Teeple Architects presents residential development reminiscent of Swiss cheese
Offering a provocative first impression, OpArt’s two ten-storey towers atop a podium playfully appear as random bubbles of Swiss cheese. With a closer look, designer Stephen Teeple’s bold architectural move replaces the traditional curtain wall with a pre-cast envelope featuring perforations of various sizes in a seemingly random pattern.
Stained in bright white, OpArt’s jigsaw facade cleans up a rugged footprint in a former industrial site at the top of Kerr Village and becomes the catalyst for Oakville’s revitalisation plan for this historic area. Balconies pop in and out of the structure to articulate movement. Framed in white concrete and glass, the variation of lines and patterns obscures stacking, provides individuality to units and adds a dynamic new vertical texture to the City of Oakville.
“We saw this as an opportunity to put the spirit back into residential architecture,” says Stephen Teeple. “White is the ideal field for this type of visual expression because it allows for subtle colouration of glazing and black volumes to simultaneously pop.” Teeple’s artful exploration of precast concrete yields punched openings that provide a more sustainable solution to the common glass curtain wall.
"People in Oakville are looking for something that’s one of a kind, they have an affinity for design and are ready for this," says developer Jim Neilas of Neilas Inc., who has spent most of his life in condos and is about to move in to his pioneering project CUBE on College Street. “It’s thinking less about what is in a brochure and more about what people actually want to see when they come home every day.”
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