The Construction Source

be wheelchair accessible, they had to achieve LEED for Homes certification, and they had to be in keeping with the built form the community. The resulting design, Michael says, was “contextually sensi- tive” and “constructed with du- rable low maintenance materi- als.” He credits the award victory to the array of challenges they had to overcome along the way. He clarifies, though, that the pursuit of LEED was not among those challenges. “Sustainability is now hardwired into all of our projects,” he says. “We rarely pursue LEED any- more, but only because we be- lieve LEED standards have just become part of best practice. That’s the path we’ve been go- ing down for a decade now.” Instead, Michael explains, the innovation came from the com- munity engagement. He recalls there being a lot of “community concern” surrounding the proj- ect in the early days. In order to assuage those concerns, he says the firm spent a lot of time hosting “incredibly open, trans- parent, and inclusive stakehold- er outreach programs.” “We had workshops where we really engaged the community, and we allowed the community to have a lot of direct influence,” he says. “They helped decide if buildings would be one storey or two storeys, what the materi- al palette would be. We figured out how each building would relate to the street based on the ideas of the people who ac- tually lived on each street. That process was very successful.” The process was so successful, in fact, that the City of Calgary Affordable Housing program has since replicated it on fu- ture projects. Michael says he and his team are proud to have helped them develop it. Michael is also proud of the way his team managed the “in- credibly tight budget” on that project, while still delivering homes that fit the character of the Rosedale high-end neigh- borhood. To pull that off, the firm devel- oped a set of highly-efficient standard interior plans that could be applied to every unit, so they could achieve some ef- ficiency of scale on the inside of the buildings. That allowed them to spend more money on the outside, and “completely customize every aspect of the exterior,” Michael says. “On the eight sites, on the out- side, there’s no repetition be- tween any of the buildings. We hand tailored each building to each street.” “That’s important because each street is different,” he adds. “If you take the time to walk up and down each street, you’ll see that there’s a character that’s unique to each street. It was im- portant for us to respect that.” Because the firm went to such great lengths to honour the character of the community, Michael believes the local com- munity has “warmed up” to the development. “We successfully addressed the majority of their original con- cerns,” he says. “We executed and followed through on what we said we were going to do in those original meetings.” The response from the client, meanwhile, was unreservedly enthusiastic. They were there to accept the MUDA award on FAAS Architecture’s behalf, and they have since awarded them another affordable housing project in Mount Pleasant. “They have been very support- ive and appreciative,” Michael says. “We’ve been able to build on that relationship, and we look forward to working with them on the next project.” THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA