Airplane wing, giant squid railing attest to designer Marco Pecota's industrial style
Bernard Weil
/ Toronto Star
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The vertebrae-styled dining table that Marco Pecota designed is made
from maple and hot rolled steel with a hand-waxed, “live” unfinished
edge. “I used a spinal column motif to fuse the two sides (of wood)
together,” he explains. “It probably weighs 600 pounds.”
By:
Rita Zekas
Special to the Star,
Published on Thu Jan 30 2014
Industrial designer Marco Pecota is full of surprises.
First off, his loft is
located on a nondescript strip of the Junction, so unprepossessing that
a man is panhandling on the stoop outside. It’s tucked above a retail
design store, in which Pecota is a partner.
The loft is
mind-blowing — from his custom-built circular staircase (featuring a
squid-design metal railing) to the “vertebrae” dining-room table. And
who else has an airplane wing in their walk-in closet? Never mind how he
got it up his narrow staircase in the first place.
His firm
Pekota Design
(the “Pekota” spelling honours his original family name) provides
original and custom-designed furniture and architectural features. This
year he’ll launch a retail line of interior and outdoor furniture. His
MK I chair was featured in the recent Interior Design Show, in the
Prototype Exhibit highlighting “the next big thing.”
Pecota
shares the three-storey, 2,900-square-foot space with his partner Ilse
Gudiño, flamenco dancer and choreographer, and their 6-month-old
daughter Adara. There are seven rooms plus two baths and a
500-square-foot deck.
The
whole place had to be gutted. “It used to be four apartments with huge
cockroaches and a slum landlord,” Pecota recalls. “There are a lot of
rooms now in this house but they are bigger, cooler rooms as opposed to
small rooms. I demolished 75 per cent of the third-storey wall and
raised the ceiling to 16 feet.”
He designed it,
general-contracted it and had it renovated in an incredible six months.
“I’ve loved design all my life,” he explains. “I flexed my interior
design muscle in the reno; I was in attendance to make it happen.”
Born in Toronto and
raised in the west end, Pecota has lived in Toronto’s Junction
neighbourhood for 15 years — in his current space for five. He describes
his décor/design aesthetic as “deco and industrial.” He favours
mid-century modern with elegant sleek lines; Gudiño is Spanish,
flamboyant and gothic-romantic. The loft reflects both their tastes.
Pecota is self-taught
and has been designing for just three years. A renaissance man, he
started out in the family meat business, morphing into owner/publisher
of Rue Morgue horror magazine and film producer at Rue Morgue Cinema on Dufferin St. He is currently working on producing the western Cut Throats Nine, a remake of the 1972 film and scheduled to star Harvey Keitel and Mads Mikkelsen.
And he certainly produced and directed his home.
“I did my own home in
Rue Morgue Manor,
above the offices, 15 years ago with me physically doing it because I
had no money. I did my own production design on my film (
The Last Will and Testament of Rosaline Leigh): set, colours, props — all that sort of thing.”
He describes the main
floor of his Junction loft as the “utilitarian floor” that includes the
kitchen, dining area, nursery and bathroom. The white lacquered cabinets
are IKEA but otherwise the kitchen design is all Pecota, including the
stools and stainless steel counters. He loves to cook.
The kitchen houses
sculpture and fish plate art from artist/restaurateur Joso Spralja, of
Joso’s restaurant. Pecota’s father is Croatian, his mother is Italian
and he grew up on Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast.
Pecota also designed
the black, hot-rolled steel stairway that connects his three floors.
“The main girder was custom-made in Brampton and weighed 1,000 pounds,”
he says. “It took five of us to put it in place.”
The
chairs and stools in the dining area are his design. The MK l chairs
featured in IDS are laser-cut steel with Baltic birch. The stools use
vintage industrial sprockets.
He designed the
“vertebrae” dining table made of rock maple and hot rolled steel with a
hand-waxed, “live” unfinished edge. “I used a spinal column motif to
fuse the two sides (of wood) together,” he explains. “I puzzled it
together. It probably weighs 600 pounds.” The table seats 14 and is
priced at $20,000. Hey, if you habitually seat 14 for a dinner party,
you can afford the freight.
The cosy sitting area
resembles a rec room with a vintage turntable from the ’60s and a
20-year-old tan leather sofa still in its prime. The bookcase behind the
couch is a Titus shelf, built by Pecota. “I need to bolt it to the wall
when my daughter starts walking,” he says.
Indeed, with all its
sharp angles and staircases, this place needs major baby proofing. He
designed the loft while he was single.
On
the second floor, a study/living room/library/office leads from the
colossal, circular steel staircase going to a secondary library on the
third floor. The leather wing chairs in the living room are
hand-me-downs from his parents; the Afghan silk rug is from a Kabul
market.
Pecota’s
office space is anchored by a stainless steel 1940’s Tanker desk
purchased from Queen West Antique Centre. There is a revolver on it — a
fake Hollywood gun from Cut Throats Nine he uses as a paperweight. The coat of arms over his desk is part of a Victorian rug.
He added oversized
doors in almost all the rooms and refitted the windows — the 1890’s
Victorian windows are from a house in South Carolina and purchased from
Smash, across the street, as are the 1920’s doors sourced from an
Italian hotel in Argentina.
The vintage light
fixtures are from Post and Beam Architectural Reclamation down the
street. Pecota clearly shops local. They originally came from a church
and are used to illuminate the bell tower.
“Ilse puts in her
Spanish touches (like the matador painting on the wall of the library
and the mannequin wearing a flamenco dress in the master bedroom); all
the steel is masculine,” says Pecota. “She puts in her feminine touches
which it definitely can use.”
And just when you
think you have assimilated it all, the wow factor goes into overdrive.
Outside the master bedroom, a 15-foot vintage Cessna airplane wing hangs
from the ceiling over the ultimate rolling rack — a 10-foot-long,
1980’s-era, dry cleaner’s motorized clothes rack bought at Smash. On it
hang mommy, daddy and baby duds.
“It only weighs 70
pounds,” he says of the Cessna wing. “I plan to hook up lighting in it. I
bought it from a farm in Northern Ontario where there was a barn with
airplane parts. It was under $2,000, finished and delivered. The wing
was stripped of its factory paint down to the bare, shiny aluminum.”
The master bedroom is
taken over by a canopied king-size four-poster bed. Pecota built the
bedroom’s window shutters and the shelving, which stores tons of the
baby’s footwear, including red polka-dot flamenco shoes. Gudiño danced
up to the month before their baby was born.
The black squid
railing is Pecota’s other baby— he designed it and was inspired by the
sea, by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi and by Picasso’s Guernica.
“That staircase
railing is a piece of art,” he says. “It leads to the music room/library
upstairs. It is a double-decker library, 27 feet on two levels.”
You have to duck your
head upon entering the second-level library space, where Gudiño plays
the keyboard and guests noodle on guitar.
“We sit up here and smoke cigars,” Pecota says.
And the smoke drifts down three flights of fancy in the home that Pecota designed and produced.
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