Glen Lochen

Originally built in 1975, the Glen Lochen Mall was once a vibrant local institution, housing first-class restaurants, shopping and offices. Over nearly forty years, time and neglect contributed to the dilapidation of this once vibrant destination. Our firm was hired to renovate this property and create a re-invented identity for the site features, building exterior and interior common spaces. With a mixed-use commercial program, this project features ground floor retail and dining with office spaces on the second and third floors.

The existing main façade was comprised of a series of disparate volumes, ad-hoc additions, leaky, inefficient glazing systems and decayed wood siding. We set out to create an architectural solution that would unite the disordered, elongated façade and provide increased transparency to the interior spaces. An undulating zinc armature stretching the entire length of the main façade serves as the cohesive element in the vocabulary of the new building and frames the new glass and Cumaru wood entry to the building. The existing signature element of the building – a triangular volume jetting out towards the street atop slender columns – was reimagined to preserve the recognizable icon while announcing the property’s transformation with its new transparent glass curtain wall.

Inside the building our client wanted to update the public common spaces in a manner to address many of the functional deficiencies related to lighting and security. Our main focus was to redevelop the central atrium and staircase to serve as the hub for occupant interaction and informal activities. A new suspended soffit extends through the common spaces to conceal previous exposed electrical busways and provides additional lighting in the corridors.

The renovation has helped restore this local cultural landmark and has already proved successful in drawing occupants and visitors back. This project was an architect-led design build effort that was conceived, drawn, permitted, procured, constructed and managed by a single firm of dedicated professionals committed to the synthesis of design and building.

Originally built in 1975, the Glen Lochen Mall was once a vibrant local institution, housing first-class restaurants, shopping and offices. Over nearly forty years, time and neglect contributed to the dilapidation of this once vibrant destination. Our firm was hired to renovate this property and create a re-invented identity for the site features, building exterior and interior common spaces. With a mixed-use commercial program, this project features ground floor retail and dining with office spaces on the second and third floors. The renovation has helped restore this local cultural landmark and has already proved successful in drawing occupants and visitors back.

The main goal of the project was to create a drastic, yet cost effective approach to re-conceiving the building’s public identity. As such the primary the focus of the redevelopment was the building’s skin and public points of entry. We were influenced by the strong angular geometries of the existing building and sought to create a design vocabulary that would work in response to this while unifying the many disparate volumes of the facade.

This project was greatly influenced by the design-build project delivery model. Both architect and builder collaborated closely from the onset of design to refine the project in regards to constructability and cost. This iterative feedback between the architect and builder preserved the design integrity throughout the project while offering creative options for addressing budget constraints.

The exterior material ensemble that was developed for this project was quite successful in forming a contemporary identify to the redeveloped building while integrating with the extensive palette of wood on the interior of the existing building. A selection of exterior materials - zinc cladding, Cumaru wood rain-screen and patterned stucco - were deployed to offer a textural variety to the facade that provided the building a more human scale.