Issue
The current residential typology - the podium/tower combination has seen considerable success. v:Je have experienced the downtown filling with energy overtime as it has welcomed a greater number of residents.
Despite this, the model has promoted a culture of sameness in downtown Vancouver - income levels, cultures and lifestyles. Like any system a city requires diversity to be sustainable. We need to encourage and enable a variety of inhabitants with varying income levels, cultures, and family conditions to be part of our growing population and we need to allow different uses to occur, overtime, within the structures we develop.
Strategy
The Open Living Project (OlP) responds to this issue by encouraging cultural and programmatic flexibility and, at its foundation, provides a mechanism for adaptation overtime.
Tactics
Flexibility
The OlP allows buyers to customize the spaces they occupy; starting with a base unit of 600 sf in combination with neighbouring units and various Add-Ons (living spaces, gardens, stairs, etc.) with customizable fa«;:ade elements. These may, in the future, be removed, modified or even sold to a neighbour
Adaptability
In order to adapt to unforeseeable conditions OlP allows for modification at both the micro and macro scales. Through the use of suitably robust permanent building systems, coupled with incrementally variable elements, the OlP offers the capacity to meet the changing needs of a single family, while also allowing for larger scale programmatic changes.
Outcome
OlP seeks to enhance the sustainability of our building stock by encouraging incremental adaptive re-use of the buildings. This strategy in turn transforms the typically anonymous spaces of the podium/tower into diverse and specific places defined by the city's inhabitants.
(From competitor's text)
6 scanned / 4 viewable
- Presentation Panel
- Perspective
- Plan
- Schema