Livingston Homeowners Association

The Livingston Homeowner’s Association is a multifaceted, meticulously programmed mixed-use facility with 32,000 square feet of indoor space and a four-acre outdoor area. The indoor area contains various amenities, such as a gymnasium, a temporary fire station, a coffee shop, daycare facilities, meeting rooms, change rooms, a mechanical workshop, and a commercial kitchen that caters to a 125-seat banquet hall. The facility serves as a central hub for community members and also houses the Homeowners Association offices.

The 4,725-square-foot fire station has been thoughtfully developed to align with current Calgary Fire Department standards, operating autonomously from the remainder of the mixed-use facility. Distinct access and egress points for the fire station are deliberately segregated from the main building, facilitating the efficient deployment of the Calgary Fire Department and safeguarding public safety.

An expansive community garden, accessible through the central grand hall, offers a range of recreational amenities, including a splash park, a recreational ice surface, a full-size hockey rink, tennis courts, a toboggan hill, and landscaped interpretive pathways.

This facility is a cornerstone for building community, providing a multitude of recreational activities and social opportunities for Livingston residents for years to come.

*Photos curtesy of Brookfield Residential

S2 overcame several challenges with this project – the key one was the requirement to design a facility into a single building that incorporates the needs of many programmatic and user requirements; including the community, daycare, and temporary fire station.

The temporary fire station is required to have a separate entrance as well as access that will not be impacted by the public parking. Similarly, the daycare also requires its own entry with easily accessible parking and a segregated play area. The site plan addresses these requirements by having separate entries from the main road; for the public and for fire services. Additionally, the daycare has a large public plaza at its entrance, allowing parents and kids to gather without impeding vehicular traffic. As a unifying element for the facility, the design incorporates a large floating roof that cantilevers over the building.

Another challenge was addressing construction phasing. The design team proposed to build the gymnasium in several years; to accommodate this, the roof has been designed to split in a way that different sections can be built out separately, in line with construction phasing, without impacting the overall design.

Landscaping is a critical element to the project with the range of outdoor activities planned. The building size was constrained by this and therefore was designed vertically with different uses stacked on top of each other. This has required careful planning for access and fire exiting while also providing opportunities, such as maximizing views of the community garden from the upper level banquet hall.

S2 held several coordination meetings with user groups to understand their needs and desires, along with how spaces can be shared between different user groups.

For the fire station in particular, the design team visited an existing temporary fire station and utilized their learnings to develop a design that incorporates CFD requirements, while adding in flexibility for future use.