1/ Walked past a tower in Vancouver I worked on years ago (pre web3 days) and it reminded me: architecture isn’t just about building up, it’s about layering meaning into space.

This is a luxury tower with ocean and mountain views, mixed with a podium for social housing 🌊🧵⬇️:

2/ The corten entrance takes you to the luxury homes. Every home is a corner unit w only 4 units per floor.

A lowkey podium marks the social housing entrance.

3/ The material language, especially the corten steel was quite interesting to me. 

Corten isn’t just a material. It’s a philosophy:
→ Let things age
→ Let them rust
→ Protect by exposing, not hiding

A kind of architectural wabi-sabi 🍂

4/ Wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a Japanese aesthetic and worldview that finds beauty in imperfection, impermanence, and the natural aging of things.

A cracked ceramic bowl that’s been lovingly mended, or a weathered piece of wood with a beautiful patina, that’s wabi-sabi

7/ For me, the most interesting layer wasn’t materials, it was social. 

The building includes social housing tucked into the same structure, with its own entrance.

It’s a common setup in mixed-use developments. But it brings up hard questions 🤔

6/ Why corten? It’s self-healing. The rust forms a protective layer that slows further corrosion. It’s honest, and in a coastal climate, practical.

I see it as not trying to outlast the elements but coexist with them.

5/ To speed up the aging, we literally hosed the corten steel entrance down during construction forcing the rust to bloom before residents moved in.