Project Tag: Public

JJ Bean

Featured locations: Bidwell, Cambie, Dunsmuir, False Creek, Fraser, Lonsdale (North Van), Marine Building, St. Clair (Toronto)
Not pictured: Railway, Adelaide (Toronto)

JJ Bean built its brand on providing great service, great coffee and food, and great spaces. To deliver great spaces, each location is unique and responds to the neighbourhood or the building it finds itself in. Our work on ten locations in Vancouver and Toronto makes the history, character, and found condition the inspiration for the design.

Each location seeks to provide a memorable and highly particular experience. From a contemporary interpretation of Art-Deco ornament at the iconic Marine Building to an abstracted walk along a forest hiking trail at the Lonsdale store, each design finds a way to link the interior to local character.

Coronation Park

Boasting mountain views to the west and situated adjacent to Inlet Centre SkyTrain Station, Coronation Park is the ideal location for a people-centered mixed-use development that envisions the transformation of 14.8 acres of an existing single-family residential area into a series of parks, open space, and podium gardens amid low and high-rise residential buildings incorporating office, retail, daycare, amenity spaces, and homes. The project is designed as an essential piece of the Port Moody urban fabric as a place of community interactivity, small-scale commerce, and a sense of home. These critical design elements are not just for those who choose to live and work here, but for the greater community beyond. The Central Green (City-owned park) overlooking the Inlet will become a jewel for Port Moody, locals could gather and take part in any number of diverse activities.

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River Mile Denver

Representing one of the most significant Urban redevelopments in the United States, the Rivermile seeks to reconnect Denver to it’s river edge while providing a publicly focused, sustainable and walkable urban environment. Focused on a approximately 3-acre central park and gathering space, the development seeks to create a thriving mixed-use urban district unlike any other. With approximately 15 million square feet of development, a variety of walkable experiences characterize the spaces between buildings and along the River’s edge.

All of the mile long river’s edge is publicly accessible, highlighted by pedestrian bridges over the South Platte River. Roads have been carefully designed as pedestrian first environments and all parking and loading is accommodated on building sites. Alan Boniface helped lead the project for Revesco in partnership with SAR of Denver.

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River District OCP

River District, also known as East Fraser Lands, is embedded in layers of rich history, and meaning. Our design for the Waterfront Precinct seeks to unite the community with the Fraser River, making the riverfront an inseparable part of the East Fraser Lands experience. As the ‘soul’ of the project, the Waterfront Precinct includes the pedestrian-oriented High Street (now named River District Crossing), that gently curves towards the water, opening views out to the river, and terminates at a highly active and unique waterfront area.

The precinct contains the tallest buildings in the East Fraser Lands, making it the focal point of the community. All these buildings feature a mix of uses and a variety of housing tenure options including affordable, rental and market housing units. The Community Centre local shops and services, waterfront retail, riverfront parks and plazas, form part of this area and are key components of this vibrant waterfront.

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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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Revelstoke Schools

Centred in a small mountainous community, the Revelstoke schools were designed as the community hub for both scholastic endeavours and after-hours community activities. The structures were designed to LEED Gold credentials and included heating derived from the waste heat of a nearby mill. Significant use of local wood including a unique code allowance for a 3-storey interconnected wood structure in an assembly use were incorporated.

The high school and elementary schools were co-located to allow for cross-over of students and local evening and weekend uses. A community theatre available at all times highlights this critical local functionality. As designed, the schools have become the community focus of the town over time.

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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 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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Memphis Crosstown

Perhaps one of the most meaningful infusions of community building in the US South, Crosstown is a poignant collaboration of many local organizations leading to a profoundly impactful mixed-use regional hub. A winner of numerous social, heritage and design awards from the 2019 AIA National Architecture award to the 2019 Ruddy Bruner Gold Medal Award, as well as LEED Platinum Certification, the creation of Crosstown was a local act of love.

While at DIALOG and collaborating with LRK and SAP, Alan Boniface helped lead the design team and the realization of a facility housing a major art facility as well as retail, housing, medical, industrial, and education uses within a 1.25 million square-foot Historically listed former warehouse. A truly ground-breaking ‘vertical-village’, Crosstown continues to evolve, growing and influencing local neighbourhoods and the entire City of Memphis.

Visit Crosstown Concourse

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