When it came to the tallest skyscraper in Calgary and an innovative condo project, the competition was so fierce that the Mayor’s Urban Design Awards had to give an extra prize.
The City of Calgary commissioned an extra bronze statue in the Urban Architecture category from Canmore artist Tony Bloom so it could honour The Bow — a building that has redefined Calgary’s skyline — as well as Olive, a townhome complex by Avi Urban in The Bridges that is helping to redefine how people can live and work in one space.
This year, 11 Mayor’s Urban Design Awards were presented in a total of 10 categories at a recent ceremony at SAIT Polytechnic.
“The jury was adamant that in Urban Architecture, they would give two winners,” says David Down, a senior city architect and urban designer who runs the awards program that is held every two years.
“They liked the fact that the two winners represented two ends of the design industry. One was the Bow and the other was Olive.”
The jury appreciated Olive for being a type of architecture that isn’t yet prevalent in Calgary. It offers live/work units that involve townhomes above office space, allowing people to reside above their businesses.
“It addressed this idea about new kinds of multi-family in the inner city and they liked that a lot,” says Down.
Olive was designed by Sturgess Architecture and built by Avi Urban, the multi-family division of Homes by Avi. It was one of the first buildings in The Bridges, a city-led redevelopment of the land once occupied by the demolished General Hospital in the inner-city community of Bridgeland.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi is an admirer of the Olive development.
“I love that building. I very nearly bought a unit in there before it was done,” he says.
“The only reason I didn’t buy it was because it was slightly outside of my price range at the time — and, of course, I’m completely kicking myself. Once the building was completed, that same unit was put on the market for almost double what I could have gotten it for a year and a half earlier.”
It’s not just a great real estate deal, it’s the real deal for new ways of living and working, says Nenshi.
“It’s an extraordinary building,” he says. “The really innovative part of it is the live/work aspect of it, as well as the actual design of the units. They’re like townhouses in a condominium complex.
“It’s very unique and I’m a huge, huge fan of it. It was very innovative for the time and I’d like to see more of it.”
The Bow, which is within eyesight of Olive, is an indisputable Calgary landmark.
“This jury felt it set a new bar for highrise office architecture in Calgary, as well as the attention to detail in the public realm and the quality of the public art,” says Down.
The jury was made up of five people — no one from the City of Calgary — including representatives from architecture, landscape architecture, media, public art, and this year, a doctor who works in public health.
For the full story by Claire Young in the Calgary Herald, click here.