Building Design Competition - Round 2
 

I'm posting this thread a little early to have it ready for tomorrow.

The design entries posted are for the chosen site, 351-364 Smith Street in downtown Winnipeg. The site, as it exists today, is very underdeveloped despite being close to Portage and Main. The current uses of these parcels include a large empty parking lot, the Burton Cummings Theatre (a national historic site designated in 1991), a small park, an Enterprise car rental location, and a Giant Tiger.

The parcel is shown in the following image:

https://i.imgur.com/opdf94Hh.jpg

Submissions must be entered by midnight on May 14th! Polls will be open for a week for voting.

Looking forward to seeing what everyone has come up with! :cheers:

Prairie Place, Theatre District Residences, & Winnipeg Odeon Theatre

Prairie Place (Office) - 38s, 157m, 43,046 sqm office space
Theatre District I (Residential) - 60s, 183m, 330 units
Theatre District II (Residential) - 45s, 139m, 240 units
Winnipeg Odeon Theatre - 5s, 25m

The podiums for both sites are 12m and contain 2-3s, consisting of a mixed-use makeup with retail on the first floor. The office tower has two green roof spaces, on floors 3 and 6. The residential podium contains 4,436 sqm of indoor amenity space, with a pool, lounging area, and gardens on the roof of the podium. The theatre structure has been expanded, with a new heritage-inspired facade which adds 1,218 sqm of space to the structure, illuminated signage, a glass rooftop addition providing 891 sqm of amenity space, and a 12m, 3s glass-clad extension providing 1,815 sqm of backstage space, complete with a green roof on top.

https://i.imgur.com/dw0da2Dh.png

https://i.imgur.com/QPoy3yth.png

https://i.imgur.com/232tMKZh.png

https://i.imgur.com/JAYFPRoh.png

https://i.imgur.com/Q57fbXwh.png

https://i.imgur.com/fNLijRWh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/3kAn6hch.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Xlna8SIh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/RTPBvwOh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/aeXGGr1h.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/FnSWHvZh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/CkLPRWhh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/bGRSJs8h.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/NYdpwidh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/3ojWc0ph.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/h13Ka6uh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/x8sHBHth.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/9EewKMqh.png

https://i.imgur.com/bAfKAguh.png

That looks excellent! I love the sign on the side of the theatre! :cheers:

Thank you, I appreciate it! I figured I would modernize what already existed on the building.

I can't wait to see what you've come up with too!

Let's get this show started
https://i.imgur.com/qkRvZeH.jpg

So, there are 3 towers:

Office - 305 metres, 62 floors, 75 000 sqm
There are 2 elevator cores, and 5 bridges suspended between them, each 5 floors high. This allows the theatre to be bridged over and remain untouched except for some minor refurbishment. Total height to the top of the mechanical is 1001 feet.

Residential - 222 metres, 65 floors, 625 units
The building has an 8 floor, above ground, parking garage and a sky bridge to the office tower on the 7th and 8th floors. Balconies on the curved side that follows the curve of the road. Retail on the first and second floors of the parking garage.

Obelisk - 138.8 metres, same height as the Great Pyramid in Giza, Observation Deck at 125 metres

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/lXCRtrn.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/8wgRcTH.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/Y5m55TJ.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/SSiFNGx.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/0uFHNi4.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/YojTMIr.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/5T5AEp1.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/NhRhJoG.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/UkAz6WO.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/i7Vcc4x.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/u0NC3UB.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/mL8ssJd.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/LS4BpYr.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/zpgFMDV.png[/IMG]

The programme: 7 buildings + the theatre
https://i.imgur.com/lLYEvDF.jpg
The Donald Condos - 32 floors 320 condos
The Ellice Hotel - 14 storeys 158 hotel rooms
Theatre Apartments - 23 floors 220 rental apartments - 40 affordable
The Garry Building - 13 floors office 170,000 sqft gfa
Walker Lofts - 5 storeys 24 rental lofts
The Spike Lofts - 14 storeys 117 condo lofts
♥WPG - 5 storeys - school for the performing arts
Walker/Burton Cummings Theatre - left intact with a few modifications including cleaned bricks, updated windows, enhanced green space
Walker Square - traffic island park moved to King Street/Walker Square - closed to vehicular traffic
alley between the theatre and current Giant Tiger lot left intact
1200 car underground parking lot
ground floor commercial retail units/community space

Awesome job guys ! I would be extremely happy if even one of the various proposal buildings came to fruition at some point in the future.

