A Door to Architectural Legend Ron Thom

By John Mackie
Vancouver Sun January 8, 2016

(Image: Jan Pidhirny and Jim Ferguson with the now famous front door of their Ron Thom designed home in West Vancouver. Courtesy of Vancouver Sun, photo by Ric Ernst)

A couple of years ago architectural writer Adele Weder was putting together an exhibition of work by the late, great West Coast modern architect Ron Thom.

One of Thom’s masterpieces, the Carmichael House, had recently been sold and restored. So Weder phoned up the new owners, Jan Pidhirny and Jim Ferguson, to see if she could take a look.

“I was going to exhibit photographs and plans of their house,” Weder recounts. “Then I saw this amazing (front) door, and was three-quarters joking when I said, ‘Can I have it for my exhibition?’”

It is quite a door. Made of oak, it’s large (114 cm wide, 203 cm tall), heavy (91 kg) and features an intricate design with a series of hexagons and parallelograms. Read more…