The tower takes shape as two sets of overlapping cylinders, clad with prefabricated panels intended to evoke clouds. PROJECT The Butterfly + First Baptist Church Complex ARCHITECT Revery Architecture PHOTOS Ema Peter When you fly into Vancouver, the most prominent structure in the city’s forest of glass skyscrapers is now a 57-storey edifice known as the Butterfly. Designed by Revery Architecture, the luxury residential tower is the latest in a string of high-rises that pop out of the city’s backdrop of generic window-wall façades.  The Butterfly’s striking form evolved over many years, beginning with studies dating back to 2012. Revery principal Venelin Kokalov imagined several options, most of them suggesting a distinct pair of architectural forms in dialogue. Renderings and models of the early concepts relay a wealth of imagination that is sorely missing from much of the city’s contemporary architecture, as land economics, zoning issues, and the profit motive often compel a default into generic glass-and-steel towers. The earliest concepts look starkly different—some evoke the Ginger and Fred building in Prague (Frank Gehry with Vlado Milunić, 1996); others the Absolute Towers in Mississauga (MAD with Burka Varacalli Architects, 2009). But one consistent theme runs through the design evolution: a sense of two Rilkean solitudes, touching.  On each floor, semi-private sky gardens offer an outdoor place for residents to socialize. Client feedback, engineering studies, and simple pragmatics led to the final form: two sets of overlapping cylinders linked by a common breezeway and flanked by a rental apartment on one side and a restored church doubling as a community centre on the other. The contours of the floorplan are visually organic: evocative of human cells dividing. The roundness of the main massing is complemented by curvilinear balustrades that smoothly transform into the outer walls of each unit. It’s an eye-catching counterpoint to the orthogonality of the city’s built landscape. The two adjacent buildings—built, restored, and expanded as part of a density bonus arrangement with the city—help integrate this gargantuan structure with the lower-rise neighbourhood around it.  The Butterfly is a high-end, high-priced residential tower—one of the few typologies in which clients and communities are now willing to invest big money and resources in creative, visually astonishing architecture. That leads to a fundamental question: what is the public purpose of a luxury condo tower?  A public galleria joins the renovated First Baptist Church to the new building. Serving as a welcoming atrium, it allows for community access to the expanded church, including its daycare, full gymnasium, multi-purpose rooms, overnight emergency shelter, and community dining hall equipped with a commercial kitchen. Whatever one feels about the widening divide between the haves and have-nots in our big cities, this building—like its ilk—does serve several important public purposes. The most direct and quantifiable benefits are the two flanking buildings, also designed by Revery and part of the larger project. The seven-storey rental apartment provides a modest contribution to the city’s dearth of mid-priced housing. The superbly restored and seismically upgraded First Baptist Church has expanded into the area between the new tower and original church, and now offers the public a wider array of programming including a gymnasium, childcare facility, and areas for emergency shelter and counselling services for individuals in need.  The church’s Pinder Hall has been reimagined as a venue for church and community events including concerts, weddings, and cultural programming. The Butterfly’s character is largely defined by undulating precast concrete panels that wrap around the building. The architects describe the swooping lines as being inspired by clouds, but for this writer, the Butterfly evokes a 57-layer frosted cake towering above the city’s boxy skyline. Kokalov winces when he hears that impression, but it’s meant as a sincere compliment. Clouds are not universally welcome, but who doesn’t like cake?  Kokalov argues that its experiential quality is the building’s greatest distinction—most notably, the incorporation of an “outdoors”—not a balcony or deck, but an actual outdoor pathway—at all residential levels. For years the lead form-maker at Bing Thom Architects, Kokalov was responsible for much of the curvilinearity in the firm’s later works, including the 2019 Xiqu Centre opera house in Hong Kong. It’s easy to assume that his forte and focus would be pure aesthetic delight, but he avers that every sinuous curve has a practical rationale.  The breezeways provide residents with outdoor entries to their units—an unusual attribute for high-rise towers—and contribute to natural cooling, ventilation, and daylight in the suites. Defying the local tower-on-podium formula, the building’s façade falls almost straight to the ground. At street level, the building is indented with huge parabolic concavities. It’s an abrupt way to meet the street, but the fall is visually “broken” by a publicly accessible courtyard.   