Project: 9th Avenue Parkade + Innovation Centre
Award: Transport, Gold, 2022
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Architect: 5468796 Architecture + Kasian Architecture, Interior Design and Planning
Client: Calgary Municipal Land Corporation and the Calgary Parking Authority
This pill-shaped multi-storey parkade is so much more than just a car park, having been creatively designed to ensure that in the future it can be adapted in to something else. Its exterior – created from more than 1,000 vertical aluminium pipes - can be removed, reused and recycled in years to come. The city of Calgary, predicting the building’s eventual obsolescence, wanted to ensure it could in future be easily converted in to an office, light industrial or residential building. As a result, ceiling heights are one and half times higher than a traditional multi-storey, while a central atrium allows natural light to flood throughout the building. Currently home to over 500 parking spaces located over seven storeys, plus a two-floor innovation centre, it also features a basketball court, café and exhibition space on the ground floor.
Design highlights
The design team overcame the challenge of an underground light rail tunnel which bisects the site and creates an unbuildable zone down the centre of the site, by building in the form of an elliptical helix which spans the undevelopable area, thus recapturing much of the lost land value. Spherical bollards, coloured concrete patterns on the floor, and a traffic mirror ceiling make for a lively and vibrant central courtyard.
Photo credit: RedPoint Media, James Brittain
- LEAD ARCHITECTS: Johanna Hurme, Sasa Radulovic
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS: Entuitive
MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS: Smith+Andersen
CIVIL ENGINEERING: Aplin Martin
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Scatliff Miller Murray