studio kimiis inc. | sk architects

The proposed artwork is a narrative into the history of the New Fort Site, and the East Enlisted Mens’ Barracks. It serves to protect Toronto’s military legacy by preserving the memories of the soldiers who trained and resided at the garrison, who offered their lives to their country and in doing so, played a significant role in Toronto’s development.

 

“Droplet”: The final pavilion and trellis symbolizes the importance of water, paying tribute to the area’s distinctive ravine system and the community activities in and around the area. It highlights the important connection with the site’s history and its natural setting, and its role in shaping both the physical and social fabrics of the region.

The openings in the GFRC panels give way to a galaxy blue anodized aluminum material below. As the viewer moves past and around the pavilion, different wavelengths of light are reflected back to the audience. The result is an ever-changing colour gradient with iridescent highlights that create the illusion of moving water and running river streams. The trellis also shares the same formal characteristics of the GFRC facade providing seating and shading opportunities where residents and visitors can rejoice in the skating activities or enjoy the scenery of the reflective pool and overall park.

The project sees the adaptive reuse of a significant piece of Canadian aviation heritage, transforming the original warehouses and adding new infill extensions to become the educational spaces for Centennial College’s Aerospace and Aviation program.

The interior offices and classroom spaces feature a sensitive mix of original and new materials, allowing the historical character to express itself.

Building Design by MJMA & Stantec

Photo Credit: Scott Norsworthy

This urban infill project is a playful take on the side-by-side typology. The two volumes are offset from each other to maximize sun exposure and privacy, while the material explorations celebrate the neighbourhood’s fabric and identity.

This series of homes brings unique identity to a new development that is currently in the rezoning and planning stages. Playing with contemporary rooflines, the multiple designs offer opportunities for harnessing light into the interior spaces, as well as providing ample area for the addition of solar panels while bringing variety to this newly proposed subdivision.

Nestled between two rivers, community parks, and commercial corridors, the project brings urban infill to a small municipality in need of new growth and modern housing typologies. Providing semi-detached homes and rental townhomes with a focus on affordability and accessibility, this development aims to appeal to a wide variety of community members. The townhomes feature fully accessible rental units, as well as units with easy accessibility retrofit options, allowing for tenant variety and future-proofing to become key components of the design.

This renovation to a 1950s narrow single family home took the compartmentalized layout and modernized it. Desiring a space that allowed the young family to transition seamlessly from work to play, flexibility and simplicity is achieved through the open floor plan, providing unobstructed views and flow from front to back with a central focus on the kitchen where much of daily life takes place.

The main floor is featured in CBC’s Workin’ Moms, seasons 6 & 7.

The aim of the outdoor pool pavilion was to establish a clear connection between the pool and the existing Fairgrounds Park. The changerooms are housed inside a row of separate volumes unified under a single sloped canopy, pierced by polycarbonate skylights that fill the interior spaces with daylight. The building’s volumes are topped by vertical cedar slats that match the canopy’s cedar lining and allow for air to flow through. The hallways between the changerooms ensure cross ventilation, as well as offer direct views into the pool deck, and in the opposite direction, to the park.

 

Building Design by MJMA

Photo Credit: Shai Gil

Coming Soon

Nestled between two wetlands and a shoreline notorious for flooding, this project becomes a challenge of constraints and boundaries. Working to find a balance between optimizing residential development while treading lightly on the land and respecting the importance of natural wetlands, the result is a dymanic subdivision proposal featuring long deep lots and multiple public connections to nature.

 

 

Forensic Services and Coroner’s Complex

The trillium begins to inform the ethos of our design. An important emblem and the official symbol for the province of Ontario, its strength lies in its “tri”part configuration; three pedals and three leaves that remain in perfect balance.

Paying tribute to the scientific realm that embodies the nature of activities undertaken at the FSCC, we begin to articulate the convergence of 7000+ molecules giving rise to a sculptural expression that transforms into a trillium-inspired artwork. Throughout its transformation, the process is paused and the molecules become frozen in time, captured and on display across the surface of the artwork.

The third component of our design presents the opportunity to generate another level of connectivity to the site by creating custom interlocking pavers that are linked in theme and in form to present a complete conceptual picture of the project. The varying densities of the pavers aggregate to form an abstracted image of three leaves, a vital element in completing the tri-part nature of the trillium. The addition of circular pavers together with the regions of controlled densities invite visitors into the space offering a level of comfort and privacy.

