Alberni by Kengo Kuma

Featured in Architectural Digest (June 2023), Wallpaper (July 2023), Dezeen (June 2023) plus cover of Canadian Architect (April 2022) among other leading design publications.

Alberni by Kengo Kuma

“The tower does not deploy glass as a mass-defining material…
that is, for the design,
the glass is conceptually ‘not there'”

Per studio founder Kengo Kuma (Sourced from interview in Dezeen – June 20, 2023 – here)

Also per the architect’s description:

The tower meets the ground with two intersecting domes that embrace Alberni and Cardero. Under the arching structures, an extensive moss garden defines the entrance and flows upwards to the swimming pool above.

Designed by renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, this 43-storey residential tower made headlines in 2016 when “it broke previous records as the highest average price for a building in North America outside of New York’s Central Park corridor” (per feature in Architectural Digest – June 2023 – here).

It is within these arching structures that the massive glass wall we’re supporting is located.

Some key challenges that this project presents:

• Highest point of wall is 12.2m [40’] tall
• Huge pieces of glass at 5m [over 16’] high x 2.5m [8’] wide, each weighs approximately 2 tonnes
• Glass walls are designed at a slope and located in a potentially corrosive swimming pool environment
• Glass panels we’re supporting are complex shapes comprised of IGUs with PVB laminate on the inside and outside

The Stella Solution was created via collaboration with the entire team.
We designed a sloping support system complete with custom hardware to support the massive slopes of glass and implemented precautionary measures to prevent corrosion (with the assistance of our metallurgist expert).