L’Oeuf

Founded by Daniel Pearl and Mark Poddubiuk in 1992, L’Oeuf emphasizes building community over building buildings. Or, more precisely it examines the relationship between the two and the interplay between building, occupant and environment creates the potential for design innovation at multiple levels.

One of their influential projects was the world’s first government-subsidized, large-scale, community-driven neighborhood renewal project, a site called Benny Farm. Originally conceived in 1947 as housing for families of returning World War II veterans, Benny Farm was a flourishing community until the late 1970’s when it faced the challenges of aging residents and an increasingly decrepit infrastructure. In 1989, plans were made to demolish the old structures and sell some of the land to finance new buildings. L’Oeuf’s success was in navigating the competing concerns of ecological sustainability, affordability, working with government agencies and stimulating the necessary changes to legislation in order to avoid private development of the site.