Reyes Architecture Studio Emmanuel Reyes, MAA · Winnipeg, MB

Principal architect · Winnipeg, MB

A gross floor area is what the bylaw counts. A net-to-gross ratio is what you get to stand in.

Residential infill, laneway and garden suites, and small institutional work across Winnipeg. Every project here carries its own area schedule — the document a client actually reads before signing an agreement, computed from the project's own numbers, not asserted as a marketing adjective.

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A two-storey brick duplex with a covered upper balcony and ground-floor garage, on a narrow urban infill lot

Four real projects, each with its own area schedule

Selected projects

Residential infill and small institutional work — not a generic portfolio grid. Every project below carries a project-data summary, an area-efficiency ratio computed from its own numbers, and, on three of the four, an attributed client quote.

A two-storey brick duplex with a covered upper balcony and ground-floor garage, on a narrow urban infill lot

Residential infill — semi-detached duplex

Sherbrook Street Duplex

Wolseley, Winnipeg

A semi-detached duplex on a 375 m² infill lot, replacing a single deteriorated house with two full-width units sharing one party wall.

Site area
375 m²
Gross floor area (GFA)
210 m²
Stage
Construction Documents
Procurement route
Stipulated Price (Lump Sum)
Completion
2027 (target)
Net floor area
181 m²
Net-to-gross efficiency
86.2%
Structural bay spacing
3.6 m typical
“Emmanuel walked us through what we’d actually lose to the party wall and the stairs before we ever saw a rendering. No surprises at framing.” — Client, Sherbrook Street Duplex (one of the two owner households)
A bright, minimally furnished living room seen through open French doors, wood flooring throughout
Interior The shared party wall splits the lot in half; each unit still reads as a full daylight plan front to back.
A small timber-clad garden suite with a covered porch and gable roof, set among trees at the back of a residential lot

Laneway / garden suite — backyard secondary suite

Riverview Garden Suite

Riverview, Winnipeg

A one-bedroom garden suite at the rear of an existing 420 m² lot, built for an aging parent moving closer to family.

Site area
420 m²
Gross floor area (GFA)
65 m²
Stage
Permit Issued
Procurement route
Design-Build
Completion
2026 (built)
Net floor area
54 m²
Net-to-gross efficiency
83.1%
Structural bay spacing
3.0 m typical
“We wanted my mother five steps away, not a subdivided basement. The suite feels like its own small house, not an add-on.” — Client, Riverview Garden Suite
A low-rise multi-unit residential infill building with brick and siding cladding

Multi-family infill — four-unit low-rise

Selkirk Avenue Fourplex

Winnipeg's North End

Four two-bedroom rental units on a 460 m² North End lot, replacing a surface parking lot with street-facing infill housing.

Site area
460 m²
Gross floor area (GFA)
620 m²
Stage
Design Development
Procurement route
Construction Management
Completion
2028 (target)
Net floor area
480 m²
Net-to-gross efficiency
77.4%
Structural bay spacing
4.2 m typical
A modest parish hall standing beside a church with a tall spire

Small institutional — parish hall addition

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish Hall Addition

Winnipeg

A single-storey hall addition on the church’s existing 2,800 m² property, sized for funeral receptions, parish council meetings and a Sunday coffee hour the current basement can’t hold.

Site area
2,800 m²
Gross floor area (GFA)
340 m²
Stage
Schematic Design
Procurement route
Stipulated Price (Lump Sum)
Completion
2029 (target)
Net floor area
275 m²
Net-to-gross efficiency
80.9%
Structural bay spacing
6.0 m typical
“He asked how many funeral lunches we actually run in a bad winter before he drew a single wall. That’s the number the hall is sized to.” — Parish council member, Our Lady of Perpetual Help

The document a permit office actually cross-checks

The drawing

A to-scale floor plan, metric, with a proper title block, a north point, a graphic scale bar and structural grid lines — this is the actual ground-floor plan for Sherbrook Street Duplex, drawn at 1:100, the scale a Winnipeg building-permit reviewer expects.

