The Globe and Mail

When my friend, landscape architect Claude Cormier, bought a former plastics factory in Montreal with the idea of making it his dream home, I knew the outcome would floor me. I just didn't know the floors would move. Renowned for groundbreaking design himself, Cormier hired like-minded architect Jacques Bilodeau to help realize his vision. On my first visit, I stared at the gutted interior -- ravaged from the excavation of contaminated soil -- and listened skeptically as Cormier described a home in which even a trip to the fridge would be a poetic spatial experience. Indeed, client and architect agreed from the start that Bilodeau would focus on manipulating floors and walls to create a kind of interior topography.