Choklit
Project Details
Location
Vancouver
Consultants
- Architect- Splyce Design
- Structural - Ennova Structural Engineers
- Interior Design - Artkonstrukt
- Photography - Sama Jim Canzian
Concrete Shell
A four-story residence built inside the concrete shell of a former chocolate factory. We started from the ground up with just a concrete structure; every wall, ceiling, floor, mechanical run, and piece of millwork in the photographs is new work.
Drawn Upward
Splyce Design's plan is organized around a central light shaft — a steel-stringered stair with floating treads of cast acrylic runs four stories up the building, paralleled by a living green wall that draws light down to the lower floors. Building the stair required holding architectural tolerance on a structural element where every connection is visible from every angle, and integrating its assembly with the green wall's irrigation and drainage.
Exacting Work
The kitchens, bathrooms, and full-height storage walls are finished in rift-cut white oak and matte white lacquer with integrated pulls and reveals throughout—millwork that survives close inspection because the substrates, joinery, and seams were detailed before the panels were drawn. The bathrooms move between honed black marble and pale oak; the master shower is a freestanding glass volume aligned on the stair's sight line.
Inherited Space
Working inside an existing building means inheriting a column grid and a slab geometry you didn't choose, and making them disappear behind the new architecture. That's most of what this project was.
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