Generous rooftop garden areas provide opportunities for urban agriculture and a verdant communal space for residents.
PROJECT GROW, Calgary, Alberta
ARCHITECT Modern Office of Design + Architecture
PHOTOS Ema Peter
GROW, a striking 20-unit rental apartment development by Calgary-based Modern Office of Design + Architecture, brings new and much-needed promise to the largely uninspired world of mid-scale multifamily housing in Canada. In a sector preoccupied with margin and brand, GROW placed its bet on a different set of ideals, centered on community and gardens?and its wager has paid off. The project has achieved a diverse unit mix, community space, food production, and innovative urban form, at a competitive cost of $230 per square foot. On one hand, this makes the project a modest and successful 20-unit experiment: GROW eschews the normative template, but still converses in the economics of residential construction. On the other hand, it makes the project a much more substantive provocation, raising the question: why does so much multifamily design promise so little" The form also allows for at-grade parking, resulting in significant construction cost savings.
The project is located on an unassuming interior street in Bankview, a neighbourhood just southwest of Calgary?s urban core. Throughout the past seven decades, Bankview has been subjected to scattered episodes of redevelopment and intensification. On every block, heritage houses intermingle with infill duplexes...