Vancouver Affordable
Housing Challenge

Laneway Village seeks to advance Vancouver’s Laneway Housing Program through an integrated approach to create a cohesive new form of cohousing community. It claims to offer an adaptable framework to a “sustainable, equitable, and feasible” urban densification plan. The jury commented: “A smart expansion of an already existing and approved policy. This is a realistic proposal that amplifies the conversion of backlanes as streets, adding vitality to underused areas that have been attributed only for the use of vehicles. It demonstrates an affordable, scalable, and adaptable way to densify the underutilised and ubiquitous laneways all over the City of Vancouver and beyond. The flexible mixing of communal and commercial programs as well as dwelling programs shows a promising way to make the existing single-family zoned neighbourhoods more livable and accessible through the proposed community land trust financing model with local timber construction methods. It offers a viable approach to densifying and moving towards a more cooperative and communal approach to living. The scale is liveable, the design options and the concept is well described both in written content and in the beautiful drawings provided. The proposal is graphically engaging, clean and bright with a simple and clear solution. The drawings demonstrate compelling places where diverse communities can flourish.”

Living Trails offers a solution for porosity and accessibility. While it focuses on a specific site in Vancouver, it offers a prototype that breaks from traditional housing schemes. The jury writes: “The proposal focuses on spaces between buildings and beautifully addresses the integration of various units types for people of all ages and family structures. This entry demonstrates an affordable and scalable housing model that is sensitive to land and site context that promotes high quality living environments both indoors and outdoors, while giving proportionate emphasis to housing infrastructure, social infrastructure, and the ecosystem as a whole, in a building/landscape form that is physically accessible and healthy for communal and multi- generational dwelling. The premise of re-thinking the housing block pattern and breaking apart what is typically a large footprint into a series of smaller but connected houses offers an interesting new typology that provides a great connection to the land and a resulting openness to light and air. It situates the buildings into the landscape, ensuring activity with residents, locals, and tourists using the paths and trails. The design creates a vibrant street level, helping to integrate the building into the community, rather than separate and stigmatise. It transforms a transitional industrial site into a highly desirable and habitable community using a classic planning strategy with beautiful scale, proportion and siting. The modular and flexible scale of interior and exterior spaces builds a community of inclusion and diversity. Additional attention to accessibility to transportation and services is needed.”

Tall Trees, Tall Houses is a design provocation exploiting the spatial potential of Vancouver’s forested landscape to mitigate the impacts of increased density. The jury writes :”A well-presented project with thought given to practical strategies for reducing the cost of new housing in Vancouver. This proposal shows an excellent understanding of the regional context. It is a daring intervention directed straight into the heart of Vancouver’s most exclusionary zoning. This submission could easily be designed to passive house standards and meet high environmental standards, and it has potential for significant success in densifying the single family neighbourhoods, another factor in its ability to achieve environmental impact. The careful inclusion of shared amenity spaces within each block of housing also offers the opportunity for social connectivity. This is a superb evolution of the multi-family dwelling that brings diversity, density and inclusion to a single family neighbourhood, while respecting the scale and character of the existing community. Six- story wood construction is already a reality in British Columbia, and the next step is to address the safety concerns regarding a singular set of stairs in a multi-family dwelling.” The jury also noted that the elimination of trees is not necessary to bolster the strength of this proposal, and suggests that this does distract from the striking premise: “The accentuation of the integration of trees into the architectural form itself as shown in the renderings would create a more holistic solution.”