Hapa Collaborative draws upon civic history

T> BY LUCY LAU

hink landscape architecture and it’s likely that images of tree-lined walkways, pristine white-picketed lawns, and immaculately groomed gardens come to mind. But the well-practised discipline goes beyond the confines of residential spaces and into public sites that many citizens inhabit every day.

“It’s anything that is in between buildings and actually implicated by buildings or on buildings,” explains Joseph Fry, principal of local landscape-architecture and urbandesign firm Hapa Collaborative, by phone. “It’s everything that you experience when you walk out your front door.”

Hapa has directed several recent projects aimed at optimizing public engagement, from the redevelopment of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s north plaza to Robson Square to the bend of Main Street that marks the transition from Mount Pleasant to Riley Park. “We really try to advocate for the life between buildings and encourage our clients and the public to understand the importance of that,” says Fry.

Since 2011, Hapa Collaborative—its name a nod to Fry’s mixed Japanese-canadian heritage and what he calls Vancouver’s “hybridized” nature—has been developing public and private outdoor sites that excite and inspire. The heart of Hapa’s practice, however, lies in its work on streetscapes, parks, and civic spots, where community consultation is key to creating beautiful, welcoming spaces that citizens can call their own.

“It’s really important for us to observe and listen, and bring a bit of that thinking forward,” says Fry. “In that way, the people who actually use the spaces afterward feel like it’s their site, it’s their design.”

Consider Sun Hop Park, a public space situated at Main Street and East 18th Avenue completed by Hapa and the Vancouver park board in 2012. To ensure that the project would successfully serve its users, Fry and his team met with residents of the surrounding neighbourhoods before, during, and after the design process.

with one of Solus’s picnic-inspired ipe-wood tabletops.

The poured concrete comes in a range of hues, from popular Cinder (a dark charcoal) to basic Portland (classic cement) to Halva (an ultramod white).

In all, the looks are a million years away—literally—from the old bonfires of our ancestors.

“People like pretty things,” says Carruthers. “You can still have something as pleasing as a campfire but still have clean lines and a clean aesthetic.”