The tower’s layered, undulating volume is echoed in a soaring residential lobby, which includes developer Westbank’s signature—a bespoke Fazioli grand piano designed by the building’s architect. After passing through this courtyard, you enter the building via the usual indoor luxe foyer—complete with developer Westbank’s signature, an over-the-top hand-built grand piano designed by the architect. In this case, the piano’s baroquely sculpted legs are right in keeping with the architecture. But after taking the elevator up to the designated floor, you step out into what is technically “outdoors” and walk to your front door in a brief but bracing open-air transition.  The main entrance of every unit is accessed via a breezeway that runs from one side of the building to another. Unglazed and open to the outside, each breezeway is marked at one end with what the architects call (a little ambitiously) a “sky garden,” in most cases consisting of a sapling that will grow into a leafy tree in due course, God and strata maintenance willing. This incorporation of nature and fresh air transforms the condominium units into something akin to townhouses, albeit stacked exceptionally high.  The suites feature a custom counter with a sculptural folded form. Inside each unit, the space can be expanded and contracted and reconfigured visually—not literally—by the fact that the interior wall of the secondary bedroom is completely transparent, floor to ceiling. It’s unusual, and slightly unnerving, but undeniably exciting for any occupants who wish to maximize their views to the mountains and sea. The curved glass wall transforms the room into a private enclave by means of a curtain, futuristically activated by remote control. The visual delight of swooping curves is only tempered when it’s wholly impractical—the offender here being a massive built-in counter that serves to both anchor and divide the living-kitchen areas. It reads as a long, pliable slab that is “folded” into the middle in such a way that the counter itself transforms into its own horseshoe-shaped base, creating a narrow crevice in the middle of the countertop. I marvel at its beauty and uniqueness; I weep for whoever is assigned to clean out the crumbs and other culinary flotsam that will fall into that crevice.  A structure made of high-performance modular precast concrete structural ribs arcs over a swimming pool that bridges between the building’s main amenity space and the podium roof. The building’s high-priced architecture may well bring more to the table than density-bonus amenities. On a broader scale, these luxe dwellings may be just what is needed to help lure the affluent from their mansions. As wealthy residents and investors continue to seek out land-hogging detached homes, the Butterfly offers an alternate concept that maintains the psychological benefit of a dedicated outside entrance and an outrageously flexible interior space. Further over-the-top amenities add to the appeal. Prominent among these is a supremely gorgeous residents-only swimming pool, housed within ribs of concrete columns that curve and dovetail into beams.   The ultimate public purpose for the architecturally spectacular condo tower: its role as public art in the city. The units in any of these buildings are the private side of architecture’s Janus face, but its presence in the skyline and on the street is highly public. By contributing a newly striking visual ballast, the Butterfly has served its purpose as one of the age-old Seven Arts: defining a location, a community, and an era. Adele Weder is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect. Screenshot CLIENT Westbank Corporation, First Baptist Church | ARCHITECT TEAM Venelin Kokalov (MRAIC), Bing Thom (FRAIC, deceased 2016), Amirali Javidan, Nicole Hu, Shinobu Homma MRAIC, Bibi Fehr, Culum Osborne, Dustin Yee, Cody Loeffen, Kailey O’Farrell, Mark Melnichuk, Andrea Flynn, Jennifer Zhang, Daniel Gasser, Zhuoli Yang, Lisa Potopsingh | STRUCTURAL Glotman Simpson | MECHANICAL Introba | ELECTRICAL Nemetz & Associates, Inc. | LANDSCAPE SWA Group (Design) w/ Cornelia Oberlander & G|ALA – Gauthier & Associates Landscape Architecture, Inc. (Landscape Architect of Record) | INTERIORS Revery Architecture | CONTRACTOR Icon West Construction (new construction); The Haebler Group (heritage) | LIGHTING ARUP (Design) & Nemetz (Engineer of Record) | SUSTAINABILITY & ENERGY MODELlING Introba | BUILDING ENVELOPE RDH Building Science, Inc. | HERITAGE CONSERVATION Donald Luxton & Associates, Inc.| ACOUSTICS BKL Consultants Ltd. | TRAFFIC Bunt & Associates, Inc. | POOL Rockingham Pool Consulting, Inc. | FOUNTAIN Vincent Helton & Associates | WIND Gradient Wind Engineering, Inc. | WASTE CONSULTANT Target Zero Waste Consulting, Inc. | AREA 56,206 M2 | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION Spring 2025 ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 106 kWh/m2/year | WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 0.72 m3/m2/year As appeared in the June 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post The Butterfly takes flight: The Butterfly, Vancouver, BC appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Got a project that’s too contemporary for your client? Submit your conceptual works, images and ideas for global recognition and print publication in the 2025 Vision Awards! The clock is ticking — submit your work ahead of the Main Entry deadline on June 6th. Spiral staircases