Set on an active but tree-lined street, the Sugarbowl Townhouses borrow their name from the idyllic café across the street, a Garneau institution that has successfully anchored this corner of Edmonton's urban core for decades. The project sets out to belong to a street whose character has accumulated over a century of city life. Six units sit directly adjacent to the eastern edge of the University of Alberta, providing family homes and well-appointed suites that offer a gently densified approach to an area of high housing demand. The unit typologies, including three- and two-bedroom units, follow the people who already live here, hospital staff, students, and small families, for whom a home this close to work, play, and study leaves little need for a car. Unique in Edmonton, life in Garneau can be conducted largely on foot, and the development was shaped around that.
Sloped rooflines and considered massing pick up the scale and rhythm of the existing street without overwhelming it. A timber plank facade, layered in varied widths, depth, and colour, gives the elevations a settled, worn-in warmth; custom steel detailing and integrated flower boxes lend each unit its own quiet identity within the whole.
Every unit connects with the urban fabric, and the building provides grade access through amenity pieces such as a porch, a terrace, or a small garden that softens the line between the public and private realm. Upper terraces, at-grade garden spaces, and generous but judicious windows work to reinforce the life of the street and allow it to become a part of the home itself, a true embrace of what has made the immediate community so appealing for so long.