Garden Drive
- City: Vancouver
- Status: Status: Design Development
- Category: Residential
The Challenge
To create high quality, family oriented rental housing that fits into the unique character and diverse social fabric of the Grandview Woodland community.
About this Project
The site is located in East Vancouver’s Trout Lake neighbourhood. The project proposes a 40 unit, 4 storey building with a small, recessed 5th level of shared amenity space and a landscaped roof deck. Across four single family lots, the projects nets a ten fold density increase of secured market rental housing, which is sorely needed in the rapidly growing neighbourhood. The unit mix is designed with the principles of community building: offering a variety of diverse housing types and tenures for different income levels and demographics.
The T shaped massing responds to the existing RM 11 zoning and is oriented to provide the main building elevation and entry along Garden drive, and naturally creates two voids at the north east and south east corners of the site. Underground parking access is conveniently provided off the lane on the north east corner and an outdoor amenity area is proposed off 11th Avenue which features a children’s playground and trellised social gathering space. This garden space is a gracious offering to the surrounding community and serves to inscribe the project as a finer grained piece of the established network of parks and green space which the Trout Lake neighbourhood is known for.
The compact massing is driven by rental utility for project efficiency and affordability, but is elegantly broken down using different architectural languages. Overall, the design proposes a clean, simple, grey and white aesthetic which is warmed by cedar toned wood siding. A series of grey frames are used to highlight building entries and break each facade down into the proportions of the individual homes it contains. Corner balconies help to further “erode” the massing, visually increasing building setbacks. Wood soffits soften balcony and overhang projections across the project with a sensitive nod to the human scaled perspective of buildings this size.
In addition to the lush corner garden space, the streetscapes of Garden Drive and 11th Avenue are animated by ground level entries and patios, and interesting patterns of permeable paving. The vibrant planting scheme contrasts against the muted tones of the architecture and compliments the eclectic collection of fruit bearing, deciduous and leafy green existing trees that have been preserved across the site.