Post Office Sold

News this week on a few fronts. The Vancouver Post Office has been sold and faces a future of 'mixed-use development'. Which hopefully means the building will be retained in some significant form.

It has also been announced that Patkau Architects have been chosen to design the new Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver. This comes hot on the heels of the announcement that Patkau will design the Audain Gallery in Whistler.

Patkau + Thom

Exciting upcoming projects for Patkau Architects and Bing Thom Architects. 

It will be particularly nice to see a cultural facility designed locally by Patkau.

Canadian Profile

Check out Architizer's profile of Canadian architecture in celebration of Canada day. 

BC-based projects featured include Patkau's Linear House and Perkins + Will's VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre.
 
On a related note: Perkins + Will's Peter Busby recently relocated to San Fransico to head up the firm's new office there.

Cardew Wins Gold

Peter Cardew has been awarded the RAIC Gold Medal for 2012.

Originally from England, Cardew moved to Vancouver in 1967, joining Rhone + Iredale. Among his designs at that firm was the Crown Life Tower, a building which has aged well and retains a remarkable originality in Vancouver's sea of glass.

In 1980 he established his own practice and has made significant contributions to Vancouver's built environment, including the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and an inspired plan for the Garden Wall House, a challenging infill project that allows the retention of an early Bob Berwick-designed home.

Past recipients of the award include Bing Thom (2011), John Patkau and Patricia Patkau (2009) and Bruce Kuwabara (2006).

Canadian Architect Awards

The 2011 Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence winners have been announced.

Amongst the winners are West Coast firms Patkau, Hughes Condon Marler and B+H Bunting Coady.

The awards were juried by Walter Francl, Diarmuid Nash and Peter Sampson.

Image: UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences/CDRD by Saucier + Perrotte Architectes w/ Hughes Condon Marler Architects

Linear House

The latest residential project from Patkau Architects: Linear House

Sited between a Douglas Fir cluster and an orchard on Saltspring Island, the house spans 276 feet in length and exhibits the highly refined Patkau aesthetic; in this case, realized in broad rectilinear form in fibre-cement board and maple millwork.

The interior spaces are expansive and relate directly to the surrounding landscape through top hung doors that, at their widest, open to 78'. In the right light these openings appear from inside as vast, beautifully rendered landscape paintings.

Linear House has been widely profiled since its completion and recently won at AZ award.

Patkau + Wright

Patkau Architects has won an international competition to design six cottages at Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. The cottages will serve as lodging and provide additional room for educational programming.

In addition to Patkau, two other Canadian firms were among six chosen by a preliminary selection committee, including Saucier + Perotte and MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects.

Image: Western Pennsylvania Conservancy

C.A.'s 2008 Awards of Excellence

Canadian Architect has published its 2008 Awards of Excellence.

West coast winners were limited to Patkau Architects (for a striking residence in Whistler and a church in Port Coquitlam) and U.B.C. M.A. student Michael Barton for his ocean-bound "synthetic land commodity" proposal.

In what might be considered an overall disappointing showing considering the number of West Coast entrants, the Patkau's two schemes stack up well with the other winners, which include projects by KPMB, Stantec and RDH Architects.

The awards continue to place "heavy emphasis on architectural discourse and process, rather than on the brute outcome of a finished building."

The judges - Bing Thom, Siamak Hariri and Christine Macy - seemed dismayed by the general lack of experimentation at a profession level, and at the same time energized by the progressive thinking of the student entries. The record number of student awards (and limited professional awards - just four) bears this out.

Follow the link to Canadian Architect - though as of this writing the December issue was not yet online.