MONAD

Location
Vancouver, Canada
Date
2009-2011
Size
12,600 sq ft
Client
Intelligent City Research and Development
Budget
–
Status
Construction Completed

With the Monad project we set out to design what is urgently needed for urban infill developments: A systematic and holistic approach to make multi-story urban living beautiful, desirable, sustainable and affordable. This led us to a process where we had to rethink everything that is essential to urban development, design, construction and long term operation. And that meant we could then design the very best housing model for today, as a flexible platform that can co-evolve and be adapted to the ever changing needs of the future.

Combining high quality livability with great efficiencies, the model is focused on what matters most to owners or tenants, providing great livability, abundant daylight, natural cross ventilation, flexibility and low operating costs.
Monad is a first to be rigorously designed as an adaptable model that can readily accommodate varying home sizes and configurations, is readily scalable to varying urban contexts, lot sizes and heights. Sky-homes can even accommodate secondary suites as mortgage helpers.
Monad is a first to bring multi story off-site prefabrication to Vancouver, using fully engineered woodframe modular construction. Yet, living at Monad does not mean to live within boxes. Rather, our out-of-the box design allows for incredibly flexible living and large span open spaces instead.
Monad is a first to bring an economic parking elevator to Vancouver that produces a game changer for new opportunities in basement design or slab on grade construction.
Monad is one of a first to combine the best of LEED Gold, Passive House and Living Building standards for this typology, dramatically reducing energy consumption with zero on site CO2 emissions.
For the first time we fully leveraged a 33’ wide building site (in fact the same size as a standard single family lot in Vancouver).