Kensington Lofts x Ottawa Citizen
Hintonburg lofts by Orange designed to fit the neighbourhood
By Anita Murray - December 9th, 2021
Inspired by the white, walk-up rowhouses of Kensington in London, England, developer Orange Design Build has created its own take on the style with a white four-storey building in Hintonburg.
Called Kensington Lofts, the 26-unit condo is clad in white brick with black accents and ground-floor units that have private walk-up (or down) entries, bypassing the common hallway of the rest of the building.
“I basically took a couple things from Kensington, like the white-and-black themes of the buildings, and tied that in with my own kind of style and my own design,” says Ryan Macintosh, principal owner of Orange. The walk-ups were included, he says, because “it made a lot more sense to have walk-ups to create consistency” in the area’s streetscape.
It’s an unusual approach in Ottawa, yet it fits in well at Pinhey and Armstrong streets, a block south of Wellington Street West and on a corner that has seen much redevelopment in recent years.
“I wanted to do something that was more human scale… what I think is proper gentrification in the neighbourhood,” says Macintosh, who studied urban sustainable development at Carleton University, including a project on the gentrification of Hintonburg.
“I’ve always loved Hintonburg,” he says. “It’s a very interesting, quirky neighbourhood.”
In another unusual approach, Macintosh went ahead and built the building before putting it on the market.
“We wanted people to see the spaces,” he says, feeling it would make for a better buyer experience. Constructed during the pandemic, which Macintosh says was “quite the journey,” the project launched this summer through the real estate firm New Purveyors. Nine units remain.
