Perfect Vision

Sitting in Larry Louie and Joanna Wong’s sleek living room in Rossdale – carefully curated with their collection of fine art, photographs and artifacts collected on their travels – you might feel you were sitting in the lobby of an international boutique hotel.

But that’s just what these consummate globetrotters were looking for in a home. In addition to being an optometrist, Louie is an award-winning documentary photographer and, over the years, his work has taken the couple to places like Nepal, Tibet, Jordan, Mali and Indonesia, just to name a few.

“The minimalist look, simple lines – that’s what inspired us to create a more modern-looking house,” explains Louie.

Far from impersonal, though, the home they designed and built – and dreamed about for the past 20 years – has their personality etched into every square inch.

Wong bought the property, with its original 1917 bungalow, back in 1993. She was 24, had been working for a year and hadn’t managed to save any money, so she bought the house for a song, with its views of the North Saskatchewan, as an investment, with an eye toward retiring there. (She likes to plan ahead.)

After she and Louie married in 2003, they lived above his shop on 124th Street, saving for the day when they could build the home of their dreams.

From the outside, the Wong-Louie house – which was a finalist for a prestigious Canadian Home Builders’ Association award of excellence – stands in contrast to its neighbours, mostly sedate, two-storey Victorians. Its cedar panels and acrylic stucco exterior is composed of different geometric shapes, which shift and pop over five levels of relief. Inside, grey walls and grey floors create a monochromatic backdrop, with occasional bursts of colour: A lime green wall, a bright orange occasional chair, cobalt blue pendant lamps.

In many ways, the home is like one of Louie’s own black-and-white photographs: A rich range of grey tones, perfectly balanced and meticulously composed. His images often capture a fleeting moment: Birds alighting from a temple in Kathmandu; a child labourer in Bangladesh, pausing from his work making latex balloons. He has won an IPA Lucie Award, the National Geographic Photo Essay Award and the Humanitarian Documentary Grant with World Photography, to name a few, and he has been published in the pages of magazines such as National Geographic Traveler and Black & White magazine.

“Larry doesn’t snap 100 shots and pick out one,” explains Wong. “He already has the picture in his mind of what he’s shooting, what angle it’s coming from, how the image is balanced. It’s the same with houses.”

To help him execute the image that was in his mind’s eye, Louie worked with Habitat, the same Edmonton architecture firm that had helped him custom build his optometrist shop and photography gallery on 124th Street. To outfit the interior, the couple relied on Orlando Milite, owner of Le Belle Arti in Edmonton. Milite helped them track down one-of-a-kind pieces, such as the living room rug, which is stitched together from swatches of antique Turkish and Tibetan carpets, hand-dyed to achieve a watercolour effect.

“I thought by the time the house was done, I’d have some say in furniture,” laughs Wong. “Well, when we went to pick out the sofa I got five choices: All in black and all this very simple shape.”

Her contribution was the kitchen, which both say is their favourite room in the house. It features top-of-the-line appliances, including a Gaggenau combi steam-oven and Capital culinary series range unit, as well as miles of counter space so the couple can entertain on weekends for their very large extended family.

While most of the house reflects Louie’s own artistic vision, the kitchen was his promise to his wife when they married.

“He said it would take three years,” jokes Wong. “It took 10.”

Having just moved in last year, they never want to move again. As a result, many aspects of the house were designed with the long view: Arthritis-free drawer pulls and faucets, and anti-slip grating on the ramp leading to the backyard. There is room to add an elevator, should they ever need one. And they have eliminated a lawn in favour of a Zen rock garden, which requires less maintenance.

“We have our own businesses, we do a lot of travel, we don’t want to spend a lot of time maintaining a house,” explains Wong, who is a pharmacist. “We want to come home and be able to relax and meditate. This is our oasis away from the chaos.”