location: Vancouver
status: completed 2014
designer: Stéfan Levasseur w/ Tantalus
photography: Stéfan Levasseur

This chandelier was commisioned by renovation clients who requested a statement piece to complete the design. The large double-height entry proved to be an ideal space to showcase this piece’s sweeping reach of narrow stainless steel tubing terminating in minimal custom LED lights.

The clients are tinkerers with an eye for design. The chandelier provides endless possible permutations by rotating each branch along its axis thus allowing the clients to take ownership of their space.

location: Vancouver
status: completed 2014
architect: Marianne Amodio, Marianne Amodio Architecture Studio
designer: Stéfan Levasseur
photography: Janis Nicolay, Stéfan Levasseur

The MAD(house) is a multi-adult dwelling in Vancouver. Housing three sets of adults from the same family within a 2880 square foot volume, the home was designed to allow for wide open shared public spaces and private separated suites. A contrast of high volume spaces with small nooks allows for varied spatial experience in the contained footprint. The homeowners sense of whimsy and quirk allows the home its delightful eccentricities: peekaboo views from the window at the floor, an exuberant use of tile and colour, a column that carries rainwater, and coloured glass mosaic chips embedded in the concrete floor. The purposeful manipulation of natural light creates a sense of spaciousness in the home, while full height doors, soaring windows and wide open roof decks add to this sense of openness. The private spaces are purposefully intimate and smaller: the juxtaposition emphasizing a sense of respite and comfort. The home provides a practical solution to housing affordability and multi-generational living while embracing the homeowners’ artful and creative nature.

Stéfan was a project designer for MAD(House) with Marianne Amodio Architecture Studio

location: Vancouver
status: completed 2014
designer: Stéfan Levasseur w/ ECON Group Ltd.
photography: Stéfan Levasseur

Burt House is a single-storey bungalow adapted to the changing needs of a growing family. With two small children, the clients found they outgrew their two-bedroom house and requested a second-storey addition as well as a basement suite conversion to house first, a live-in nanny, then, renters to provide additional income, and finally, the family's aging parents.

The house is situated in a heavily controlled zone with strict design guidelines requiring new construction to keep in line with the neighbourhood's aspiring Victorian character. Working with city employees, we were able to negotiate a contemporary interpretation of the design guidelines that fulfilled the clients' design sensibilities while satisfying the city and pleasing the neighbours.

location: Vancouver
status: completed 2014
designer: Stéfan Levasseur
photography: Stéfan Levasseur

This major façade renovation was a response to the clients' desire for an exterior update that would match their contemporary aesthetic as found throughout their own previous interior renovations.

location: Vancouver
status: completed 2014
architect: Marianne Amodio, Marianne Amodio Architecture Studio
project designer: Stéfan Levasseur
photography: Stéfan Levasseur

APT is the next step in the evolution of this 12-storey Vancouver tower. Having previously operated as a retirement home, a bed & breakfast, and a short-term rental apartment, the vision for APT is to bring a modern concept of urban living to Vancouver.

The renovated building offers private micro-suites that contain kitchenettes, bathrooms and convertible sleeping / living rooms, while the main and lower floors provide common space to foster a sense of community. Among the amenities accessible to all tenants will be common lounge spaces, a common TV lounge, and a common gym / yoga space. Also available will be dining rooms, art studios, meeting rooms, and party rooms that tenants will reserve should they need space to entertain guests.

Stéfan was a project designer for Apt with Marianne Amodio Architecture Studio

location: Vancouver
status: completed 2012
designer: Stéfan Levasseur w/ ECON Group Ltd.
photography: Stéfan Levasseur

This restoration of a beautiful pool house in Vancouver's Shaughnessy neighbourhood was accompanied by a new landscape design that would suit the clients' need for a flexible and easy to maintain space for entertaining guests. The project included the repair of the building's structure and envelope as well as the addition of an indoor steam room and outdoor hot tub.

location: New York City
status: 2012 Competition entry
designer: Stéfan Levasseur w/ Jason Pfeifer, Erik Bean, Cameron Hardinge-Rooney

In early 2012, our design team was shortlisted for Anonymous.d, an international design competition featuring a derelict site underneath New York's famous Highline in Chelsea.

Shoreling to Highline was formed as a result of research into the social and environmental history of the area. Over the last 400 years, the Island of Manhattan has not only expanded upwards with its ubiquitous skyscrapers, but also outwards to accommodate its bustling ports. In 1609 the shoreline was unaltered, tracing a line through the precise location of our site. Shoreline to Highline accentuates this original morphology while exploring the experiential and formal properties of water.

location: Vancouver
status: 2012 Competition entry
designer: Stéfan Levasseur, Jason Pfeifer, Erik Bean

