Giancarlo Valle and Jane Keltner de Valle, partners of Studio Valle de Valle, pursue evolving concepts by building conceptual through lines and varying successful elements. The firm updated a 19th-century Italianate house in Toronto that had accumulated piecemeal alterations, creating a resolved interior within the historic brick shell. The team consolidated multiple staircases into one continuous main flight and reorganized rooms to introduce a more intimate scale. Collaboration with architectural designer Christopher Cornecelli supported these structural and spatial shifts. The renovation restored groundedness and weight to the house while embedding reimagined iterations of Giancarlo's signature design flourishes.
Project to project, the two endeavor to build conceptual through lines, referencing past successes without resting on repeats. "We always want to create new recipes, but we have ingredients that we know work," reflects Giancarlo. "Maybe we'll add a new spice here, a new sauce there. In this field, you create your own rules, but you can also break them."
Case in point, the firm's latest project: a comprehensive update to one of Toronto's oldest houses. A short drive but a world away from the city's bustling downtown, the 19th-century Italianate edifice had undergone piecemeal alterations over time, resulting in an awkward pastiche of styles. "Nothing felt grounded," recalls Giancarlo, who sought to create a fresh and resolved world within its historic brick shell. "We had to give this house its weight again."
Today, the property has emerged from a multiyear transformation, realized in collaboration with local architectural designer Christopher Cornecelli, Giancarlo's graduate-school classmate at Princeton University. "There had been all these incremental moves over time," explains Cornecelli, who worked with the team to consolidate discrete staircases on multiple levels into one continuous main flight, all the while reorganizing rooms to introduce a more intimate scale. "The space was there, only it wasn't expertly used."
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