WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

In the sprawling city of Edmonton, sensitive infill dwellings are a rarity. Infillhaus, originally conceived as a competition prototype, explores the merits of compact, flexible living in the prairie capital. The single detached dwelling is half the width of its neighbours, contributing to urban densification in the leafy inner-city Norwood district.

The dwelling’s bedrooms are embedded in the ground, using the natural insulating capability of the earth to maintain winter warmth and to provide cooling in the summer. The living space is contained above in a high-ceilinged, pavilion-like volume, zoned between “servant” and “served” spaces by tree-like structural columns.

This floor overlooks the street and backyard, with no windows peering into adjoining lots. A thin, galvanized steel canopy extends over both ends of the building, providing a simple, contemporary lid and protection against the elements.

As a good neighbour, the house includes a raised entry and veranda to welcome visitors. It significantly reduces excavation and construction times by choosing a smaller footprint and opting against a full basement. The home aims to achieve net zero energy consumption—beginning with its building orientation that tracks and captures the sun’s energy from east to west, and layering in an efficient envelope, building integrated photovoltaics, and a ground source heat pump.

Jury comments

Manon Asselin :: This is an incredibly refreshing and charming project. The proportions and connections are impeccable, and the design offers a surprising and unexpected solution to the need to integrate the house into the typology of the heritage neighbourhood. The architect has taken a mansion and sliced it down the middle, playing with a half profile to see what it could become.

Patricia Patkau :: The Infillhaus is carefully drawn and successful in its presentation. It is precisely calibrated to its tight lot, and you can see how light would get in everywhere. It reads as both a Japanese temple on the side façade and a strangely warped idea of a home on the front. It’s done with such elegance, care and consideration, and is really a phenomenal little project.

David Sisam :: I am a real fan of the Charleston Single House typology, and this one-room-deep house reminds me of that model—particularly in its challenge to residual side yards and inappropriate scale. This house inverts the conventional arrangement of having bedrooms at the top, by placing them below and raising the living areas in a very eloquent way—a piano nobile taking advantage of the volume created by the roof form. The project has a very convincing and well-considered sustainability strategy. Most of all, the project is both highly rational (using served and servant spaces) and very elegant at the same time, as illustrated by the beautiful model and clear drawings.

Client Stephen Ellis | Area 1860 ft² + decks | Budget Withheld | Status Development Permit application pending, anticipated completion December 2017

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

The North East Transit Garage is big architecture on a big site. The 38,340-square-metre building will accommodate approximately 320 workers and 300 buses, and includes the Edmonton Transit System’s administrative offices.

Bordered by the Trans-Canada Highway, the Edmonton LRT corridor and Fort Road, the 9.7-hectare site was once industrial; the only artifact remaining from its previous use, a 50-metre-tall Canada Packers smokestack, is preserved.

The project performs at the scale of urban infrastructure, while providing more intimately scaled amenities for transit employees. Sheathed in corrugated stainless steel panels and mirrored glass, the building has an elemental and simply articulated presence. It invokes the industrial legacy of the site and of modern architecture, without lapsing into nostalgia for either.

Roof lanterns bring diffused natural daylight into the workplaces, while social areas such as the cafeteria enjoy views to a garden and the historic smokestack. The alignment of angled walls and a footpath create visual and physical connections across the site.

The need to remove three metres of contaminated soil provides an opportunity to locate one level of employee parking under the bus storage area, freeing up space to insert a mediating landscape of trees, bio-swales and gabion walls between the vast building and the surrounding traffic.

Manon Asselin :: It’s amazing that cities are investing in architecture for these types of utilitarian buildings, and this one is nicely done. The profile of the stainless steel custom panels is beautiful, and I like the way the same panel is shifted and modulated throughout. We see the elegance of a simple and rational construction logic at play.

