Home & Garden 2025: New builds or heritage work, John Rutledge can do it all
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
People all over Canada are feeling the crunch of the housing crisis, and Huron County is no different. While the current provincial mandate is to build as many new homes as quickly as possible, Blyth-based architect John Rutledge believes we should also be looking at existing structures in the search for places to live. Forgotten factories, well-built barns, and shuttered churches all have the potential to find new life through a creative process known as adaptive reuse. “In short, you take an old or vacant existing building, and you modify it, renovate it, or restore it, to be used for a different purpose,” he explained.
Recently, he’s been working on the design for a brand-new daycare in Blyth, but Rutledge has also built a reputation for being dedicated to preserving the historic structures of Huron County. His firm has taken on some of the area’s most-iconic restoration projects, like the Benmiller Community Hall, the Alice Munro Library, and the Brussels Public Library.
Rutledge actually grew up in Brussels, at a time when lots of new homes were being constructed. It was then that he was first drawn to the magnetic mystery of structures. “Ever since I was a kid, I used to sit and watch houses getting built. And I was always amazed by it. But somewhere along the line, I asked myself - ‘how did all the contractors figure out where to put everything?’… And eventually, over a long period of time, I found out.”
While studying architecture at Fanshawe College, Rutledge was given an assignment that shaped the way he looks at home design. It involved doing the interior design for every room of a modern, one-storey house. “I did every room differently,” he recalled. “And my instructor looked at me and said, ‘well, John, which one do you like? If it’s that one, then why wouldn’t you design the whole house like that, so you’d be comfortable in all the rooms? Best lesson I ever had. It’s that ‘oneness’ that I try to achieve. And when a house doesn’t have ‘oneness’, I get really worried.”
When it comes to defining what buildings can be defined as “old,” Rutledge has learned that it’s all relative. “I’ve heard some people say that anything that was built five years ago or beyond is old. That’s a pretty broad definition. The Building Code classifies an old building as ‘a building that’s sat vacant for two years.’ Again, broad statements on that,” he pointed out. “Almost all buildings from before the Second World War, you could say, are old. But buildings that were built in the 1800s, versus buildings that were built in the 1400s - can you both say they’re old? No, you can’t.”
He explained that turning an old building into a new home can come with environmental and financial benefits. “You’re saving energy immediately,” Rutledge pointed out. “An existing building is the greenest building possible, because, with anything you do to it, it’s already built. So you’re not expending any more energy. You are to renovate it, but not to build it.”
An important element of converting an older building is identifying if it has any features that are subject to historical protection. “If it’s been historically designated, you have to find out what has actually been designated. Usually, it’s the exterior. Occasionally, some of the interior features get designated also,” Rutledge explained. “So you have to check that, and that’s in the municipal records.”
Another reason to repurpose old buildings? Because they’re there. “Why are we destroying buildings that are in pretty good shape and putting them in the landfill?” he asked. “There are a lot of perfectly good old buildings that have a lot more life in them, and they were designed to last indefinitely… and we should not be building new buildings on prime agricultural land.”
Of course, some existing buildings are easier to turn into liveable housing than others - it’s not as simple as just moving people into vacant office space. “The big high-rise office towers are extremely difficult to convert into housing. People are doing it, and I’m glad to see that they’re doing it, but it’s difficult. And unfortunately, that’s why a lot of big buildings in the cities sit vacant.”
One of his favourite spaces to see repurposed: old churches. “There are churches around here that have been converted into houses - small, medium, and large. And again, they have their challenges, but it’s very doable.”
He’s found there’s no one way to redesign a space. Sometimes, it takes months going back and forth with clients to settle on the right plan. “A lot of times I’ll be designing, and eventually it just gets crumpled up and goes in the garbage, because it’s not working.”
Other projects seem to design themselves. One such building was an apartment in Seaforth owned by somebody who had also studied architecture. “I had a great client,” he recalled. “We designed the renovations for the apartment in three hours, and then we drew it up. And it got built exactly the way we designed it.”
Getting it right on paper before proceeding to the construction phase is essential. “Good drawings make good buildings… you can have good and bad designs - you still have to draw them up. And if you have a bad design drawn up very well, it might become better. And if you have a good design that’s drawn up very poorly, it could be very, very difficult for the contractor to build it. If good drawings are not done, the clients may not get the building they expect, or the building they want, or the building they need.” Rutledge still does his designing the old-fashioned way. “I still do hand drafting. And I’m not on the computer. I’m a dinosaur. Too many keys. Too many buttons.”
Rutledge likes to ask himself a few questions before he undertakes a repurposing project. Is it appropriate to do something to an old building? Does it make sense? Are you going to be changing the character of the old building, or are you doing the renovations in keeping with the original character? “It’s two totally different things, and some people want to do one, and some want to do the other,” he delineated. “It’s a whole mixed bag of stuff, and there isn’t one clear answer to that… but authenticity really is the best word.”
He comes by his love of the authentic honestly. After Fanshawe, Rutledge studied architectural restoration in Chichester, England - a cathedral city that’s serious about its physical history. “It was pretty amazing,” he recalled. “I realized how pure they restore buildings there. They do them very authentically, very purely, and they restore them to their original time period. They’re very purist about it, I guess would be one way of putting it. And I brought that back to Canada and still use it today.”
Each old building Rutledge decides to take on comes along with the individual expectations of the stewards of the property; some clients are seeking authenticity, others are hoping to make a lot of changes. Striking the right balance is the hard part. “Some people want a modern kitchen and a modern bathroom in an old Victorian house - does that really work? Yes, no, maybe,” he said.
Even old houses can require a bit of a redesign to make them suitable living spaces for modern families. “We are using houses backwards to what we did in the 1800s, because everybody used to have the formal front door, and people were invited in, and sat in the parlour. In the 1800s, nobody got to the kitchen. Kitchens were workplaces… but they didn’t have the things we have to store food. They were not nice places.” The advent of electric appliances like refrigerators have streamlined the kitchens of today. “So now, we go in the back door of the house, and we’re plunked in the kitchen. We’re using houses almost opposite to what we used to do,” he pointed out.
Rutledge knows what can be achieved when an old building becomes a new home - when all goes well, modern functionality blends seamlessly with historical integrity to produce stunning results. “More and more people just have to realize that it’s possible, it’s feasible, and much less energy is expended. An existing building is the greenest building we’ve got.”