Edmonton, Canada
10,880 SQM
2012
Client: Redbrick Real Estate Development Inc.
The project involves the “re-birth” of the existing Chancery Hall (a 1950’s government office building) in downtown Edmonton’s Churchill Square, seeing it converted from a state of energy inefficiency to one that is responsive to local climate. This adaptive reuse capitalizes on the materiality and embodied energy of the current structure. A load-bearing external skin is retained, and a new external layer is created as a second skin, with considerable environmental implications for the building.
Existing Chancery Hall
Site Plan
Front Lobby
In the redefinition of the building’s use, this second skin becomes a thermal envelope that mediates summer and winter conditions, and greatly increases access to fresh air throughout longer periods of the year. In the creation of a hotel and residential building, a new community is created in Churchill Square. Though concerned with the provision of healthy and inspired shelter for residents and hotel guests alike, the skin recognizes the importance of its siting, and offers the city a new sculpture, carved and formed through environmental calibration.
Exterior render