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Stay updated with our latest Ottawa architecture insights and projects in our News section. Engaging blogs await!

News From Award Winning Architects - Linebox Studio

Quand on parle de nous.

Nouvelles

Linebox's second large-scale adaptive-reuse project launch!

Article published in the Ottawa Citizen May 4th 2026. Article by: 

We're proud to have completed our second large-scale office-to-residential conversion in downtown Ottawa and our second with the incredible team at CLV Group. What was once a vacant government office building is now 139 rental homes, breathing new life into the heart of the city.

Adaptive reuse isn't just good design. It's the right response to the housing crisis, to climate commitments, and to the future of our cities. Projects like this save hundreds of truckloads of concrete from landfill, cut carbon emissions by over 50% compared to ground-up construction, and bring community back to neighbourhoods that need it.

Converting Office to Residential at 360 Laurier

Converting Office to Residential - 360 Laurier

What does it take to transform a 60-year-old Brutalist government office tower into a place people are proud to call home? For Linebox Studio, the answer lies in embracing the puzzle. Our second office-to-residential conversion in Ottawa's downtown core, 360 Laurier Ave. W., in collaboration with CLV Group, is a masterclass in adaptive reuse architecture: preserving the building's precast concrete structure (and its considerable embodied carbon), reimagining dead-end floor plates as amenity spaces, and engineering creative solutions for windows, plumbing, and natural light where no residential architect would have thought to look. The result? Nearly 140 new rental homes added to Ottawa's housing supply, with 28% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a new build of comparable size.

Office-to-residential conversion isn't a straight line, it's a complex, evolving design challenge that demands ingenuity at every turn. From uncovering asbestos on day one of demolition to negotiating a year-long encroachment agreement just to add windows to the building's west façade, every obstacle became an opportunity to design smarter. Linebox's approach working 

 the bones of the building rather than against them is how we turn aging, underutilized office stock into vibrant, livable communities that strengthen Ottawa's downtown core. Read the full story in the Ottawa Business Journal. 

https://obj.ca/long-road-to-converting-360-laurier-ave-into-apartments/

From Cubicles to Community: Inside the 360 Laurier Ave. Office-to-Residential Conversion

What happens when clients challenge you to rethink everything? You get Ottawa's first residential Cross Laminated Timber home — a 2024 Housing Design Award winner that treats sustainability not as a feature, but as a foundation.

Located in Champlain Park, the Northwestern CLT House was shaped — literally — by three majestic trees on site: two bur oaks and a sugar maple. Rather than work around them, the design was sculpted to them. A 12-foot protection radius around the front oak. Hydro-vacuumed roots wrapped in burlap. The rear of the home raised on piers to avoid root damage. Every decision was made with the same question: 

can we make it better? Can we make it last longer?

"Construction is a very wasteful, resource-intensive and environment-damaging activity. Our goal was to partially offset this negative impact by building something that lasts a very long time."

Cross Laminated Timber is an engineered wood product that captures carbon, insulates beautifully, and performs structurally as an alternative to concrete. In this home, CLT wasn't just a structural choice — it became the soul of the interior. Exposed panels line the walls. The staircase spine reveals it as the home's central connective element, running from basement to rooftop patio overlooking the Ottawa River.

Triple-paned windows, a heat pump, extra insulation, and locally sourced Canadian materials round out a home that is as honest in its construction as it is beautiful in its design. The result? A space so quiet that, as builder Antonio Sanchez of Sanchez Homes put it, "you could have a truck go by and it's so quiet."

The project was recognized at the 2024 Ottawa Housing Design Awards — winning in the custom home category, with additional finalist recognition for the exterior and kitchen. It has now received a full editorial feature, and we couldn't be more proud of what this collaboration produced.

The Northwestern CLT House was designed by Linebox Studio architect Josée Anne Pronovost, built by Sanchez Homes, and engineered by Bautechnik and Moses Structural Engineering.

Ottawa's First CLT Home Was Designed Around Its Trees

One of only 5 international projects selected as finalists.

 - one of the world's most prestigious global architecture and design programs - in the 

Now in its third edition, the Archello Awards brings together an international jury of 120 architects and designers to evaluate more than 1,000 entries across 66 project categories. From that field, five finalists were shortlisted in each category, followed by a month-long public vote that spotlighted standout projects, innovative building products, and contributions from leading firms worldwide. In each category, one winner was chosen by the jury and one by popular vote.

Being recognized among this small group of projects, from across the globe and across every scale of practice, is a meaningful milestone for our studio and a reflection of the care, craft, and intention that went into every decision at Ruby Cottage. Thank you to everyone who supported and voted. We are grateful, and we remain inspired.

