Dear Victoria,
Pearl Block is 6 unconventional missing middle 3-bedroom townhomes located at 2910 Shelbourne. We have been working on this project with D’Arcy Jones Architects, along with a team of consultants, for 1.5 years and we’re super excited to be able to bring it to market today.
The reason why Pearl Block, and our other projects, is compelling to us, is that on a personal level we are foremost: residents of Victoria’s neighbourhoods, community members, young family homebuyers. We are experiencing the same housing crisis first hand along with you and your family. However, as entrepreneurs within the real estate industry, the development team at Aryze saw an opportunity to demystify, do things a little differently, and to contribute what we can to address the exodus of our friends from the city core due to a lack of housing options. Pearl Block is the first of many homes we hope to bring to to our friends and family: 3 bedroom family townhomes in a connected neighbourhood, uncompromising of design, functionality and quality.
Transparent Homeownership
Part of the mission of Pearl Block is also to bring transparency to the real estate process: to this end, we have decided to uncover the true cost of each component which went into Pearl Block, complete with our revenue earned. As aspiring young homeowners ourselves, we believe that the value of one of the biggest purchases of any of our lives should not be an ambiguous number. Through our transparent homeownership mission, we hope to make the value of Pearl Block apparent: the legacy of craftsmanship from our 10 years of experience in custom home building, married with the intelligence behind D’Arcy Jones Architecture, executing on details together that will integrate seamlessly into your life.
Pearl Block x Branch Collaborative Pop Up
With a conscious effort to bring Pearl Block to market at a competitive price, we challenged ourselves to see whether we could launch a project on a skinnier-than-most marketing budget. In lieu of a fancy sales centre and flashy brochures, we have decided to buy everyone coffee. EVERYONE. The idea was borne from a genuine love of the way people lingered over food and conversation in cozy neighbourhood coffeeshops, a true hub and heart for personal gatherings. Given the choice between an expensive traditional sales centre or having an honest conversation in a warm and inviting coffeeshop, it didn’t take much debate to go with the latter. Not just from a rebellious streak to be disruptive within an unchanged industry, but to be authentic to Aryze’s values and self identity, we believe the second approach is more true to who we are as people of our community and what we are hoping to achieve through Pearl Block and in broader scope, Aryze Home.
So yes, we want to buy everyone a coffee, even if you not interested in purchasing a home, but are just a huge fan of Aryze or Fairfield Branch Coffee Shop! We are psyched and grateful for any way which our neighbours are interested in engaging with us.
Click Here > #CoffeeforPearlBlock To Register, Get a Coffee and Pearl Block Info
To reach a wider audience on a small marketing budget, we have gone completely rogue. We’ve brought 9 Pearl Block Bikes to 9 accessible and convenient locations in the City of Victoria. By tagging an instagram photo when anyone spots one of them with @aryzehome and #coffeeforpearlblock we would buy you a cup of coffee. At Branch, your coffee is poured in holographic cups, we’ve redecorated the cafe with holographic vinyl wrap, complete with pearlescent canopy and a pearlescent photo-booth. If nothing else, we hope everyone enjoys some truly world-class instagrammable moments and a good laugh with us.
And that’s it folks; we don’t take ourselves too seriously and want to have fun along this journey, that is what gives meaning to what we are doing. We hope you will follow along this little experiment of ours, and lend us your support and curiosity so the future holds more Pearl Blocks, for us and for you.
With our sincerest gratitude,
Aryze
For the design of Pearl Block, DJA fit a small grouping of six rowhouses on a wacky site that is shaped like piece of pizza. The only way to do this while creating homes that the design team would want to live in themselves was to manipulate the traditional rowhouse type, while appealing to five practical everyday concerns
The floorplans started by turning each home’s living area away from the nearby neighbours, to have the six rowhouses all facing the street, instead of looking into the neighbour’s balconies and living spaces. The chunky stucco side walls of each rowhouse act like horse blinders.
Pearl Block’s sculpted personality is like a solid safe castle. Like armature or like a shell around the building, there are reliefs into the envelop to reveal selective windows and views.
Each rowhouse has a roofdeck. But roofdecks aren’t much fun if you feel like you share it with five other neighbours, which would be like having a backyard without a fence. So all of the building’s parapet walls were raised above eye level.
Deeply recessed windows and doors along with little nooks and crannies inside each home make this modern building as appealing as a traditional one, making it feel safe and secure.
Cars would not be able to drive into the attached garages if the ground level was the same size as the second and third levels. So, the ground level was made smaller, becoming a courtyard, kind of space. Courtyards are very common in the Middle East, in Ancient Rome and in old European cities. Since Canadians are not used to courtyards, the one at the base of Pearl Block was designed to be immediately loved and appreciated, since it also creates a place to play in the rain.