are famously beautiful but notoriously tricky to design, particularly in section. (Ask any architect who’s ever tried!) Still, the payoff is worth it. Beyond their visual appeal, spiral stairs can save space, guide circulation, and even become striking centerpieces within a building. The projects below prove there’s more than one way to embrace the twist, using unexpected materials and creative details to shape spaces in offices, schools, restaurants and parks. Even when things get complicated, these nine stairs make a strong case for taking the spiral route. OFFICE @ 63 By Sanjay Puri Architects, Navi Mumbai, India Popular Choice Winner, 12th Annual A+Awards, Commercial Interiors (<25,000 sq ft.) A curved steel staircase rises through the center of this workplace, connecting three levels in one continuous movement. Perforated and matte-finished, it feels both solid and light. Its underside, lined with warm tones, softens the otherwise industrial palette. Set within a tall, multipurpose space used for exhibitions and gatherings, the stair becomes a quiet focal point. Surrounded by concrete, cork, glass and exposed metal, it stands out not just as a route between floors, but as an element that gives the entire space rhythm and focus. La Maison de Beauté Carita, L’Oréal-Luxe By Le studio REV, Paris, France At the center of Carita’s Paris beauty house, part of the L’Oréal portfolio, a curved staircase rises through what was once a closed courtyard. The space is now topped with a tall glass roof that brings in soft, natural light. Pale marble, pink onyx and brushed metal set a quiet, polished tone. The staircase is kept light with floating steps and slim supports. It connects the levels clearly and efficiently, without blocking views through arched openings. In a building designed around care and detail, the stair adds just the right touch of structure and calm movement. Sjustjärnan, New Nordic Headquarters for E.On By Kanozi Arkitekter, Malmö, Sweden A wide, open staircase connects the floors of E.ON’s Malmö headquarters, rising through a central glass atrium that joins the two curved volumes of the building. Designed to encourage movement and connection between departments, the stair is placed at the heart of shared circulation. Materials are simple and natural: light wood treads, glass balustrades and metal accents, chosen to support the building’s focus on well-being and daylight. Generous landings allow for pauses and casual interaction, reinforcing the workplace’s flexible layout. With no assigned desks and no divided entrances, the building encourages a sense of togetherness and the staircase plays a clear role in making that daily flow visible and accessible. The Learning Center at Quest By KSM Architecture, Chennai, India Jury Winner, 12th Annual A+Awards, Architecture +Learning A vivid red spiral staircase rises along the facade of this learning center in Chennai, connecting the top floor library to a rooftop cafeteria and terrace. Attached to the exterior, the stair adds a moment of surprise to the otherwise calm, ribbed concrete surface. Made from perforated metal, its bright finish contrasts with the muted palette of the building while echoing the colorful window frames scattered across the elevation. Inside, a separate metal stair winds through a central atrium, linking five stacked classrooms and open learning spaces. Together, the staircases reflect the school’s focus on movement, openness and curiosity — key principles in its interest-based approach to education. Varee Valley Restaurant : Jungle Junction By NPDA studio, Thailand Inside this forest-side restaurant in Northeast Thailand, a white spiral staircase rises slowly through the center of a light-filled dining area. Designed for pause and perspective, the stair leads visitors to a rooftop platform that opens up to the surrounding trees. Built with slender steel members and a delicate footprint, it reflects the lightness of the overall structure and mirrors the verticality of nearby tree trunks. The stair wraps around a central cylindrical column that also serves as a rainwater drain and light shaft, drawing daylight into the heart of the space. The Opera Park By Cobe, Copenhagen, Denmark Jury Winner, Public Parks & Green Spaces, 12th Annual A+Awards At the heart of this new harbor front park in Copenhagen, a spiral staircase descends through the center of a circular greenhouse, wrapping gently around a subtropical garden. The stair connects the café at park level with an underground parking facility, guiding visitors down through layers of greenery. Slim metal railings trace its curve, while the surrounding glass enclosure creates the feeling of walking through an open-air terrarium. The park itself spans six themed gardens across a former industrial island, offering paths, ponds and planting from around the world. In this setting, the staircase becomes part of a wider idea: architecture that supports slow movement, seasonal change and a close connection to nature. Balmy Palmy By CplusC Architects + Builders, Sydney, Australia In this compact holiday home raised above a rocky slope, a yellow spiral staircase links the natural ground to the open-air platform above. Built from powder-coated steel, it curves tightly between tree trunks and timber posts, bringing a sharp