Vancouver is a city without a central square, whose public space traces the shoreline and faces out toward the majestic views. Log Jam, an entry to the City's 2012 "Viva Vancouver" public space competition, draws familiar beach elements - Vancouver's ubiquitous logs, towels, and parasols - away from the edge in an attempt to refocus public attention to the city itself. This proposal occupies the 800 block of Robson Street which has recently been closed off for pedestrian use during the summer months. Replacing the downtown traffic jam, our "Log Jam" features a cluster of logs with strategically placed seats carved away and colourful powder coated steel ‘towels’ offering opportunities to lounge, sit and hangout. The multiple configurations make sure there is a spot for any size of group.

location: Vancouver
status: completed 2011
designers: Stéfan Levasseur, Erik Bean, Jason Pfeifer
photography: Stéfan Levasseur

Upon renting space in 222, a shared studio space run by Vancouver artist run centre 221A, Design& undertook to build our own desk. The lumber, salvaged from the building renovation, was laminated into a single ribbon that grows from the floor, around a corner, and terminates in the purposefully unfinished wall framed with matching studs. The desk was lightly sanded and finished to highlight blemishes and remnants of previous paint.

location: Vancouver
status: completed 2011
architect: Kenneth Chooi, DSK Architecture
project designer: Stéfan Levasseur
photography: Stéfan Levasseur & Cut My Timber

The Intergenerational House is an energy efficient residence for multi-family living. The three story main house is designed as a home for a family of two adults and two children. The spacious, lower two bedroom suite is occupied by grandparents, while the small laneway home is designed for future occupancy by the children; it currently provides affordable rental accommodations to students at the nearby University.

Passive sustainable concepts are used throughout the project: thermal mass, natural and stack ventilation, natural day lighting, rainwater harvesting and the use of thermal hot water heat. It’s main innovation is the building’s wood framing process - prefabricated off site with the aid of computer cutting machines and erected on site in 4 days. The residence is Built Green rated platinum and LEED for homes certified.

Stéfan was a project designer for Intergenerational House with DSK Architecture

location: Vancouver
status: completed 2011
designer: Stéfan Levasseur w/ ECON Group Ltd.

This loft renovation answered the clients' need for additional living space and increased privacy in the previously open bedroom. Semi-transparent walls and floors allow light to penetrate the deeper and more private portions of the loft while maintaining an element of openness that initially attracted the clients to loft living.

location: Vancouver
status: 2011 Academic project
designer: Stéfan Levasseur 
mentor: Erick Villagomez

City Growth explores the potential for urban agriculture to advance the cultivation of Vancouver’s identity and to reconnect the community of Marpole to the Fraser River waterfront with an interactive interpretive centre and market facility. As a gateway to the city, City Growth will showcase Vancouver’s role as a leader in sustainability. The project’s location directly below international flight paths and adjacent to a main bridge entering the city provides a rare opportunity to view the site from an aerial perspective, creating a visual record of the transformation.

The site is presently dominated by light industry and surface parking. Its conversion to agricultural land is hindered by contaminants from previous industrial use thus requiring intensive bio-remediation. Mobile greenhouses will contain the contaminated ecosystems and provide lab facilities to explore new methods of bio-remediation and allowing the public to witness the gradual transformation of the site.

To intensify a connection to the waterfront, the facility blurs the shore line with an integrated ramp descending through cattail-seeded steps. Two market platforms cascade along this ramp, separated from the building by a descending cattail ‘creek’. As through a patch of cattails, light filters into the interior spaces through a skin composed of alternating solids and glazed voids. Visual connection is maintained with the outdoor market platforms through openable wall panels.

location: Victoria
status: 2010 Academic project
designer: Stéfan Levasseur 
mentor: Christopher MacDonald

The neighbourhood of James Bay in Victoria, BC was once involved in industrial/commercial activity. The existing building at 118 Ladysmith Street was a grain processing plant with an attached bakery where residents of the community could buy freshly baked bread until 1971 when the plant relocated to Surrey and baked goods became available only at the local shopping area a number of blocks away.

In keeping with the James Bay development plan towards community-oriented services and gathering spaces as well as healthy pedestrian lifestyles, the aim of this development is to challenge norms and current zoning paradigms by provide multiple adaptable units within a residential neighbourhood that are capable of housing anything from residential to live/work to office spaces. Focus is placed on healthy live/work conditions encouraging community interaction through crossing circulation paths and sight lines between various levels of public/private zones. Historical usage is re-introduced with a bakery/cafe along with a small convenience store that will once again draw an increased public presence to this otherwise residential block. The final outcome is a place for brief or drawn out interactions among residents of the community.

location: University of British Columbia
status: 2010 Academic project
designer: Stéfan Levasseur w/ Mark Ross
mentor: Martin Lewis

Re-establishing the ground datum to the existing roofscape, a vegetative formal expression rethinks the entrenched connotation of what an engineering courtyard could be.

Vegetation within the courtyard is coded to reflect the given program of UBC’s new engineering centre, providing a sense of cohesion between the vegetative and built programs.

Transparency is used to blur the boundary between landscape and building. The landscape penetrates within the building challenging social conventions by creating a visual filter between programmatic elements.