2023 Urban Design Awards

Category Description: any built project, however modest, initiated and implemented by a community-based organization that enhances the public realm in the Halifax Regional Municipality.

Reimagining Gottingen Street Seating *AWARD OF EXCELLENCE WINNER*

Lead firms: OSO Planning + Design; FBM Architecture; Omar Gandhi Architect; Peter Henry Architect

The North End Business Association (NEBA), with the support of Build Nova Scotia, embarked on a project to bring public seating to Gottingen Street, which involved reimagining the deteriorating concrete planters into functional artworks to be used as public seating and community gathering.

NEBA was joined by design firms Omar Gandhi Architects, OSO Planning + Design, Peter Henry Architect, and FBM Architecture to bring the project to life. These firms worked in collaboration with their partnering community organizations at Phoenix, Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, Radstorm and the Bus Stop Theatre. Together they creatively designed and built five unique benches along Gottingen Street.

Alderney Plaza Placemaking

Lead Firm: OSO Planning + Design

Alderney Plaza demonstrates that infrastructure is an opportunity for placemaking when we take a participatory approach to design. The plaza was reimagined with input from the community, who participated in various creative engagement sessions. It was built by an energetic team of students.

By working with community, the plaza was transformed into a vibrant space with greenery, shade, seating, and many new programming opportunities. The revitalized plaza features a 64-foot bench with five 10-foot piers, shade sails, hand-woven hammocks, and a beautiful garden. Located in the heart of Downtown Dartmouth, the project connects people through art, play and collective ownership.

 Category Description: Projects where a heritage resource has been thoughtfully and expertly adapted for a new use while maintaining the integrity and important character elements of the resource.

Kinney Place *AWARD OF MERIT WINNER*

Lead Firm: T.A Scott Architecture + Design

The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (NSHCC) has been renovated, re-opened, and renamed Kinney Place, 101 years after its doors first opened. Named after James Alexander Ross Kinney, a founder of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children and its first superintendent, Kinney Place has been a long-time dream of Akoma Family Centre Inc. and Akoma Holdings Inc. and hopes the community sees it as a place of both historic significance and a place for healing, a phoenix rising from the ashes. Today we reflect on the past 101 years of the building while looking towards the future.

NFLD Store

Lead firm: Kerry Lynch

It was the end of an era when the NFLD Store at the corner of Clifton and Willow closed after 50 Years. The landmark building was purchased and restored to welcome new commercial tenants with apartments above. The exterior character was re-established to resemble what it would have looked like when originally built in the late 1800's. Much of the character of the interior of the store was maintained and the commercial garage at the back of the lot was converted to a secondary suite. 

Category Description: Awarded to any community builder who has built or has advanced plans for a project that delivers housing in a creative way. Priority is given to infill projects or plans that prioritize affordability and groups that face greater housing challenges.

Sprout Dwellings *AWARD OF MERIT WINNER*

Lead Firm: Sprout Dwellings Inc.

Great things come in small packages, especially with Sprout Dwellings. Our small homes, which we affectionately call Sprouts, are as beautiful and functional in your backyard as they are on a waterfront lot or in the woods as a cottage. We have serious expertise by our side—architects, engineers, interior designers, construction veterans, and accessibility experts. To top off our amazing team, we work with innovative Nova Scotian companies to ensure every Sprout is built to withstand our harshest winters. Simply put, we’ve got a big vision for introducing the Maritimes to the benefits of our backyard suites and cottages.

Diamond Bailey Healing Centre *AWARD OF EXCELLENCE WINNER*

Lead Firm: Fathom Studio

Diamond Bailey Healing Centre is a new emergency transitional housing centre operated by the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre in Halifax, NS. It is named after those who dedicated their entire lives to harm reduction within the urban Indigenous community. Located on a historic streetscape this development was the hard work of many to facilitate much needed emergency transitional housing within the HRM. The design of the building strays from a standard institutional layout to incorporate a more diverse method of support that is based on the needs of each individual.

The Sunflower

Lead Firm: Passive Design Solutions

The Sunflower is an affordable housing community in Lakeside imagined and realized by Adsum for Women & children. Comprised of 25 residential units and a community centre surrounding a shared courtyard, The Sunflower was informed by the voices of women and gender diverse folks impacted by homelessness and housing insecurity. Housing at the Sunflower is permanent, and rents are geared to household income. Supports on site help to foster a sense of community and create opportunities for social and cultural supports. The Sunflower was created using passive design. All the buildings meet high standards of energy efficiency and accessibility.

