A precedent-setting adaptive reuse project, Eva’s Phoenix is a residence/skills training centre for homeless and at-risk youth. The design, which stitches together two previously divided warehouses in a 1930s heritage-designated former municipal waterworks, is organized around an expansive atrium that forms a ‘main street’. Ten ‘townhouses’ clustered around this street accommodate 50 residents in total. Each townhouse contains private bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a communal living space and kitchen. The townhouses face onto the internal street, which serves as the primary gathering space for this ‘community within a building’.
The layering of spaces enables residents to choose the level of integration that feels comfortable to them. Above one of the townhouse rows, the design team inserted offices and 'rooftop' meeting areas that provide humane, semi-private, light-filled spaces for working, meeting and counselling. With a demonstration kitchen on the ground floor and a full-service commercial print shop in the basement, Eva’s offers employment and life skills training to its residents, who can live in this shelter for up to one year. This is the second Eva’s Phoenix — LGA Architectural Partners also designed the original, which opened in 2003. When pending redevelopment made it necessary to relocate the first Eva’s, the client hired the firm once again to design their new premises.