The Design Hotels Group has opened its flagship eco-hotel The Scarlet on the Cornish coast in Mawgan Porth, blending stunning architecture and interior design, with the highest environmental standards seen in any hotel in the UK.
Read more about this article here.
Posted on February 15th, 2010
O2UK – the UK’s Sustainable Design Magazine
Size does indeed matter. Just ask the Surrey homeowners troubled by the 4,000-plus-square-foot home overshadowing their rancher. Or the folks who can’t wait to move into a 270-square-foot rental in East Vancouver.
The former is viewed by municipalities, proponents and opponents as a rather prickly issue that is not easily resolved. The latter has generated much to-and-fro discussion ever since a developer issued a news release heralding his 30 micro-suites as “the smallest self-contained rental apartments in Vancouver.”
The new boys on the Burns Block in the Downtown Eastside are anything but newbies.
The developer, Reliance Properties, is a privately owned Vancouver company with more than 50 years experience in Vancouver’s real estate market. In the past decade, Reliance has built about 300 rental lofts in Gastown and the Downtown Eastside, and has won several heritage awards.
Reliance’s project partner, ITC Construction Group, is the largest residential construction company in Western Canada and has completed 115 projects in B.C. and Alberta. ITC has been selected as one of Canada’s best-managed companies for six straight years, and is committed to corporate social responsibility.
Not a bad partnership handling the makeover of a 100-year-old, five-storey, 18,000-square-foot building. As a former board member of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, I can tell you the once-abandoned structure promises to be a polished heritage jewel when work is completed next year.
The suites will offer a space-saving wall bed with built-in, flip-down dining table. The kitchen will include a bar-size fridge, two-burner cooktop, sink, convection microwave, countertop and cabinets. The bathroom will have a shower, sink and wall-hung toilet. A computer work area will have space for a wall-mounted TV. A large window will take up almost the entire space on the exterior wall.
Monthly rents will be as low as $675, reasonable in a city just pegged by a public-policy research group as the most unaffordable in the world. (The group’s assumptions and conclusions are considered somewhat flawed by some industry watchers, but that’s a story for another day.)
Despite the need for more affordable housing in this region, the project has its detractors. As soon as media outlets posted the story on their websites, comments from the public quickly followed.
One fellow wrote that living in such a small apartment would be akin to occupying a prison cell. Perhaps he has claustrophobia issues but, for the record, the average prison cell built today is a cosy 70 square feet. Another guy said he wouldn’t last more than a few months in a 270-squarefoot apartment.
Here’s the thing. The Burns Block concept is not new, far from it. So all this naysayer chattering about some newfangled housing form coming soon to Lotus Land-by-the-Sea is a tad bothersome.
Tiny homes exist all over the world, and the folks who live in them are quite happy and content.
Take, for example, Californian Jay Shafer, who for more than 10 years has lived in a 96-square-foot home complete with galley kitchen, bathroom with shower, seating, desk, bookshelves, closets and fireplace. The home is easy to heat and cool, and meets California’s strict energy-efficiency standards. I don’t know Shafer’s significant-other status, but his sleeping loft accommodates a double bed.
New York is home to the Prokops and their two cats. Compared to Shafer’s home, the Prokops’ Manhattan coop apartment is mansion-like at 175 square feet. They have given new meaning to the term “downsizing”, starting out with a 1,600-square-foot apartment, then 900, now 175. The married couple plan to renovate their home this year, a process that likely won’t break the bank or take much time.
Worldwide, the story is the same. Los Angeles is home to a growing number of small-unit condos and apartments, including the Rosslyn Lofts in the historic downtown. The 297 rental apartments range in size from 200 to 325 square feet. The homes add to the variety of mixed-income housing, which helps to attract a diverse group of tenants, enhancing the vitality and diversity of the downtown area.
Small is also big in Santa Monica, where space-efficient 375-square-foot apartments in a central location close to amenities are popular with renters. And in Edinburgh, Scotland, renters are flocking to 350-square-foot contemporary concrete-and-steel apartments, complete with balconies overlooking green space.
