Home Builder Canada - Template11

Master Designer
By Frank O'Brien

When the Greater Toronto Home Builders' Association bestowed a Lifetime Achievement Award upon Ken Viljoen this summer, it recognized the influential stamp the prolific South Africa-born architect and designer has forged in his adopted city.
Viljoen, 66, is president of Viljoen Architect of North Toronto. Over the past 3 decades, he has taken the lead in his firm's design of at least 10,000 new homes, captured numerous design awards and proved a mentor to most designers specializing in low-rise residential construction in the Greater Toronto Area.
Viljoen, who arrived in Toronto in 1965 and completed his Masters Degree in urban design from the University of Toronto two years later, has crafted complete communities, low-rise and high-rise homes and private residences for Toronto's most prominent builders. Yet it is his pragmatic approach to design and a noted talent in matching architecture to on-site reality that is perhaps Viljoen's most enduring trademark.
"What you can't lose sight of is that you are designing for someone who is eventually going to purchase," Viljoen explains. "You must capture the public's eye." He is also known for designs that are practical to build. "The work at the production end is critically important. If the framer can't put it together, then you have a problem."
Viljoen bristles at suggestions that architects dictate design trends. Instead, he says, good design bubbles up from the market. According to Viljoen, what appears to be nostalgia - such as the Craftsman and Victorian designs and "the new urbanism" of some suburban neighbourhoods - is simply a reflection of a consumer's continuing search for security, comfort and value. Knowing the pulse of the consumer, anticipating what will sell two or even three years out - and the equally important ability to recognize and reject shallow trends - is important to a designer's success. Viljoen is among those with these rare talents.
An example is the town homes that he designed for the Millcroft golf course development by Monarch Homes in Burlington, Ontario, nearly twenty years ago. Today the homes remain a signature project within the giant Monarch portfolio and representative of timeless residential design with consistent resale demand. In fact, clones of Viljoen's design for Millcroft can now be seen in high-end resort developments across Canada. ("Our work gets ripped off all the time," Viljoen says with a laugh. "That's why you have to survive on service and quality, not just good design.")
After 33 years in the business, Viljoen is skeptical about some of the purported trends in new homes. For instance, Flex housing, while touted as a cure-all for a growing family, is "too complicated and impractical" for most mainline single-family builders, he says. "The code problems can be horrendous." And, while Viljoen and his 33-person office consistently incorporate R-2000 technology into their designs, he says pushing the "green" envelope further is often cost-prohibitive for the average builder. "Green architecture and design has to start with the land developer to be truly effective," he explains.
But there is one overriding trend in metro Toronto that Viljoen believes will dictate home building and design for years to come: the restrictions on land development, such as the Ontario government's moratorium on rezoning in the Golden Horseshoe, and subsequent soaring land costs. "Intense densification is a reality," Viljoen says. "We have no choice."
The cost of serviced land will increase pressure to build more high-rise condos and low-rise town homes rather than tracts of single-family houses on wide streets, he explains, and higher-density communities clustered near light transit hubs are the inevitable future for southern Ontario. Viljoen notes that, while it cost about a $1 billion to extend the Yonge-Shephard rapid transit line from Toronto, about $5 billion in private development has sprung up around the stations.
As a result, Toronto-area home builders will increasingly find themselves working in ultra-planned communities, Viljoen says. "We are no longer building homes; we are building neighbourhoods." The emphasis on urban design, he adds, has already elevated new home architecture in the city.
Despite its prolific production, Viljoen Architect does not create stock house plans. Each design is done for a specific client, Viljoen explains, and "although we own the copyright, I feel it is the client's design. I would never try to sell it to someone else."
At the Viljoen Architect's offices and studio in North Toronto, staff are largely recruited from community colleges and have training both in design and construction, Viljoen says. His staff are taught to respect the technical and logistic aspects of home design as much as the creativity. Home builders should also choose designers carefully, he adds, because the few dollars saved with a "kitchen table designer is nothing compared to the cost if there is a site problem that will delay construction."
"We train all of our staff as if they will be here for years," he says. In reality, some former Viljoen designers have gone on to become active competitors. Viljoen has no problem with that. "There is plenty of room for good designers in Toronto today, besides which it keeps you on your toes."
Married and the father of two grown sons, Viljoen and his wife, Ann, live in a 50-year-old renovated house on a ravine lot a block off Toronto's Yonge Street and he looks forward to continuing an active career in Canada's biggest city. "Some people say we are in the eighth year of a seven-year building boom," Viljoen says, "but I believe there is a strong future for new homes in Toronto."
And there are few doubts about who will be designing many of them. HB