Centre Culturel et Administratif de Montreal | WORKac

This competition entry is for a public building that combined offices for the Provincial Government, a 1200-seat Concert Hall, and a Conservatory. Our project exploits this association between government and culture with singular building which maintains discrete identities for the different programs.

The three institutions are organized into parallel ‘strips,’ each entered from a different street. These strips are fused into a single loop of interconnected spaces which accommodates each program’s uniqueness through variation in height. At the heart of this loop is the Concert Hall, capped with a glass roof. Capitalizing on the coincidence between the symphony season and the winter months, snow and ice are encouraged to collect on the glass roof, providing additional acoustic insulation.....more

Landsbanki Bank Headquarters | Reykjavik, Iceland | WORKac

WORKac was one of five invited teams to propose a new Headquarters for Landsbanki Bank in Reykjavik, Iceland. Our proposal was conceived of as a historical, urban, architectural and programmatic connector to knit together the old fabric of the city center with the scale of new developments at the city’s edge.


The building is formed from a series of programmatic strips stacked to create strategic voids and shared elevated gardens. On the inside, the strips allow for maximum flexibility and provide ideal northern exposure for the offices while also protecting outdoor spaces from the northern winds. Inspired by the interwoven patterns of Icelandic art, the façade combines structure with fenestration......more

Housing Proposal | Plug Out ,Lower Manhattan,New York By Workac

This proposal was commissioned by New York’s Downtown Alliance to generate ideas for an underused site in Lower Manhattan. WORKac proposed a series of experimental new housing typologies, stacked in a 45-story building. Each housing type is expressed as an independent section, rotated around the building’s core to take full advantage of sunlight and views. Each section’s rooftop is a different ecosystem.

The concept of the “Plug-Out” is that a single building can provide the necessary ecological infrastructure for a neighborhood, allowing it to “plug out” from the city grid and performing what we call “urban dialysis” filtering and cleaning water and providing energy which is then fed back into the surrounding district. The tower’s core, linking the various sections with structure and vertical transportation, provides this infrastructure. The core is divided into waste and water systems moving down one side and heat-producing systems moving up the other, criss-crossing at points to generate public programs.

On the water/waste side, rainwater is harvested for toilets, irrigation, hydroponic farming, laundry, & fish farming. Grey water is cleaned in the Grey Water Wetland and reused in toilets and irrigation. Black water is cleaned and recycled in a treatment facility to be moved back up the tower into the energy systems. Heat and energy are created via composting, a “waste to power incinerator”, geothermal heating, solar powered facades, traffic wind turbines and a co-generation plant to create public baths, a hot yoga center and warmed earth for urban camping. At the top of the building is the Eco-Research school, PS 2030 (in honor of the mayor’s PlaNYC 2030).....more at Workac