In Toronto, the city’s smallest detached home, built in 1912, is only 330 square feet. It even has a backyard.
In 1990, Gordon Price lived for a month in a 290-squarefoot apartment at Drake and Seymour in downtown Vancouver because he wanted to see if such a small space was livable. Turns out it was.
“The apartment was absolutely livable for me. If the space is designed and proportioned to both day and night uses, it will be perfectly fine for all functions. In my case, the apartment’s Murphy bed tilted up in the morning, replaced by a dining room table for the rest of the day,” said Price, a former Vancouver city councillor and now the director of the Simon Fraser University City Program.
“It is important the apartment remains uncluttered, and the furniture is appropriately designed for the space. And you need lots of natural light, preferably from a floor-to-ceiling window,” said Price.
“People who live in small spaces typically spend more time in the public realm -making use of parks and other amenities, eating in restaurants, that sort of thing. Because they spend so much time away from their apartments, it is important that their neighbourhood is clean, green and safe,” said Price.
Tom Durning of the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre is always happy to see an increase in the production of affordable rental units, particularly in Vancouver, where supply is tight and costs high.
Durning was quoted recently in this paper as saying, “Any rental housing is good housing these days.”
Many groups — including housing advocates, developers and governments — will be watching to see how the Burns Block project fleshes out. So far, I believe all can agree it’s not a bad experiment.
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A few young people have called our office to ask when the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association’s annual first-time homebuyer seminar will be held. Well, save the date, the seminar will be held from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23 at the Vancouver Sheraton Guildford Hotel in Surrey.
Presenting sponsor of this year’s seminar will be the Homeowner Protection Office, the provincial Crown corporation responsible for builder licensing and the provision of home warranty insurance.
Corporate sponsors include The Vancouver Sun, the Province, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., TD Canada Trust, Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, Travelers Guarantee, Genworth Financial, Shaw Cablesystems, CKNW AM 980, Classic Rock 101, AM 730 and 99.3 The Fox.
Visit www.gvhba.org for registration details. More than 900 registered for last year’s seminar.
Peter Simpson is the chief executive officer of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association. E-mail peter@gvhba.org.
By Peter Simpson, Special to the Sun
February 6, 2010
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
As most of you know, our designs are predominately in the lower mainland, but being so passionate about design, we never turn away a fun project. This recent project is exactly that. The site consists of 138 acres and has magnificent views of Garibaldi and the Fraser River valley.
The clients are a great couple who are loving and fun. In fact, I felt a great chemistry with them right form our first meeting. They are looking for a unique and modern design that will take full advantage of the views on their site. The are probably the most prepared clients I have ever worked with. They came equipped with a full wish list complete with photos and magazine cutouts. I actually had to compile a full binder just for their notes. After seeing the site and initial discussions during our kick off meeting, I came back full of ideas in my head. I was excited and can’t wait to sit down on the drawing board to develop the design for them. I must say, I was excited to a level I haven’t been for a long time. It really made it easy as they were clear in relaying their requirements and we had like-minded visions right from the beginning.
We are in the process of developing a 3D rendering and will continue to post further design developments of this project.
Check out this link to a small sized apartment in Hong Kong featuring a sliding wall system which can create up to 24 different room combinations!
Who said Architect’s are boring?
Check out the 2nd annual Gingerbread Competition and Charity Auction where this city’s Architects and Designers are challenged to re-interpret and construct a traditional gingerbread house within a modern context.
Take a look at some of the entries.
What would an eco-friendly downtown look like? The newurbanism blog has some examples, including an award winning concept from Vancouver’s Romses Architects.
Cities around the world are running into the same problems with their infrastructure: how can we create true eco-friendly living where cars, concrete and metal dominate? Its not simple. Problems of old infrastructure and traditional city planning curb significant efforts to recreate a city’s environment. New urban developments, like Blue Springs’ downtown revitalization, are much easier to reimagine with green living; the upper west side of Manhattan is another thing entirely.
