Echo's modern take brings boutique luxury condo living to the canal
Anita Murray, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: July 8, 2019
Life on the street; life on the canal — that’s exactly what a new condo building on Echo Drive is designed to emulate.
Appropriately called Echo, the six-storey building at the corner of Main Street was created by an impressive team that includes Uniform Urban Developments, Hobin Architecture, 2H Interior Design and Astro Design Centre — with a goal of offering a sophisticated boutique-like urban-lifestyle residence that pairs views overlooking the Rideau Canal with inviting outdoor spaces that connect with the street.
It’s a building that both makes a statement and is subtle in its presentation and it launched July 2.
“This is very much about the canal,” says Rheal Labelle, an intern architect for Hobin and the lead designer on the project. Making the most of an unusual triangular lot, the building is oriented so that more than two-thirds of the 32 units command canal views with oversized terraces and cantilevered balconies to take advantage of the location.
Boasting strong vertical stone tiers balanced by “large projecting terraces floating in between,” Labelle says, the building accidentally gives a nod to a famous Frank Lloyd Wright home designed in the 1930s: Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.
“It was a little bit ironic because it was never an intentional relationship to Fallingwater,” he notes. Yet along with its style, Fallingwater’s intimate connection with its environment — set amid the forest along the Bear Run tributary in the Appalachian Mountains — is repeated in Echo’s connection to the nature surrounding the canal.
The building itself is a “modern interpretation of those cantilevers, those really bold vertical punctuations,” says Ryan MacDougall, marketing and sales manager at Uniform.
But it also gives a nod to the site’s past, respecting its next-door neighbour (the Canal 111 condo), the decommissioned church currently on the property and its position as a gateway to Main Street.
It was Ryan’s father, John, who first saw the potential of the site and approached the owners about purchasing more than a decade ago. Not ready to sell at the time, when they were, they came back to Uniform.
Since buying the property about five years ago, Uniform has taken its time to determine just how to develop it.
“There’s every so often little nuggets of land come up along the canal but, truly, location is the differentiating factor here,” says Emily Meyers, who also a Uniform marketing and sales manager. “And because we think this is an A++ location in Ottawa, we basically made all the subsequent design and finish decisions that just honoured that and kept it high-end luxury.”
Aimed primarily at downsizers and professionals, the units are large enough to give the feeling of a home, with layouts that emphasize entertaining and empty nester living. While a majority of units are two bedrooms plus a den, for instance, the secondary bedrooms and dens are pulled to the interior of the unit so that master bedrooms and the main living space can take advantage of the canal views.
“Sometimes there’s the convention that all bedrooms have to be on the window side, but oftentimes it really compromises or squeezes your living space,” says Meyers.
There was also an emphasis on making sure “all the real estate is usable, so making sure hallways were not too long and making sure that you would live in all the spaces… really giving every space a function,” adds Danielle Hannah of 2H Interior Design, who absolutely loves the building.
“The architecture and the trees and the water; there’s something I find very seductive about the canal if you want to live urban.”
Ian Rowbotham finds it seductive as well. That’s why he’s become one of the first buyers at Echo, having planned the move for years.
“I think it’s one of the best locations going for downtown and (being close to) the Queensway.”
As a commercial landscaper (he runs Exel Contracting), Rowbotham has worked all over the city, including for Uniform, and has been aware of the project from the beginning. “I was interested from Day 1.”
Although he and his wife had already downsized to a bungalow in Stittsville, he knew it would be an interim move until Echo was ready.
“I’m looking forward to being downtown, closer to a lot of things and the outdoor activities like biking and all the pathways. And being on the canal and being close to Lansdowne Park I think will be great.”
Building amenities include a rooftop terrace and lounge, concierge service, pet washing station, bike storage and indoor, heated garage. The building is also smoke-free.
In the units, the emphasis is on high-end features and finishes, with quartz counters, floating vanities, curb-less showers and wide-plank hardwood among the standards. Kitchens are by Astro, which is introducing a line of more modern European shaker cabinets as one of the design options.
Astro is taking a contemporary approach to the kitchens, says designer Walter Bunda, yet creating spaces that people moving from a traditional home would still feel was in their style. “And even though we’ve designed the spaces, there’s still flexibility that when the client comes to us after purchasing the unit to change them.”
Bunda says key features include high-end Miele appliance packages with integrated fridges and dishwashers and islands that “don’t have any interruption in them. They’re smooth, large expanses that present a nice area you can entertain on or work on without a sink on there to interrupt that flow.”
There has also been a lot of attention paid to ceilings throughout the units, which are either nine or 10 feet. There are coffered, drop and floating ceilings, subtle reveals and soft details to accentuate or hide lighting.
The 2H and Hobin teams “spent a lot of time on creating a hierarchy of what the bulkhead details would be,” says Meyers. “If you don’t do that thoughtfully, it can really take away from what is otherwise pretty dramatic spaces.”
The attention to detail on the ceilings and for the interiors in general was “really about making sure that the beautiful finishes on the outside were also continued on the inside,” says Hannah. “(This project) is really going to add something fantastic to Echo Drive.”
Echo
What: A six-storey luxury condo building with 32 units on Echo Drive overlooking the Rideau Canal
Builder: Uniform Urban Developments
Prices: From $846,000 for a one-bedroom-plus-den with 955 square feet
Sales centre: 115 Echo Dr. (in the church building on the site)
Hours: Monday to Thursday, noon to 7 p.m.; weekends and holidays, noon to 5 p.m.
Information: 613-552-1004;
echocanal.com
https://ottawacitizen.com/life/homes...g-to-the-canal
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