Starling is Brookfield Residential’s newest community in northwest Calgary, set among natural grasslands under wide open prairie skies. Its tagline is “Where the City Meets the Sky”, and that line ended up shaping a lot of what we made.

Brookfield came to us before most of Starling had been designed. They needed a two-minute teaser to introduce the community: where it sits, how it connects to the rest of the city, and what life will feel like once the parks, ponds and pathways are in. So we combined drone footage of the site with 3D models of the first five phases, showing the homes as conceptual models (they weren’t designed yet, even on paper) and later phases as simple massing. Then we came down to eye level for the moments that sell a community: the entrance monument, the playground, the creek and the ponds, full of the people who’ll use them.