What is the answer? Instead of trying to take the cities back into the natural environment, architects, designers and eco-friendly entrepreneurs are attempting to bring the natural environment back into the cities, right underneath their noses. These eco-towers and sustainable skyscrapers could become a part of your skyline in the coming decades. What do you think? Green, or not? Inspiring or silly? Check out this description of one proposal in Vancouver:
See more examples and original blog here.
Local architect and in industrial designer, probably best know for his Bocci lights, is collaborating with the 2010 Olympics to help design the medals. This is a great local story for a talented designer/architect that has really made a name for himself.
You can read the full story here.
Every medal won at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will be unique — a first in Games history. Recently unveiled to great critical acclaim, the medals designed by Omer Arbel are characterized by an undulating form meant to abstractly represent ocean waves, drifting snow and the mountainous landscape surrounding Vancouver.
On the medal’s surface, Arbel applied two large master artworks of an orca whale (Olympic) and raven (Paralympic) by Vancouver-based Corrine Hunt, a Canadian artist of Komoyue and Tlingit heritage. Hunt’s artwork was produced at a large scale, and then a specific, cropped section of the larger art was applied to each of the individual medals, making each unique. A silk scarf printed with the master artwork will be presented to each medallist along with their medal, enabling them to see how their medal connects with those awarded to other athletes at the Games and to make the artwork complete. Like a puzzle, it takes all of the individual medals to complete the artwork.
The medals were produced by the Royal Canadian Mint using metals supplied by Canadian mining company Teck Resources.
Omer Arbel is an industrial designer and architect based in Vancouver who leads OAO – a design office focused on eliminating the boundaries between the traditionally defined fields of architecture, industrial design, material research, manufacturing and invention. This basic conceptual approach has resulted in unexpected and inventive works which have positioned the practice as one of Canada’s most experimental and innovative young design offices. The practice has been extensively published, has won some of the highest profile international design awards,
and exhibited work in some of the most celebrated venues worldwide.
Bob Rennie, probably the most successful Real Estate Marketer in town, has spent millions restoring the oldest building in Chinatown to convert it into a Contemporary Art Musuem. I think it’s a great way to give back to the community and a great gesture for heritage Architecture, for art lovers, and of course, for artists.
The article is below and can be found on CTVBC’s website along with the news video.
Bob Rennie has made millions selling condos in downtown Vancouver. But his latest real estate venture has nothing to do with money — it’s all about art.
Rennie has spent $20 million turning Chinatown’s Wing Sang heritage building — the oldest building in Chinatown — into a contemporary art museum.
“We’ve promised artists for years who have trusted us that eventually we’ll have a space,” Rennie said Saturday before an opening gala for collectors and curators.
“I’ve got the world here and my goal is to make sure I’m conscious every minute of it because I’ll never open a space like this again. I’m a happy guy.”
His first exhibition is the work of renowned Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum — part of a private contemporary art collection experts call one of the finest in the world.
“This is my golf game,” Rennie said. “Every morning when I go in, I can talk to artists and curators and museum heads and dealers in Europe or back east, and I can go about my day knowing I got to play my golf game. It’s my passion.”
The museum will be open to the public on Thursdays, though appointments will be required.
Admission is free.
“You don’t charge people to see art,” said Carey Fouks, the museum’s director of art services.
The Condo King isn’t making any money out of this?
“No,” Fouks said.
(source: Vancouver Heritage Foundation)
Look Beyond the Fence…
get INSPIRED, EDUCATED & INSIDE 5 renovated Specials.COME TO GET IDEAS!
Experience the stories of five local projects:
Hastings-Sunrise — family zen
Riley Park — aesthetic simplicity
Douglas Park — european flare
Kitsilano — west-coast modern
Point Grey — contemporary elegance
What is a Vancouver Special anyway?
Some say it derives from the “rancher” turned sideways, to adapt to Vancouver’s narrow lots. Popular and quick to build, thousands of “Vancouver Specials” were constructed in the 1960s and 70s in bluecollar neighbourhoods all over the lower mainland, and they remain today the dominant house type in Vancouver.
The sheer quantity of Specials and their adaptability to a two family dwelling is making them more and more attractive to first time buyers.
For more information, click here.
