The Reservoir Dogs Townhouse Lofts, 7-9-11 Brock Street

hamilton, Ontario

This unusual project is an adaptive reuse of a heritage industrial building into housing in Hamilton’s hip and ultra-desirable North End waterfront neighborhood, and part of the legacy of Hamilton’s storied industrial and waterfront history. This project has obsessed us as both the architect and developer. We renovated the vacant industrial building into three large residential loft-style freehold townhouses.

For us a clear goal has been to inject high calibre architecture and interior design in order to help elevate discussion and expectations about design quality, and help raise the bar aesthetically in a town and neighbourhood belaboured with much banal, non-descript recent housing and infill projects. Hopefully people will see what is possible and then to expect and demand it with their pocketbooks. The idea is also to illustrate what good design looks like in a world where everyone with a Pinterest page thinks they are a designer. The design inspiration was the similarity to the warehouse setting of the Reservoir Dogs movie, and this led us to craft each dwelling loosely around a character, Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink and Mr. White and their personas.

The finished product is a highly individualized design with customization and detailing of each dwelling, both inside and out. Colours, cabinets, finishes, lighting, and landscaping are all unique to each dwelling and are all by the architects. Remnants of the past industrial history have been left intact inside and out. The exterior design blends the historic character with modern steel, glass block, corrugated metal siding and custom designed steel and glass elements.