contrast to the greens and browns of the site. The stair leads into an outdoor area that connects the home’s simple rooms, with views of the treetops, the bay and the sky shifting between the leaves. Designed to limit excavation and preserve the forest setting, the staircase plays a clear role in the project’s minimal footprint — serving as a key access point and everyday reminder of the landscape it rises from. Dental Clinic By IFAgroup, Gdańsk, Poland Jury Winner, Hospitals and Healthcare Centers, 12th Annual A+Awards Jury Winner,  Architecture +Health, 12th Annual A+Awards Photos by Hanna Połczyńska This dental clinic, once a granary, is organized around a wide spiral staircase that rises through its three-story foyer. Clad in warm wood, the stair connects waiting areas, dental offices and training spaces while giving the interior a clear center. It’s surrounded by concrete, brick and steel surfaces that reflect the building’s industrial past. Live piano music and soft lighting help create a calm atmosphere, while sound-absorbing materials keep the space quiet and focused. Envisioned as more than a circulation route, the stair shapes how people move, wait and gather inside. Concept WRRF Yixing (Water Resource Recovery Facility) By SUP Atelier of THAD, China Inside this water treatment facility, a spiral staircase sits next to a café and community area. Built from metal with clean, simple details, it leads visitors through spaces designed to educate the public about recycling and sustainability. Large windows around the stair offer clear views of the nearby farmland and waterways, connecting visitors with the natural setting. As part of the facility’s open, welcoming design, the staircase makes it easy to see and understand how wastewater is turned into clean water and renewable energy. Got a project that’s too contemporary for your client? Submit your conceptual works, images and ideas for global recognition and print publication in the 2025 Vision Awards! The clock is ticking — submit your work ahead of the Main Entry deadline on June 6th. Top image: The Learning Center at Quest by KSM Architecture, Chennai, India The post 9 (Somewhat) Unconventional Takes on The Beloved Spiral Staircase appeared first on Journal.

On a sunny spring morning in south London, Walworth Square offers a freshly minted moment of respite from the clamorous main road. Around a peculiar new war memorial (to which war? The tracksuited boy perched on a branch is not enlightening) new trees shiver in the breeze, while, beneath them, a man, seemingly the worse for wear, stares vacantly at his scruffy shoes. Another man with enormous shoulders emerges from a gym and begins to take selfies. Across the square, steps rise to the grand Victorian jumble of Walworth Town Hall, which hasn’t been a town hall since the mid-1960s. Now, thanks to a fire and the near-bankruptcy of local government, the building houses offices, a café and a community centre. The architect of this transformation, Feix&Merlin, has had to negotiate a problematic inheritance – a (minor) landmark, catastrophic fire damage, impecunious owners and angry locals – and knead it into shape. In this they have succeeded, but the shape that it has assumed will, through no fault of the architects, prove indigestible to some.  The kernel of the extant structure was built as a church vestry in 1865. It later became Southwark Town Hall and was variously extended. Following the council’s evacuation to Camberwell in 1965, what remained was a public library, a local museum and municipal offices. In 2013 the roof caught fire and much of the Grade II-listed building was reduced to a shell; the remainder rotted behind hoardings until 2022, when work finally commenced on its restoration. Advertisement The protracted nature of this process can ultimately be attributed to chancellor George Osborne’s austerity budget of 2010. Although Southwark had at first intended to return the building to its original uses – and held a competition on this basis in 2015, which was won by Avanti Architects – it realised, on seeing the price tag, that this would be impossible. Avanti was dismissed and a new competition was held in 2018, with a revised brief. This emphasised the long-term commercial sustainability of the building, as well as an element of cultural use, taking into consideration the needs of the local community. The winners were developer General Projects working with Feix&Merlin. Their main gambit was to turn the building over to offices. However, on consulting the public while working up their proposal, they quickly realised how upset local residents were about the loss of public ownership. As a result, a community centre was added to the programme. It was the task of the designers to square this circle: how to retain the look and feel of a public building while optimising its new private function. They returned the exterior of the protected structure to its original form, including restoring the pattern to the roof tiles, which had been lost over the years. The ground floor houses the remaining public, or publicly accessible, spaces – the lobby café and community centre. The latter can be hired free of charge by local groups. The rest of the building is now offices. These also occupy its grandest rooms: the former main