These are phenomenal... ericmacm's concept is the most impressively aspirational, something like that would be perfect from an urban development standpoint. The placement of the office tower at the eastern edge of the site closest to Portage and Main is a good nod to the dynamics of downtown Winnipeg. And I like how it enhances the historic appeal of the theatre.

koops' concept brings the landmark architecture to downtown Winnipeg... interestingly, the lower part of the residential (parking and retail) works very well along Ellice.

urbandreamer's concept is very realistic... I could actually see something like that getting off the ground.

Very interesting... looking forward to seeing more!

The view from Walker Square between Theatre Apts and ♥WPG School for the Performing Arts looking towards Smith St/The Ellice Hotel/Burton Cummings Theatre
https://i.imgur.com/3td6jOO.png
(I switched to the water marked free Thea Rendering because Twilight is killing my 8GB RAM Dell laptop.)

Welcome to the new heart of Winnipeg ... ♥WPG
https://i.imgur.com/Vt58Qdg.png
Winnipeg's newest flatiron buildings: Spike Lofts located at the corner of Donald and Smith streets - named after Donald A Smith the man who drove in the last spike on the CPR and ♥WPG School for Performing Arts - built of timber with soaring glulam beams and a stunning mirror cladding
https://i.imgur.com/LEJiHBN.png
https://i.imgur.com/FGjT7uo.png
https://i.imgur.com/vOQwU57.png
lining Ellice Avenue from East to West: The Garry Building - office Theatre Apartments - rentals The Ellice Hotel - boutique hotel Donald Condos
https://i.imgur.com/V2rH3st.png
Donald Street
https://i.imgur.com/eT8JAOP.png
the Donald Condos with entrance to an expansive underground garage between the Walker Lofts - rental lofts for the performers, artists and musicians out there with studio space at grade
pedestrian and vehicle alley between the theatre and new residential developments remains - upgraded landscaping not shown
https://i.imgur.com/Kerij77.png
looking south down Smith Street towards Ellice
https://i.imgur.com/Pfl5Sg4.png
looking north towards Notre Dame: The Ellice Hotel with Theatre Apartments on the right
https://i.imgur.com/Xhf22G3.png
The Garry Building - 13 floors with 170,000 sqft office space
https://i.imgur.com/JF0LgTp.png
arches and curves greet you at the corner of Ellice/Garry/Notre Dame
https://i.imgur.com/fFBGOtE.png
looking down Notre Dame
https://i.imgur.com/Lu9lBKT.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lEbt4wI.png
Do you ♥WPG?
https://i.imgur.com/HcxPBL3.png

Whoa I almost disqualified, didn't realize there is a new thread for it...

Since everyone did a "master-plan" instead of fixating on one icon like I had expected, I decided to go there too lol. Replacing the pink placeholder massing is a couple of neutral residential towers at the scale of one of the office tower segments, and humbly added some kind of expansion wing to the theater with a colonnade of abstracted arches to imply an institutional relationship to the original theatre without actual imitation. Perforated sheet metal shroud is the common language linking the residential towers and the theater expansion

Overall I wanted the site to be mainly a plaza connecting both sides of downtown, and with heritage buildings lining the adjacent blocks, a new tower, however big, needs to touch down very lightly on the site to not overpower the smaller scale of those buildings. What I like about top-heavy buildings is how they maximize public space without sacrificing square footage. And if Vancouver House was feasible (top floors are twice the size of lowest floor), then maybe the 5:2 ratio here might work too!

This design isn't my usual style, but is a slightly crazier version of an unbuilt work project in Calgary that was inspired by how the Bow dwarfed the city's skyline at the time, that, for me, answered the question of "what is a prairie skyscraper?" It's not driven by the kind of high-priced desirability crammed into geographically-constrained coastal cities with good transit that spurs organic forest-like vertical growth, but more by the clustering of public space into discrete megastructures that offer shelter from the extreme climate. Some of the largest rec-centre/library/arena/civic combo buildings in Canada are in the prairies. I thought of the opening scenes of the 2009 Stark Trek reboot and the silhouettes of the megaliths against the flat Iowa landscape. The number 1 feature of the prairie landscape is the sky, so it was from there that the built form draws its relationship, but instead of reaching up to it, what if the sky reached down to touch the earth... like da Vinci's Creation of Adam... if that didn't kill your BS meter, just call it The Tornado.