Patricia Patkau :: This project is fantastic. I like how it invests itself in the landscape (through reflection) and relates to the communities around it. Its site development is interesting as it doesn’t just disregard its neighbours as so many such buildings do. It reminds me strangely of Jorn Utzon’s Bagsvaerd church, in its quiet “industrial” repetitive massing.

David Sisam :: This project is all about the wrap. The brushed stainless steel panels are not inexpensive, and they are skillfully deployed here—a welcome investment in a building type not usually accorded this level of design excellence. From the underground parking, one ascends through a skylit concourse, a generous welcoming gesture for all the
occupants. Also encouraging is the decision to invest in significant planting around the building as a transitional landscape.

CLIENT The City of Edmonton | ENGINEERING/CODE/LEED Morrison Hershfield | LANDSCAPE gh3 | AREA 38,340 m² | BUDGET $123 M | STATUS Under construction, anticipated completion October 2018

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Elää is a 41-unit residential complex located at the entrance to Verdun, a predominantly residential area adjacent to downtown Montreal. Instead of occupying the corner lot with a single volume, the project creates a miniature village by fragmenting the building into many volumes. The result is a porous, spatially varied environment.

The volumes are articulated through a series of slight setbacks and extrusions, which help to match the project to the scale of the surrounding neighbourhood. Each unit is given both a public and a private façade, and enjoys natural light and ventilation. The exterior perimeter is clad in charred cedar, while by contrast, the interior façades and courtyards are clad with white acrylic. To animate the courtyard spaces, select walls include cables for supporting climbing vines, while a series of suspended lights creates a luminous canopy overhead.

Elää aims to achieve LEED platinum certification through the creation of a long-lifespan structure that is easy to maintain. It hopes to encourage indoor-outdoor living and inspire walkability in the surrounding community. The units are net-zero ready, meaning that individual residences can achieve net-zero energy by adding solar panels to offset their use of natural gas.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin :: This project has that intimate quality that you find in Montreal’s older neighbourhoods, where buildings sit on the sidewalks in the front, but have a sense of community and proximity to neighbours in the back alleyways.

Patricia Patkau :: What makes this project intimate and strong is that interior community space. The one unit sitting out in the space breaks down the scale of the whole. Windows are carefully placed to maintain privacy for each unit while giving a sense of the larger community. It is a project where you believe that people will use their common space in ways that enhance daily life, but also in ways that build a strong local neighbourhood.

David Sisam :: This project is very well considered in terms of unit arrangements. It is village-like, and even though the space in the courtyard is small, the windows never look into each other. Privacy isn’t compromised and units achieve cross-ventilation and multi-directional views—the courtyard perspectives are very convincing. The material palette and the environmental strategy were carefully considered. There is a real sense of place here.

CLIENT District Atwater Inc. & KnightsBridge | STRUCTURAL L2C Experts | HVAC Martin Roy & Associés | CIVIL Vinci Consultants | LANDSCAPE Vlan | Area 11,000 ft² | Budget $5 M | STATUS Tendering, anticipated completion Fall 2017

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Several blocks of St. Catherine Street, a main commercial artery in downtown Montreal, are undergoing a four-year infrastructure improvement plan. During this renewal, segments of the street will be closed to vehicular traffic, but businesses will remain open.

Imago won a City of Montreal competition as a creative means of minimizing the construction process’s negative impacts. The competition sought design solutions for an “innovative urban experience” that would direct the flow of people, reduce construction-related disruptions, and disseminate information about the work and its progress.

An imago is the adult stage of a winged insect. This project features modular, inflatable catenary arches with latticed intermediary members that, like a butterfly’s wing, combine lightness, strength and flexibility.

Hinged at the top and anchored to concrete construction fence sections at the bottom, the connectable arch components are width-adjustable. Widened, they enclose construction work on the central roadway. When work shifts to the sidewalks along the perimeter, narrowed arches form a shelter­ing, vaulted pedestrian corridor that can double as a temporary event space.

