This building can switch from residential, office, industrial or parking uses
In today’s world efficiency is valued. A Calgary group has mastered that with a structure that can serve four purposes.
The building located in the city’s downtown can be used for residential, office, light industry, or parking purposes.
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Kasian Architecture, Interior Design, and Planning put the seven-story building together along with 5468796 architecture and the City of Calgary.
James Brittain
Kasian Senior Project Architect Joanne Sparkes says the idea for the building came from trying to maximize its usefulness.
“When we consider concepts for a project, we aren’t just striving for environmental sustainability, but also social and economic sustainability to increase the overall resiliency of the building, and by extension the community it serves,” Spakes said. “So, our team felt that unless the project was designed to be resilient, a new parkade was at risk of becoming redundant very soon.”
James Brittain
So…how does it work?
“The parkade structure is open in plan, with columns assigned to the perimeter. This allows for parking under the current use and a variety of configurations for future stages. The key components in the building were sized to accommodate future light-industrial, residential and commercial occupancies, minimizing the scope of work required,” Sparkes explained.
“In contrast to the typical parkade structure, the parking levels above the Platform Innovation Centre are sloped on a 1-2% shallow incline. The shallow slope serves as a ‘flat’ floor within acceptable tolerances for class B or C office space, or light industrial space. The gradual incline also creates an ‘infinite’ floor plate, allowing for flexibility of use in the future.”
James Brittain
And while they planned for several different uses, Sparkes says there have already been events in the space they weren’t expecting.
“We have already seen and experienced uses that were not originally conceived at the design stage, including wedding photos, impromptu car shows.”