Canada 20241550 Alberni Street Tower
This is a high-rise condominium, located where Vancouver’s Coal Harbour District tapers north toward Stanley Park. We wanted to create a new kind of skyscraper not as an isolated object, but instead defined by strong relationships to its setting. We also wanted nature to be present throughout the ground floor. Here, an open-air moss-covered amphitheater invites people under a kigumi cloud for musical and theatrical performances, engaging the city with a natural place for cultural activity. The tower’s characteristic silhouette results from its response to the city and to the vast natural surroundings. Large, sweeping arcs carve the building volume according to view corridors of the adjacent buildings, toward the Harbour and the mountains beyond. These big scoops reveal the softer interiors of the building, yielding balconies throughout, and exposing the wood patterning beneath the eaves. Outdoor living is immediately accessible for each unit. Elsewhere, the harder vertical facades comprise units of glass, opaque aluminum and grille panels, reflecting and filtering the ever-changing Pacific Northwest light. It is a tall, distinctive presence on the skyline, but made of visibly smaller pieces. No two views of the building are the same, its shape elusive.
