Project Tag: Local

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.

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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.

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Seaspan Head Office

Housing 390 Employees within an 84,000 sq.ft. state of the art office facility, Seaspan represents an evolution in the design of collaborative work environments. Visually and functionally linked directly to the water-edge operations of Seaspan, the facility allows for operational efficiencies in an ever-changing organization focused on Port-related operations and the National Shipbuilding Strategy.

Sitting on structural piles and cantilevered over the water, the Seaspan fleet passes by appearing to be floating through the building at various vantage points and in particular from the three-storey atrium. Incorporating passive heating and cross-laminated timber, the facility is environmentally focused.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Chilliwack Secondary School

Building on a portfolio of community minded projects, Chilliwack Secondary School seeks to integrate education and community in unique ways. A series of casual meeting areas were combined with a variety of community uses ranging from First Nations educational facilities, a student parent daycare, a hairdressing salon, welding facilities, and incubator ‘shops’ for student-led businesses were incorporated with other more traditional educational facilities.

Together with a sustainable focus on clean air, energy efficiency, and the use of cross laminated timber, the school represents the leading edge of social, physical, and mental health-based learning while also functioning as a community hub.

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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.

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The Shipyards

The Shipyards is a mixed-used project on the North Vancouver waterfront that includes 100,000 sf of mixed retail, restaurant, and hotel space. These spaces wrap around a covered outdoor plaza, which operates as a water park in the summer and an ice rink in the winter. The site itself was the location of the Machine Shop Building of the former shipbuilder that occupied the entire precinct since the early 1900s. This redevelopment imagines the ghost of the Machine Shop being reconstructed to support the next century of activity on the North Vancouver waterfront.

The project is adjacent to the ‘Spirit Trail’ pedestrian and cycling path. The Shipyards is conceived of as a belt buckle of sorts, connecting a series of shoreline public spaces. The project acts quite literally as center ice for the urban public life of the North Vancouver while drawing visitors from far beyond. The project was completed as a collaboration between the City of North Vancouver and Quay Property Management. Shane was the project architect on the project while working at Dialog.

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