Acton Ostry Architects’ Cactus Club Cafe English Bay has been awarded LEED Gold.
The distinctly linear design of the new Cactus Club at English Bay in Vancouver runs parallel to the seawall promenade, reinforcing a direct relationship with passersby and the bay. The spirit and form of the 6,200-square-foot restaurant pays homage to the area’s structures of the past with a forward-looking vision, complementary and sensitive massing, scale, rhythm and cadence of structure.
Clad in fiery glazing yet unobtrusive in its transparency, Cactus Club at English Bay rests elegantly on the urban waterfront. The stylish restaurant combines with a beachside takeaway that offers reinvented beach classics.
SUSTAINABILITY
Cactus Club English Bay is the first restaurant in Canada to receive LEED Gold certification. The new building’s mechanical system employs a high-efficiency air-source variable refrigerant flow system for heating and cooling. Waste heat from the kitchen exhaust conditions ventilation air and waste heat from refrigeration equipment pre-heats domestic hot water. Rainwater is collected in a cistern and used for irrigation. A green roof is used to grow herbs for use in the restaurant.
QUOTES
“Long awaited, the 22nd iteration of the Cactus Club chain – a beautifully designed, LEED Gold, glass box at the foot of Denman Street – has come vibrantly to life. Remarkably, every table has a great view, which this night featured ocean freighters silhouetted against a mauve-and-magenta sunset” — Vancouver Magazine
“Acton Ostry kept a sense of transparency by designing the facade as a continuous curtain wall and using coloured panels where opacity was required. To this reporter, the orange-and- yellow glazing evokes a Singapore Sling and the sense of languid pleasure contained in such a cocktail” — Adele Weder, architectural critic, Canadian Architect
“Acton Ostry have taken a sensitive, difficult site, respected the slope to the north, views to the east, bathhouse to the south, seawall to the west, and inserted a colourful building of attractive proportions” — Gord Price, urban planner and former Vancouver city councillor
Go9ld
