The Orchard on 12th

Client Lamb Development Corp.
Location Calgary | Alberta | Canada

The Orchard on Twelfth is a bold urban gesture that stands to contribute a great deal to Calgary’s urban fabric. Totaling 96 trees and three varieties of apples, at maturity, the orchard is estimated to produce over 10,000 pounds of apples per year. The harvest from the orchard will be distributed among residents, with a significant share being donated to local charities.

The Orchard is an important precedent in North America. It demonstrates that private development can deliver meaningful space that combines local food production, green infrastructure, and high quality urban design. Through a combination of creative design, progressive planning policies and a collaborative approach to design between disciplines, the Orchard on Twelfth serves as a model for progressive urban development.

From an urban design perspective, the Orchard on Twelfth represents a citizen friendly approach to city building, and a new trajectory in urban development. The notion of combining mixed-use development, publicly accessible open space, and urban permaculture at this scale has never been attempted in Calgary. In fact, prior to launching sales, Lamb conducted a survey of over 2,000 Canadians and Americans, asking people to speculate in which city the development will be built. Most participants responded Portland, Vancouver,

Toronto or NYC, with only a handful choosing Calgary. In the same survey, 90 percent of Canadians supported the idea of growing food in the inner city, 93 percent responded cities need to be more creative with inner city green space, and just as many responded that they wanted to see more green space downtown.