Office: D'Arcy Jones Architects | ArchDaily

Double Header House / D'Arcy Jones Architects

Valeria Silva — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 06:00:00 +0000

The Double Header house is a unique take on the main house and secondary suite type that has become common in Canada's major cities. Rather than placing the suite in the basement, the Double Header house comprises two mirrored volumes connected by a simple, functional spine. This building is clad with galvanized steel shells, which open like metallic flowers to the front and back yards equally, creating a compact new housing type that allows a regular urban lot to accommodate six to eight people or three generations of one family. The double-headed form was primarily generated in response to the zoning regulations requiring secondary suites to be attached to the main house. The smaller suite is apartment-like, ideal for the two grandparents, while the larger suite houses their adult children and two grandkids. This multi-generation arrangement allows the grandparents to live close to the city centre with their adult children to provide childcare for their grandkids while enabling them to age in place with the close assistance of their family.

House With Big Shingles / D'Arcy Jones Architects

Hadir Al Koshta — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Site - This project is in Sandy Cove, a small West Vancouver neighborhood in a mature coastal rainforest filled with mature Douglas fir and Western red cedar trees. The unique site has three "front" yards, facing Cypress Mountain to the north, Burrard Inlet to the south, and Lighthouse Park to the west. The site's complex geography is cradled by rough, lichen-covered granite. This house replaces a distinctive Ron Thom-designed house that was as sharp and ragged as the site with an innovative hexagonal grid inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian floor plans. Unfortunately, the previous house from the 1960s was demolished after a contentious battle between heritage preservationists, local politicians, and land speculators.

Pearl Block / D'Arcy Jones Architects

Hadir Al Koshta — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Pearl Block is a compact cluster of six rowhouses. Staggered in response to the unusual triangular site, the building's form modifies a common housing type to provide each resident with a generous outlook of the street. This neighbourly gesture preserves the privacy of the surrounding homes and enhances the privacy afforded to each Pearl Block unit. The project brief was to create 4–6 new rowhouses for young families who appreciate the qualities of single-family homes, but are also interested in living more compactly and sustainably. These desires, along with the ever-increasing cost of real estate, provide an incentive to explore an architectural type in search of an ideal scale for family homes in the city.

Split Level House / D'Arcy Jones Architects

Andreas Luco — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 16:00:00 +0000

This project gutted and re-built a classic split-level house from the early 1980's. A long angular space was completely opened up, to create an airy sense of volume not possible in Vancouver anymore, since high ceilings heights are not allowed in any new house. Constricted stairs, dropped ceilings and non load-bearing walls between the living areas were removed, but the existing exterior shape of the house was not changed or enlarged. Old window locations were preserved to leave the house’s structure almost completely intact, and then elongated to let more light in. Since the house is on a prominent corner site, corner windows were added to create panoramic views out into the established neighbourhood.

Studio Three / D'Arcy Jones Architects

Martita Vial della Maggiora — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 17:00:00 +0000

This renovation focused on building a sculptural light-filled liner inside a 106 year old space.

Okada Marshall House / D'Arcy Jones Architects

Pilar Caballero — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 08:00:00 +0000

This craggy H-shaped house wraps around itself to contain two inner courtyards. All of the house’s windows and doors point toward ancient moss-covered rocks or the Pacific Ocean, creating lively contrasts as one moves through the house. Low-slung and modest, the house has a constant parapet height, to emphasize and visually contain the undulating concrete and courtyard screen that is scribed to the existing contours of the rock. Externally the form of the house is quiet and solid, belying an inner complexity and spatial variety in plan. The house is a comprehensive tribute to wood: for its efficient and ambitious engineered wood structure, for its delicate yet robust courtyard screening, and for its hard-wearing traditional board and batten cladding that will last hundreds of years. The absolute minimum number of 2x6 light-wood frame shear walls were sculpted and carved to allow for large window and doors in all spaces. Soaring engineered LVL beams (laminated veneer lumber) were pushed to their limit, spanning more than 30’ without posts to hold up an outdoor dining roof, to define natural outdoor courtyard areas, and to make a typically generic parking area into a well-composed and inviting outdoor “room”.

480 House / D’Arcy Jones Architecture

Cristobal Rojas — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 15:00:00 +0000

When the project started, this 105-year old house on a narrow 25’ wide lot had been an unheated and neglected shelter for an elderly occupant. It was overrun with rats and was almost tipping over sideways. The new owners met D’Arcy Jones on the street at a real estate open-house, when he was considering buying it as a new of office for his practice. The cost to restore the house seemed too high, so D’Arcy declined to make an offer on the property. A few days later the new owners tracked him down via the web, and asked if his office could modernize the house. The architects rolled up their sleeves, ate their words, and got to work.

430 House / D’Arcy Jones Architecture

Karen Valenzuela — Thu, 27 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This renovation of a 1981 Vancouver Special on a 33 foot wide lot retained the entire foundation and structure of the house.

Island House / D'Arcy Jones

Amber P — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This project was designed as a vacation house for an extended family. Three concrete and glass pavilions are linked with a large heavy-timber roof, connecting the volumes with a breezeway and 6'-0" deep overhangs. The elevation of the house facing the ocean is a continuous wall of full height glass doors, high on a steep bank above the beach. Nestled between a damp forest and a tangle of blackberry-bushes, the house was conceived as a single-level vacation and retirement house, appropriate for aging clients and their young extended family.