In a city where architectural trends shift as quickly as its skyline, there is something quietly radical about staying the course. For 26 years, one Toronto-based studio has been doing exactly that, refining a singular approach to residential design rather than chasing the next big thing. Now operating as Michael Taylor Architecture + Design (MTA+D), the practice marks a new chapter while holding firm to the values that built its reputation in the first place.
Founded in 2000 as Taylor Smyth Architects, the firm has spent over two decades crafting custom homes across Canada and abroad. Today, under Michael Taylor's sole direction, MTA+D offers an even more personal take on that legacy, one built for clients who want architecture and interiors imagined as a single, seamless vision.
A Practice Rooted in Experience
Michael Taylor is not a newcomer to testing ideas on his clients. A registered architect since 1993 and a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, he brings decades of hands-on expertise to every project that crosses his desk. That depth of experience is matched by continuity within his team: senior associates Marco Bonatti and Brian Harmer, both OAA-licensed architects, have worked alongside Taylor since 2006, joined more recently by architectural intern Benjamin Bomben.
This kind of longevity is rare in design practice, and it shows in how the studio operates. Taylor stays involved from the first client meeting through to the final stages of construction, treating architecture and interior design not as separate disciplines but as two expressions of the same idea. The result is homes that feel resolved down to the smallest detail, rather than assembled from disconnected parts.
Two Decades, Five Homes, One Sensibility
The firm's portfolio reads less like a list of buildings and more like a study in how architecture can respond to memory, landscape, and material honesty.
House on a Ravine, completed in 2001 in North York, set an early benchmark. The 7,000-square-foot home opens onto a conservation ravine through ten-foot mahogany-and-glass doors, its split-faced limestone exterior giving way to walnut floors and polished plaster within. It earned the 7th Annual Best of Canada Award and the National Post Design Exchange Award, both in 2004.
A few years later came Bishop Street Residence, a striking conversion of a post-industrial Yorkville building into a two-bedroom home centred on a private courtyard and plunge pool. Clad in black standing seam zinc and grey concrete block, it picked up the OAA Award of Excellence in Design in 2009, proof that the studio's restraint could thrive just as well in a dense urban infill site as on a sprawling lot.
Perhaps the most personal project in the firm's catalogue is House on the Bluffs, a 2,300-square-foot residence in Scarborough built on the very foundations of the owner's childhood home. The project went on to receive the 2011 International Property Award, the 2013 OAA Award of Excellence in Design, and the OAA People's Choice Award, a rare trifecta that speaks to how deeply the design resonated with both critics and the public.
In Forest Hill, one of Toronto's oldest and most established neighbourhoods, the studio took on a different kind of challenge with Russell Hill Road Residence. The 5,700-square-foot new build, clad in Indiana limestone with a base of split-faced Algonquin stone, had to feel contemporary without feeling foreign to its surroundings. Interiors developed in collaboration with Cecconi Simone helped the home earn a 2019 BLT Built Design Award and an honourable mention at the 2021 Architecture MasterPrize.
The firm's most recent work, Percy Lake Cottage, completed in 2024 near Algonquin Park, shows a studio still evolving. Set into a steep, wooded slope on the Canadian Shield, the 2,800-square-foot single-storey cottage is built to disappear, with only its chimney and roofline visible from the road. Dark wood siding lets the structure recede into the treeline, while Douglas fir ceilings flow from the interior straight out to a screened porch, blurring the line between shelter and forest.
Listening Before Building
What ties these projects together is not a signature material or a recognizable silhouette, but a process. At MTA+D, design begins with research, conversation, and three-dimensional models that clients can explore alongside the architects themselves, long before a single wall is drawn. Taylor's working principle is straightforward: understanding the client and the site always comes before shaping the building.
That philosophy explains why a Forest Hill mansion and a Haliburton cottage can both carry the same studio's fingerprints despite looking nothing alike. Material choices, the quality of natural light, and the relationship between a home and its landscape are never treated as afterthoughts. They are woven into the brief from day one, which is exactly why each MTA+D project feels less like a statement and more like a place someone was always meant to live.
A Legacy Still Being Written
Twenty-six years in, Michael Taylor Architecture + Design is proof that consistency and craftsmanship can be more powerful than reinvention. The studio's homes, whether perched on a ravine, tucked into Yorkville, or set into the Canadian Shield, share a quiet confidence that comes from decades of getting the fundamentals right. As MTA+D steps into its next chapter, that legacy looks less like a finished story and more like a foundation for what comes next.
MTA+D is a Toronto-based, internationally renowned architecture and design firm that draws on three decades of award-winning design excellence. Under the direction of esteemed architect Michael Taylor, the accomplished team partners with clients to understand their visions and bring their design inspirations to fruition. MTA+D brings this client-centred approach to everything they
do, from custom urban residences, lakefront properties and cottages to commercial and institutional buildings
