N3
N3 stands at 450 8 Avenue SE in East Village, one address along from the St. Louis Hotel. GEC Architecture drew it at 15 storeys holding 167 suites, and it finished in 2017 for Knightsbridge Homes with Metropia.
The building
N3 went up with no vehicle parking. Calgary city council relaxed the requirement that would ordinarily have put roughly a hundred stalls under a building holding this many suites, and what went underground instead was a level given over to bicycle storage. The architects paired that with heat recovery ventilation and compact suite plans, and they describe the result as transit-oriented rather than car-served. A resident here is walking or boarding a train.
At street level the building opens through transparent retail frontage and a public mews running to the St. Louis Hotel next door, one of the oldest hotels in the city, whose upper floors now hold the head office of Calgary Municipal Land Corporation. Shared space inside includes a rooftop lounge and a two-storey fitness area.
The bicycle storage level carries cleaning and repair facilities. The rooftop terrace is outfitted with two gas barbecues, a sink, pergolas, seating, and a fireplace, and the fitness area beside it runs across two levels with windows onto the Bow River, Studio Bell, the Saddledome, and downtown Calgary. Suites are assigned storage lockers.
Around it
The Central Library opened four blocks west in November 2018, drawn by Snøhetta with Calgary's DIALOG and built over a working CTrain line that curves from grade into tunnel underneath the reading rooms. A block east of the library, Studio Bell opened on Canada Day 2016 as the home of the National Music Centre, wrapped around the old King Edward Hotel. RiverWalk runs four kilometres of pathway along the Bow between The Confluence and the Peace Bridge, and St. Patrick's Island sits across the water off the north edge of the neighbourhood. The 7 Avenue CTrain platforms are a few minutes north on foot.
What the building leaves out is what the neighbourhood has to supply, so read Living in East Village alongside it.
