Pendrell is a residential tower inspired by the modernist vocabulary of Vancouver’s 1960s towers and its Westcoast maritime context. Acting as a backdrop to the vibrant seawall waterfront at the entry to Stanley Park, Pendrell brings much needed purpose-built rental to the West End – one of Vancouver’s most populated neighbourhoods and home to the city’s LGBTQ+ community.
Similar in scale to buildings from the 1950s-1970s, Pendrell’s design is split into two blocks, animated with traditional West End architectural elements including concrete construction, ribbon windows and landscaped setbacks. A unifying steel frame ties these elements together, recalling cargo ships anchored in the nearby harbour. The frame geometry is further punctuated with wooden-slatted privacy screens.
The development has been designed to reduce impact on private views and minimize shadowing on public open space. View corridors to neighbouring parks are carefully preserved, and the western block shifts visibly to the south, maintaining the northern neighbour’s panoramic English Bay views.
Providing a distinctive frontage and visual extension of public realm, ground-level landscaping includes a distinctive laneway activation to provide beach access and car share to residents. A Japanese Zen Garden reinterprets the traditional West End garden with an Asian influence, complementing the clean, modern aesthetic of the architecture. A public art piece, “Still Standing” by artist Samuel Roy-Bois, depicts a fossilized homage to the cedar shake cottages that once populated the West End 100 Years ago, and screens a separate wellness pavilion for privacy.
Fulfilling an important social sustainability objective in a rental-heavy, low-vacancy neighbourhood, Pendrell introduces 173 new market rental units with 26 units secured as affordable rentals. The unit mix ranges from studio to three-bedroom apartments; approximately half of all units comprising family-sized, two- or three-bedroom units.
A holistic approach to sustainability also led to the integration of an innovative district energy feature. Pendrell establishes a district energy node as the primary energy source for a new hot water network, designed to grow with demand and to serve an area of downtown Vancouver that is currently outside of Central Heat’s service area. The project’s focus on sustainability also extends to the provision of urban agriculture. As a multiple dwelling development, the roof terrace’s shared amenity provides urban agriculture to residents satisfying the City’s goals of encouraging food security and reducing our ecological footprint in a social, sustainable space.
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