Stats:

Tornado Tower
Height - 230m / 51 floors
Square footage - ~1.2 million sf office
Floorplates - from 14,000sf to 34,000 sf

Residential Tower 1
Height - 64m / 19 floors
Square footage - 215,000sf

Residential Tower 2
Height - 43m / 13 floors
Square footage - 74,000sf


https://i.imgur.com/v6jq7Li.jpg
View down Arthur St

https://i.imgur.com/BOpFQ3w.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/31QeKaa.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/F0vLm1z.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/tn8VLbu.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/odoctf6.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/bBK2a7H.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/yHC03tz.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/x9IcTwy.jpg
This is only to show that I briefly thought about structural grid and elevator cores

https://i.imgur.com/dKIoG0F.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/p4hyQ0e.jpg

A few night shots:

https://i.imgur.com/77O4XsZ.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/XUGKtVk.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ON12qBX.jpg

Biggest regret is that I initially worked myself into a corner with the detailing and forgot that the tower sections didn't have to shrink from all sides downward, but could grow a bit in places to create terraces and add movement to the tornado silhouette. If I had more time, the tower plates would be rationalized to a more rigorous structural grid, and the sculpting would be more deliberate to respond to localized surrounding conditions at each height (i am from Vancouver afterall). And while the louvers were the quickest way to express the horizontal sweep of the facade, this would've been a great project for the type of screens from the unbuilt Le Phare project by Morphosis.

Very polished concept by dleung… the pieces compliment each other nicely and fit together well. I also like the plaza surrounding the base of The Tornado... I'm normally not a fan of plazas but if there's one office tower in Winnipeg that would deserve that treatment, it's that one.

The combination of the buildings plus the theatre's arches gives off strong Lincoln Centre vibes... I love it even though I'm not sure I could work up the nerve to ever enter such a top heavy tower :haha:

Sorry wasn't home and for some reason I thought the date was May 24. I just opened my file now and it's corrupted so I lost most of my work anyway. Also for the next round can we set it up so that whoever is competing sends in 1 render to who ever is going to set up the thread so all of the submissions can be viewed in the same first post? Then we can just ad all of our renders in our own post. It would make it easier for judging I think..

That being said some really nice submissions guys. I'm going to finish what I had but you can take me out of this competition this time. :tup:

Damn, I really like all of them this round.

Really love all these different renderings of this site. Definitely some neat planning applied through all of them. Great job guys. :cheers:

Really love how you played with the arch of the old theatre here Delung. I literally laughed out loud when I saw the name on. Why not lol. :cheers:


https://i.imgur.com/tn8VLbu.jpg
All post what I have in a few days after people have stopped voting.

Arches are sexy.:)

I forgot to add that Smith Street between Ellice and Notre Dame would be turned into a Woonerf - closed to traffic during events. I've got floor plate layouts for all the residential buildings.

I've learned a lot about Winnipeg's development history these past few weeks: Ericmacm why did you choose this site?

Honestly, it was a number of things that made me settle on this site as our location.

I didn't really want to do another Toronto location because I honestly find Toronto boring for this type of thing. There's so much going on that I see no way for a design to really stand out, and the scenery lacks inspiration because it's mostly just glass boxes as far as the eye can see. I was in a toss up between Edmonton, Calgary, and Winnipeg, I went for Winnipeg because I figured it would be more of a "neutral site" that none of us were from (as far as I know) and that the surroundings were more unique and would invoke more creativity.

This specific area was a big hole in the downtown which I saw immediately in Google Earth. I initially looked at just the parking lot, but I felt it was too small so I worked in the theatre plot as well. I think it really ended up really working out because of the heritage aspects and helped exercise everyone's creative muscles more than the last competition.

I know I certainly enjoyed designing my buildings a lot more in this round, and I honestly love what everyone came up with. I'm looking forward to the next round of our competition and seeing our skills continue to improve.

I think the next site location should be out East...