Souls Harbour Rescue Mission (12-unit apartment)

Lead Firm: Souls Harbour Rescue Mission

The current condition of housing is at critical levels in Nova Scotia, and particularly in urban areas, such as HRM.  To this point, Souls Harbour Rescue Mission (SHRM), with the financial assistance of CMHC and administrative direction from Halifax Regional Municipal Planning, have constructed a 12 unit apartment which is dedicated to “persons at risk” of being without suitable housing accommodations; in particular for women at risk and their children. This apartment is adjacent to and an extension of the SHRM Crisis Center for women.

Category Description: Civic improvement projects that have been implemented as a result of a larger urban design plan or initiative and that make a positive contribution to environmental and climate change goals of the municipality.

Queen's Marque *AWARD OF MERIT WINNER*

Lead Firm: Fathom Studio

Queen’s Marque’s new waterfront public space in Halifax provides 100,000 sq ft of public open space that complements the mixed-use development of Queen’s Marque. The landscape design celebrates the site's history as a working waterfront, and features elements such as hemlock boards, muntz metal, and reclaimed brick. The addition of new public wharves and granite steps called Queen’s Landing offers new ways for people to get closer to the water. The project overcame design challenges, including the construction of the public space on an underground parking garage situated below sea level, to create a unified and accessible space.

Peggy's Cove Viewing Deck *AWARD OF EXCELLENCE WINNER*

Lead Firm: Omar Gandhi Architects

The new, accessible Viewing Deck at Peggy’s Cove, along with fully accessible public washroom replaced a place for cars with an accessible place for people. The 14,000 square feet of new, accessible public space provides the opportunity to view the lighthouse, waves and rocks in a more attainable and safer way. 

A significant portion of the deck was reclaimed for people from the existing roadway with the remaining extending slightly over the landscape and designed to blend in with the natural surroundings. Materials were used to complement the terrain. Visitors are still welcome to access the rocks and natural landscape.

Category Description: Urban design projects from individual students or groups of students enrolled in a University located within the Halifax Regional Municipality. Projects must address local context.

Food Activism: Fighting for Affordable Living and Food Justice *AWARD OF EXCELLENCE WINNER*

Project Lead: Tai Nguyen Ha, Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Dalhousie University

The design is an approach to community food growing in the inner city, within a social welfare fabric. When food meets activism, the architecture makes space to resist, using the roof element as a habitat for activists on the street, and creating space for the community to frame live work and care. The selected site is framed within a neighborhood context, using a vacant parking lot to transform into a hybrid combination of social and community food hubs. This brings back the essential affordable housing model to community living and caters to many employment opportunities for community agencies.

Fields and Flows: Township Development in Nova Scotia

Project Lead: Preston Stronach, Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Dalhousie University

Located on the eighteenth century Shubenacadie Canal network in Nova Scotia, Canada, it utilizes sedimentation as a generator of industry, and canals as points of application, providing the rationale for a distributed infrastructure tied to a local material culture. Reconstituting components of an industrial process toward an Architecture based on Rammed Earth and Ceramics, it seeks to help improve fragmentation, provides better local and regional cohesiveness for inhabitants, and ultimately protects our critical waterways.

Haven

Project Lead: Victoria Payne, Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Dalhousie University

"My goal with this project was to design a long-term housing program for our unhoused neighbours who wanted to remain on the Halifax Peninsula, when they have been told repeatedly to leave. The residents here would be in a stage where they are looking for employment and are ready for a more hands-off housing situation, while still being provided with some resources and community connections. 

I wanted to connect this housing project to the harbour to provide the quintessential Nova Scotian experience of living on the water, which might facilitate a connection to place and a feeling of belonging. Through my research I discovered that much of Nova Scotia’s shipping vessels and infrastructure were going unused since the start of the pandemic, so I thought the adaptive reuse of barges and other marine architecture would help to both cut costs and provide an unconventional living experience that unhoused people in Halifax might find comforting."

Category Description: A building (or group of buildings) of high architectural standards that achieves urban design excellence through its relationship with its immediate surroundings because of its site, massing, and pedestrian amenities or green building design. 

