Balance matters to Vanessa Fong. Whether the challenge is figuring out how to use natural materials to take the chill off clean, contemporary lines, or balancing family life with a demanding career, she’s given careful thought to getting the ratio right. In becoming an architect, she struck a balance between the careers her Asian-immigrant parents envisioned for her when she was growing up in Toronto—medicine and accounting were at the top of their list—and her own affinity for creative work.
After completing her undergraduate and master’s degrees at McGill University in Montreal and returning to Toronto, Fong worked for well-established Quadrangle and then for its nascent offshoot RAW Design, before founding VFA Architecture + Design, in 2014. The birth of her twins prompted Fong to strike out on her own. “I had this idea that I would raise my babies idyllically, and work on one project [at a time],” she recalls, laughing. “That never happens. It just kind of all exploded at once.” A decade later, VFA is a 10-person firm specializing in single-family and low-rise multi-unit residential architecture.
Cleaver Residence illustrates VFA’s conception of home as the still point in a bustling world, and demonstrates the practice’s collaborative approach to working with clients. One of those clients on this Oakville, Ontario home happened to be a landscape designer. Fong describes the limestone-clad front façade as “a canvas for the landscape”; it was intentionally kept very simple, almost blank. At the rear, the landscape juts into the architecture: a European beech rises up through the slim, open-ended courtyard that visually and acoustically buffers the ground floor’s ‘social’ kitchen and living room areas from quieter den and home office spaces. Passing in behind the courtyard and extending most of the house’s width is a wall of mellow mahogany slats. Gently undulating in section, the slats introduce a warm, organic counterpoint to a predominantly rectilinear composition.
VFA’s work is urbane, never showy. Woodycrest, a new mid-block Toronto residence, echoes the massing and materiality of its older neighbours, while unobtrusively incorporating a width-spanning skylight that channels sunshine into the kitchen at its core.
Architecture, as Fong is well aware, does not exist in a vacuum. “We’re so dependent on the economy; we’re so dependent on all these other factors that we don’t have control over,” she says. With its pre-fabrication-oriented Ukkei Homes initiative, VFA is simultaneously attempting to foster closer collaboration between architects and contractors, and make it simpler and more affordable for homeowners to add laneway suites to their properties. The practice has completed a dozen laneway suites so far, and has two more in construction.
Meanwhile, Fong is exploring other avenues to ensure that her practice is resilient in the face of a persistent housing affordability crisis and fluctuating market conditions. She recently enrolled in the Rotman School of Management’s MBA Essentials program, and is contemplating doing a full MBA “to run a practice better.” In a business in which younger employees are often expected to put in a lot of overtime, Fong strives to provide an office environment with a viable work/life balance. “I’m not saying no one in our practice works overtime, but if you need to work overtime to hit a deadline, take those extra four hours off next week or next month, or whenever you can,” she says. “Take time to go to the bank, walk the dog, visit your grandmother.”
As appeared in the October 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine