The Challenge: Urban Reimagination

This is a hands-on immersive workshop that encourages architects and engineers to work together to come up with a creative solution that responds to a city challenge.

Across Downtown Vancouver, parts of the urban fabric have lost their sense of purpose in contemporary urban life. Dispersed throughout the city, certain buildings and spaces remain underutilized and lack a clear identity while demand for meaningful ‘third spaces’ grows.

In this context, this design hive called on creatives to propose bold, inclusive ideas that reimagine a given Vancouver site as a vibrant public destination. In addition to exploring reclaiming underused spaces, the challenge explored the boundary between indoors and outdoors, and how a ‘sense of place’ can be cultivated that nurtures community, culture and everyday urban life.

Using an existing mall and adjacent alleyway on the downtown eastside as a representative urban site, the challenge was to envision a design intervention that activates and optimizes this site and the urban fabric it occupies.

The concept had to fulfill the following elements:

• Contextual Integration: Respond to the layered character of Crosstown—at the intersection of Gastown and Chinatown—by drawing from its cultural, historical, and urban context.
• Adaptative Reuse: The atrium structure is to be reimagined using adaptive reuse best practices. Existing structural elements are to be reimagined and repurposed as key components to complement additional ‘light touch’ new interventions across the whole site.
• Inclusive and Safe Design: Define the program and create an environment that is welcoming, safe, and accessible to all users, supporting a diverse range of communities and everyday experiences.
• Modularity: Consider modularity with potential expansion to further local sites.