Renowned Canadian architect Arthur Erickson’s Filberg House, a two-bed, two-bath house with a cottage on the property, has been listed for $4.9 million. The Comox property designed in 1959 offers waterfront and mountain views alongside a connection to Canada’s architectural heritage.
The property
- Type: House/Single Family
- Neighbourhood: Comox Peninsula
- Beds: 2 (2 more bedrooms in the cottage on the property)
- Baths: 2 (1 more bathroom in the cottage on the property)
- Year built: 1959
- Parking: 10
- Lot area: 7.67 acres
- Title to Land: Freehold
- Taxes: $14,876
- Listed price: $4,900,000
- Listing agent: Marcus Friedlander, Sutton Group West Coast Realty
According to Marcus Friedlander, a realtor with Sutton Group West Coast Realty, the Filberg House was listed in early May and has received “steady interest every week since day one.” Though Friedlander says the Comox Valley consistently offers “a steady supply of quality listings,” he says the Filberg House is the definition of a “one of a kind, once in a lifetime opportunity.”
The history
The Filberg House was completed in 1959, four years before Erickson and his architectural partner, Geoffrey Massey, would win the competition for Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby campus. The SFU project brought them widespread recognition and opened the door to a series of commissions, including Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology at UBC and the Provincial Law Courts and Art Gallery in Robson Square. But, before gaining such prominence, Erickson was experimenting with domestic modernism. And, as the West Coast Modern League, a Vancouver-based organisation dedicated to protecting significant modernist architecture, puts it, “the single-family home was a young architect’s playground.”
The Filberg House was commissioned by Robert M. Filberg, son of a logging and railway tycoon, and upon its completion received some of the highest praise of Erickson’s career to that point. In a 1961 issue of Canadian Homes magazine, it was awarded the title of “the most fabulous house in Canada.” Since then, the property has changed hands several times, most recently sold in February 2021 for $2,125,000. Now listed at $4.9 million, the property reflects the premium that is attached to architecturally significant homes as well as the continued demand for waterfront real estate on Vancouver Island.
Though the property has seen its share of renovations over nearly seven decades, Friedlander says “preservation is most definitely part of the conversation with all interested parties,” adding that the ultimate buyer of the house will “most likely be one that has preservation in mind.”
There is still potential for change, however. Studio Erickson, run by Arthur Erickson’s nephews, Geoffrey Erickson and Christopher Erickson, has designed a potential modernist replacement in keeping with the era for the caretaker’s cottage on the property and an infinity-style pool that was part of Erickson’s original design.
Erickson spent several years travelling throughout the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Japan, and the influence of those journeys is evident in several design elements of the Filberg House.
Latticework-framed windows, polished marble floors, and barrel lights are set against a backdrop of glacial peaks and sweeping views across the Strait of Georgia.
