The word "dwelling" has two senses: the active manner in which we inhabit; and those houses and apartments where we chose to live. With this in mind, my roundup of the best of 2006 is in two parts. This week, I will build on this latter sense with a brief review of my "Dwelling of the Year" for 2006 - the best of the new physical places we call home. Next week, I will name some "Dwellers of the Year" - those individuals who are leading the way in showing British Columbians how to improve the residential side of urban life.
It will take some time to assimilate the past year's key shifts in how British Columbians build and live in new housing. One fact is crystal clear: by almost any statistical or financial measure, the peak of the housing boom has passed. The countless ways in which this watershed event will shape our lives will be the subject of future columns.
With the passing of ever-greater housing construction numbers and sale prices, there comes one welcome change: the quality of residential design seems to be increasing. This is most apparent for condominium buildings. The demand for fee-simple boxes in space has been so hot since the mid-1990s that the condominium apartment started to resemble a generic commodity - an undifferentiated substance like refined zinc or hog bellies, ripe for speculation.
Because condos sold and re-sold so easily through this period, there was little financial encouragement for developers to invest in better design or include features intended for long life, rather than instant curb appeal. This has changed dramatically in recent years, with developers increasingly shifting from the generic production of apartments-as-commodities, to niche specializations - Robert Fung for inner city adaptive re-use and infill, Ian Gillespie for top of the topper-most luxury towers, and so on.
My choice for "Dwelling of the Year" hits a lot of key buttons: densification of Vancouver's arterial streets outside the downtown peninsula; a bold contemporary design; sustainability balancing livability; the globalization of design and development in our market; flexible floor plan layouts; appropriateness to different stages in the life cycle; and perhaps most of all, an obsession with maximizing natural light deep into apartments.
While it has its flaws, the sheer verve and design innovation of the ROAR condo building on West 10th Avenue next to the former site of the Varsity Theatre gets my nod as "Dwelling of the Year" for 2006. "ROAR" is a contraction of the last names of the two families who built it - Rodriguez and Arias - who split their time between Vancouver and their native Bogota, Colombia.
The project started when they saw an illustration of the work of the small Vancouver design firm of LWPAC in enRoute Magazine on an Air Canada flight back from South America. When they contacted the husband-and-wife principals of the firm - German-born UBC architecture professor Oliver Lang, and Calgary-native UBC grad Cynthia Wilson - they were delighted to learn that both were fluent in Spanish, having designed several buildings in Chile.
Lang and Wilson's investment in the project was soon more than intellectual and professional-they decided they would live at ROAR with their two young daughters, once it opened. A number of features make the resulting 10-unit building - designed by LWPAC under the supervision of architects-of-record Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden - appropriate for families, rare because Vancouver's condo industry tends to direct its all-new product at speculators, young couples and retirees.
Not just kid-friendly but also building on a sense of community for all of ROAR's residents is its large courtyard - invisible to passers-by because it runs lot line to lot line parallel to West 10th, at dead centre of the site. Rather than bury corridors, elevators and stairs within the building itself, as is typical in Canada (but not South America), these features are all located in the courtyard, with the added benefit that it acts as a light well and cuts common area heating bills, ensuring natural light and natural cross ventilation for every unit. These range from studios of 850 square feet, right up to the Rodriguez' own penthouse of 2,000 square feet.
From the street, two architectural features are most evident. Long and thin covered decks extend from both West 10th and the rear lane to deep within the site, bringing increased natural light and ventilation into what are often the 'dead zones' of apartment layouts. This is complemented with tall sliding metal sunscreens, maintaining views, indirect sunlight, and a sense of security for residents while not sacrificing views, as with drapes or shutters. These two features pay off architecturally - an unusually animated elevation.
I hope mayor Sam Sullivan and councillors who support his EcoDensity Initiative take a tour of ROAR soon, as there is hardly a better example in this city of a building that combines design innovation with livable Green features. While there, they should talk to co-designer Oliver Lang, who says that ROAR could not be built with the recently-revised C-2 zoning. "We were one of the last projects built under the old rules," says the house-proud Mr. Lang. "The revised rules are supposed to temper impact on neighbours, but they will make courtyard buildings all-but-impossible - we should be increasing building heights along arterials, not reducing them."
Mr. Lang's words and actions are the best EcoDensity-type initiative yet, and a superb bit of city-building.
tboddy@globeandmail.com