Viking by Crown

Viking by Crown is a 10 storey residential development in Waterloo, boasting 108 luxury apartments across two towers, gymnasium, outdoor pool and ground floor retail areas. The building design incorporates a three-storey central breezeway cutting across the middle of the building, providing landscaped common areas and pedestrian links to the thoroughfares adjacent to the site. An angled, kinetic art façade inspired by Yaakov Agam creates an illusion to motorists and pedestrians as they move past the building changing from red to yellow. The development was short-listed as one of the 25 coolest new buildings of 2015.

Although Holmes Fire became involved relatively late in the design development phase of the project, our experienced engineers were still able to add significant value by:

• Justifying reduced fire ratings to the Ground Floor retail area, eliminating the need for core filling of blockwork, thus accelerating the construction;
• Omitting the need for sprinklers and one of the fire-isolated stairways from the lower of the two towers, yielding construction cost savings and increased saleable floor area.
• Allowing for extended travel distances within the gymnasium balcony pool area, ensuring the architects had the freedom to achieve their vision for this area of the building.