Evan Saskin
Toronto Missing Middle Architect & Builder
I’m a licensed architect in Ontario and Nova Scotia, and I’ve been designing and building missing-middle infill housing in Toronto since 2011. Blue Lion is me and the small group of like-minded builders and designers I’ve met along the way.
Toronto missing-middle housing, designed as homes
We mostly create duplexes, triplexes, laneway suites and other careful responses to Toronto’s varied urban lots. Much of the work is developed speculatively, but designed and delivered to feel like a home rather than a unit.
The proof is in the portfolio
At Croft, we designed three new freehold homes on a laneway. At Ossington, we created a triplex with a laneway suite. Harrison is a single-family house on a 16-foot lot. Lappin is tighter still: two lofty semi-detached homes with just 11 feet of clear interior width. At Coulson, we transformed a 1960s duplex in Forest Hill Village into two 3,000-square-foot homes, one above the other.
Toronto neighbourhood Infill
From Queen and Ossington to Kensington Market, Cedarvale to Lawrence Park, the Beaches to High Park, Rogers Road and Caledonia and many tucked-away sites in between. Blue Lion works wherever there is an appetite for more neighbours living in good housing.
Housing//Thinking by Evan Saskin
I studied philosophy before architecture and I still treat housing as a question: How should a city work? How should people live together? What makes a home? Not only in theory. Where does the garbage and recycling go? How do the groceries get in and the wastewater out? We think about much more than what fits on a lot.
I write, draw and speak on housing and how design and policy are reshaping Toronto and other Canadian cities. Housing//Thinking collects my essays, case studies and talks.
Start with a Blue Lion Site Read
If you own a Toronto property and want to know what it could become, start with a Blue Lion Site Read: a fixed-fee first read on the architectural, financial and bylaw potential of your Toronto property.
