AHC 6th Ave | 25m | 6s | Attainable Homes Calgary | Hindle Architects

Yep, Discovery Pointe. Tough to see the lighthouse aspect from ground level, but they are clearly meant to be light houses. You can kind of see it in the 3D google maps view:
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Mountain Man said:
Where are these? I'm struggling to know what you're talking about lol.
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There's about 10 building in the west end of downtown in which could easily be mistaken for vaguely "lighthouse inspired"...

Whether someone is a fan of pitched roof on this building as being appropriate or not in the downtown area, we actually have set the precedent for unconventional roofs the other way around where we clearly are intentionally or unintentionally encouraging weird roofs in the west end of the downtown. Of the dozen or so taller buildings built since 2000s in the area, only Avenue I think has a flat roof. Several have very suburban-style pitched roofs, just at 25 storeys above the ground.

Here's a real sloppy attempt to highlight all the tall buildings in the area that have weird roofs, some tasteful, many not.

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Excluding the temple, there's 11 towers. Here's my first ever West Downtown Awards:
  • Most tasteful roof award - Vogue Tower with a weird but almost classic New York-inspired art deco top
  • Lighthouse award - Discovery Point (green roofed) x 2, 5 West Condo (blue roofed) x2 , West Village Towers x 2
  • Most appropriate ground floor treatment in an urban context award - 5 West Condos, Avenue
  • Least appropriate ground floor treatment in an urban context award - Riverwest condos (yellow roofs) x 2, The Marquis; West Village Towers a close runner-up
  • Most number of colours, materials, angles and random articulations for no reason award - Tarjan Place, but honestly 90% of the buildings could win this one
Jokes aside, this is how I come to my conclusion that this AHC building's design is not only is better than most in the area, it's actually keeping thematically with the neighbourhoods weird love of non-flat roofs. As a whole, a clean design and (hopefully) good materials will make this one a win - among the other benefits of 70 new affordable units in a highly accessible area.

It's not just about the height - or indeed the roof shape - many of these taller buildings are actually detrimental to the area's aesthetic and street life, despite offering some additional density over this 6 storey proposal.
 
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UrbanRED said:
Just because we've built crap before in the area doesn't mean we need to continue building crap though. This proposal as it stands on its own merits isn't very good
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Completely agree. But why is it not a good proposal though?

It's a simple and clean design, it's dense but not tall, it's pedestrian-centric, it's affordable housing in a good location that maximizes the lot and frames the street well. The criticism on this thread seems to be centred around comments of it being out of context due to being too "too short", "roof inappropriate for downtown" etc. Materials will be critical on this one (as usual), but what else am I missing?
 
CBBarnett said:
Completely agree. But why is it not a good proposal though?

It's a simple and clean design, it's dense but not tall, it's pedestrian-centric, it's affordable housing in a good location that maximizes the lot and frames the street well. The criticism on this thread seems to be centred around comments of it being out of context due to being too "too short", "roof inappropriate for downtown" etc. Materials will be critical on this one (as usual), but what else am I missing?
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This thread is interesting because it really shows who seems to understand the economics of development and who wants to be able to see a tall "pretty" building from a distance in our skyline. This is attainable housing, it is only economical to build in this location as wood-frame construction which caps at 6 stories unless you go CLT. In fact, for for-sale projects, you're seeing very few (basically none) taller concrete projects because it doesn't provide the appropriate ROI when looking at the hard construction costs and achievable saleable $/psf. This building is doing everything right in terms of adding to our urban fabric: affordable housing, dense, street-oriented, probably energy efficient, shows design restraint and is simple (no random rectangle horseshit), and is filling in a parking lot. If you're in this thread saying "don't build it, build taller because it is downtown", you don't understand how to financially execute a multi-family project. This is also a very amenity starved and shitty part of downtown, if you walk the streets around this neighbourhood like i did yesterday, it is abundantly clear why little to no investment from the private side is happening here. I am very supportive of this project and think it is solid, only thing i think it could have benefited from is maybe a better at-grade treatment, recessed balconies and maybe a modified roof design and colour change to the podium material. This is excellent filler as proposed. I'll take 20 of these projects on empty parking lots in the downtown over another dog shit West Village Tower every day of the week. That is what city-building looks like in my opinion. Also Hindle Architects rocks, and they aren't even one of my consultants but probably should be.
 
