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Vision Magazine
F
acing a wave of traditional tract housing,
Hachem Architects has created a flagship project
to help anchor the new subdivision of Ecoville
in the lightest way possible. Hoping to influence the
wider development, the designers were ultimately
restricted to this centrepiece project.
It demonstrates the scope to see beyond the
square – and standard box. Project principal,
Fady Hachem has a reputation for testing convention.
Despite his original vision being curtailed, the project
offers plenty of ideas for engendering community.
Surrounded by tight allotments and housing stock
with small, quaint windows, Hachem heads in the
other direction. His answer fuses landscape and
structure into an imaginative whole with a gentle
blur between inside and out. Entirely unexpected in
its setting, Hachem hopes that many of the project’s
principles will eventually inform new project housing.
He discusses his masterstrokes of light and shade
with Peter Hyatt:
What is the centre’s key appeal?
A sense of ownership is really, really important.
People who bought blocks of land and houses had
little ownership of anything else. The strategy here
is to give the community ownership. Fundamentally,
they own this centre. It has become a real sense
of pride.
Did the developers have any apprehension about
how your proposal would be accepted within
a setting of brick veneers?
The developers had doubts not necessarily about
the project, or whether the architecture would
succeed. Their doubt concerned funding and the
money associated with building something like this.
Open House