Mid Rise and Missing Middle Architecture You Want to See
 

A contentious issue when it comes to density in Metro Vancouver (and specifically the COV) is that when it comes to density everyone points out that there is no mid-rise strategy or missing middle housing; and that highrises are expensive to build which drives the prices of housing up.

This thread is simply about discussing mid-rise architecture that you would want to see being built and where.

For purposes of this thread a mid-rise is anything 4-12 floors. And the missing middle housing is anything 2-3 floors. I wasn't able to find a definition of a mid-rise according to the municipal government so I am going with these definitions. If anyone has a link to a mid-rise definition used by the municipal government, please feel free to correct me :) .

Also I am not going to be specifying whether I think these designs should be condos, rentals, or social housing complexes as that would totally depend on the neighbourhood. The idea is to introduce density into low-dense areas.

Without further ado, let's talk about the mid-rise/missing middle solutions that we would like to see. I have some "local" examples to share.

Mid-Rise Housing Designs

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/61/42/50/6...41145c5217.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/a5/26/08/a...36a2b04b0b.jpg

These purdy looking mid-rises are 4-5 floors tall with retail on the first floor. I really like this kind of architecture (and I am inviting someone to give me the proper name for it) because it feels like a mountain lodge and that it can be introduced into some hardcore SFH neighbourhoods to add a lot more density while enhancing the neighbourhood feel. I'm thinking that a bunch of these should go around Nanaimo station with maybe a townhouse set up on the ground level.

As much as I love Vancouver as a cosmopolitan city, I feel that we should balance our architecture between contemporary styles and styles like this. Oh, by the way, these are in Squamish.


https://i.pinimg.com/474x/be/c3/d3/b...fae250b283.jpg

Moving onto something slightly taller, we have this mid-rise that reaches 8 floors. I took this picture myself and I took it from this angle because it was the only angle where we could count up all of the floors and I also wanted to showcase that this kind of architectural style is simple to employ: essentially its style is just defined by the windows and its roof, juxtaposing it from the Cosmopolitan box style mid-rises we see popping up all over Vancouver (don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the modern boxes). I know that it is a questionable angle but the first floor can be townhouses or retail.

I could see these taller midrises (8-12 floors) being constructed alongside streetes like W. 4th avenue or as the standard transitional density between Skytrain stations along Broadway, Cambie street, as the minimal density on Commercial Drive, or any other major arterial that doesn't have a Skytrain station. Otherwise these taller midrises could also go nicely around Nanaimo Station, 29th Avenue Station, and 22nd Street Station (which have all gotten away murder IMO).

If this looks familiar, it just might be because it is a photo of a resort in Whistler. I think that at the time, I didn't want the front entrance because it looked too resort-y and it would detract from my point that different architectural styles can be simply achieved.


Missing Middle Housing Designs

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/f6/6d/79/f...d888260e88.jpg

Moving on from the Mountain-style midrises, I found this one which I think is really SFH friendly. IMO half of the reason why people oppose increased density is because the style of the complex clashes too much with the SFH's. I took this picture from Mount Pleasant around Guelph Park.

I could see this style of complex fitting into SFH heavy streets like East 10th Avenue or in various places within the Arbutus Ridge that are adjacent to major arterials.


https://i.pinimg.com/474x/66/da/7c/6...3fb959707f.jpg

I got a special one just for Shaughnessy :P .

I took this picture last summer in Victoria as I thought that this rowhouse complex was a beautiful way to introduce a little more density into Nimbylands. I'm thinking that it could be nice on streets adjacent to West. 10th and West 4th in Kitsilano.

So yeah, post pictures of mid-rise and missing middle styles that you would like to see developed in Metro Vancouver. I am going to do my best to find more examples of taller (8-12fl) local mid-rises. I know that I haven't touched on other sub-topics of midrises such as the opportunity to use materials for construction (like treated wood, etc) so there is lots to talk about regarding a density solution that doesn't include towers :P .

I'd recommend reading a few of the policy recommendations that are present from the end of this exercise.

It was a bit of preaching to the choir when it as going on and lack "substance" but it's more of a policy and zoning / by-law restriction rather than design "restriction" or preference... hence why it's "missing", in a broad sense.

https://urbanarium.org/missing-middl...tion-completed

I'll have to use google map links. CoV may be adverse to mid-rises but I can't agree with you for the rest of the region. I've seen plenty of it in Burnaby, Surrey and Langley (I'm sure it's not limited to there - that's just where I've noticed it).

