Located on one of Vancouver’s main avenues, the 1515 Alberni tower stands as a new beacon at the entrance to Vancouver from the North Shore and Stanley Park and forms an urban pivot at the junction where the city’s grid splices and begins to expand from the West End to the diagonal along West Pender Street into the Coal Harbour waterfront and downtown Vancouver. Its position at the crossroads between the City to the south, Stanley Park to the north, and the waterfronts to both the east and west calls for a multi-directional design that capitalizes on the urban and natural qualities at this important site in the West End.
A system of vertically shifted apartment modules enables dynamic yet rational and efficient layouts for residential units, while the horizontal rotation of these modular elements projects living spaces outwards to introduce the concept of horizontal living in a slender high-rise. The resulting multiple terraces generated from these horizontal shifts create both physical and emotional connectivity between the indoor and outdoor environment.
Images © Buro Ole Scheeren