Local Mountain

Research
Exhibition
Digital Publication



Courage or stupidity?

From its beginnings in the 1930s, ski flying has developed its own distinct history. Although the sport of skiing in North America is little more than a century old, researchers have dated a rock carving of a skier, found on the Norwegian island of Rodoy as being over 4,000 years old. Besides the spectacle of a human body flung into suspenseful precarity, it is difficult not to be fascinated by the infrastructure that supports the sport of ski flying; the provisional, often delicate, and yet sublime architectural structures that make human flight possible, if only briefly. This research sets out to collect and synthesize the history and spirit of the sport through an architectural analysis of its artifice, ambitions, spectacle, and folly.

Shed / Light

Kaleden, British Columbia
Private Commission

Architecture

2013


This rural studio situated in the Okanagan Valley will remain entirely off-the-grid. The design emerged from a palette of reclaimed materials collected on the property that included 40 year old orchard crates, barn timbers, floor boards from the local school gymnasium, and a door from a turn-of-the-century San Francisco sailor's bar that mysteriously made its way north.

The design responds to the various, and often competing aspirations of a young family who have embarked on a long term process of transforming a 5 acre farm into an organic cornucopia. Having very little to spend up front, the desire was to set up a basic seasonal dwelling that would permit the couple to begin cleaning up the property over the course of coming summers.

The colourful patterning and simple form of the building reference a local vernacular of basic building types comprised of picker shacks, fruit stands, and utility sheds. The building is visible from a nearby highway where the checkered cladding catches the eye of summer tourists in search of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Pop Bottle Barge

Design 
Fabrication

2010

Designed and built in 12 days for the School of Fish Foundation summer fundraiser to heighten awareness around sustainable seafood harvesting practices, this dining pavilion floats on over 1700 recycled pop bottles positioned below the floor. Made entirely from donated materials, we worked with Matt Kirk-Buss of Loki Ocean Enterprises to engineer the structure to float safely with up to 12 guests on board. We built the pavilion on “the hard” at Granville Island Marina and then had it towed across False Creek and then craned into position (over cars and sailboats) near ‘C’ restaurant on the opposite side of the harbour. Dinners were prepared by some of Vancouver’s top seafood chefs throughout the summer with a rotating menu of beautifully presented and sustainably harvested seafood.