The final sculpture offers a place of comfort through discrete seating and shading opportunities where visitors can find relief in order to think and gather strength. It represents the coming together of the organizations within the FSCC, all of which are committed to fulfill their role in keeping Ontario’s communities safe while increasing Ontario’s ability to meet the demands of modern forensic investigations and criminal prosecutions.

For more project images

‘Urban Syncopation’ temporarily inhabits the existing spaces of the city with a performative skin that functions as a responsive, dynamic interface. As in the encryption of data that underlies the invisible orgware of the city’s systems, the patterned and faceted surface of this installation acts as an infrastructural device and living thickened topography that collects, transcodes, and re-transmits—in a rhythmic syncopated fashionthe collective ‘heartbeat’ of the city as this is interwoven with the reflected movements of its immediate environs. The work is a repository of urban information that renders visible the unseen traces of the city’s occupation while simultaneously weaving them into a new architectural and spatial network. The patterned surface of ‘Urban Syncopation’ is defined through a series of faceted, mirrored, and perforated “pixels” that are rhythmically arrayed according to rules that modulate their width, depth and triangulated surface topography.

Design Team:
Ila Berman, Mona El Khafif(Scaleshift)
Marcella Del Signore (X-Topia)
Steven Beites (Beites & Co.)

with:
Robert King (Coding and LED Technology),
Mengdie Zhang (Production), Shannon Wright, Kristin Beites.

Photo Credits: © 2016 Cris Ponce

Commissioner: Art Gallery of Alberta / Catherine Crowston

Curator: OPSYS / Pierre Bélanger

Organizers & Collaborators:OPSYS / Christopher Alton / Zannah Matson, Ecological Design Lab / Nina-Marie Lister, RVTR / Geoff Thun / Kathy Velikov / Colin Ripley, Hume Atelier / Kevin Hume /Genevieve Ennis Hume, M+B Studio / Troels Bruun / Luca Delisle, Blackwell Studio / Kelsey Blackwell, Steven Beites, Alessandra Lai, Massimo Benedetti, Michael Awad, Sam Gillis, Jacob Moginot, Olga Semenovych, Jane Zhang, Tiffany Dang, Hamed Bukhamseen.

Supporters: Canada Council for the Arts, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation, Ontario Association of Architects, The Walrus Foundation, MIT Press, RBC Foundation, IGEA SPA, Gloria Irene Taylor.

Events & Partnerships: Influentials.ca / Rich Bruggeman Contact: bruggeman@extraction.ca

Media @1partperbillion on twitter extractionempire on instagram extraction.ca on the web

Photo Credits: © 2016 OPSYS

Jetée (english translation Jetty): A structure, such as a pier, that projects into a body of water to influence the current or tide.

Similarly, our installation entitled Jetée begins to influence passing onlookers inward to an underutilized public space located off Confederation Boulevard in the Nation’s Capital. Each location – wall, upper and lower bench – clocks the movement of people through the space. Each piece represents a different time frame for experiencing the site and the surroundings. Inspired by the flow of water and the movement of people, the fluid wall and seating elements provide an area where visitors can rest and absorb the beautiful panoramic views of the Ottawa river, the Museum of Civilization and Parliament Hill. As visitors pass through the space throughout the evening, LEDs swell in a rising crescendo, representing a meeting of sort, an opportunity to reach out and greet the visitor.

Jetée (english translation Jetty): A structure, such as a pier, that projects into a body of water to influence the current or tide.

Similarly, our installation entitled Jetée begins to influence passing onlookers inward to an underutilized public space located off Confederation Boulevard in the Nation’s Capital. Each location – wall, upper and lower bench – clocks the movement of people through the space. Each piece represents a different time frame for experiencing the site and the surroundings. Inspired by the flow of water and the movement of people, the fluid wall and seating elements provide an area where visitors can rest and absorb the beautiful panoramic views of the Ottawa river, the Museum of Civilization and Parliament Hill. As visitors pass through the space throughout the evening, LEDs swell in a rising crescendo, representing a meeting of sort, an opportunity to reach out and greet the visito

This proposal navigates three thematic currents: history and culture, materiality, and discovery. The proposed artwork is viewed not as a culmination of a series of steps but as one instance, representative of a process. Broadly stated, the focus of our proposal is centered on ‘embedded materiality’: material and material process as applied to generative design and fabrication techniques.

