In Surrey, winners were revealed in an affordable-housing ideas competition that challenged current building codes while exploring new apartment designs.
Urbanarium’s third Decoding Density contest distributed $44,000 to winning teams from Canada, New Zealand, South Korea and the United States. In all, 85 proposals were submitted from teams in nine countries involving students, housing advocates, architectural professionals and urban planning enthusiasts.
The challenge: Imagine new possibilities for six-storey-plus apartment forms in Metro Vancouver, keeping climate change and affordability top of mind. “Submissions will challenge the constraints of code and other regulations to do so,” the competition website says.
During an awards ceremony April 16 at Surrey City Hall, winning projects emphasized light, outdoor space, communal-oriented features and low-energy approaches to comfort and livability.
“We were blown away by the innovation and thoughtfulness of the submissions,” said competition co-chair Sara Stevens.
“It’s clear that there are some exciting and compelling directions that architects, designers and city planners can explore in the future. Collective solutions to shared space, adaptability to extreme heat events and porosity as communities become more spatially connected — the only limits are our creativity and current building codes.”
The jury called a tie between co-winners, the New York-based Studio Oh Song (with “Towerhouse”) and Vancouver’s Switch (with “Shared Density”). Studio Oh Song’s Ericka Song and Justin Oh also earned the Planners Prize for total winnings of $20,000, while Switch teammates Jonas Thalamas, Charlie Petit, Kareem Negm and Chris Quigley pocketed $10,000.
Studio Oh Song’s “Towerhouse” proposes an open ground plane with a design that makes it a very desirable space, the jury said.
“A number of submissions proposed similar checker-board site plans that toggled open space and built form, but this solution was the most successful and elegant among them. Also similar to many entries, it eliminated underground parking on-site and included a few spaces for car shares.”
The “Towerhouse” climate strategies are “solid and proven,” the jury added, “and importantly link the technical design decisions about reducing carbon to the more social side of climate resiliency by designing to encourage active transportation over driving and connections with neighbours through the community room and shared outdoor spaces. It does not require land assembly, yet with one or two lots is able to add density and challenge the status quo.”
Meantime, co-winner Switch swayed the jury with “the practicality” of the team’s scheme. “A simple set of changes — adding height, hiding cars from the street, and reducing the front setback — would be very applicable in the Lower Mainland. The scheme has a great section that includes a small commercial or community space at the street, and draws people in and up to an elevated outdoor courtyard space in the mid-block. What it does at the street with the lack of setback, generous public program, and welcoming entry up toward the courtyard, is very successful. At the back, cars are hidden and their presence minimized. With 16 units on one lot, it densifies and has the potential to greatly improve on affordability.”
Third place went to “Cul-de-sac Nouveau” by PAC Lab of Auckland, New Zealand.
The winning proposals can be viewed on decodingdensity.com. A publication about the finalists and a “solutions video” by About Here launches June 3 at The Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver.
The competition jury included Cedric Yu (architect), Frances Bula (journalist), Inge Roecker (architect), Ly Tang (development manager), Marta Maj (engineer), Richard Henriquez (architect), Sara Muir (Planning Institute of British Columbia), Shirley Shen (architect) and Travis Hanks (architect).
Said jury member Yu: “The fact that we have landed on a pair of co-winners identifies how challenging it truly is to resolve all of the problems in front of us — namely, affordability and climate change. These challenges will require innovation in many areas.”
Founded in 1985 “by a group of urbanites passionate about city making,” Urbanarium has been a registered charity since 2015. The mostly volunteer-run organization’s mandate is “informing and engaging the residents of Metro Vancouver to help guide community decisions. Through a variety of programs, very often in partnership with other organizations, Urbanarium provides the region with stimulating information and creative solutions for how our urban system works, the forces acting upon it, and what alternative futures might be realized.”