In 2024, the Canadian government commissioned the development of the National Low-Rise Housing Design Catalogue  in collaboration with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada. 

The Housing Design Catalogue provides tools to increase housing options within existing neighbourhoods through gentle density, featuring 50 standardized housing designs for rowhouses, fourplexes, sixplexes, and accessory dwelling units across the country. Michael Green Architecture delivered designs for British Columbia, while LGA Architectural Partners led the project for the rest of the country, working with architects in each geographic region of Canada. In partnership with LGA, 5468796 Architecture contributed seven designs for the Prairies (Manitoba and Saskatchewan.)

To help ensure the Housing Design Catalogue supports the goals of Canada’s housing system, numerous principles were considered during the development phase. These principles include adaptability and accessibility, energy efficiency, financial feasibility, use of regional construction methods and materials, and compliance with local regulations and building codes.

Once the final architectural design packages are ready, the Housing Design Catalogue will help builders streamline the process from concept to construction, cutting costs and speeding up housing delivery. The catalogue simplifies design, ensures compliance with building codes, and helps estimate costs—so homes can be built faster.

The final architectural design packages will be released this spring.

For more information visit https://www.housingcatalogue.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/

Renders: Office In Search Of…

The Arthur Residence is a two storey home for a finish carpenter and an emergency room doctor situated in the Cathedral neighbourhood of Regina. Originally from South Africa, the owners longed for a private sanctuary that would provide ample space for gardening and infuse inspiring views into a modest forty foot infill site. Where required side yard setbacks typically result in unconsidered or left over space, the residence is designed to encompass the entire width of the lot. Conceived as a secret garden, the ground floor is surrounded by a concrete fence at the property edge. Beyond the wall, four courtyards – an entry court, a sunken patio, a main garden and a carport – define three interior spaces: the foyer, the combined living and dining room, and the linear kitchen / utility wing. The house is then divided vertically into living and sleeping quarters.

While the main floor is a protective shell punctured by internal garden views, the second floor is an airy refuge providing secretive, more discrete lookouts over the neighbourhood and existing tree canopy. White plaster walls curve inward like curtains drawn in by the breeze, resulting in triangular voids that allow daylight to softly wash the interior. These two distinct territories – of solidity and lightness, of activity and repose – intersect in the double-height living and dining room. Smooth, contoured plaster rests on raw, cast-in-place concrete, reinforcing the tactile and sensory qualities of material, space and light that form the essence of the house, one which is simple but not strictly minimal.

Photography: James Brittain

Awards: 2016 World Architecture Festival | Future Projects, House Category Winner; 2014 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence

Shared Ground is an applied research initiative dedicated to developing more affordable housing on social purpose infrastructure in Winnipeg.

We provide social purpose organizations with the knowledge and tools they need to determine if their land and building assets can support an affordable housing development. If you’re a mission-driven charity, non-profit, co-operative, or social enterprise with land or a building ready for transformation, we’re here to help!

Please visit https://www.shared-ground.ca to learn more and sign up.

Shared Ground is funded in part by the Government of Canada through the Research and Knowledge Initiative (RKI), a national merit-based contributions funding program from Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada (HICC).

Read the official press release here.

90/100 Alexander is positioned between a recent condominium development to the south and the historically protected Eaton’s Warehouse building to the north.

Located within the borders of the parcel, the W.J. Guest Fish Company Warehouse — a four storey brick and stone heritage warehouse built between 1905 and 1910 — defines the approach to the project. Due to the site’s depth, there is an opportunity to provide the heritage building with considerable breathing room, allowing it to stand alone, exposing all four sides to operate as a 360 degree building.

A new 7-storey building winds around the existing brick structure, exposing all sides of the original building as an homage to its original free-standing form [uniquely, the entire building was constructed using face brick and remains in excellent repair after 115 years]. The building’s geometry maximizes the site density while creating a series of high quality public spaces.

The entry level of the site is designed with a porous ground floor, offering views through to the heritage building from Waterfront and Pacific, to the Red River from within the structure, and via paths into two intertwined plaza spaces from all directions.

A true mixed-use development, commercial units are offered at grade along Waterfront and Pacific with approximately 160 residential units above. In service to the neighbourhood and to offer an optimal mix of uses, the entire heritage building will hold commercial and office occupancies as well as tenant amenities including a rooftop patio.

Defined through interplay of old and new these spaces vary in scale, light conditions, and compressed or expansive nature, offering opportunities for commerce and city-building at different scales.

Awards: 2021 World Architecture Festival | Future Project | Finalist; 2020 Canadian Architect | Award of Merit

IW09, also known as RNDSQR Block, is an iconic mixed use project, woven carefully into the existing neighbourhood of Inglewood, Calgary. Prominently placed, it enhances urban life through a series of new exterior amenities while achieving density of use through 24/7/365 commercial, office, and residential programs. The existing 2-3 storey street fabric is being replaced by mid-rise structures. In correspondence, three floors of commercial retail build up from the sidewalk, referencing the scale and height of the Historic Building. Residential floors are stepped up and back from street level, achieved by twisting the entire form away from the Historic Building on the site’s Southwest corner, and the Lawn Bowling court to the Northeast. This cuts away overall mass, creates visual relief, and effectively ’thins’ out the tall portion of the building for residential use. The building form is shaped by site responses and to reduce its impact on adjacent properties. Maintained as a point of interest along the sidewalk, the renovated Heritage Building injects new life through universal access, roof activation, and via a new forecourt at its side. The remaining spaces extend public sidewalks through a diagrid arcade, with select elements removed to reveal building entrances on both streets, every corner, and the Public Lane. The 360 degree building design makes this possible by eliminating facade hierarchy and responding to each corner and public throughway.

Awards: 2020 AR Future Project Award | Highly Commended, Commercial Mixed Use; 2019 Canadian Architect Award of Merit

17th Avenue Clinic is a health-oriented commercial building that centres around a purpose-designed skin clinic. The building features three clinics [medical dermatology, aesthetic, and rheumatology] at the second storey level, retail units at grade, on top of underground parking.

Light modulation is important for procedures in the clinic. The design evolves around different ways of bringing natural light into the spaces while reducing direct exposure to sun and glare: a tall clerestory perimeter that washes light against the roof’s light wooden undercroft; cut-away balconies at corners that softly light corridor spaces; strategically placed skylights; and a central lightwell that extends down through the two upper floors and pierces the parkade with light.

The lightwell, enhanced with boreal landscape features, radiates into adjacent spaces and embodies the natural and healthy ethos that the centre represents. Open to the sky, tall vegetation is envisioned to liven the interior life of the building.

On the top floor, a sequence of light-filled spaces is defined by a wood beam system, creating ceiling coffers and providing sound separation between rooms. Hundreds of micro-layers of laminated wood are stacked to form the monumental beams that reach down from the ceiling and form a datum grid. This grid supports the convex arc of the roof undercroft, which bows upward to meet the roofline at its perimeter and draws in a wash of natural light.

Photography: James Brittain

Awards: 2022 World Architecture Festival | Completed Project, Health | Winner; 2021 Prairie Wood Design Awards | Commercial