The proposed artwork is a vertically-mounted, CNC-derived concrete surface that is representative of the Métis nation. Two species of wood – one local and one foreign – are used together to develop a distinct set of molds, rich in texture and grain, to form a distinct set of precast GFRC panels that are then mounted to the wall surface. The two woods, local and foreign – suggestive of the Aboriginals and the French voyageurs, respectively – undergo an iterative series of operations as part of a generative strategy that is based on the manipulation of the surface qualities of river water in different conditions.

Jetée (english translation Jetty): A structure, such as a pier, that projects into a body of water to influence the current or tide.

Similarly, our installation entitled Jetée begins to influence passing onlookers inward to an underutilized public space located off Confederation Boulevard in the Nation’s Capital. Each location – wall, upper and lower bench – clocks the movement of people through the space. Each piece represents a different time frame for experiencing the site and the surroundings. Inspired by the flow of water and the movement of people, the fluid wall and seating elements provide an area where visitors can rest and absorb the beautiful panoramic views of the Ottawa river, the Museum of Civilization and Parliament Hill. As visitors pass through the space throughout the evening, LEDs swell in a rising crescendo, representing a meeting of sort, an opportunity to reach out and greet the visitor.

Collaboration with Stacklab: Design and fabrication of an Oyster Road Case, CNC milled out of 2500 year-old redwood burl. Designed for the private event catering company Neptuno Oysters.

The artwork entitled “Captured Crescendo” is directly informed by the orchestral suites of “Daphnis et Chloé” a ballet developed by one of the great composers of the 20^th century, Maurice Ravel. More specifically, the design is centered on Part 1 of Ravel’s Suite No. 2 entitled “Lever du Jour” (Sunrise).

The final artwork, symbolic of the lines and spaces that form the basic components of music notation, is transformed through Ravel’s musical score where each module changes in size, position and scale, as it continually responds to the instruments, frequencies and melodic gestures performed throughout the ballet. The artwork is in unison with the music, beginning with a vivid illustration of sunrise and gradually increasing until it reaches an impassioned climax which gives rise to its formal identity.

Excelaura: symbolic of Olympic Excellence required in capturing gold (aurum, aura). Each wall is composed of several custom-designed, CNC-fabricated metal panels that use perforated tabbing to generate an image of a rippling Canadian flag to celebrate Canadian Winter Olympic achievements. Each circular tab is emblematic of the medals won by Canada’s most accomplished Winter Olympians and the staggering number of hours committed to training during the four years leading up to each Olympic competition

This proposal navigates three thematic currents: history and culture, materiality, and discovery. The proposed artwork is viewed not as a culmination of a series of steps but as one instance, representative of a process. Broadly stated, the focus of our proposal is centered on ‘embedded materiality’: material and material process as applied to generative design and fabrication techniques.

The proposed artwork is a vertically-mounted, CNC-derived concrete surface that symbolizes the coming together of two nations. Two species of wood – one local and one foreign – are used together to develop a distinct set of molds, rich in texture and grain, to form a distinct set of precast GFRC panels that are then mounted to the wall surface. The two woods, local and foreign – suggestive of the Aboriginals and the French voyageurs, respectively – undergo an iterative series of operations as part of a generative strategy that is based on the manipulation of the surface qualities of river water in different conditions.

The Weber Street Reconstruction and Widening project in the City of Kitchener looks to enhance the appearance of the Weber Street pedestrian bridge. Working alongside Montgomery Sisam Architects and Stantec, we designed and developed 215 GFRC panels, rich in texture and grain that pays tribute to four historic industries that existed in the vicinity of the project.

Excelaura: symbolic of Olympic Excellence required in capturing gold (aurum, aura). Each wall is composed of several custom-designed, CNC-fabricated metal panels that use perforated tabbing to generate an image of a rippling Canadian flag to celebrate Canadian Winter Olympic achievements. Each circular tab is emblematic of the medals won by Canada’s most accomplished Winter Olympians and the staggering number of hours committed to training during the four years leading up to each Olympic competition

Impeller is a flexible lightweight thermoplastic polymer surface composed of oscillating elements that operates in concert with information absorbed from the surroundings. This project is one in a series of speculative works that look to expand the definition of building systems through digital and material investigations. Activated apertures, flexible hinges respond to stimuli by slowly opening and closing, impelling air across its plastic membrane and filtering light through its surface.