Multi-Unit Residential Wood Design
The Outback Resort | Okanagan Lake | Vernon, BC
Coast Architectural Group
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
By integrating ecological thinking and real estate coupled with environmental responsiveness and cultural/heritage sensitivity, this project’s objective is to create a residential resort of international quality. The natural landscape of the Outback is “world class.” It has an extremely rich and diverse landscape, vista and thousands of years of people visiting and respecting. The responsibility of the designers for the Outback to retain the integral nature/character of the site is huge. Imagination is, again, free to explore the creative in a place that allows one to reconnect with the beauty of granite cliffs and tortured ancient firs in a place of brilliant sunshine and the azure blue of Okanagan Lake. It is a place to disconnect from the conformity of prescribed action and experience an enlivened state of playfulness in mind, body and spirit, recognizing that all decisions must be land-based; the needs of the land come first.
Cultural Heritage Influences:
South Bay: Has been occupied since prehistoric times as a summer fishing camp or stopover; more recently by the Okanagan Band of the Interior Salish peoples.
Granite Quarry: Granite extraction at the turn of the century for government buildings in Kelowna and Vernon.
Boy Scouts and Trethewey Family – Summer camp for recreational pursuits since mid 1950s.
Architecture:
Is a play on rustic and cultural symbols in an assemblage that is climatically functional and exciting, unique and familiar.
Materials that are native to the site, granite and weathered rock, wood or others that are environmentally appropriate.
The building form combines the elements of unlimited openness and solid enclosure, the unexpected and the adventurous. Recycled stone used on stone dash walls form out of the ground to grasp the building, merging with individual rough wooden boards that rise vertically to the parapet, to find a tent on top of the forested cliff.
The fabric awnings are manually retractable and add a varying fluted edge to the building as the occupant adjusts them to suit the sun. The fabric screens are alive at night, reminiscent of the lantern in the tent. The transition from enclosed lower terrace to the lookout-tented tower creates the cliff experience and offers the outdoor tent. Lower terraces are sheltered and private for sleeping under the stars.
Proposed Development Summary:
Various residential buildings sizes; Phase 1 completed December 2007.
Estate Lots – Ridge Homes
• 22 Building sites
South Bay Villas
• 27 Units – 1500-1600 sq ft
Quarry Villas
• 15 units – 1200 sq ft
Meadow Duplex Homes
• 38 units – 1200-1300 sq ft
Forest Cabins
• 33 units – 900 sq ft + sleeping loft
Townhouses
• 19 units – 1200 sq ft
Wood materials used:
- Large cantilevered glulam beams suspend homes out over the cliffs.
- Sawn timbers of interior fir form vaulted roof spaces and internal post and beam supports.
- Fir is used for internal finish and panelling.
- Rough-sawn fir siding boards stained with a diluted semi-transparent stain to enhance the natural tones and textures of the wood.
- Timber poles to support the building and deck structures.
- Engineered joists for flat roof and floor framing.
Wood has been used extensively throughout the project. It is an important component of the language that connects the architecture to the landscape and cultural heritage.
Project team:
Architectural:
Kevin Ryan, MAIBC
Coast Architectural Group
Kamloops, BC
250.374.1112
kevinryan@coastarchgr.com
Structural:
Chiu Webster
Vancouver, BC
604.737.9830
Builder:
Mike Parker
Scott Nash
Stonecroft Management Ltd.
Vancouver, BC
604.331.6005
Owner:
Bob Glass
McDonald Development Corporation
250.716.1520
