The Globe and Mail

Oliver Lang and Cynthia Wilson have seen their share of bad architecture. From Germany to New York City, the primaries behind Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture (LWPAC) -- who are also married, with two children -- have lived in plenty of lousy apartments. "I'm so used to the deficiencies of apartment living, in Hamburg and elsewhere," says Mr. Lang, who grew up in Germany, earned a Masters in Advanced Architectural Design at Columbia University and is now an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. "You spend all your time making those spaces bearable. From that perspective, this project is sort of a critique of my whole life." The project is Roar_one, a development of stacked homes in Point Grey that Mr. Lang and Ms. Wilson hope will spur a paradigm shift in urban architecture. Designed in association with Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden Architects, Roar_one was one of three winners of the 2005 Design Exchange awards for residential projects, and synthesizes two decades of lessons for the young architects.