• A modern architectural house with three wings labeled 'Utilize,' 'Gather,' and 'Rest,' connected by glass corridors, featuring a central courtyard with greenery.
  • A modern single-story house with a stone chimney, surrounded by a well-maintained lawn, with trees and a blue sky with scattered clouds overhead.

Havenwood Residence

Multi-family Residential
Colwood, BC // Rezoning

Design Challenge: To provide genuinely affordable rental housing that lowers rents for its residents, while achieving a distinct architectural expression that still respects a sensitive context of surrounding forest, creeks, and established sight lines. The challenge was to make the building's form and materials feel unique yet complementary to their setting, while carving out generous outdoor space for the wider community.

Our Solution: The form steps back from the site's forest, creeks, and existing sight lines, using those features to shape a building that reads as sculptural rather than incidental. Materials are chosen to stand apart while staying in conversation with the natural surroundings. Rather than closing off the landscape, the design improves access to the site's best features and returns the natural ground plane to residents and the community at large. The result is affordable rental housing that gives more to its setting than it takes.