Vancouver, 2019

Project Team: Design - Colin Clark

Photography: Norihisa Hayashi

The HAVEN headquarters is housed in a new building in Vancouver’s Eastside, a neighbourhood undergoing transformation from light industrial and warehousing to a mixed use creative hub. Within this emerging creative neighbourhood, the HAVEN Office & Studio occupies over 6,800 SF of double height shell space. The new headquarters houses the company's operations and executive offices, clothing design studio, photography studio and wholesale distribution operations.

We sought to create privacy from the busy thoroughfare and the functional interior space. A unique entry sequence creates an interior ‘front yard’ that runs along the south-facing glazed frontage and separates the street from the interior with a concrete screen block wall. Long oak benches flank the procession which is bookended by two interior gardens.  Very few full height walls were built, rather, the raw, lofty scale of the space is maintained through considered placement of design elements that define discrete areas and create semi-permeable boundaries.

The material and finish palette are a testament to the HAVEN brand, timeless and utilitarian; Raw, unfinished concrete, with inscribed construction notes and markings left untouched, natural oak floors, white floating planes, and formal black volumes. Clean linear lighting elements produce a modern, minimal effect in contrast to the rawness of the exposed concrete, large stone elements, and interior gardens.