Lee Penthouse DDes Research Vancouver, British Columbia 2024
What is Being Subverted?
1 Modernist stair design 2 Open plan offices 3 Office furniture 4 Flooring 5 Construction precision
Nonfiction Case Study Questions
Can a new interior be made from a kit of parts so it can be brought in and out easily and quickly? Can new interior fittings truly float in space, leaving more room for people and chairs? How can a new stair ennoble an older one without doing much design? Can imperfections be celebrated exaggeratedly? How can an interior feel open when it has more vertical than horizontal volume? How can phone privacy be created in a completely open space? How can a new interior respect a heritage building without mimicry?
Dictation
This project is a real commission for a client’s office space in the historic Lee Building where our studio practices. The client is our bookkeeper and part of the building’s ownership group. The scope of work updates and repairs an existing elevator penthouse lobby, utility room, and utility attic up on the roof of the seven-story building.
The Lee Building, started by Irish merchant Herbert Lee in 1911, was one of Vancouver’s first mixed-use buildings. Lee commissioned architects Stroud and Keith to design a building inspired by Chicago’s brick and terracotta architecture. Lee lived on the seventh floor with his family until the Royal Bank repossessed the building during the Great Depression. Vancouver’s building culture has always favoured renewal, so relatively few old buildings are left. The goal of this renovation was to celebrate old ways of building through contrast and emphasis. The project also sought to showcase the bookkeeper’s own workspace as a place of experimentation and ideas, articulating a nuanced stance on what reuse can achieve within a culture that prioritizes the new. This project creates architectural fullness through a process that curates as much as it invents.
Our client bought an older, smaller office six years ago. He and his partner are expecting a baby but want to continue living and working in the building. He can’t work from his one-bedroom apartment and wants to rent the mostly empty rooftop penthouse. The Lee Building will allow our client to share the penthouse space with the in-house handyman. Any alterations are limited to interior fittings that can be easily removed, and any use of the penthouse utility space must be created with “furniture.”
The space is tiny and is served by an existing concrete stair. Concrete beams between the two levels supported a massive water cistern for a gravity-pressure fire sprinkler system. The client’s brief requested an open-plan office that was airy and fresh. This is hard to achieve. This two-level space will never feel horizontally open because of its overall size and ceiling height, small windows, and dark stained clay tile walls on four sides.
We realized the space could at least be vertically expansive if we removed the cistern’s rotted plank floor. Instead of having four windows bring natural light into each level, the interior can be lit by eight. However, this new openness can only be preserved if the second level’s floor plane is transparent. The best we could come up with was a galvanized steel bar grate, commonly used for construction walkways, industrial stairs, and bridges. It is rarely used indoors because its gaps are meant to let rain through, not light. Office chairs can roll on bar grating, though pens and pencils will fall through it. People will be visible from underneath, so if you can’t see their faces and sides, at least you can see their bottoms or tops.
To exaggerate how open the office is, the desk on the first level matches the size of the desk on the second level and is hung from the strong concrete beams once used to hold the much heavier water cistern. The concrete beams are the biggest asset in the space and the detail that gives the space its personality. Unlike many old/new renovations, the existing structure is put to work and not treated as a museum piece.
The spatial benefit of hanging a galvanized steel desk from the bar grate above is a free and open first level, with no desk legs cluttering the space. The desk will not seem like furniture; it will appear integral to the second-floor floor.
A new plate steel stair replaces a ladder leading from the first level to the second. It will be made by almost “melting” new raw steel pieces onto the existing rough concrete stair below, effectively using it as a mould. Since the new stair design mimics the old stairs in every dimension, darker hot-rolled steel will be used to confuse the timeline. The renovation will be contemporary with the bar grate floor and working desk, but it will hopefully seem older because the materials suggest different eras.
Super Short Criticisms
D’Arcy If you want to see in every direction you risk being seen from every direction.
Kelsey Bar grate floor is great (or grate) for the people above.
Jonny Cling clang all day.
Jesse Bar grate floor is not great (or grate) for the people above.
Alex 9(?) flights of stairs to the toilet.
Mary Very fun…until you actually have to work up there.
Shane “This is fine” manifest as a spatial condition.
Breana Goose’s worst nightmare.
This exploration is part of an ongoing speculative project that began as doctoral research. The collaborative case studies test ideas that will inform future built work. A new design methodology using unconventional techniques explores how to delay aesthetics and form in a search for utility-driven, human-focused projects. Architecture’s status quo is questioned through an optimistic but contrarian lens.
