The Royal Vancouver Yacht Club’s new Dock Building is an example of industrial architectural elegance crafted from a modest budget.

The Dock Building, located on Jericho Beach in Vancouver, BC, serves a large marina of sailboats. The facility provides washrooms and showers, offices for the Harbour Master, instruction space for children, and a variety of workshops to maintain boats, sails, and gear. The project’s practical working needs, very modest budget, and prominent siting required a simple solution that honoured the cannery and industrial heritage of waterfront buildings that were once found on the site a half-century before.

The massing is simple. Two intersecting wedge volumes mirror each other to create a lantern to the sea and a lantern to the land. Facing land is a glulam and translucent polycarbonate wall that brings light into the workshop spaces and glows along the beach at night. Facing the sea and the marina itself are a series of garage doors opening to the shop bays as well as glazed offices for the management of the docks. A wood screen above the offices hides the mechanical systems in the high volume of the wedge that faces the water. A knife-edge gutter provides an overhang for the shop doors mimicking the razor edge forms of the racing sailboats that line the dock.

The building resides on the waters’ edge just where high tide meets the beach. Almost half of the project budget went to the foundation and piles, leaving the design team with the challenge of meeting the project’s functional needs while delivering something more meaningful to the community.

White standing seam panels are used for the exterior in the spirit of the forms and colour of the sails and boats. The structure is a mix of glulam posts and beams with light timber infill decking and walls. The interior is predominantly construction-grade plywood, providing a tough, easily replaceable interior finish. Throughout, the details are modest and practical to work with the limited project budget.

MGA | Michael Green Architecture

The post The Dock Building was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The cocktail bar Bardem is situated in a first-class location in Helsinki. Many office buildings, but also shops have settled there and offered the varied potential for appealing gastronomy concepts. For the studio Fyra, the challenge was to transform a two-storey former sales area into a bar concept which literally captivates the guests, but at the same time also offers an opportunity to retreat from the hectic pace of everyday life.

They decided to centre the room around a large bar and make it the heart of the entire interior concept. Especially the curves of the bar, which were covered with wooden panels with a light, honey-coloured finish, catch the eye. Perfectly arranged spirits, together with stylish, painting-like wall decorations, complement the generous bar counter.

The mysterious appeal of a Speakeasy Bar is enhanced by the subdued, atmospheric lighting and the dark colours of the interior. A curtain-like navy-blue background in a velvet look exudes a touch of classic theatre charm, while deeply upholstered furniture invites guests to sink in and relax. The interior combines old and new in a natural way, curtains and recycled furniture (newly upholstered) lend the room softness and intimacy. The subdued lighting also offers protection from prying eyes and gives the guests the peace to relax.

A special highlight on the wall was created by Fyra with the help of ceramic tiles, which were produced by long-time firing in a classic tunnel kiln. The studio used the tiles in different colours and played especially with the exquisite high-gloss glazes. “The tiles play an important part in our interior concept, as they bring life to the dark, dimly lit room”, explains Laura Järvinen, the interior designer in charge of the project. “The high-gloss surface perfectly harmonizes with the soft shapes and materials we used in this bar. We also arranged the tiles in several horizontal rows and used a colour gradient to create a perfect visual link between floor and ceiling.”

Fyra chose the colours mid-grey, olive-green flamed and benit-blue. The centrally inserted strip tiles with wave profile (also olive-green) give the wall a rhythmic three-dimensional structure and create different visual effects, depending on the incidence of light. Well-balanced, the upholstery of the bench, the wall lamps and the folds of the multi-layered curtain hanging above it adapt the texture of the strip tile format. The result is a new, stylish yet casual cocktail bar and a unique, harmonious “total work of art”.

Fyra

The post Bardem Helsinki was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

In 2017, the townhouse owners contacted Montreal architect Guillaume Lévesque for a unique renovation project. They wanted to transform an old 1880s duplex into a multi-unit and harmonize the original style of the building with a decidedly contemporary and uncluttered addition.

Restoring a 19th-century house while retaining the heritage and creating a contemporary addition is quite a challenge. The Ville-Marie borough required that the existing building be preserved and restored. A challenge that the team of architects, accompanied by tinsmith craftsmen, cabinet makers, and masons, has successfully taken up.

