Ouse is structured around a system of concrete columns and slabs, upon which an independent second layer is placed: a continuous metal skin wraps the building’s front façade as a lightweight exoskeleton. This external structure organizes the façade and incorporates planters along the floors, allowing metal and vegetation to jointly shape the building’s expression.

At street level, the parking floors are not resolved as blind surfaces. Instead, they are framed by an interface of planters that establishes a softer transition between the building and the sidewalk, filtering views and enhancing the ground-floor scale. The transparent entrance lobby further strengthens this relationship. The absence of visual barriers brings interior and exterior closer together, creating continuity and reinforcing a gesture of urban openness.

At Ouse, structure and envelope overlap to create an active façade, where lightness, vegetation, and transparency define the building’s presence within the city.