Donovan

Rafii Architects designed the Donovan, completed in 2009 on Richards Street, and added some really different balconies. These sort of details can significantly reduce the energy efficiency of the building – the ‘thermal bridging’ can transfer the cold of the slab into the apartments, but they certainly make a change from earlier projects in the area.

Like other Downtown South schemes, this site is under a viewcone, so it’s a shorter and slightly wider tower. It replaced some two and three storey commercial and warehouse buldings – none of them of any great age or beauty.

Before images 2006; after images 2009

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TV Towers

TV Towers were permitted to be as large as they are to pay for the CBC redevelopment to the north on the rest of the block.  Walter Francl and  Hotson Bakker’s design adds coloured balconies to a curved facade, and scattered red panels in ‘CBC red’.

Since the mid 1970s the corner of the CBC lot where they were built was a parking lot for the CBC’s trucks. These days they’re in a new underground parkade.

before image, 2006; after image 2009.

1000 block, West Broadway

Three-storey woodframe offices were replaced by a pair of 12 and 13 storey towers; La Columba by W T Leung completed in 2007 and The Zone by Gomberoff Bell Lyon in 2009. Nigel Baldwin’s Spruce is now built to the west of these two.

Before image 2004; after image 2009