Missing Middle Infill Housing designed by Haeccity Studio Architecture, Characterized by the layering of many periods of the city’s history, the West End neighborhood in downtown Vancouver showcases a diverse range of heritage buildings from the turn-of-the-previous-century. It is this context, and the Mole Hill block, in particular, that becomes home to Haeccity Studio Architecture’s most recently completed infill housing projects.

Sama Jim Canzian

At a time when housing choice is a pressing issue in Vancouver, Haeccity addresses this need by proposing a three-story walk-up, offering six dedicated rental units for tenancy with a rooftop, green roof and shared courtyard that supports the retention of an existing mature Cypress tree. Sandwiched in between a seven-story heritage building and a two-and-a-half-story heritage house, principal Travis Hanks explains, “This project was largely about unlocking the potential for contextual multi-family housing on a standard 33’ x 122’ lot. Previously a 1950s bungalow, there are now potentially six households on that lot.”

Sama Jim Canzian

The heritage context of the neighborhood notably shaped the modernist structure that gently inserts itself among the Victorian and Edwardian buildings. Its modern expression makes a deliberate nod to some of the more traditional typologies of the neighboring Mole Hill Houses, articulated through the sloped roof, separate exterior dwelling entrances, and a network of intimate paths and walkways accommodating multiple families on a single residential lot. Haeccity’s project successfully responds to spatial limitations of the site as well as to the parameters set by municipal policies and the West End Community Plan, while considering key issues such as walkability, transit, car sharing, housing diversity, accessibility, and aging in place.

Sama Jim Canzian

Not quite a single-family home, and yet not a soaring condo building, the missing middle typology offers something in between. In rethinking the possibilities for urban dwelling, it’s a solution that calls for incremental densification without drastically disrupting the character and community of existing neighborhoods. The Comox St. project and its lessons would ultimately provide the framework for Haeccity Studio’s design rationale in the 2018 Urbanarium Missing Middle Design Competition, garnering them both the First and Planners Prizes. The location, site constraints, and built form would render Comox an effective prototype for the award-winning proposal by developing responsive, small-scale ground-oriented, multi-family housing that is largely “missing” from Vancouver’s urban fabric. Comox embodies the desirable qualities of a missing middle typology, including walkable urban living, accessibility to a middle-income household, and housing diversity, which are all essential to the continued fostering of a city’s social and cultural vibrancy.