The work of Winnipeg-based 1×1 architecture is a lot like the sorts of characters Gary Cooper played in classic movies: unpretentious, principled, and quietly charismatic.
Partners Travis Cooke, MRAIC, Glen Gross, MRAIC, Jason Kun, MRAIC and Markian Yereniuk, MRAIC, all in their forties, met in architecture school at the University of Manitoba and working at Cibinel Architecture. In 2010, they founded what is now an eight-person practice.
St. Vital Park Pavilion, which serves as a picnic shelter in the summer and a heated skate change enclosure in the winter, embodies the studio’s mix of thoughtful design and resourceful pragmatism. The shelter was carefully positioned to preserve existing trees in one of Winnipeg’s oldest parks, and its adjacency to a duck pond inspired a roof evocative of flight. The type of bi-folding doors often used on auto showrooms provided an affordable, off-the-rack means of completely opening the pavilion’s long sides in warm weather.
Janzen Residence, a house designed for an expansive Manitoba prairie site, has a sparseness that says “Mies” and “barn” at the same time. Many of 1×1’s other works are parks and recreation projects, or industrial buildings with challenging budgets.
“We take a lot of satisfaction in designing industrial buildings that are not just boxes, but work environments with well-placed access to natural light,” says Cooke. “We hit the programming and budget objectives,” Gross adds, “and then try to take it one step further with design.”