The George *AWARD OF EXCELLENCE WINNER*

Lead firm: Dexel Architecture Ltd., Fathom Studio

The George offers Haligonians the best of both worlds: the opportunity to reside in a stylish modern building nestled in a vibrant downtown neighbourhood while also living just steps away from abundant green space. Located on the corner of Pepperell and Robie streets, this mixed-use building transitions from the large-scale building context of Quinpool Road into what are primarily single-family residential neighborhoods to the south and west. The use of human-scaled materials, formal articulation, and strategic massing result in a building that reinforces and improves the neighborhood character.

Brewery Park Hotel

Lead Firm: Kerry Lynch

Brewery Park Boutique Hotel launched in March of 2020. The second phase began in 2021 and was completed in the summer of 2022. The three-story hybrid construction combined steel, concrete and 1,100 pieces of locally sourced spruce to form the Nail Laminated Timber (NLT) floor/ceilings. 250,000 fasteners were used to connect the NLT assemblies. Brewery Park is now one of the most efficient buildings in Canada for its size and operates as the only hotel in the city's historic North End with 16 rooms.

The Queen’s Marque

Lead Firm: MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects (Design Architects and Urban Design), FBM (Prime Consultants)

Queen’s Marque, a 41,800 square meter mixed-use complex on Halifax’s Waterfront, was born from the desire to build a significant Canadian landmark that would be created by Nova Scotians, for Nova Scotians. Through landscape-informed design, Queen’s Marque instills pride in local history and culture. The program includes offices, a luxury hotel, shops, restaurants and rental apartments. A “U” shaped, tripartite composition reflects the marine forms of the harbour. A sunken ‘hull’ serves as a metaphor for how the culture can reinvent itself. The design dedicates 70 per cent of the site to public space, making a difference in public life.

SEE-MORE Student Housing

Lead Firm: zzap Consulting Inc.

SEE-MORE features intelligently built, fully furnished modern spaces, fostering quality of life for students. In consideration of local market needs, and inspired by the classic Maritime row house aesthetic, this six-storey building promotes sustainability by integrating density through strategic application of Halifax Regional Municipality’s Regional Centre Plan. Highly efficient spaces responsibly inject a significant amount of new housing stock into communities. SEE-MORE's most striking features are its large-scale public artworks, celebrating the rich cultural heritage of the Mi'kmaw people, and promoting community connection. Zzap was the project partner guiding the process and promoting high-quality design to create this more affordable, sustainable student housing.

Category Description: A plan or study of a significant area within the Halifax Regional Municipality that provides a development or redevelopment strategy for inspired urban transformation in the mid-to-long-term. 

Hubbards Community Plan

Lead firm: UPLAND Planning + Design Studio

The ‘Hubbards Community Plan’ is a document that outlines urban design strategies for Hubbards, a seaside community of about 1,200 residents in the southwestern corner of the Halifax Regional Municipality. The Plan was initiated by the Hubbards Streetscape Project, a community group that engaged professional planners from UPLAND Planning and Design to create urban design policies, recommendations for walking and biking infrastructure as well as a vision for St. Margaret’s Bay Road as the main street of Hubbards. 

Category Description: This category is for single, small-scale pieces of a building or landscape that contribute significantly to the quality of the public realm in the Halifax Regional Municipality.

Halifax Explosion Markers *AWARD OF EXCELLENCE WINNER*

Lead firm: RHAD Architects

Two twisted elements derived from the image of exploded trees that lined the streets after the destructive Halifax Explosion was part of the inspiration for these commemorative markers. They represent a duality; of past and future, history and reflection, despair and hope. Corten Steel represents the past, and stainless steel the future. One hundred perforations were made into each stainless steel piece to personify the lives lost in the tragedy. The sculptures reflect sunlight through their perforations, creating a dynamic experience on the site that is ever-changing depending on the time and seasons.

Our Stories Murals

Lead firm: OSO Planning + Design

Our Stories Mural consists of 19 circular murals painted at the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre and installed on the Barrington Street wall of the Scotia Square building. The murals convey stories from indigenous culture and history through the lens of local indigenous youth and artists. Positioned on one of Halifax’s busiest transit corridors, the murals are highly visible to hundreds of people daily, bringing joy, color, and story to an otherwise dull concrete wall. This project fosters collective awareness that we live in Mi’kma’ki and instills pride and ownership in the people who created the artwork.