Unlike the flat, sterile tracts of suburban land across North America where builders crank out cookie-cutter houses, the rocky outcrops and deep forests of the Pacific Northwest prove both challenging and inspiring for Vancouver architects.

The West Coast Modern style first appeared in Vancouver in the 1930s. It was developed from a modernist approach to suburban living in a rainforest climate. Architects drew inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, the International Style, and Japanese residential design. They incorporated these elements into designs that responded to the climate, terrain and rainforest setting in which they worked. The result was a style with a close relationship to their individual sites.

In response to our site, to achieve a high efficiency 6-story building form, we opted for a courtyard typology. On Grover, the building has two wings embracing an inner courtyard. This typology allowed us to explore and employ passive strategies for daylighting, ventilation, thermal and envelope performance, in order to meet our greater responsibility to the environment while creating a poetic response to the context.

With the floorplates resolved, our next challenge was to optimize the individual floor plans. Wood frame buildings, in general, offer more floor space to home buyers, but because of construction methods, it is often inefficient or wasted space when contrasted with typical concrete homes. Our goal was to realise concrete value in a woodframe building through material efficiency.

Starting with an “open plan” concept that removed walls to maximize utility in homes with a smaller footprint, the interior architecture follows a clear philosophy: optimize function. And while we’ve reduced the form down to the essentials like concrete floor plans, we’ve ensured the interior space remains spacious, fluid, flexible, susceptible to change, and open to interaction. And in the spirit of West Coast design, the homes at Söenhause feature large windows, and expansive decks with overhangs and solar screens to bring the outdoors in.

To document this design process, we engaged Open Gate Architectural Scale Models to develop a deconstructed model of our typical 1BR home. Crafting the deconstruction model involved over 300 hours of meticulous handiwork by the team Open Gate Architectural Scale Models. Using wood as the primary material not only reflected our product, but also our commitment to sustainable buildings.

Open Gate created multiple 3D demo models, allowing us to visualize the perfect fit for the stage at Outpost. With each cable meticulously positioned, we ensured vertical alignment and uniform spacing, resulting in a visually stunning display that ignites imagination and expands on Wright’s legacy celebrating the development of cities featuring affordable and practical, yet beautiful, homes.

While we can never make the home big enough, or the sense of relationship between exterior, interior and environment close enough, we can focus on bringing out the building’s inherent modernist qualities and put it on display.

The result is simple, elegant wood frame homes — a calm refuge of clean lines and natural materials to retreat to in a busy everyday life — the idealized depiction of a good life on the West Coast.