our Jones Avenue Laneway House project was published in a beautiful pictorial. Many thanks for our friends at Neighbourhood Living Magazine for their interest.

Earlier this year SUSTAINABLE.TO was selected by the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign as the 2014 Advocate for Canada!

Our Jones Avenue Laneway House was recently published on Houseporn.ca. For full article with images, click the link below…

Sustainable recently transformed an unremarkable converted garage into a compelling thoughtful laneway house in Toronto’s central east end.

Architects are in a key position to ensure that buildings well built and that they operate well -well into the future. Buildings are known to contribute too many greenhouse gas emissions to the earth’s atmosphere - allegedly more than any other major economic sector in the industrialized world. Developers, owners, financiers, builders, lawyers and engineers all play a role - but it is architects who stand at centre stage.

Toronto may soon be home to a chain of DIY backyard bee hotels and a natural forest in a down­town al­ley­way. Those were the win­ning de­signs se­lected in the first Homegrown De­sign Chal­lenge, launched this spring by Work­shop Ar­chi­tec­ture and the David Suzuki Foun­da­tion.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s wife, Laureen, is either very brave, very comfortable around bees, or a bit of both.

Harper was at Toronto’s Royal York hotel Sunday to visit the rooftop garden and beehive. Without hesitation she walked right over to the bee enclosure as Executive Chef Collin Thornton removed the cinder block. And then Harper showed her strength.

Toronto’s population of pollinators is in for a freebie: a complimentary stay at a “bee hotel,” thanks to Toronto firm Sustainable.TO Architecture + Building.

TORONTO, July 9, 2014 — Toronto may soon be home to a chain of DIY backyard bee hotels and a natural forest in a downtown alleyway. Those were the winning designs selected in the first Homegrown Design Challenge, launched this spring by Workshop Architecture and the David Suzuki Foundation.