SMStudio

Raised in West Vancouver and educated at UBC, Simon Montgomery, founder and principal of SMStudio, grew up surrounded by the legacy of West Coast Modernism. Early visits to Arthur Erickson's office and sustained exposure to the modernist homes of Thompson, Berwick & Pratt on the North Shore established the principles that would come to define his practice. Time working in the studio of Peter Cardew, one of the city's most meticulous architects, sharpened his eye for craft and detail. A period of study in Tokyo brought a further influence: the particular discipline of Japanese spatial thinking, its preference for the pared-down and the considered over the ornamental.

Founded in Vancouver, SMStudio has built a body of work across residential, retail, and commercial typologies, earning recognition from Western Living, Architizer, and the Kyoto Global Design Awards. It is the single-family residence, however, that has most fully expressed the studio's convictions: architecture that concerns itself with connection to its site, honesty in its materials, and the careful celebration of natural light. These ideas found their fullest expression in the Floating House.