life can unfold amidst the quietude of carefully designed landscape.
Engagement without Activation: A Different Kind of Ground Floor A key point of departure from conventional urban mixed-use developments lies in OnPark’ s approach to the ground plane. Along Century Boulevard, where one might typically expect retail or active frontages, the design team opted for a quieter residential interface. This decision was not made lightly but came from a nuanced understanding of site dynamics.
The building is positioned on a sharp bend in Century Boulevard, opposite the busy entrance ramps to Canal Walk. The heavy vehicular traffic and limited pedestrian engagement along this section made a commercial interface impractical. Instead, the building addresses the street with two storeys of elevated apartments, each set behind a layered landscape plinth that offers privacy while still contributing to the urban façade.
This restrained approach avoids the alltoo-common pitfall of ground-floor retail that remains vacant or underutilised. Instead, groundlevel animation is deferred to future adjacent developments, most notably the forthcoming Site C proposal, where pedestrian activity and urban intensity are anticipated to be more organically embedded.
The Park Edge: Where Urban Life Meets Nature Conversely, the western edge of the building offers a radically different experience. Here, the architecture opens itself generously to Ratanga
40 On Park