Ruby Cottage: a finalist in the Archello Awards

Ruby Cottage named a finalist in the Archello Awards 2025

What does it mean to design a building that belongs to its landscape?

The best buildings don't look like they were placed on a site. They look like they grew from it. That's not a romantic notion; it's a design standard. Site-responsive architecture starts from the premise that every piece of land has a logic: a topography, a climate, a material culture, a view. The architect's job is to read that logic carefully and respond to it honestly. When that happens well, the result is a building that feels inevitable, as if nothing else could have stood in that spot.

Linebox Studio recently developed three distinct cabin concepts for a multi-unit retreat development on a 132,000+ sq/m waterfront lot along the Gatineau River near Mont-Sainte-Marie, Quebec. Same site, same zoning, same material palette - three very different answers to the question of what it means to belong to a place. One concept plays with vertical contrast: a steeply pitched gabled roof rising from a cantilevered concrete base, cedar-clad and dramatic. Another goes tall and lean, a vertical vernacular expression with a soaring two-storey interior. The third goes horizontal - a long, low single-storey form that follows the landscape rather than competing with it.

What unites all three is a commitment to architecture as a response rather than an imposition. The green roof that slows the wind and softens the silhouette. The earth-bermed wedge that pulls daylight deep into the section. The covered threshold that stages the transition from outside to in — compression, then release. 

Retreats, Cabins, and the Architecture of Belonging to a Place

For 10 years, Joanne Hall and her husband, Russel, had their dream cottage. Mostly.

Their place was large – about 2,500 square feet – on a scenic lake just a 45-minute drive from their home in central Ottawa. “Our dock was on a deep part of the lake with an interesting, rocky shoreline,” says Joanne.

There was, however, one major drawback. “The cottage only had one bedroom,” she explains. “There was a big open room where we could fit a lot of people, but there was no privacy.”

That issue became more pressing in the summer of 2020. Russel was retired, and Joanne was on the verge of stepping back from her career in mental health.

The cottage property of Joanne Hall and husband Russel is set on a scenic lake a 45-minute drive from central Ottawa.

“I’m from Northwestern Ontario and my husband is from England,” says Joanne. “Growing up, our kids never had the experience of easy, accessible time with their grandparents – they lived far away. We wanted to retire close to Ottawa so our kids and grandkids could visit whenever they wanted, even if it was just to come swimming for the day.”

A cottage on stilts rises above the tree canopy near Ottawa

A cottage on stilts rises above the tree canopy near Ottawa.

A growing body of research — and a new wave of experimental housing - suggests that architecture has a measurable impact on human wellbeing. Here's what that means for how we design.

It's a question worth asking directly: can architecture make people healthier, happier, more connected? The answer, increasingly supported by research and real-world experimentation, is yes — but only if we design for it intentionally. The built environment shapes behaviour, mood, and social connection in ways that are both subtle and profound. Most housing is designed around minimum viable standards. The most interesting work happening today is designed around maximum human flourishing.

Linebox Studio is currently in the early research phase of a new development project centred precisely on this question. We're exploring what 'light-touch, human-centred' architecture can mean today: materials that age well and improve with time, spatial layouts that encourage connection without removing privacy, systems designed for adaptability as households change over decades. We're drawing on exemplars like Living Places Copenhagen — a brilliant model of how real-life testing and architectural experimentation can reshape the way we think about residential design.

The fundamentals matter enormously here. Natural light isn't a nice-to-have, it's a primary health determinant. Acoustic quality shapes stress levels and sleep. The presence or absence of outdoor space, shared amenities, and well-designed thresholds between public and private life all have measurable effects on how people experience their homes. The best residential architecture takes all of this seriously and considers it as a coherent spatial thesis about what it means to live well.

As housing supply becomes the defining urban policy challenge of this decade, there's a real risk that quantity crowds out quality. We'd argue the false economy is obvious: buildings that don't support the wellbeing of their residents cost more in the long run; in social services, in turnover, in the erosion of neighbourhood quality. Designing for human flourishing isn't a luxury tier of housing. It's the right baseline. 

Can Architecture Actually Foster Wellbeing?

The Living Places Question: Can Architecture Actually Foster Wellbeing?

CLV's second adaptive reuse project with architects Linebox Studio

Article by David Sali, Ottawa Business Journal

The developer that transformed a vacant commercial building on Albert Street into an apartment complex is poised to launch its second office-to-residential conversion project in downtown Ottawa".

https://obj.ca/clv-group-to-convert-laurier-building/