A place of refuge and protection

Crafting Total Design

Horseshoe Bay’s interiors and architectural details continue a bold tradition of total design in West Vancouver. Merrick Architects take inspiration from West Coast Modern, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Arts and Crafts movement in their fully-conceived system of interior appointments, light fixture designs, details in wood and the visual language for the lobby at Horseshoe Bay.

  • Lobby lounge with 24 hour concierge, west coast modernism at its finest
  • Falling water designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, 1935
  • Smith House Designed By Arthur Erickson, 1964
  • Helmut Eppich House Designed By Arthur Erickson

Interior Architecture

Horseshoe Bay’s exterior details in natural wood and integrally coloured walls frame the homes they enclose. Interiors continue this aesthetic, with textures and colours inside carefully selected for this special location. In preparing their drawings, the architect studied the leaves, rocks and branches of the surrounding forests, the harbour’s rich maritime legacy of handmade boats, and local traditions of bold modernist architecture. These particular choices ensure that each home will be as memorable inside as the exterior architecture and public spaces that surround them.

Finishes & Specs

  • Overheight Windows Maximizing the Water and Mountain Views
  • Elevator Entrance integrated into a rock wall
  • Gracious Outdoor Living Spaces with Views

Miele Kitchen

  • Large living and kitchen spaces for entertaining

  • Westbank has a long and deep relationship with Miele, the world’s leading high-end appliance manufacturer, who has curated an appliance lineup in keeping with a building of this quality. One of the features of Horseshoe Bay will be the inclusion of Miele Professional Dual-Fuel Ranges in all Residences – a first in Canada. All Miele Professional Dual-Fuel Ranges include M-Series ‘swipe’ touch controls and extensive MasterChef pre-programmed recipes.

Duravit & Hansgrohe Bathroom

  • Founded in 1817 in Germany, Duravit bring a tradition of European excellence to all of their bathroom fixtures. The choice of fine hotels and luxurious spas globally, their shower heads and taps are elegant exemplars of the art of industrial design. Grohe is another manufacturer with European roots, but one who operates a 15,000 square foot show-room on New York’s Fifth Avenue to showcase their innovative designs. The easy action and clean lines of both company’s fixtures lead the industry.

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Paul Merrick

Paul Merrick was born and grew up in West Vancouver, remembering his Ambleside neighbourhood as a “real village,” and remarks on the multi-generational shops that are still there. His grandfather was an engineer on coastal ferries, his father an industrial arts teacher at West Vancouver High and his uncle ran the local gas station. Young Paul played in the surrounding forests, caddied at the Capilano Golf Club, and picked up the wood-working skills that still serve him today in his sailboat design and construction at his East Sooke workshop.

Paul Merrick faced a choice when applying to the University of British Columbia: “There’s not much room for imagination in engineering, so I choose architecture – it looked like more fun.” His natural abilities with freehand drawing served him well as a student, but his real education in design thinking came from one of the School of Architecture’s most charismatic professors. “Arthur Erickson had a Socratic teaching process,” Merrick says, “He showed these magnificent slides of his travels – he took us on mental journeys, talked about pace and place and light.” At the time, Erickson was designing the Filberg House in Comox – his first large house commission – and he shared the evolution of its design with Merrick and his classmates. After third year, he spent a summer working at Ron Thom’s office, working on the details of Massey College in Toronto. Upon graduation, Merrick faced a choice: “I had offers from two firms that were on very different wavelengths. You could say that Arthur Erickson’s office was FM, but Ron Thom’s was AM, and that is what I chose.”

Soon, Merrick was designing small wooden houses in the Westcoast idiom that was Thom’s hallmark. “It’s hard to know where one’s influences come from, but from an early age I had a strong empathy for an organic way of thinking,” he says of these designs. These tendencies are evident in the larger Sciences Complex and Library/ Bridge commissions he was given as part of Thom’s design of the Trent University campus in Ontario, which meet the technical needs of a contemporary university, but retain a sense of handmade tradition. Merrick says: “When Ron put his hand to something, a different kind of light emerged.” After a few years in Thom’s then-Toronto-based office, and some extended travels in Europe, Merrick returned to Vancouver.

