The Granville Gateway

COMMUNITY AND RECREATION CENTRE IN VANCOUVER, CANADA

Design Narita Reyes Ico

The Granville Gateway is an entrance into one of the most iconic areas of Vancouver, the Entertainment District. Young professional Narita Reyes Ico transforms two underutilized parking lots and their adjacent green spaces into a cohesive community and recreation centre. This floating forest hovers above the street and is an elevated escape from the city.

The first level of the Gateway is a multifunctional public plaza suitable for activities and events for every season. Above the plaza is a green space that connects the two pre-existing parks, creating its own natural landscape while it simultaneously conforms to the different contours of the urban fabric. The next layer of the Gateway contains the athletic facilities. These program spaces are flexible and can be repurposed to suit a wide range of activities so that the centre can adapt to future recreational trends and innovations, ensuring its longevity. The roof of the building is an outdoor recreational park. A grass field, outdoor court, community garden, and running track overlook the scenic view. All visitors are accommodated through the centre’s use of universal single-stall washrooms and change rooms. The building’s circulation has a variety of entry points and is composed of ramps and surfaces at slopes of five degrees or less to ensure everyone’s transportation needs are met. The façade of the building parallels its surrounding environment. Using concrete and glass, the building is visually incorporated into the city’s urban aesthetic, while the interior contrasts its surroundings by using wood and vegetation. The Gateway takes advantage of Vancouver’s mild climate and uses natural systems of heating and cooling to moderate the building’s

2021 IOC IPC IAKS AWARD FOR STUDENTS & YOUNG PROFESSIONALS BRONZE

temperature. The adjacent buildings provide shade throughout different times of the day and program spaces are organized based on the heating and cooling requirements of various activities. Natural air filtration is provided by the park’s vast amount of indoor and outdoor vegetation. The building’s roof spans a large space, making it ideal for rainwater collection, which can be used for plumbing and irrigation purposes.

The Granville Gateway is a space for equity and inclusion that supports its community with a wide range of activities for all ages and abilities. Through the rehabilitation and revitalization of disused space, future urban environments can foster a balanced relationship between nature and the city.

JURY VERDICT

The jury finds that The Granville Gateway successfully creates new life and space for physical activity in an underused parking facility in an urban setting. Taking advantage of a well-functioning public transport system that has left several under-utilised multi-storey car parks in downtown Vancouver, the project explores in a very innovative way the scope for converting former infrastructural facilities into a recreation and social centre. Thus the project reopens access to green spaces that have fallen into disuse due to a lack of accessibility, multifunctional plazas, pop-up spaces for events, and courts for different kinds of ball games, among others. The design execution demonstrates a very fine level of reading and interpreting an existing building structure and its surroundings and skill in turning an under-utilised and gloomy space into a vivid and translucent facility that provides a range of activities, green pocket parks and service facilities for the benefit of the local community.