The still-unnamed project for developers Westbank and Allied REIT comprises about 725,000 square feet; plans call for more than 500 apartment units. The proposal, which echoes several other schemes by BIG is for a highly sculptural courtyard building: seen from above, it’s a hollow rectangle. But the higher levels of the building are not flat slabs.
Instead they break down into a grid of 12-by-12-foot modules – which Mr. Ingels calls a “pixelated” pattern – and spun at 45 degrees, so the walls and windows look out at oblique angles. These stacks would step back, like a ziggurat, to form five “peaks” around the site, reaching to between 15 and 17 storeys. On the upper levels, they would house apartments of one to three bedrooms.
For the design to be successful, materials and the arrangement of the windows will need to be very carefully modulated. The developers are thinking about cladding the exterior of the building with some sort of light-coloured stone. So, too, will the approach to the heritage buildings on site; these will have to be rebuilt, but should remain as discrete pieces within the design.
Rather than a stack of repeating layouts, there will be at least a dozen different floor plans used in the various apartments. Most units would have private terraces, which the architects imagine as being heavily greened. “The scale of the project is so broken down that it almost looks like a bundle of homes rather than a big new building,” Mr. Ingels argues; the effect he is going for is akin to “a Mediterranean mountain town. Source by The Globe and Mail and images Courtesy of Bjarke Ingel Group.