Business, Building & Development

Infill Housing Design Competition

Infill Housing Design Competition Winners Announced!

Thank you to everyone who submitted their designs to the Town of Gibsons Infill Housing Design Competition. All submissions have been reviewed, and the panel has chosen our winners!

The aim of the competition was to inspire thoughtful and innovative design while streamlining the development approvals process. Submissions were evaluated based on how well they embodied:

  • Affordability and cost-effectiveness – balancing affordable materials with sustainable design
  • Flexibility and creativity – varying aesthetics that suit a range of neighbourhoods and settings
  • Inclusivity and livability – ensuring socially connected housing that is accessible for all ages and abilities
  • Good neighbourhood design – integrating attractive infill housing into existing neighbourhoods

Interested in building one of the designs on your property?

The adoption of the winning submissions as pre-reviewed designs is being finalized by the Town of Gibsons. Once submissions are adopted as pre-reviewed designs, development applicants using these winning designs will receive an expedited approval process timeline and may eventually be eligible for reduced fees.

If you are interested in building one of the designs on your property, contact details for the designer/architect are listed in the plans below. 

Winners

Small Lot (3-4 units) Category

First Place

The Driftwood, Callander Architecture
Designer Contact Information: https://callanderarchitecture.com/

Second Place

Small Lot Nesting, First Light Design
Designer Contact Information: https://firstlightdesign.ca/

Third Place

Small Lot Multiplex, JWT Design Ltd.
Designer Contact Information: https://jwtarchitecture.com/

Long Lot (5-6 units) Category

First place

[PARK]WAY, Diego Ortiz Architecture Studio
Designer Contact Information: https://www.doas.ca/

Second Place

Large Lot Multiplex, JWT Design Ltd.
Designer Contact Information: https://jwtarchitecture.com/

Third Place

The Driftwood, Callander Architecture
Designer Contact Information: https://callanderarchitecture.com/

Competition Details (Now Closed)

For more details on the Infill Housing Design Competition (now closed), see the Infill Housing Design Competition Design Brief.

People’s Choice Award – Voting Closed

The winner of the People’s Choice Award, as voted on by Gibsons residents, is Small Lot Nesting, designed by First Light Design, a Sunshine Coast-based architecture firm. The People’s Choice Award was determined via an online survey that was open exclusively to Gibsons residents from April 28th to May 7th.”

Links

Infill Housing Design Competition Design Brief

Design Competition Poster

Infill Housing is development that occurs within already built-up areas with existing services. Infill housing contributes to affordable, inclusive, and complete neighbourhoods through development of vacant lots or the subdivision of large lots. The IHDC aims to inspire thoughtful and innovative design while streamlining the development approvals process.

Why infill housing?

The Town of Gibsons will experience a lot of growth over the next 10 years. According to the Town of Gibsons’ 2024 Housing Needs Report, a projected 364 homes are needed by 2034 across a range of tenures, affordability scales, and sizes, to meet the current housing needs and projected growth.

Infill housing types, such as multiplexes, row houses, and accessory dwelling units, can help meet this need by increasing the Town’s housing supply, affordability, and diversity. The benefit of infill housing is that it enables already developed land, underutilized land, or vacant land to increase the supply of rental and/or owned housing.

The IHDC builds on the Town of Gibsons’ existing garden suite program.

Submissions were reviewed and evaluated by a talented panel of experts:

Peter Atkinson – Human Studio
Peter is the co-founder and principal of Human Studio, a Vancouver-based architecture and urban design firm focused on creating social and environmental resilience. The firm strives to rethink conventional architectural design and the delivery process. Human Studio believes that there is a strong link between sociability in architecture and long-term sustainability.

Lucas Berube – Bosa Properties
Lucas is a Senior Development Director at Bosa Properties. He specialises in building master-planned communities that strive to provide residents with the opportunity to build strong community ties through unique amenities, curated commercial spaces, and inclusive public realms. He was also recently a member of the District of Squamish’s Advisory Design Panel, which judged the District’s infill housing design competition.

Julian Burtnick – Caerus Construction
Since 1992, Caerus Construction limited, based on the Sunshine Coast, has been providing quality new home construction for more than 500 families.

David Longman – Longman Developments
David has leveraged his personal commitment to value and excellence to build a successful construction company that specializes in building not only single-family homes, but also multi-unit residential developments and commercial structures.

Luke Mari – Aryze Developments
For the last 15 years, Luke has been skillfully navigating the intricate maze of city planning, staying true to his mission to demystify and disrupt the development industry. As the Principal of Development at Aryze, he lands complex site acquisitions, unlocks creative financing solutions and decodes the art of approvals. Previously serving as a Director of Planning and Approving Officer with a leading local government in the Greater Victoria region, he knows his way around a zoning bylaw or two. Passionate about data and diverse housing, Luke is all about making neighbourhoods more interesting—one creative infill at a time.

Katie Thomas – Town of Gibsons
A member of the Town of Gibsons’ planning team has been included to ensure the Town’s experience with infill housing and broader planning objectives are represented on the panel. The staff planner will contribute to the review of submissions but will not be a voting member of the panel.

  • First-place winners for each category will receive $2,500
  • Second-place winners for each category will receive $1,250
  • Third-place winners for each category will receive $500
  • People’s Choice Award will receive $500

Winning designs and designers will be featured by the Town of Gibsons. The original designer will retain ownership rights of all designs to sell traditionally.

Winning designs will be marketed as pre-reviewed infill housing designs, streamlining the approvals process. Development applicants using these pre-reviewed designs will receive an expedited building permit timeline and may be eligible for reduced fees.

The IHDC is being funded by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporations’ (CMHC) Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF). The HAF is a federal grant program, intended to encourage local initiatives to build more homes, faster.