Fountain Springs Housing
Winnipeg, Manitoba

Category: Recent Work
Project Owner: Manitoba Housing
Architect/Interior Designer/Landscape Architect of Record: David Penner Architect + h5 Architecture
Structural Consultant: Wolfrom Engineering Ltd.
Mechanical Consultant: DJK Mechanical Engineering Consulting Ltd.
Electrical Consultant: Ibasa Enterprises
Contractor: Bockstael Construction Ltd.
Additional Consultants: Civil Engineer: MEC Consulting

Jury Comments

The jury sought to award this project for its clean and considered design of a typically overlooked typology of subsidized living and assisted living housing.

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A great narrative about public housing and revitalization of a Winnipeg neighborhood. It uses an interesting use of material and detail of exterior skin responding to the regulated unitization of the residential programs beyond. The polished stainless-steel plays with reflection and engages the everchanging colours of the prairie sky while performing as envelope and ventilation. The use of reflection decomposes the inherent larger scale of the building within its context. The wood façade provides a warm identity towards the streetscape folding down into the entrance providing a low interior lining that is at a welcoming pedestrian scale

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Excellent clients inspire excellent architecture. This robustly modern housing project offers shelter and assisted living to low-income residents and for those afflicted with mental illness. There's magic in the client brief and in the design. Given Canada's growing crisis of mental illness and its impact on rising numbers of homelessness and addiction, this multi-unit residence offers an important template: handsome architecture that lifts the existing street context, that captures light behind generous vertical windows and an elegant main street facade of wood.