The original 60m2 building has been fully restored and converted into two apartments: a two-floor 4 ½ and a 3 ½ on the second floor.

Both apartments have an open plan with abundant fenestration with large 3.65m high side windows carved into the brick wall. The attic has been completely covered with new slate tiles. The dormers and woodworking have been completely rebuilt.

 A 180m2 contemporary addition on three levels was also built at the back of the building. The basement includes a double garage with concealed door and storage rooms. The living room on the ground floor opens through large sliding doors onto a 4m x 12m outdoor terrace. It covers the driveway to the garage in the basement and offers a magnificent space for a dining room and sunny outdoor living room. The second floor contains the master bedroom, two bathrooms, and a living room which can also be a guest bedroom.

The addition includes large openings providing all interior spaces with a considerable amount of natural light. A sober facing of black metal panels covers the contemporary addition and gives the whole a neat finish.

Guillaume Lévesque

The post Alexandre-de-Sève Town House was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

A small vacant lot located at the epicenter of Montreal student life, just north of the McGill University’s Milton gates, was the basis of the latest design by KANVA. The site endured a fire in the early 20th century, which flattened the existing 19th century historic stone house; this tragedy represents only one of many narrative layers embedded in the land. The historical context of the site became the primary inspiration for the urban renewal project, which lead to the exploration of an innovative concrete fabrication technique: Photoengraved concrete panels that enabled the building to tell a story. The project encapsulates an architecture ‘parlante’; an architecture that heightens the intellectual and perceptual experience of its inhabitants by stimulating active looking. The film sequence photoengraved into the concrete façade is extracted from the sequence of stills from the film: Montreal Fire Department on Runners (Edison, 1901). The film was carefully chosen for both its historical and contextual relevance: referencing the fire that vacated the site and highlighting the prolific inventor Thomas Edison, an important contributor to the development of ‘tableaux mouvants’ and motion pictures.

Materiality constraints arose from the outset of the project due to the fact that the site is positioned in a Montreal heritage zone; the palette was limited to masonry. The design team approached this predicament as more of an opportunity to challenge conventions and to test the limits of concrete. The process of photoengraving concrete was selected for its sensitive properties; it does not overwhelm the viewer but rather invites the user to re-imagine a story, as they move past or through the building and the film stills progressively move in and out of focus. The refined technique of photoengraving is an intricate tool facilitating a playful and adaptable narrative, on an otherwise brutal and barren material.

Specifically, the process of photoengraving translates an image into a positive/negative representation, which is then converted into a series of vertical striations that form the image. Playing on light and shadow, each film still, and by extension, the sequence in the photoengraving technique is perceived in an ever changing, dynamic manner as the sun’s oblique angles accentuate or the clouds soften the visual perception of the vertical ribs that form the image. The panes of glass on the front facade are also screen-printed with complementary images, helping to achieve the desired sequential effect. As students occupy or visitors pass by the site, their proximity and angle relative to the façade, in addition to the speed at which move, transform the way the sequence is viewed.

The choice of program for the building, a student residence, came naturally due to the proximity of the University campus. The two defining public and private volumes host internally their respective private and public functions. The intimate residence houses thirty (30) individual rooms, communal living spaces such as kitchen, lounge, living room etc. Each student room is designed as an optimal module, outfitted with floor to ceiling built-in storage that frames the bed along one wall, and allocates an alcove opposite to slide in a desk. All private rooms give onto the quiet communal garden, which wraps the entire footprint of the building, providing both recreation and security for the users. The side façade and garden abides by the same conceptual cinematic strategies; the yellow markers are a graphic way of marking individual living modules. The primary entrance is through a porte-cochère, a contemporary tribute to Montreal’s traditional method of building a protected passage for horse carriages, which offers an intimate approach to the building. The common spaces are positioned within the public domain of the building giving onto busy University Street and are designed to optimize flexibility and incite appropriation by the student residents.

Edison Residence creates an animated architecture by using new technology in a socially engaging way. It calls for participation and reflection by the viewer as he or she contemplates the transformation and evolution of the site, and by extension the City. Most importantly, the Edison residence will be an inspiring living space for a student as they broaden their horizons.

KANVA

The post Edison Residence was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.