stair, debating chamber, library and museum. The last two functions have been transferred to a new building across the square, where they are housed in a new ‘heritage centre’. The architects have restored the historically significant interiors, more or less, removing the institutional accretions that had latterly defaced them, such as asphalt that had been laid on top of the masonry stairs and the false ceiling that hid the skylight above it. They also exposed the boxed-in balustrades on the mezzanine of the library and restored the parquet flooring throughout. All structural interventions have been achieved using cross-laminated timber. The roof has been reconstructed using it, creating a new storey with some intriguing windowless cubby holes inside its terminal turrets (handy for undistracted meetings). In the former debating chamber, the structure of the roof is exposed to view, a striking piece of engineering. On the ground floor, the ceiling of the space that now houses the lobby-cum-café, which had fallen in during the fire, is supported by hefty wooden arches. In some places, the architects have made looser interpretations of the original fabric. The public viewing gallery of the debating chamber has been extended to cover three sides of the room and a pattern derived from the lost balustrade has been cut into sheet steel to create a protective barrier for this new mezzanine. Certain elements, especially in the less important interiors, have been preserved as the fire left them. Where internal walls were removed, their footprint remains, breaking up the parquet, so that, as Julia Feix puts it, visitors can still read the original plan. Above a painted dado, the pitted and scorched surface of the old plaster, or the bricks exposed beneath it, have been preserved in their damaged state. Feix says this approach ‘lets the building talk about its history, rather than creating a pastiche of an era that’s long gone’.  This move has by now become an established procedure when dealing with rescue jobs, the obvious local example being Battersea Arts Centre, which Haworth Tompkins left similarly scarred following a 2015 fire. Its antecedents stretch back to Hans Döllgast’s post-war work on the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. In its more recent manifestations we could call this approach a fetishisation of decay, which raises questions as to what is being commemorated, and why. In Döllgast’s case, the answers were obvious: the Second World War, in order to prevent wilful amnesia. But in these two more recent examples, where the catastrophes in question were accidental fires, one might ask why a coat of plaster shouldn’t have been applied. Advertisement Walworth Town Hall helps to clarify the logic at work here, which is partly born of necessity. The building could not be restored to its previous condition or use, to the dismay of some locals, including the Walworth Society heritage group. The latter objected to the perceived loss of public access and was concerned that what remained could easily be revoked: for instance, if the café were unprofitable, it could be turned into more offices. They also disliked certain architectural aspects of the proposal, which they called ‘generic’: ‘neither bold and confident designs nor faithful restorations’. After protracted consultation, these concerns were taken into consideration by the architects in the restoration of the more significant rooms. Given the wrangling, it seems to me that, as in the case of Flores & Prats’ Sala Beckett in Barcelona, these patinated surfaces are intended to produce an impression of authenticity, without recourse to (prohibitively expensive) restoration, or ‘pastiche’, as the architects put it. It seems likely, however, that this code speaks more clearly to designers than to members of heritage groups.  But buildings are not made for heritage groups. Instead, this one is addressing two distinct publics. The community centre still opens to the Walworth Road, with its enduringly working-class character, and has already seen good use. However, the commercial part of the building has been reoriented to the new square to the north, from which it is accessed via the steps we traversed earlier. On the other side of the square rise the brick-slip-clad southern reaches of Elephant Park, the controversial development built by Lendlease on the rubble of the Heygate Estate. The Town Hall has turned its new face to these new Elephantines, the gym-dwellers who can afford to eat in the café and might choose to rent desk space here (if they have to work, that is). To return to my earlier question regarding the catastrophe being commemorated by these charred walls, perhaps the answer is: the conflagration of local government, which produced this double-headed building. Tom Wilkinson is a writer, editor and teacher specialising in the history of architecture and the visual culture of modern Germany Architect’s view As architects, we often aim to deliver transformational change, but at Walworth Town Hall, transformation came through restraint. Rather than imposing a vision, we allowed the building to speak, guiding us in knowing where to intervene and where to hold back. One key move was the reinvention of the former debating chamber into a light-filled triple-height