Project Tag: Live

Strathcona VPL/YWCA

The necá?mat ct Strathcona VPL/YWCA ‘Cause we Care House’ Project is a joint project of the City of Vancouver, the Vancouver Public Library and the YWCA. The building integrates three component parts: a new Library Branch, 21 affordable family housing units, and program space for single mothers and their children operated by the YWCA.

The new Library Branch serves the Downtown Eastside, Strathcona, and Chinatown areas. It provides full library services including a book collection, computers, a children’s programming space, a teen programming space, multipurpose meeting spaces, maker-space, reading areas, and library staff workspace. The project achieved LEED™ Gold Certification.

The architecture was conceived to present a welcoming, double-storey ‘living-room’ open to Hastings Street. The striking faceted glazed library frontage stands out on the block of commercial storefronts to signal its intention to engage with the neighbourhood. A second storey meeting room that is shared by all uses and can be rented by the public is cantilevered over the sidewalk and main entrance to be seen and to project its public function into the street. A neon VPL sign celebrates the local retail signage and character of East Hastings street and its landmarks like the Astoria and Ted Harris Paints. Robust but refined materials, brightly coloured balcony elements and outdoor amenities on the laneway side help to add vibrancy to the area and distinguish the building as a local landmark and community amenity.

Related Work

See All

Southlands Residence

The Southlands residence began as a renovation and became a complete reimagining of a house on stilts straddling a ravine in South Vancouver. Divisions between inside and outside dissolve through an open plan that expands outwards through slide-away glass walls, extended eaves, bridges, and decks that all hover above and extend into the landscape. From the main living space above, a glass-enclosed steel stair descends to additional living space suspended over the creek and finally touches down to a water-side platform below a soaring concrete buttress that anchors the home to the site.

Related Work

See All

The Park

Located in the Bankers Hill area of San Diego this 14 Storey mixed-use building focuses on creating a high-quality public edge in this growing urban neighbourhood. At the Park in San Diego, we brought lessons learned in Vancouver about public realm and the thresholds between private and public to a site overlooking Balboa Park in the Bankers Hill area.

Townhomes, lobby, and retail spaces present an openness and willingness to engage with the street that is unusual for this growing urban district. Private courtyards, sweeping balconies, generous amenities and stunning views in all directions make the residences stand out, while refined materials, details and approach to the sidewalk help it to fit in. The building set a new standard for urban private and public spaces in the city.

Related Work

See All

Harlin

Harlin (River District Parcel 29) is a gateway tower to the waterfront precinct of the River District. It will function as both a conduit and a platform for the emergent urban life of the waterfront area. The courtyard space between Parcel 29 and Parcel 30 to the south will act as an important public space for local residents. We have imagined the building edges and courtyard spaces as moments of interference to the predominant flow of people running north south along river district crossing. Inspired by the river ‘Eddy’ we imagine that the spaces around the building can offer opportunities for people to pause and to gather.

The central public space is a critical gathering area for the neighbourhood, connecting to the future public areas to the south and the future community centre. The central courtyard is characterized by a terraced grassy knoll that offers a unique connectivity to the adjacent building edges adjacent to it. The ‘rippled edges’ of the cast-in-place ribbed façade profile reference the site’s history in the heavy logging industry and proximity to the Fraser River.

Related Work

See All

Ardea

Ardea is located in the southwest precinct of Area 2 of the East Fraser Lands. This precinct’s identity draws from its naturalistic setting and the established appeal of the Kerr Street pier. Eight blocks frame a gently curving east-west street envisioned as a richly landscaped pedestrian-friendly environment. Terraced mid-rise blocks frame a series of generous garden spaces opening onto the foreshore and modulate the streetwall along the Kent Avenue corridor.

Ardea sits at the eastern end of Riverwalk Ave and adjacent to the future Kinross Park. It is also bound by the Fraser River and foreshore walkway to the south. The project is envisioned as a series of building pavilions within the landscape. The lush, naturalized landscape is welcomed into the site and abuts each building. The simple rectilinear forms of the buildings are situated as a counter point to this organic landscape.

Visit Ardea by Wesgroup

Related Work

See All

Band

Band is located along one of Coquitlam’s main transit corridors, near the Evergreen Line’s Burquitlam Station. The project features a continuous dark clad ribbon that wraps the podium perimeter and extends up both towers to unify the massing, reduce the apparent width of the towers, and announce the main entry points. At-grade commercial units along North Road and ground-level two-storey townhomes for both the north rental tower and south condo tower contribute to the pedestrian-focused public realm.

The storefront and townhome frontages share a strong language of recessed vertical piers to create individual bays, while a similar horizontal gesture helps break down the height of the taller tower to provide deeper terraces and common rooftop decks. Numerous public and private gathering spaces are designed into various rooftops.

Visit Band by Townline

Related Work

See All

The Mark

Winner of UDI’s best urban high rise for 2014, the Mark is a ground-breaking mixed-use urban project characterized by green walls, urban agriculture, green roofs, and a high-performance envelope. Movable sunscreens are featured on the East podium while an integrated daycare and unique angled podiums activate the laneway and street edges.

Public art by Sonny Assu was incorporated as a key design element. Alan Boniface led the design team while Adrian Politano was instrumental in the project’s realization. The project was designed to a LEED Gold Standard.

Related Work

See All

East Hastings & Semlin

East Hastings and Semlin is located along a major transit arterial in the heart of the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood, close to the active Commercial Drive corridor. Along with at-grade retail and live-work units, an outdoor ‘urban room’ contributes to the vibrancy of the public realm, anchoring the corner of the building and connecting the building to the life of the street. The idea of movement – referencing the active pedestrian, bike, and vehicle movement along East Hastings Street – is articulated in the building’s facade, where the pattern of angular bays can be appreciated from various speeds and perspectives.

Sawtooth balconies highlight this sense of dynamism while optimizing building energy performance with a simplified envelope. Inspired by the neighbouring light industrial buildings, textured cladding reinforces the building’s angles and adds visual interest throughout different lighting conditions. All units enjoy private outdoor space as well as a shared rooftop amenity terrace with views of Downtown Vancouver and the North Shore Mountains.

Related Work

See All

The Charleson

Situated adjacent to Vancouver’s thriving Yaletown neighbourhood, The Charleson occupies a small site characterized by a triangulated overhead view cone. Rental and for sale housing is mixed with an active retail podium. The previously dormant laneway is activated with retail and residential components and a critical pedestrian cut-through angled towards the Seawall and adjacent parks.

Each floor plate required careful design to accommodate suites within a constrained geometry and within a very small floor plate. A 43-storey by 30-foot-wide mural by Elizabeth McIntosh highlights the building’s south façade and enlivens the City’s downtown.

Related Work

See All

Northern Junk

Located at the head of the Johnson St Bridge between Old-Town and Inner-harbour, currently isolated between Reeson Park and Bridgehead Green Park, the site offers the potential to complete a key piece of the public realm and neighbourhood revitalization. It consists of a multi-unit residential apartment building set atop the existing Northern Junk heritage warehouse buildings that are to be rehabilitated and incorporated into a mixed-use development.

It brings together active ground level uses, new housing options, and an integrated public access and extension of the public waterfront walkway.

Related Work

See All