The inflatable structures are composed from a recyclable high-resistance polymer, and their structural efficiency makes them easy to move and erect. Some of the diamond-shaped voids in the modules are left open for natural ventilation, while others are filled with translucent historical images that narrate the evolution of St. Catherine Street.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin :: It’s great that the city recognizes the need for these kinds of interventions and is investing in a temporary structure. This one is particularly intelligent because it uses air, and presumably, you can dismantle it and move it somewhere else in the future. It’s a great intervention.

Patricia Patkau :: While we have seen inflatable archways before, the innovation here is in using an inflatable form as an urban repair tool—a band-aid for the city while things around it are under construction. It’s essentially a kind of alleviating device and a mechanism that works to everyone’s benefit. It’s a very interesting and innovative attempt to deal with a temporary and specific condition in the city of Montreal, yet it is generalizable to any city with similar disruptive situations.

David Sisam :: Sections of our large cities are being dismantled because of aging infrastructure. Given this constant state of repair and restoration, it’s encouraging to see that someone has provided funding to instil a sense of joy in the process. In some respects this light, portable and reusable inflatable structure celebrates the city’s renewal.

CLIENT City of Montreal | STRUCTURAL Blackwell | CIVIL Alta Construction | LIGHTING LightFactor | HISTORIAN Paul-André Linteau | HERITAGE Susan Bronson | ART HISTORY Gabrielle Mathieu | Budget $2.8 M | STATUS Design development, anticipated completion January 2018

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF MERIT

The Backcountry Hut takes IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad’s ideal of affordable, well-designed products “for the many people” into the realm of lodging. Created for outdoor enthusiasts, the modular hut is designed as a flat-packed kit of parts that are easily assembled into an affordable recreation structure.

Packed onto pallets, the hut’s components can be shipped by air or off-road vehicles to remote sites. Minimal site work is needed: sonotube footings sit in hand-dug holes. Volunteers can erect the engineered wood post-and-beam frame by hand, and then, using a winch and pulley system, hoist prefabricated infill panels into place.

The basic 10-foot-wide module encloses 191 square feet and sleeps up to four people; additional modules can be connected to accommodate more people. Optional inserts include a propane tank, composting toilet, and a solar power storage unit. The design encourages passive cooling, and includes photovoltaic panels to be installed on the sloped roof at mid-latitudes, or on a vertical façade at high and low latitudes.

A range of interior fit-out options and exterior finishes is available. This includes the possibility of furnishing the prefabricated shells to support year-round occupancy as a tiny “frontcountry” house.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin :: I like the cloning potential of this little hut. A DNA module that can be copied, extended and retracted, plopped anywhere and not just used in the north. I think the drawings convey that idea very well. I also like the rawness of what’s presented on the interior, an understanding that the experience of backcountry is mainly about spending all of your time outside, and offering a simple and functional shelter when you come in.

Patricia Patkau :: This project is beautifully done. It’s careful about its openings and its allocation of solidity and enclosure, but you don’t get a sense of claustrophobia. And when you look at the common space, it’s very minimal. You can understand the rituals of daily life that would occur here—people making meals together, being social.

David Sisam :: In a sense, this project has the same sensibility as the C House. It’s at a different scale, but it shares the idea of flexibility and variable occupancies—a kind of economy of means—and the expression of generosity and organization achieved with very little space. The modules combine to make very handsome structures that are beautifully illustrated in the presentation.

CLIENT The Backcountry Hut Company | PRE-FABRICATION AND STRUCTURAL CascadianWoodTech | AREA AND BUDGET 191 ft² ($69,000) / 527 ft² ($89,000) / 748 ft² ($119,000) / 937 ft² ($139,000) – all budgets for shell only | STATUS Construction documents; construction of first prototype in summer 2017

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF MERIT

Described as “an urban co-habitation prototype,” C House is a co-housing concept that responds to the lifestyle needs of a wide spectrum of household types, from retired empty nesters to students sharing a space, to young families.

