Housing

"Geography, housing typologies, and urban vs. suburban conditions are among the contexts defining Barton Myers's contributions to residential architecture. The history of his practice-- beginning in Toronto then relocating to Los Angeles-- anchored Myers's work in two climactic extremes of the North American continent. Utilizing steel, glass, and exposed environmental systems, he creatively framed innate responses to natural light, seasonal change, and landscape conditions in single-family houses in Toronto, Los Angeles, and the Santa Barbara Area." -- Excerpted from the essay by Lauren Bricker in Barton Myers: Works of Architecture and Urbanism

Barton Myers established his practice in Canada during the tumultuous years of the late 1960s. In his first house for himself and his family, designed in 1968, he embraced steel, a High Tech style, and the politics of neighborhood cohesion and preservation. These interests can be traced to the rebellious spirit of the sixties and the diverse urbanism of Toronto, and his training at Penn. These interests also can be followed throughout Myers’ career of almost fifty years.

His low-rise Dundas Sherbourne multi-family infill housing was an innovative project in Toronto that sparked controversy and change, earning praise from journalist and Toronto resident and neighborhood activist, Jane Jacobs (author of The Life and Death of Great American Cities).

A sensitive engagement with site and with history is particularly evident in Myers’ urban infill and urban renewal housing projects. His multi-family housing for Ghent Square in Norfolk, Virginia recalls the materials (yellow brick) and the urban patterns (the square) of Federal-era Virginia. 

In his single-family houses Myers has maintained an interest in high tech materials and off-the-shelf elements to create flexible living spaces and what he has called the “vitality of the ordinary.” His first steel houses—his own house at 19 Berryman in Toronto and the Wolf house, also in Toronto, share this material vocabulary and formal interest with his later steel houses in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles (the Myers Toro Canyon house, the Gardner, and the Bekins houses; the Rogers house and the Graphic house) but each is a highly specific response to a particular site despite the elaborated building system, articulated and hierarchical ordering of spaces, and the detached façade, conditions that they all share.