sustainable architecture

The towering elm trees and gentle meadows of Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park have for generations formed an inspiring backdrop to the city’s collective memory.

The Qualico Family Centre connects to the temporality of this landscape, evolving, growing and decaying in harmony with the natural rhythms of its surroundings.

With time, materials will allow the architecture to mature, growing into its site. The zinc fascia will patina to a soft grey, and a permanent record of local weather patterns will be imprinted distinctly on facades clad with weathering steel. Wood soffits of locally-salvaged elm  will weather & a vegetated roof, planted with local grasses, will grow to become a raised piece of the forest floor.

As seasons pass, the reflected colors of the forest transform the building and redefine the experience of interior space. The angular forms channel harsh winter winds in specific ways, shaping snow into extensions of the structure.

See more of this contextual, unique project at the link...

A family with one child moved from their apartment in the city to a house at the periphery with plenty of green for children to play in the grass, parents and friends sitting amongst them- all around nothing but green, trees, pure nature. The site is a 500 sq. meter plot, a grassy meadow with trees.

Four levels, three above ground and one below, are to yield a total of 300 m⊃2; of living space.

In order to retain the character of the original meadow, the ground-floor living and dining area are tied to the garden in a sweeping gesture. This gives the feeling of a living room composed of outdoor and indoor spaces. The end of the form tapers to human scale forming smooth shallow depressions for sitting, curvilinear furniture, a pool and terrace with rounded corners.

On the rooftop, the patch of meadow removed from below is woven into the undulating green office landscape, with grassy green fields on several levels interspersed with ephemeral swooshes of space.