Occupying a basement level and three above-ground storeys on a site in Winnipeg, the three-dimensional jigsaw of living spaces is distributed around a core of infrastructural needs, including circulation and washrooms. On either side of the core are living areas, which can be configured for various uses, as well as shared collective spaces: a communal dining space on the first level, a second-floor laundry and rest area, and a roof deck. The split-level distribution of spaces around the core, coupled with the alternating front/back orientation of the side-by-side units, allows for a balance of privacy and social interaction between the tenants.

At the street edge, a set of steps invites passersby to pause, sit or converse, while simultaneously demarcating a transition between public and more private space. A planted slope in front of the building, together with wide stairways inside, encourages social encounters between tenants. The carport at the back of C House is conceived like a boathouse, with transparent doors and an upper level annex that tenants can use as a studio office or for storage.

A dark brick skin, perforated with openings and brise-soleils, gives C House a unified presence at the urban level.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin :: A number of housing projects that were submitted to the awards have circled back to the post-war preoccupation with housing. Housing, as a social concern and field of research, was subsequently somewhat abandoned by architects and became driven by developers. As a result, we have built lots of condominium projects where the most important design parameters are efficiency and cost. It’s interesting to see housing being re-invested by architects in such a sensitive way, with a concern for community and everyday-ness. C House is an example of this. The drawings are also very interesting and intriguing, with a surreal, almost Alice-in-Wonderland quality to them.

Patricia Patkau :: C House is rigorous in its exploration of program. Its design tests the precise dimensions of the human body and makes sure that the scenarios fit inside the space. The resulting house can accommodate all sorts of different lifestyles and family units, and as you grow older, you can redefine the space to fit your needs.

David Sisam :: What I think is key about this project is that the living spaces of the house type are not over-designed. They are calibrated to particular dimensions that work for a variety of occupation scenarios, which are tested with various furniture layouts. The core, with its potential for variable edges and stairs to either side, anchors and divides the living space. Less convincing is the exterior expression of the project as a whole.

Client Gea Ok Jeon | Structural Wolfrom Engineering | Area 6,000 ft² (3,000 ft² per unit) | Budget Withheld | Status Design development, expected completion 2018

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF MERIT

Part addition and part renovation, the Brewery at The Forks adds 2,000 square feet of new construction adjacent to a 1,750-square-foot space in Winnipeg’s historic Forks Market. Due to height and load limitations, the existing space in the former railway facilities (dating from the early 1900s) was unsuitable for use as a full-production craft brewery. These restrictions created the opportunity for a new form inspired by the area’s industrial past.

Site constraints necessitated a compact footprint, and the vertical breweries of the 1870s—organized to make efficient use of gravity—inspired a three-level distribution of functions. Malted grain stored in roof deck bins flows down to the second-floor brewery for crushing, before being transferred to the adjacent brewhouse for mashing and boiling. The final stage of production, fermentation, takes place in tall tanks on the ground floor, where brewmasters and the public sample the results.

The addition interlocks with the existing building at each level, and celebrates the industrial aesthetic of the site. Its corten steel skin provides support for the significant lateral loads that result from the structure’s high centre of gravity, while framing a series of level-straddling apertures that provide intriguing glimpses of the operations within. These slivers of view encourage passersby to step inside, see the whole process, and visit the tap room.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin :: The formal solution proposed creates an iconic structure that coexists seamlessly with the original industrial typology while avoiding the obvious mimetic addition. It is playful and sculptural; an elegant solution derived from a quasi-machine aesthetic that creates a new harmonious ensemble.

Patricia Patkau :: The Brewery at the Forks has a handsome corten steel cladding to it. It provides a smart and empathetic addition to the old industrial building, while stacking its program in a way that relates to pre-industrial methods of gravity-fed brewing.

David Sisam :: The brewery’s expression reflects the historic industrial nature of the area, while its effort to engage the public is a catalyst for the area’s renewal. Programmatically it works—its vertical stacking is reminiscent of early gravity-fed breweries and establishes it as an iconic landmark. The corten steel fins are structural while allowing framed apertures in-between for viewing the process.

