Annual home tour showcases laneway housing in Vancouver

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The aim of today’s 5th annual Vancouver Modern Home Tour today is put local architecture in the spotlight. But there is one particular kind of home that is setting the city apart from other major metropolitans.

No, it isn’t the venerable Vancouver Special, but another type of home unique to the region, called the laneway or coach house.

“…Three of the six houses [on the tour] are laneway homes. That is a trend that is definitely specific to Vancouver. There are no other cities that we go to where people are building smaller houses on their property because it’s economically feasible,” explains Ken Shallcross with the US-based Modern Architecture + Design Society, which operates the tour.

He adds these smaller homes show you don’t need to sacrifice style in favour of size. “[A] tinier space doesn’t mean it’s any less of a house. I like to consider our tour basically an art gallery where the pieces of work are individual homes by architects.”

The self-guided tour takes you on six homes in Vancouver, North Vancouver and West Vancouver. “We did a tour in Calgary last year, there were no laneway houses. We do tours in Seattle and Portland up in the northwest and there’s no laneway houses. This is really something we’ve only seen in Vancouver and it’s really, really neat.”

Click here to learn more about the tour.

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