Burnaby has plenty of retail with 3 floors above - I wish they would go another 2 floors on some of the buildings but...:shrug: Here's a pair near Royal Oak Station that are a prime example, and another is being built just down the street. Here's a couple of examples of row houses.

While technically a little shorter than what you're asking for, I keeping seeing variations of this style of townhouses (or whatever they want to call it) throughoutt the region. Surrey and Langley in particular seem to like building these instead of SFH. Also let's not forget Richmond. It's an easy way for them to add some 'gentle density'.

Ugh when I see these buildings all I can think is leaky condos and high maintenance fees.

When you look at a building think to yourself, how are you going to wash the windows, when water falls where will it flow to where will it accumulate, what parts need to be painted/coated/caulked regularly to prevent ingress, where are the weak points for water ingress, where will moss/dirt accumulate, etc.

One large reason Vancouver buildings suffer constant leaks is poor design that prioritizes looks/the newest technology.

In a place with as much precipitation as Vancouver we should be minimizing our surface area to FSR ratio while doing our best to avoid curves/corners as a flat surface is much easier to repair/maintain.

Of course curves/corners/unique aspects look gorgeous. But they are impractical and expensive from both a construction and maintenance perspective.

One reason behind our housing crisis is our city pushes designs that are not made to last centuries and easy maintenance is not the priority of their building code.
Reminds me of how cadillac locates the battery under the back seat (and its very hard to get to) or how you got to take some sports cars apart to change their oil.
Vancouver pushes the construction of impractical luxury cars that look good and win them political points rather than inexpensive long-term reliable designs.
Btw balconies are totally impractical if your looking to build something that will last and is affordable.

A great example of a difficult to maintain mid-rise:
https://assets-prod.rew.ca/building-...op&w=768&h=461

isn't that what Cambie is becoming right now?

Copied from Surrey/South Fraser Updates

COV is definitely one of the worst offenders of excluding midrise construction in the Lower Mainland. The advantage that the other municipalities have is that their lands weren't hyper developed within a short amount of time (I'm thinking way back when Vancouver was sprawling like crazy just after Point Grey was amalgamated) so they have a lot more flexibility with their land to create mid-rise developments without as much displacement as the COV would. The other emerging metro Vancouver municipalities also get the huge advantage of learning from COV's mistakes.

IMO, one of the best mid-rise communities in Vancouver is actually OV. An example below is something that I like in terms of mid-rise density:

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f8/3f/83/f...b528639dfb.jpg

I know that OV was exceptional in that it didn't displace a lot of people. However OV is becoming an awesome neighbourhood and it is a great example in COV (and in the country) of a mid-rise density neighbourhood. The issue is that people oppose this kind of architecture because it clashes with the architecture of the current neighbourhood. And they immediately think that mid-rise density equates to 'modern boxes' a la OV.


Those are some awesome examples. I remember watching the rowhouses get built when I first moved to the area. Specifically I remember how fast construction felt here from my last city. I still think that Metro Vancouver constructs buildings super quickly lol.

But back to the rowhouses, I love those as an architectural style and I truly think that they suit the area perfectly. However just a little bit north of them along Imperial street heading west, there could totally be an opportunity for some more residential mid-rises (6-12 floors) since it is so close to the Metro Town core. Now I do realize that there is an industrial element to that little chunk of land but that could also serve as an opportunity for higher density forms of Industrial - high dense industrial is a whole other thread but I just wanted to acknowledge it.

Royal Oak station, for me, is a clear example of where we can introduce denser mid-rises (8-12floors) without feeling the pressure of making it all towers since it is right. Beside. A. Skytrain station and the adjacent area is the 'downtown' for Burnaby. However in the immediate area around the Skytrain station we are only seeing mid-rises being constructed that are 4 floors tall which to me, is under-building for an area that has direct access to a rapid transit line.

Yes I have been noticing that too in Surrey and Langley. I see more of these examples deep in the corresponding municipalities, off of the main arterial roads in newer designs. However Surrey is still very guilty of sprawling with SFH's and so is Langley. It just seems that Surrey, Langley, and Burnaby have a much easier time switching over to midrises and introducing gentler density into their SFH neighbourhoods.

And by the way, great finds with the Kings Landing project! The midrise and townhouse complex were the exact styles that I was talking about :) .