space. Historical features were carefully restored, while a new mezzanine with a CNC-cut solid steel balustrade subtly echoes the original decorative railings of the former viewing gallery. The space is now crowned with a new exposed CLT timber roof with a bespoke light feature at its centre. All new structural and architectural elements were executed in timber, speaking to the sustainability agenda, aligning with modern environmental standards and enhancing user wellbeing. Timber’s biophilic properties connect occupants with nature, supporting physical and mental health while improving air quality. Crucial to our design language was an honest celebration of the building’s history, including the fire-damaged ‘scars’ that tell its story. While a handful of spaces were traditionally restored, most were approached with a light touch. New finishes were installed only up to the lower dado level, with the rest of the wall surfaces and ceilings left as found, retaining their battle-worn character (cleaned up and made safe, of course). Subtle material changes, such as microcement infills in the parquet, hint at the former wall layouts and structures. Striking a balance between restoration and contemporary intervention was essential. It has been a privilege to work on a building with such legacy and seeing the community return after more than a decade is deeply rewarding. Walworth Town Hall now honours its past while looking boldly to the future. Julia Feix, director, Feix&Merlin Architects   Client’s view We approached this project with a vision for developing a new blueprint for bringing at-risk municipal landmarks back to life. Now restored to its former glory and removed from Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register, Walworth Town Hall has been given back to a new generation with an exciting new purpose, made viable and fit for modern standards. In partnership with Southwark Council, and closely collaborating with Historic England and local community groups, we worked with Feix&Merlin to deliver a sensitive but impactful design approach. Our vision was that the building’s legacy should be revealed, rather than erased. The result strikes a balance between celebrating its inherited state and adapting it to modern use, combining elements of old and new by making sympathetic references to its beautiful 19th century architecture. Distinctly modern features, such as the use of cross-laminated timber to replace sections of the building damaged by the 2013 fire, are a reflective and contemporary interpretation of the original design. Elephant and Castle is undergoing a significant regeneration and Walworth Town Hall functions as a bridge between the area’s authentic heritage and its new future. Driven by a collaborative process, and tailor-made for small businesses to create, inspire and thrive, the reimagined Walworth Town Hall lays the groundwork for a new creative community to grow in this local destination.  Frederic Schwass, chief development officer, General Projects   Engineer’s view Heyne Tillett Steel was engaged as structural and civil engineer from competition stage to completion. It was both a challenging restoration of a listed building and an ambitious contemporary reconstruction, in exposed engineered timber, of its pre-fire form – at the same time creating better connectivity and adding floor area.   Built in various stages, the existing comprises nearly all methods of historic construction: timber, masonry, filler joist, clay pot, cast and wrought iron. The building had to be extensively investigated to understand its condition, fitness for reuse and, in some cases, capacity to extend.   Particular attention was paid to the impact of the fire and fire dousing in terms of movement, rot and corrosion. Repairs were carried out only where necessary after an extended period of drying and monitoring. The original council chamber roof was rebuilt as hybrid trusses (glulam and steel) to span the approximately 13 x 13m double-height volume below. The roof was prefabricated in just four pieces, built off the retained walls and installed in under two weeks.  A cross-laminated timber (CLT) covering creates the roof’s truncated pyramid shape. A new floor was added within the original massing of the west wing, utilising CLT slabs and a glulam ‘spine’ beam, creating unobstructed, exposed CLT ceilings across 7m bays at either side. The significant amount of retention and timber additions mean that the project scores very highly on benchmarks for embodied carbon, competitive beyond 2030 targets. Jonathan Flint, senior associate, Heyne Tillett Steel   Working detail The restoration presented a rare opportunity to reimagine a historic structure using sustainable, expressive materials. The original council chamber roof, destroyed by fire, was rebuilt as a hybrid CLT/glulam and steel ties structure, combining the aesthetic warmth of timber with the tensile strength of steel. The new roof had to clear-span approximately 13 x 13m over a double-height volume, and as the truncated pyramid structure was kept exposed, the increased volume of the space added a dramatic effect while introducing a contemporary character. Timber was selected not only for its sustainability credentials but also for its light  weight, crucial in minimising loads on the