Planned with a team of faculty and students from Carleton University's School of Architecture, and later Mark Brandt of Thompson Brandt, Econiche House received much consideration as to the exact mix of private and public space which would bring people together sensitively.

The idea was to encourage a wider participation by creating interesting public areas and simple comfortable bedrooms. With such a design, guests spend most of their time with other guests, get to know each other and informally enrich the discussions which begin in the meeting rooms.

This planning lead us to a bold decision - to mainly feature shared bathrooms and to arrange the rooms in "pods" of three, four and five rooms. In this way we can divide a group on gender lines if the group wishes and have all women in one pod, with their own privacy - and all men in another. This removed any real dilemma surrounding privacy. Beyond this, for those who really need it, we included three rooms with en suite baths. In this way, the design accomplishes its aims, creating a homelike experience, but not ignoring the greater privacy needs that may arise.

This concept has really worked. Many, many groups - ministerial, deputy ministerial, private industry - return time after time, happy to be more public than they expected. In the end, our more public atmosphere adds to enjoyment.