Working with Thompson Berwick Pratt, Merrick was lead architect for the lobby extension and interior adaptive re-use that transformed the former Orpheum cinema in to Vancouver’s leading concert venue, winning Governor General’s Medal for Architecture for his design.
A felt pen elevation for UBC student house design project
A sketch for Paul Merrick Family Residence, Eagle Harbour

For Thompson Berwick Pratt he designed the powerful Brutalist forms of the downtown Vancouver CBC studios, then was project architect for the very different interior renovation and lobby addition for the oncethreatened Orpheum Theatre, which won a Governor General’s Medal for architecture. Merrick designed a sublime house in the forest for his family in West Vancouver in 1972, then a few years later formed his own practice. The range of buildings completed since is remarkable, ranging from the Gothic touches of the UBC Alumni Medical Library at 12th and Heather to the assertive wood structure of the Day Lodge at the Callaghan Valley installations for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Merrick says that one of his most important techniques he used as he built his own architectural practice – which has grown to forty employees in offices in Victoria and Vancouver – is to constantly ask “What is the site asking of us?” He regards the current commission for Westbank on the Sewell Marina site to be one of the great challenges of his career. “Horseshoe Bay has the curious condition of the view being north, the sun to the south,” he says. A breakthrough came with memories of the rural English architecture he had toured with is family in the 1970s, with “buildings one room thick” being the perfect strategy he had sought for this confined site having the additional site conditions of steep forest on one side and harbour on the other. “During design development all the notions were there, but they got pumped up a bit, more texture came in,” says the architect of his Horseshoe Bay design, concluding: “Listen to the land, and it will tell you what it wants to be.”

Interior Finishes & Specifications

Design

  • West Coast Modern luxury homes in the waterfront community of Horseshoe Bay
  • Horseshoe Bay West Vancouver steps right out from the hillside to the ocean front
  • Interior design inspired by natural west coast surroundings
  • Layouts allow for natural cross ventilation and expansive views of the waterfront, mountain, forest, or park
  • Homes are accessed through covered external walkways
  • Reinforced concrete construction

Sustainable Design

  • In building heating and cooling provided through an onsite geothermal ocean loop, allowing for a reduction in greenhouse gas emission of up to 70%
  • Underground Parking supplied with electric vehicle charging stations (available for purchase)
  • Onsite cistern to capture stormwater runoff and recycle it for irrigation, thereby reducing the use of fresh water
  • Local recycling of onsite rock material to protect and enhance to waterfront
  • Local material use that supports local artists and trades

Security

  • 24-hour concierge
  • Building-wide electronic Access Control system
  • 24-hour digital video recording surveillance of building entry points
  • Electronic access using a single encrypted security device
  • Video Entry System allows identification and screening of guests
  • Elevators include restricted floor access

Amenities

  • Amenity Boat House, that is truly one of the most breath-taking boathouses in history
  • Luxurious 24 foot Chris Craft boat, with dedicated Captain
  • Paddle Boards and Kayaks for residences to use
  • Private Lobby with soaring ceilings and architectural fireplace, and additional private lobbies for each building
  • State of the art gym

Interiors

  • Designed by Merrick Architecture in a West Coast Modern typology
  • Unique overheight extra wide solid oak suite entry door, modern interpretation of the Arts and Crafts style
  • Overheight ceilings
  • Wide-planked wood flooring in all living areas
  • Porcelain Limestone look tile throughout the bathrooms and up wet walls
  • Designer wool carpet in bedrooms
  • European kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities
  • 30" and 36" gas fireplace in majority of homes, covered in travertine stone
  • Finest quality roller-blinds with woven sun control fabric

Bathroom

  • European teak vanities
  • Polished quartz countertop for master ensuite and second bathroom
  • Porcelain Limestone look flooring in oversized tiles, and up wet walls
  • Grohe polished chrome fixtures including a rain shower head, with a 3-jet hand shower wall mounted
  • Duravit undermount sink basin
  • Duravit rectangular deep soaker tub
  • Floor heating in master bathroom

Kitchen

  • European matte lacquer cabinetry
  • Contemporary built-in under-cabinet lighting
  • Self-closing cabinet drawers
  • Polished granite slab countertop, glacier white corian, or an exquisite glass fused countertop
  • Contemporary satin brushed metal and glass backsplash
  • Grohe polished chrome fixtures
  • Stainless steel double kitchen sink with built in garburator
  • Ceiling treatments will incorporate wood panels and elements to recall the forested surroundings while adding warm and tactile
  • contrast to the clean lines of the kitchens

Appliances

  • Miele 30" or 48" Dual Fuel M Touch Range
  • Miele 48" Range includes Speed Oven (Combination Auxiliary Convection Oven and Microwave) and Warming Drawer
  • Miele Futura Classic Plus custom panelled Dishwasher with Cutlery Tray
  • Miele 30" or 48" stainless steel hoodfan
  • Miele Microwave (in Residences with 30” Ranges)
  • Miele 30" or 36" MasterCool Refrigerator with Bottom Freezer Drawer & Ice maker
  • Miele MasterCool Wine Fridge, Tall Unit with 3 temperature zones, or Under-counter Unit with 2 temperature zones.
  • Garburator
  • Miele 24" stackable washer/dryer

New Home Warranty

  • 2 Years Materials and Workmanship Protection
  • 5 Years Water Penetration Protection
  • 10 Years Structural Protection