Client The Forks Renewal Corporation | Structural Lavergne Draward & Associates Inc. | Area 1,750 ft² (renovation) + 2,000 ft² (addition) | Budget Withheld | Status Construction documents, completion expected 2018

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF MERIT

Liberty Village, one of Toronto’s oldest industrial districts, has become a rapidly intensifying mixed-use neighbourhood. How does one add to the area’s unique building fabric without simply reproducing what is there, or reverting to the contemporary default of a glass curtain wall?

Misfit[Fit], a new boutique office building in Liberty Village, is a compelling answer. The building references the district’s heritage brickwork, while attempting to rekindle Toronto’s faded love affair with precast concrete.

Misfit[Fit] capitalizes on the economy of repetition offered by precast concrete without creating a static pattern of solid and void. A key inspiration was the neighbourhood’s old brick buildings—the way bricks protrude, shift and stack to produce ornament. Similarly, individual edges and profiles are pronounced within the precast façades, whose panels are designed with seeming disregard for adjacent units.

Just two façade panels—divided into six sub-panels and created from reusable moulds—are used to produce the office building’s concrete façades. Each façade reads not as a continuous surface, but as an accumulation of individual objects, revealed by the misalignment between them. Apertures are created through the removal of units, a process divorced from the stacking logic.

Instead of creating a monolithic volume, the design celebrates the imperfect and tenuous characteristics of the misfit, producing new perceptual, formal and spatial effects.

Manon Asselin :: This project’s expression reminds me of that period in the Renaissance when architecture became rusticated, chunky and exaggerated. Although it’s ornate, it is the result of a pragmatic construction logic, creating a depth from its building envelope that is associated traditionally with masonry construction.

Patricia Patkau :: There’s something really original about this project. It’s quite provocative and is smart on many levels by thinking through an old material and making it appear new. The pre-cast façade is interesting because it uses punched openings, but unlike the brick ones in the nearby area. The openings allow the amount of light that you need without letting excessive light in. They also offer a reasonable amount of window to solid. It is environmentally smart in such considerations. This is someone really thinking through the problem—you may or may not like the result (I really like it), but anyone can appreciate the thinking. It will stop people in the street. We haven’t seen this before.

David Sisam :: It is interesting to see this rigorous investigation into the potential of precast concrete to create a robust, highly articulated “thick” wall as an antidote to the pervasive glass curtain wall or thin brick veneer. Discontinuity, repetition and considered adjacencies create a dynamic (if rather heavy) façade. The most convincing aspect of the project is the roofscape, where the sculptural quality of the precast has a wonderful scale and beautifully frames the view of the city beyond.

Client Valari Levin | Planning SvN | Area 32,000 ft² | Budget Withheld | Status Design development, expected completion 2019

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF MERIT

Taking the form of a serpentine glass pavilion with a gently sloped, two-acre rooftop garden, the Canadian Canoe Museum rises out of the ground alongside the Trent-Severn Waterway. Embedded into the drumlin-lined landscape instead of dominating it, the museum provides spectacular views of the water and the Peterborough Lift Lock National Historic Site, originally constructed in 1904.

The museum’s deference to its surroundings embodies the Aboriginal tenet of building lightly on the land. The structure nestles between its green roof and the earth to provide energy-efficient and environmentally controlled display spaces for canoes, kayaks and other artifacts dating back to the 1780s. A sinuous central skylight draws light deep into the interior along the access path. Flexible, internally partitioned floor plates enhance the museum’s ability to adapt to programmatic and technological changes over time.