Lol, I may or may not be in the middle of making a zoning fantasy for COV :P . Thanks again for the good read! I intended this thread to be a way to guide mid-rises into the hearts of the forumers before I get banned for my zoning fantasy thread (lol) that I will post eventually. I just think the COV is a little narrow-minded when it comes to the design of midrises because a lot of the midrises that are currently being designed fall under the 'contemporary modern box' architectural style. Or atleast they get the most publicitiy. Midrises can be designed to actually suit a diverse amount of neighbourhoods; in fact I think that treated wood can be used in midrises up to 6 floors (please, someone correct me here) before needing to adhere to additional construction codes. This would open up the opportunity to use diverse construction materials instead of being forced to stick to expensive ones. Currently we are just seeing a lot of modern box midrises in COV, which is great, but there are also lots of examples of other architectural styles out there as well. This thread is to try and open up new ideas and feelings towards midrises as becoming a significant part of the housing solution.

The thing is that the Metrotown Town Centre border is Royal Oak from Dover / Oakland down to Imperial. The area from Kingsway down to Imperial along Royal Oak is all zoned for high rises (including a bunch of mixed use) on the west side of the street. The east side of Royal Oak and south of Imperial is outside of 'downtown Burnaby' - which is why it's all zoned for lower heights.

I'm with you that I wish they'd go a little taller right near Royal Oak Station. At least they've slowly been replacing the small houses that used to be there with those low / mid rise buildings instead.

Actually, The City of Vancouver develops more mid-rise units than any other municipality. At least, they did from 2011-2016, the most recent period you'll find data for. Statistics Canada publish a cross-tab of dwelling type by period built. If you look at 'apartments in a building that is fewer than 5 storeys' then Vancouver saw 3,640 dwellings added. The next municipality was Surrey, with 3,215. Burnaby and Richmond each saw just over 1,600 built.

When it comes to taller buildings - five or more storeys (like Olympic Village, but obviously also towers) then the City of Vancouver is even more ahead of all the other municipalities. There were 9,975 units built between 2011 and 2016, while Richmond saw 3,480 completed, Burnaby 3,720, Coquitlam 2,125 and Surrey 1,905. Obviously some municipalities have seen more built in the current cycle, but probably not dramatically more than in these numbers.

The design of the buildings is almost always up to the developers. They chose the architect and the there are very few parts of Vancouver where there are any sort of design guidelines to force any particular style. Some architects have quite retro styled townhomes, and we've seen a few retro towers proposed (but not many developed). Contemporary designs are apparently more popular with developers, presumably because they believe they sell more easily. Materials are increasingly driven by performance - both in terms of energy and durability. Buildings can be woodframe up to six floors, and higher if they use laminated panel construction. There will be more of those in future, but the structural requirements that follow with that form of construction will almost certainly mean they'll be contemporary looking.

Thank you for the stats. It certainly helps to create a clearer picture. Did the COV outpace every other municipality for construction under all housing categories? Because that would also make sense to me since COV is currently the leading economic centre in the region.

However just because COV was "doing better" than the other municipalities, it doesn't mean that the COV was doing enough midrise construction (or housing construction in general) during a housing crisis to meet the demands of regular working people who make under 80k/year. I'm not saying that mid-rise construction is the magical missing piece of the housing puzzle but it is going to have to have a significant role since Vancouver has to face a lot of issues when developing its land densely including View Cones, a slow-rezoning process, the US border, the Ocean, the Mountains, NIMBYs, etc. And what we are doing in the past and right now in Metro Vancouver isn't as effective as it should be; especially when we don't maximize density around around Skytrain stations like the 4 floor midrise beside Royal Oak or Nanaimo Station.

I know that I am giving the COV a lot of hell for NOT developing mid-rises but I just see first-hand that there is actually a lot of opportunity for denser mid-rise developments on streets like Granville, Main, Davie, Denman, and Robson if people are so opposed to towers. Each of those streets have lots of examples where it is only 1-2 floors on extremely busy arterials; and a lot of have them haven't seen significant changes for the past few decades.

Main street specifically is getting some 4-6fl midrises - which is better than nothing, don't get me wrong. But it could totally support more 8-12fl midrises between East 1st and Broadway than what it has now.

I get that midrise development and architecture is a lot more complicated than pulling ideas out of thin air and I understand that you can't just kick out businesses to up-zone. But it is one of the solutions that all sides of the housing crisis argument can agree on - that there is just simply not enough housing diversity including midrise development.

