Cortes Housing Society film: Behind the Design

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents The Cortes Community Housing Society has just released a video about the design work they have completed, with the help of Iredale Architecture, on the Rainbow Ridge project.

“ We're very lucky to have Bill Weaver, the video maker on our board of directors. Bill is actually our vice president and one of the things he's so gifted at is capturing video and photos. One of the things he's been trying to do since the beginning of the project is really record the process that the housing society has gone through,” said Sandra Wood, Executive Director of the Housing Society.

“I think Bill has done a beautiful job in capturing footage along the way and really trying to demonstrate the care and thought that we're putting into this project. The experts that we've invited as our architects and landscape designers and stormwater designers, are people who we really felt understood Cortes and could add something of value to our community and bring an environmental sensitivity to the project.”

The video starts out with Richard Iredale, of Iredale Architecture saying, “Islands can tend to become only accessible to either the very young or the very prosperous. So the idea of affordable housing in a more rural community is intriguing because making housing available to people of all ages and all income brackets strengthens that community. I partly lived on Mayne Island for a big chunk of my life, so I've had a firsthand sense of what it's like to participate and volunteer and feel like you can make a difference.”

His firm has done a lot of work in the Gulf Islands, as well as downtown Vancouver.

Wood added, “Things like the landscape plan are not just about making the property pretty for the future tenants, the landscaping will have an actual function on the property because we're all living in a watershed. The things that we need to put in place on Rainbow Ridge are critical to ensuring the lakes are protected and the whole neighborhood continues to be a really healthy and beautiful ecology. This will be our third attempt to get government funding to start construction. I think we'll be better prepared now than we've ever been before as far as having more of the planning and design work done in advance, and to have a budget that's really solid and professionally costed in today's dollars.”