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Calgcouver said:
This thread is interesting because it really shows who seems to understand the economics of development and who wants to be able to see a tall "pretty" building from a distance in our skyline. This is attainable housing, it is only economical to build in this location as wood-frame construction which caps at 6 stories unless you go CLT. In fact, for for-sale projects, you're seeing very few (basically none) taller concrete projects because it doesn't provide the appropriate ROI when looking at the hard construction costs and achievable saleable $/psf. This building is doing everything right in terms of adding to our urban fabric: affordable housing, dense, street-oriented, probably energy efficient, shows design restraint and is simple (no random rectangle horseshit), and is filling in a parking lot. If you're in this thread saying "don't build it, build taller because it is downtown", you don't understand how to financially execute a multi-family project. This is also a very amenity starved and shitty part of downtown, if you walk the streets around this neighbourhood like i did yesterday, it is abundantly clear why little to no investment from the private side is happening here. I am very supportive of this project and think it is solid, only thing i think it could have benefited from is maybe a better at-grade treatment, recessed balconies and maybe a modified roof design and colour change to the podium material. This is excellent filler as proposed. I'll take 20 of these projects on empty parking lots in the downtown over another dog shit West Village Tower every day of the week. That is what city-building looks like in my opinion. Also Hindle Architects rocks, and they aren't even one of my consultants but probably should be.
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I see your point but I don't know. The same people who like the design are the same people who are OKAY with this f*ckin' thing lol:

Photo-1.png
 
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YourBoy007 said:
I see your point but I don't know. The same people who like the design are the same people who are OKAY with this f*ckin' thing:

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Whether you like the design or not for Courtyard 33, it positively contributes to our urban fabric. Do I love every aspect of how it turned out? No but it is cool because the project took chances and is interesting and creates an overall positive impact. The long-term impact of Courtyard 33 is: a human-scaled mixed-use building, street-fronting retail, an activated courtyard and many rental units that fill the missing middle housing gap. AHC 6th Ave repairs our urban fabric in a shitty location in West Downtown, provides 70 units of affordable housing in a dense, human-scaled building that avoided many of the architectural faux-pas that much less financially constrained projects have fallen into. If more height is all you want go take a walk around West Village Towers and tell me that is better from a pedestrian's experience than Courtyard 33. The only point of towers is so you can see them from far away, the surrounding towers in this part of downtown do nothing to contribute to the at-grade experience, but i guess you can see them from far away, so yay.
 
Calgcouver said:
This thread is interesting because it really shows who seems to understand the economics of development and who wants to be able to see a tall "pretty" building from a distance in our skyline. This is attainable housing, it is only economical to build in this location as wood-frame construction which caps at 6 stories unless you go CLT. In fact, for for-sale projects, you're seeing very few (basically none) taller concrete projects because it doesn't provide the appropriate ROI when looking at the hard construction costs and achievable saleable $/psf. This building is doing everything right in terms of adding to our urban fabric: affordable housing, dense, street-oriented, probably energy efficient, shows design restraint and is simple (no random rectangle horseshit), and is filling in a parking lot. If you're in this thread saying "don't build it, build taller because it is downtown", you don't understand how to financially execute a multi-family project. This is also a very amenity starved and shitty part of downtown, if you walk the streets around this neighbourhood like i did yesterday, it is abundantly clear why little to no investment from the private side is happening here. I am very supportive of this project and think it is solid, only thing i think it could have benefited from is maybe a better at-grade treatment, recessed balconies and maybe a modified roof design and colour change to the podium material. This is excellent filler as proposed. I'll take 20 of these projects on empty parking lots in the downtown over another dog shit West Village Tower every day of the week. That is what city-building looks like in my opinion. Also Hindle Architects rocks, and they aren't even one of my consultants but probably should be.
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Agree with all of your points about realistic expectations around development, but as a former resident, I feel the need to defend the Downtown Westend a bit. There are a lot of amenities in the area (albeit, I acknowledge the urban form sucks and is not the most comfortable). Lots of little restaurants, even a small grocery store. And, there has been more investment in that side of downtown than East Village it seems in the past 5 years or so, with the Avenue tower finishing up, Hat 7th Avenue and West Village Towers.
 
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