St George United Church was built in the early 1920s for a large active group of parishioners. By the year 2000, the small congregation decided to relocate to shared facilities and sell the building. The purchasers made a commitment to retain the existing church and to create a development within it. They approached us with this idea in mind.
V+A designed a 37-unit residential condominium project that met this goal. In our work, we were committed to creating a development that would relate both to the existing building in form and mass, and to the surrounding neighborhood. We were also interested in preserving the significant architectural features of the existing building and to complement them in our design of the new structures.
This project was technically demanding. Due to by-law restrictions, we were compelled to work entirely within the footprint of the demolished gymnasium and church school. Parking had to be located below the existing and proposed structures, requiring substantial underpinning and sectional investigation. Inserting new steel structure into the existing building was logistically challenging, as was improving the performance of the building envelope while preserving significant architectural features.