existing retained masonry. The trusses were prefabricated offsite in four large components, ensuring precision and reducing construction time and disruption on site. Once craned into position, they were set atop an existing concrete ring beam, a structural necessity installed after the fire to stabilise the perimeter walls in the absence of a roof. This ring beam now discreetly supports the new load paths. The combination of the timber structure in combination with the exposed brick and traditional plaster achieves a visually striking, materially honest reconstruction that honours the building’s historic proportions while firmly rooting it in contemporary sustainable practice. Julia Feix, director, Feix&Merlin Architects   Project data Location: Southwark, south London Start on site: February 2022 Completion: November 2024 Gross internal floor area: 5,000m2 Construction cost: £18.4 million Form of contract: Design and build Construction cost per m2: £4,500 Architect: Feix&Merlin Architects Client: General Projects Structural engineer: Heyne Tillett Steel M&E consultant: RED Engineering Quantity surveyor: Quartz Heritage architect: Donald Insall Associates (planning), Heritage Architecture (tender) Planning consultant: Rolfe Judd Landscape consultant: Town & Country Gardens Acoustic consultant: Sharps Redmore Transport consultant: Caneparo Associates Project manager: Quartz External lighting consultant: Atrium Specialist light feature: Barrisol Fit-out contractor: White Paper Art curation: Art Atelier Furniture, fixtures and equipment procurement: Hunter Community space operator: WTH Community Space Principal designer: ORSA CDM co-ordinator: ORSA Approved building inspector: Sweco Building Control Main contractor: Conamar Embodied carbon: 52 kgCO2/m2

The Vessel Glass Balustrade in NY | © Benny Rotlevy via Unsplash Designing a modern home depends heavily on choosing the correct details. Architects, designers, and homeowners have shown a dramatic increase in their interest in glass balustrades. Glass balustrades are safe, stylish, and sleek, and they modernize any part of your home, whether inside or outside. If you aim to modernize your home’s appearance during renovations, the features and benefits of glass balustrades make them your prime consideration. Unmatched Visual Elegance Glass balustrades are the epitome of minimalist design. The transparency of the construction of glass balustrades allows for unrestricted views and, together with the feeling of freedom, outlines rooms as open and airy. In contrast to historic materials, including wood or metal, glass railings keep views clear and harmonize with the rest of the design scheme. If you have a staircase, balcony, or terrace, using a glass balustrade will update the room with a modern look. Maximized Natural Light High-quality, bright, natural light is highly prized in modern spaces, and glass balustrades are designed to allow it. Penetration of sunlight into the region helps reduce daytime artificial light and provides a pleasant, airy ambiance. Such a feature is handy in multi-level houses, as the enclosed balconies or staircases look very narrow and dim. Low Maintenance One of glass balustrades’ significant advantages is the simplicity of care they demand. Unlike wood or wrought iron, glass does not need sealing and staining to retain its looks. Taking care of glass is easy: Just use glass cleaner and a soft cloth to wipe it off. Because glass is not scratched or tinted, these balustrades will remain as pristine as possible after several years. Increased Property Value Glass Balustrade | © Quentin Basnier via Unsplash Details | © Gregoire Jeanneau via Unsplash A home that looks contemporary, offers plenty of space, and is brightly lit is sure to draw buyers’ attention and increase in worth. Using glass balustrades as a design feature is a luxury, as they can quickly give a home a contemporary feel. For homeowners, sellers, and renters alike, a glass balustrade is a worthwhile investment to increase curb appeal and marketability. Personalized Designs  Glass balustrades offer a wide range of configurations and styles. Choose either a frameless or semi-frameless style or framed alternatives to match your home’s style and privacy needs. Tinted or frosted glass also offers an extra touch of style and privacy considerations, along with the ability to use hardware finishes that will fit nicely with your home’s overall look. Ideal for Indoor and Outdoor Use Glass balustrades are adaptable and can fit in a range of spaces. Indoors, they work best on staircases, landings, and mezzanine levels. Externally, they also grace balconies, patios, decks, and pools. For homes Sydney residents looking to renovate, the use of glass complements contemporary and coastal aesthetics common in the region. If you’re going to spruce up your home, installing a glass balustrade can serve as both decoration and functionality. It fulfills all demands, such as a great look, guaranteed safety, versatility, and simple maintenance. Whether you want to make small changes or larger overhauls, the use of glass balustrades can add a dramatic impact to any environment. From luxury penthouses to coastal retreats, glass balustrades are redefining modern living one clear panel at a time. Glass by ArchEyes Team Leave a comment