NK Flats is a 29-suite apartment block on a landlocked site in Winnipeg?s North Kildonan neighbourhood. It shares a green space with a high-rise neighbour to one side, and is realized at a scale sensitive to the single-family housing on the opposite side. Photo by Stationpoint Photographic
AtLRG?s founders are candid about their origin story: the Winnipeg-based firm was born of a mid-life/mid-career reckoning with time. Colleagues and friends Chris Wiebe, Brian Pearson, and Sean Radford were all turning 40. They?d studied together at the University of Manitoba, and had worked for well over a decade in the profession. ?Over the years, we had talked about maybe starting up a firm,? Wiebe muses. ?There?s something about turning 40 that encourages you to ask: if not now, then when"? The trio had amassed plenty of experience in sectors like multi-family housing and mixed use, and were sufficiently well known within Winnipeg?s compact design community that they were able to build a book of business quickly.
While Winnipeg remains a sprawl-oriented city, the market for modest intensification/infill in older core areas, like the Exchange District, has provided AtLRG with appealing opportunities, such as the conversion of the upper floors of a 1970s office building on Main into residential units.
703 St. Anne?s parallelogram shape responds to its location?a long-vacant parcel whose corner is cut diagonally by a meandering creek. Photo by Stationpoint Photographic
703 St. Anne?s...