Although the building’s lines are organic, it has been designed to be straightforward to construct. Two concrete slabs, one at grade and one forming the roof, are the main structural elements, and the undulating elevation will be glazed with a 4:1 straight-to-faceted glass ratio; no curved glass is required. The green roof affords opportunities to establish a variety of native and pollinator-friendly plantings, while facilitating storm water management.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin :: The museum defers to the landscape and the need to integrate with it, as opposed to standing out like a Bilbao. It’s not architecture as an object, but rather architecture linked to experience. The most significant thing beyond the integration in the landscape is the experience from within, and how the museum frames the view to the outside. It’s a very soft and generous approach to building.

Patricia Patkau :: The Canadian Canoe Museum identifies with the landscape and allows the locks to be the object of focus. My understanding, however, was that the museum wanted to establish a similarly meaningful interaction with the artifacts. They wanted more space to display their canoes, and knowing the amazing quality of the collection, it seems important to address this as the design continues to develop.

David Sisam :: The museum provides two promontories to view the canal. One is the museum itself with its ample glazing and the other is its landscaped roof. It’s very generous in that way, reinforcing the connection to the locks and to the waterway where the canoes have travelled. The single floorplate of the museum offers great flexibility, but moving forward, its undifferentiated exhibit area would benefit from some “interior landscape” elements to frame and highlight this remarkable collection.

Client The Canadian Canoe Museum / Richard Tucker (Project Director), Bill Morris (Museum Chairman) | Engineering Arup | Landscape Foggy River Farm – Phillip Collins | Area 80,000 ft ² | Budget $35 M | Completion Schematic Design, expected completion 2020

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF MERIT

In recent years, Quebec’s provincial legislature, designed by Eugène-Étienne Taché and completed in 1886, has been in need of revitalization. The addition of a reception pavilion was recommended to improve security systems as well as to allow greater citizen access to the National Assembly, and room for additional parliamentary commission sessions.

The new reception pavilion nestles beneath the building’s monumental staircase, modernizing the heritage site while preserving the Parliament’s historic façade, with its iconographic depiction of the province’s history. The underground addition includes commission rooms and spaces dedicated to security, reception, services and teaching. It links
to an entrance with an elevator, located in the renovated inner courtyard, to allow access to the upper floors.

A 300-metre-long ramp organizes the spaces of the 5,100-square-metre expansion around an agora with a central oculus that provides a view of the National Assembly’s tower. The ramp performs not only as the main circulation element, but also in housing building systems. Its perforated, wood-panelled narrative wall doubles as a mechanical plenum, and the wall’s imagery continues the story of Quebec’s history that begins on the historic façade.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin :: This project is generous yet humble vis-à-vis the original building. As it should, it discreetly adopts a background position as part of the landscape, while at the same time proposing a new way to view the tower. The oculus is an effective and symbolic way to transform the experience of the site while providing underground, essential new services for the public. It is a perennial and timeless addition.

Patricia Patkau :: If you need space around a building, then learning how to knit the structure into the existing context is crucial. The provincial assembly’s forecourt is an instance where the relationship to the site is very carefully orchestrated. New opportunities for the community are uncovered without damaging the representation of the existing building. This is a smart project.

David Sisam :: There is a very delicate assertion to this project that preserves the quality and integrity of the existing building and its forecourt and gardens while adding a substantial amount of area. Though it contains a complex below-ground program, daylight is brought inside by means of a large oculus above and through glazing beneath the grand exterior staircase.

Client Assemblée nationale du Québec | Structural WSP Canada Inc. | Mechanical/Electrical CIMA+ | security CSP Consultants en sécurité Inc. | Contractor Pomerleau | Area 5,100 m² | Budget $30 M ($35 M construction, overall project budget $65 M) | Status Under construction, expected completion 2019/2020

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Lőrinc Vass

The University of British Columbia (Thesis Advisor: Blair Satterfield)

In cities, usage patterns overlap, collide and shift—between groups, across history and over the course of a single day. This thesis project selects five interstitial locations across Metropolitan Vancouver that are characterized by ambiguous or contested relationships between spatial jurisdiction and temporal occupation. An architectural intervention poised between realism and provocation is presented for each site. By responding to multiple viewpoints, the proposals have a transformative effect.

