Expertise
Existing Places
Our studio recognizes that existing buildings are a significant resource and opportunity for meeting and exceeding current sustainability efforts. We are cognisant of the current climate crisis and its perpetration in part by the construction industry—our planet cannot simply sustain building (new!) our way out of current energy and climate challenges!
Existing buildings are the foundations of our cities, societies and culture. They are the spaces in which stories are told and made, providing context for what we do and how we live. Collective memories, cultural traditions, personal moments are equally as important in our existing spaces as the embodied energy they represent. Our approach to construction starts by developing a deep understanding of an existing place, its original construction, its design intent, its evolution and its community values. Placing community and user(s) at the core of our research honours the scale and voice of the community. Our goal is to guide the evolution of a place in a dynamic and sustainable way.
Our studio actively enjoys exploring opportunities for changing or shifting perspectives around existing places, especially related to heritage character. We work to avoid sudden changes to context, and instead value a process that enables places to build upon layered history within a greater collective memory. We recognize that heritage value is entwined with a place’s collective memory and greater community value.
We understand the responsibility in assessing and interpreting heritage value for existing places, whether it be environmental, design, associative or cultural. This is why we believe in developing a deep understanding of place at the start of a project. As a palimpsest of collective voices, we acknowledge that existing places mean different things to different people. We recognize the challenges that may be present in an existing place, to provide solutions that work to build on value(s) that build on a large theme of storytelling.
Our approach to working with existing buildings and places builds on decades of experience in a broad cross-section of the building stock in the National Capital Region, and beyond. Part of exploring an existing place means that we are not the first, nor the last designer or architect to intervene. We focus on the outcome of working towards a design solution that leverages an existing place within its lifecycle of past, present and future.
All of this is intended to highlight that all buildings have value of some type and bringing a higher level of awareness, more commonly seen for heritage buildings to the broader cross-section of existing buildings is a key area of focus for us.Heritage Places
Our studio understands that heritage buildings hold value because of their communities. Communities are ultimately responsible for determining a place’s value, contextual relevance, design quality and experiences defined by collective memory. As places can often be misunderstood and/or viewed through to constrained of a lens, we seek to understand existing places from multiple perspectives. We understand that it is critical for places to have a function for their long term survival, knowing that an existing place can influence how a use is arranged, accommodated and may evolve. We take pride in professionally developing an informed and balanced approach to design within heritage contexts and our approach to even non-heritage places take advantage of this sensibility.
Sustainability
By their nature, existing buildings are most often inherently sustainable and have a head start to minimize the environmental impact associated with construction through their embodied energy. By minimizing demolition and large scale construction in favour of strategic upgrades and additions, our existing places can be made more useful, relevant and more sustainable. Sustainability is multi-faceted and represents more than energy savings. Our team actively seeks opportunities to achieve a balanced response to sustainable design in an effort to augment what exists and managing change.
We have taken our sustainability action to new levels, with members of our team actively pursuing Passive House certification. We are constantly looking for opportunities to spread the word of Building Reuse is Climate Action! We are the authors of Building Resilience, a companion document for the Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada. This resource identifies best practices for the sustainable conservation and retrofit of existing buildings. Specific to the Canadian context, the primary focus of this resource is to observe the interconnectedness of environmental sustainability and historic buildings. A member of out team was also instrumental in the creation of the Zero Net Carbon Collaborative and promoting the existing building focus area within the group.
Research & Policy
To help guide our projects we value thorough research and context analysis to provide a well formed understanding of a place. Our inhouse research lead has invaluable experience with library, archive, museum and other information collections in multiple jurisdictions. We welcome a challenge and enjoy finding the needle in a hay stack that can come from researching existing places.
We have extensive research experience in the multi-jurisdictional heritage policies in the National Capital Region and Eastern Ontario and occasionally beyond. We enjoy working with individuals and developers to best understand how our cities and rural communities can respond to growth and evolution, in a way that honours heritage and community.
Our team is well versed in site visits, on-the-ground context analysis, non-invasive and invasive testing and investigations to name a few. We look forward to the understanding stages of a project to better understand the context, deeper aspects and stories within a place.
As an extension of our experience and awareness on existing places, we have been fortunate to prepare and influence related policies including developing more robust approaches to construction and documentation processes in heritage buildings. We have been retained as guiding experts in developing national sustainable rehabilitation guidelines, participating in case study projects, and developing community heritage plans at the building, complex and neighbourhood scales.
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While our focus and expertise stems from our interests listed above, we are above all, an architectural and research studio. Our leading architects and emerging professionals, with their varied experience and perspectives can assist with any feat related to new builds, renovations and additions. The more challenging the context, the better.
