Henriquez Partners and the IBI Group mitigate concrete’s tough side with bright color and warm materials for a children’s clinic.
Squeezed between snow-capped mountains, Juan de Fuca Strait, and the Fraser River delta, Vancouver has one of the world’s premier urban settings. While it boasts a mild, largely benign climate, it can be plagued by long periods of cloudy, wet weather. This suggests a climate ill-suited to the raw concrete architecture of Brutalism. Over the past decade, however, the work of Henriquez Partners has presented a strong argument for the appropriateness of bold concrete forms in urban Vancouver, with projects like the Coal Harbour Community Centre and two recent award-winning social housing projects. The firm’s Ambulatory Care Building (ACB) on the British Columbia Children’s Hospital campus (a joint effort with IBI Group and Karlsberger Associates as associate architects) succeeds on a tight budget in creating a bold but welcoming facility for young patients.
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Architectural Record
A recreation and social center is tucked under a park to preserve expensive views
By Sheri Olson, AIA
The Coal Harbour development is transforming what had until recently been train yards at the end of the Trans-Canadian railroad into a community that will eventually comprise 5,000 people in 15 towers on 57 acres. Several apartment towers have already been built, and plans call for a school, a day-care center, and more housing.
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Architectural Record
Past and present coexist comfortably in heritage laboratory renovation
Completed in 1923, the Chemistry Centre was UBC’s first permanent building and is a major heritage landmark. It is one of only two Collegiate Gothic style buildings on campus, complete with granite facade, copper scuppers and downspouts, leaded windows, and corridors with detailed brickwork and woodwork. Although these fine architectural details were still intact, the building was in desperate need of life safety and seismic upgrades. It could no longer support today’s chemistry research, and its original building systems were practically non-functional. With 60% of UBC’s buildings over 30 years old and a history of inadequate maintenance funding, the Chemistry Centre situation was far from unique. A bold initiative was needed.
The design team, led by Henriquez Partners Architects, responded to this challenge with a scheme that preserved the heritage character of the exterior, the entrances and circulation spaces, while creating state of the art laboratory spaces which range from fume hood intense synthetic chemistry labs to analytical chemistry labs with computer workstations.