A lot of the issues with housing is the rezoning processes as pointed out by the Urbanarium that GenWhy? linked to earlier. But I think that I am side-tracking this thread a little bit :P .


Design will always be up to the developers but it also helps for the public to know what to ask for in order to attract developers that build that style (or are open to it). Specifically I am thinking that knowing about different architectural styles of midrises will help us come to a compromise with NIMBY-driven neighbourhoods. I am sure that regular folks that aren't on these forums have a certain impression that mid-rise architecture only comes in the glass box form whereas we know that there are a plethora of other mid-rise developments around the world that aren't glass boxes.

For example I think that folks living by West 4th Avenue would be more open to a 5 fl building like the first picture that I posted (from Squamish) in this thread than to a 4 fl glass box like the one that I posted from OV.

Here's a relevant article on Toronto,
but applies to Vancouver, too:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/...-we-afford-it/

Yeah I can see that happening here. I can't remember where exactly it was (Coquitlam, PoCo, Port Moody ?) where the city wanted towers around 12 - 15 storeys and didn't get developer interest because developers said they'd need to build taller to make any money.

I think what we're seeing with this is a way to add density without annoying the nimbys. Yes they live in the suburbs too and they want a house with a yard and the very idea of a tower terrifies them. However buying up block of SFH and replacing it with townhouses, rowhouses, etc only potentially causes a little bit of grumbling. Then developers start making entire new neighbourhoods of that with the occasional building with ground floor retail with a few floors of office or residential above on a busier street. Again only minor grumbling, more about a planned community lacking character than an 'OMG it's a tower I'm going to have a heart attack!'

From the article:
"He has a more radical solution: Expand densification deeper into Toronto’s sleepy, leafy, low-rise neighbourhoods. He argues that the city should open up the so-called “yellowbelt” (areas where single-family homes predominate) to allow for fourplexes and other mini-condos to be built. He suggests the return of the so-called Toronto Specials of the 1950s and ‘60s that responded to an earlier wave of immigration would do a lot to let homeowners unlock the value in their land, and create more affordable options for newcomers and new families."

The same many of us propose in Metro Van.

Because it logical.

What was it at last count? 70% of Vancouver land base is still SFH?

Were trying to put out a forest fire with water bottles.

So tying my comments back to the 1st post... as a measure of reassurance... the cited examples are present and common throughout Vancouver proper but they are not perhaps numerous in total or in certain areas that might need / handle them due to zoning and not necessarily design being limited or "refused" by the City or locals, like the Sunset area.

We've had plenty of "neighbourhood appropriate" designed projects that some vocal locals hate (because it's taller than their house by 1 floor or is multifamily) but unless it's supported by city policy and zoning then it won't be built. You'll see more of the above-posted architecture rather than boxes if they're under 6-storeys, IMO.

I think you find more of these more expensive "interesting" designs in areas of more local resistance to changing urban environments (SF to multi-family West but also East Van). But, like with the 2 MIRHPP projects around 4th Ave, the "box" their preference for these designs come at great cost. 5 instead of 6 floors and greatly reduced floor area and expensive changes in design. Mostly been a fan of MOSIAC stuff lately - when implemented with minimal lot assembly. 2 max.

The plan calls for most density around transit.

This is to reduce our carbon footprint.

One big high density building has a much better economy of scale.

The front can look good but can kill everything else, as I love this project's potential. Across the street the find the continued issue of garages and car-orientated development.

Though monotonous, large, and expensive (UG parking), Oak and Cambie have great examples.

While more affordable (pick your personal metric) options with less parking for renters are similar in design. The key is small lots with less parking can achieve good locally acceptable design as per the Urbanarium. Current new SF homes, even in East Van, could have 4 or 5 great units in the same footprint rather than 2 dark poorly lit rental units and 1 massive home. That was the curx of the Urbanarium "missing middle". Options all over town, rather than "x" here and "Z" there only.

https://rezoning.vancouver.ca/applic...5ave/index.htm

https://rezoning.vancouver.ca/applic...12th/index.htm

I think both of the rezoning townhome examples required no lot assembly.

It could be that, demographically, the people now living in the suburbs did at one time live in a downtown condo or apartment tower, whereas the "gray hairs" on the West Side of Vancouver may be less likely to have lived in (and therefore less receptive) to that form of housing.