Architecture & Interiors — Vancouver · Est. 2004
Vesterholm is a small atelier drawing site-specific houses, additions, and adaptive reuse across the Lower Mainland. We work in light, proportion, and material — and we take fewer commissions than we are asked to, on purpose.
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N 49.28° · W 123.12°
21
Years in practice
76
Projects realised
9 ×
AIBC / Lieutenant Gov. awards
1:1
Principal on every project
The practice
Vesterholm Atelier was founded by Ingrid Vesterholm after a decade with practices in Oslo and Vancouver. She trained first as a cabinet-maker, and the habit never left: we begin every commission at the scale of a joint, a sightline, a threshold — then work outward to the building.
We keep the studio deliberately small. A principal leads every project from first sketch to final site visit, and we accept a limited number of commissions each year so that none is hurried. Drawings are resolved before ground is broken; budgets are honest from the first conversation.
One project tells you how we work. A heritage cottage in Point Grey arrived to us with a collapsing rear wall and an owner attached to every floorboard. Rather than demolish, we spent a season measuring, then grafted a slim cedar-clad addition that borrows the old roofline and lets the original house keep its dignity.
What you are buying from an architect is judgement — where to spend, where to restrain, what to leave alone. That judgement is the whole of our work, and it is the reason our buildings still feel right twenty years on.
“Architecture is the thoughtful making of space.”
Louis Kahn — a sentence we keep on the studio wall
Work we do
Fee — % of construction cost
Ground-up, site-specific homes drawn for your light, your slope, and the way you actually live — so the house feels inevitable rather than designed at you.
Design and permitting typically run nine to fourteen months; construction another twelve to eighteen. We give you a dated phase plan before you commit to drawings.
Fee — fixed, by phase
Additions, heritage adaptation, and adaptive reuse that respect what stands and add only what's needed — keeping the character worth keeping and fixing what isn't.
Yes — heritage alteration permits, development permits, and the board reviews that come with them are managed in-house. It's much of why owners come to us.
Fee — fixed or hourly
Joinery, light, and material at close range — kitchens, libraries, and whole-home interiors detailed to the millimetre and made by trades we have worked with for years.
Gladly. We can carry a project through construction with your contractor, or recommend builders whose finishing we trust to hold the drawings.
Voices
Commission
We take a limited number of commissions a year. Send us the site and what you hope to make of it, and we'll reply within two working days to arrange an introductory conversation.
studio@vesterholm.ca
+1 (604) 555-0173
312 — 1 East Cordova, Vancouver BC
AIBC Registered · LEED AP
