American Architecture Prize Firm of the Year | 2017 Submission PFS STUDIO PFS STUDIO PLANNING | URBAN DESIGN | LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE 1777 West 3rd Avenue Vancouver BC V6J 1K7, Canada T 604.736.5168 | [email protected] www.pfsstudio.com Contents Firm Profile 5 Sustainability 6 Work Highlights 9 Leadership 52 Selected Recent Press Coverage 58 Selected Recent Lectures 63 Awards List 68 Selected Client List 89 Selected Project List 90 Firm Profile PFS Studio is a leading planning, urban design, and landscape architecture firm based in Vancouver, BC. Their international practice undertakes projects both for the public and private sectors throughout Canada, the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia and China. Over the past 30 years, the firm has received numerous awards, including more CSLA awards in the history of the Society than any other firm in Canada. This is a testament to the firm’s commitment to exemplary planning and design, demonstrating its ability to create iconic, memorable and engaging public spaces. With offices in both Vancouver and Shanghai, PFS Studio has consistently delivered many of the best known and celebrated open space projects in a variety of jurisdictions around the world. The professionals in these highly charged and creative offices are very experienced in all aspects of planning and design. Together with their award winning approach to creating exciting and inspirational landscapes, their commitment to environmentally intelligent solutions, often within ambitious sustainability frameworks including LEED, has placed PFS Studio at the very top of their profession. PFS Studio has been involved in many large scale planning and urban design projects, ranging from the preparation of detailed design guidelines to more comprehensive planning that addresses community visions and long term policies. In every case, the design team has worked closely with the community and municipal staff to strike a balance between the interests of development agencies and the objectives of the community. The firm is well recognized for working with clients and communities to realize their visions and aspirations. The firm’s comprehensive portfolio of work demonstrates its success in completing projects that have faced a high degree of complexity in both process and approvals. It confirms PFS Studio’s commitment to innovation, technical advancement and cost effective design solutions. PFS Studio is also committed to incorporating best practices for achieving sustainability in its work and the firm has many LEED® certified professionals on staff, and is adept with SITES and One Planet Comunity frameworks among others. PFS Studio is proud of its many projects that have been taken from conceptual design through to constructed work. The firm is recognized as a leader in constuction detailing and over the years has seen much of its detail work replicated by others. The knowledge gained from research, construction detailing and management always informs the next round of design for the performance of materials and details, for costing and specifications, and for the experiential qualities of scale, comfort, and beauty. PFS Studio’s built works have garnered many design awards for landscape architecture and urban design and have been published in many books and design journals internationally. PFS STUDIO | 5 Sustainability Sustainable landscapes are inherent in PFS Studio’s practice and the firm has demonstrated leadership in this important consideration in numerous projects from the conceptual phase of the process through to lifecycle of design components and energy efficiency considerations. PFS designs sustainable landscapes and public urban realms through an integrated approach as promoted by LEED®. Whether or not a client expresses the desire to pursue specific criteria stipulated by LEED®, PFS makes a practice of incorporating environmentally sound elements whenever possible to ensure that our design and construction work is integrated through each phase of the project from inception to successful completion. PFS’s work has explored many aspects of sustainability, including management of conservation areas for recreational use, watercourse protection and stewardship, surface stormwater retention and biofiltration, utilization of grey water, and strategies to reduce impermeable surfaces. Members of the firm have been part of design charrettes and competitions that have explored opportunities to address sustainability in the development of large-scale mixed-use projects, including the Southeast False Creek lands in the City of Vancouver and the Burnaby Mountain Community adjacent to Simon Fraser University, now UniverCity, in Burnaby. Sustainability in Projects The firm has many innovative sustainable projects in its portfolio. PFS has recently completed Telus Garden, Canada’s first office tower to be certified LEED® Platinum under the new standards. It is one of the most environmentally friendly projects in the City of Vancouver. Currently PFS Studio is pursuing Sustainable SITES for UBC Library Gardens and Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre. Once completed it will be the first Sustainable SITES project in Canada. Sherbourne Common on the downtown Toronto waterfront is the first LEED® certified park in Canada. It is the first Canadian park to integrate a UV purification facility for neighbourhood-wide stormwater treatment. Once collected and UV treated, a thin veil of purified water cascades down three 9 metre tall sculptures titled, “Light Shower’s. The water then passes through a biofiltration bed planted with aquatic grasses and is directed into a 240 metre long water channel. As the water travels down the channel and reaches the centre of the park it meanders through a zinc-clad jewel-like pavilion and ultimately is discharged into Lake Ontario. 6 | PFS STUDIO PFS Studio was a key member of a multi-disciplinary team of architects and engineers that created the winning scheme for a high profile, international urban design competition for a new highly sustainable community, Blatchford Community, in the heart of Edmonton. Planning for the new community strove to be sustainable on every front and to establish new standards for stormwater management, transportation network, energy use, architecture, social sustainability, and urban agriculture. PFS Studio created the public open space masterplan, comprised of a series of nine interconnected neighbourhoods for Zibi, a newly planned sustainable community situated on Chaudière Island and former Domtar Lands between Ottawa, Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec. Zibi, one of the largest urban redevelopment opportunities in the National Capital Region, is based upon a “One Planet Community” framework that guides sustainability and eco-friendly planning through a series of key design principles to create a project specific mandate. Cultural, Social, and Environmental Sustainability The understanding of sustainabiity at the basis of the firm’s approach extends well beyond conventional pursuits in energy and material efficiency. An example of this holistic approach is demonstrated in Landsdowne Park, with a diverse series of strategies expressing a comprehensive commitment to sustainability seamlessly integrated within the park design and program. The park includes preservation of two significant heritage buildings. The Aberdeen Pavilion remains the ‘jewel at the heart of the park’ and the great ‘tent’ for flexible indoor programming. New thresholds and surrounding plazas on all sides serve to orientate all spaces on site through visual connection with the Pavilion. The adaptive reuse of the Horticulture Building includes a teaching kitchen and community hall, and now houses City offices to facilitate the rich schedule of events which has returned to the site. A series of interpretive elements embed stories of the Algonquin People on the site. The paving of the Square is inspired by an ash basketry pattern, a teaching circle in the Children’s Garden incorporates seating in the colours of the medicine wheel and is surrounded by text representing the Seven Grandfather Teachings and trees, and ethnobotanical plantings are incorporated in the demonstrations gardens and in planting palettes throughout the park. SUSTAINABILITY | 7 The park is designed with universal accessibility measures embedded in all aspects of its design including clear travel paths, seating with backs, tactile wayfinding paving, and multi-lingual signage, including Anishinaabemowin and braille. Two significant integrated public art pieces, Moving Surfaces and Uplift, provide additional animation to the park and convey stories about the significance of water to the site and its relationship to the Canal. The programmable screen of Moving Surfaces can be used for curated visual arts as part of the City arts program. The park design integrates sustainable objectives by retaining a 100-year storm discharge within the shallow basin of the Great Lawn; user activated water for children’s play on the plaza is captured for overnight irrigation of the lawn and surrounding plantings; LED lighting with a sophisticated control system, and highly efficient irrigation are used throughout the park; robust, handsome, durable materials and finishes are employed throughout; runoff from the Horticulture roof is captured for reuse in the demonstration gardens; a greatly expanded tree canopy across the site, with substantial soil volumes in urban locations, provides pollution mitigation, with shade and habitat creation; and the integration