Among the sites is Kitsilano Indian Reserve No. 6, the repatriated vestige of a Squamish Nation reserve, where a series of large scale acoustic mirrors are proposed to engender provisional connections across the territory.

In a second instance, a greenway where a natural gas pipeline slices diagonally through a suburb is populated by collapsible shelters, which facilitate communal gathering.

A set of floating shacks on the edge of Vancouver’s mudflats invites squatting, while doubling as nodes in a system of tidal booms.

A fourth episode proposes a series of canopies for Burnaby’s infamous winter roosting site of northwestern crows, providing civic amenities for both human and avian occupation.

Finally, a series of parking silos responds to the uneasy coexistence of assembly and agricultural uses along Richmond’s “Highway to Heaven,” allowing both activities to expand beyond their conventional zoning boundaries.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin :: The project experiments with the poetic expression of architecture as a discovery through the juxtaposition of adjacent programs. It’s a very positive and refreshing way to rethink programmatic innovation.

Patricia Patkau :: This project is not bombastic or heavy-handed. It’s delicate, and yet that delicate thinking can have incredible consequence. This project includes a sincere and simple mediation between habitat and human occupancy, and at the same time, its power is in its ideas.  I thought this was really beautiful.

David Sisam :: This project takes conditions of tension and perceived negative adjacencies and turns them into positive places, making the adjacencies into a celebration of their juxtaposition. I especially liked the description and proposal for the farmland and interfaith community, consolidating both as a way of preserving the agricultural land while accommodating the interfaith community. The whole notion of looking at these in-between places was in itself an interesting point of departure.

For the full project presentation, visit www.falseboundaries.xyz

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Alexander Ring, University of British Columbia (Thesis Advisor: Raymond Cole, FRAIC)

Sea levels could rise several metres by the end of this century, while extreme weather events simultaneously increase in frequency and severity. These pressures are already beginning to force coastal populations to migrate to higher elevations.

Polyvalent Adaptations proposes to create networks of soft and hard infrastructures that meet current needs for resource independence, while also offering emergency support in the aftermath of severe storms. Ultimately, these infrastructures become armatures guiding new, more resilient settlement patterns.

The author chose Tongatapu, a low-lying island home to 70,000 Tongans—and a place that could lose half of its land to the ocean in the coming decades—as a test location.

The thesis takes the form of a narrative spanning from 2020 to 2080, centred on a Tongan named Fokai. When he is 17 and living on his family’s farm near the sea, the Vaota (“forest” in Tongan) is being developed as a new infrastructure strip, stretching the length of the island along the 20-metre elevation line. Planted with trees, it also contains resources such as a market and a water treatment facility. Over the course of Fokai’s lifetime, the pre-planned intensification of the Vaota enables it to become his refuge after a catastrophic hurricane and flood in 2045, and ultimately, the site of his new home in Tongatapu’s transplanted capital.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin: I was quite impressed with the breadth of what was presented in the student projects. It’s enlightening to see young architects taking on serious and substantial issues, and seeing it as part of their responsibility to respond to these issues in building the world of tomorrow—it’s going beyond just making pretty buildings.

Patricia Patkau: What’s most convincing about this project is that it deals with a serious issue in a rather matter-of-fact way. It suggests that communities can help themselves before the water rises and disaster strikes, and helps them to manage and plan. It has depth and optimism, offering a fully integrated way of approaching these kinds of problems. It’s thorough but also accessible, explaining itself in such a way that anyone can understand.

David Sisam: This project takes a very real situation—rising sea levels—and deals with it in a thoughtful and modest way. The proposal accounts for a decades-long period over which the scenario of reconstruction takes place, and recognizes the importance of both community involvement and proactive initiatives to respond to this crisis. The project was clearly presented, with an impressive degree of pragmatism.

For the full project presentation, visit www.alecring.ca

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