barry johns (architecture) limited » Projects

ECCA Airport Lands Competition

admin — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 03:54:41 +0000

Perkins & Will (Vancouver) with Group2 Architecture Engineering (Edmonton) has won a design competition as the only Canadian team against an international short list for the Edmonton City Centre Airport Lands Masterplan Redevelopment. The team’s concept for a future mixed use sustainable community for 30,000 residents incorporates deep well geothermal and biomass technologies to provide up to 20MW of renewable energy to service the site plus several other institutional buildings around the downtown in a district heating system that takes the development beyond carbon neutral, with a total non reliance on fossil fuels. Concepts include 50% open space and a regional park completing a 20 km river to river loop around Edmonton, a working lake, and urban agriculture on a large scale amidst a transit oriented development, a new town centre with retail and cultural amenities and critically important NAIT expansion. Over-arching these strategies, the living memory of Blatchford Field as the first registered air harbor in the Commonwealth is celebrated by preserving and re-purposing 3 existing heritage hangars and the airport control tower, organizing the plan around the existing runways and using the names of distinguished air pioneers to name all public open spaces, parks, festival plazas, streets and neighborhoods. Follow the links at www.edmonton.ca/ccr to see the five submissions.

Centre for Physical Activity and Wellness (PAW)

admin — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 03:32:52 +0000

In 1998, the University of Alberta and the Faculty of Physical Education first reviewed the facility condition and functional space issues of its Van Vliet Centre – a complex of several awkwardly connected buildings. In 2004, Barry Johns (Architecture) Limited was engaged to complete a master plan. BJ(A)L and its successor firm Group2 Architecture Engineering later revised the Master Plan with the intent to explore the need for academic, research and fitness space, re-programming the complex into a centre for Physical Activity and Wellness (PAW).

The plan in its current preliminary stage, envisions an interior, daylighted student concourse to be created between the varsity gymnasium and the east academic wing on an existing windswept exterior plaza, providing a major social centre for the complex. The new concourse is also a circulation backbone to all components including a new fitness centre, climbing centre and student service spaces.

The Fitness Centre and Climbing Centre will be new construction. Renovation work is extensive and will be integrated with the new construction to create the overall image of a new facility. Recognizing the central and high profile location of the site, the new PAW Centre will provide a striking architectural presence at the corner of 87th Avenue and 114 Street with its glowing translucent, ice like mountain climbing centre envelope. This corner is widely recognized as both a crossroads between the Health Sciences District and what will become the new main north entry to the University of Alberta campus.

In keeping with University goals and procedures, the PAW Centre will be designed to minimize its carbon footprint and incorporate sustainable design principles according to LEED, with capital and operating cost neutral or cost saving solutions as the primary goal.

Innisfail Public Library

barry — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:38:28 +0000

A new library and seniors centre designed with Group2 Architecture Engineering provides expanded public services and gathering space for a growing community. With lifelong learning as its focus, programs and technology are offered for adults and seniors, school groups, children, teens and families.

Situated within an idyllic birch and aspen forest on a hill adjacent to a residential neighborhood and overlooking downtown Innisfail; a former logging road bisecting the site becomes the project footprint while the main circulation spine through the building is maintained as a connecting path to the town.

The spatial sequence along this spine ensures that the site is revealed through the building one frame at a time.

The building’s green roof, its defining element, is an undulating series of folded planes and overhangs billowing and tent like, supported by wood pegs that slope in seemingly random directions like the trees in the forest, to define space that is both intimate and expansive, transparent and oriented to the tree-tops and the intensely bright prairie sky.

The folds track the sun – opening up to the cooler southeast sky and reducing down to small perimeter clerestories to mitigate west solar gain. Combined with displacement ventilation, operable windows, natural finishes and water reducing fixtures, the building is integrated with its surroundings, maximizing daylight and providing ambient comfort through a LEED^® Gold climateologically responsive shelter.