Reading the sheet

Sherbrook Street Duplex, ground floor plan Sheet A-101 · scale 1:100 · Rev 2 · 2026-06-15.

Download the sheet (SVG)

A close-up of an architectural floor plan blueprint, dimension lines and room labels visible
Before the permit set An early diagrammatic floor plan, sketched before the permit-ready sheet above existed.

Drawing register

Sheet number, title, revision, date and scale for the set the sheet above belongs to — the exact document a permit office cross-checks against what's submitted.

Sherbrook Street Duplex — drawing set, Construction Documents
Sheet Title Revision Date Scale
A-001 Cover Sheet & Site Plan Rev 2 2026-06-15 1:200 / NTS
A-101 Ground Floor Plan — shown at right Rev 2 2026-06-15 1:100
A-102 Second Floor Plan Rev 2 2026-06-15 1:100
A-201 Building Sections Rev 1 2026-05-28 1:100
A-301 Exterior Elevations Rev 2 2026-06-15 1:100

Net-to-gross efficiency, per project, computed — not asserted

Area schedule, compared

A gross floor area is what the zoning bylaw counts; net-to-gross efficiency — usable floor area ÷ gross floor area — is what a client actually gets to stand in. BOMA's own measurement standards put well-designed buildings at roughly 75–90% efficient; poorly resolved circulation or an oversized core pushes that number down. Every figure below is computed from each project's own site area, GFA and net floor area at build time, from the same numbers shown on each project card above.

The comparison

Project, site area, gross floor area, net floor area, net-to-gross efficiency
Project Site area GFA Net floor area Efficiency
Sherbrook Street Duplex 375 m² 210 m² 181 m² 86.2%
Riverview Garden Suite 420 m² 65 m² 54 m² 83.1%
Selkirk Avenue Fourplex 460 m² 620 m² 480 m² 77.4%
Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish Hall Addition 2,800 m² 340 m² 275 m² 80.9%

A published convention, not a project-specific dollar figure

How the fee works

The RAIC's Guide to Determining Appropriate Fees for the Services of an Architect describes fees invoiced against the agreed budget at schematic design, then against the estimated probable construction cost at each phase after that, settling only against actual final construction cost. The stage distribution below is a real, publishable industry convention — stated here as settled, because it's a published percentage-of-fee split. What isn't stated is a dollar fee for any specific inquiry: that number is % of fee × construction cost, and construction cost for a concept-stage project is exactly the thing that isn't known yet.

Fee-stage distribution

Stage, % of fee, typical deliverable — RAIC convention, no dollar figure
Stage % of fee Typical deliverable
Schematic Design 15% Concept drawings, preliminary area schedule, order-of-magnitude cost estimate
Design Development 20% Developed drawings, material and system selections, updated cost estimate
Construction Documents 40% Permit-ready drawing set and specifications
Bidding / Negotiation 5% Tender documents, bid review, contractor recommendation
Contract Administration 20% Site review, shop drawing review, certificates for payment
Total 100% The full RAIC/CHOP fee-stage convention, five stages

Seven phases, RAIC/CHOP convention

Design process

Programming through post-occupancy — the same seven phases the fee-stage table above is keyed to, minus bidding and contract administration's own fee lines, which aren't design phases so much as procurement and site-review phases layered on top.

  1. Programming Space needs, budget range and site constraints established with the client — the area schedule below starts here, not at schematic design.
  2. Schematic Design Concept drawings and a preliminary area schedule, tested against the programming brief.
  3. Design Development Drawings developed, structural bay spacing and material systems selected — the numbers in the area-efficiency table firm up here.
  4. Construction Documents The permit-ready drawing set — the document a city plan reviewer actually checks against the drawing register below.
  5. Bidding / Negotiation Tender documents issued, bids reviewed, a contractor recommended.
  6. Contract Administration Site review through construction, shop drawing review, certificates for payment — 20% of the fee, per the RAIC convention below.
  7. Post-Occupancy A follow-up visit once the client has lived or worked in the space through a full season — the stage most firms skip and Reyes doesn’t.

Bands, stated as bands — not promises

Permit & approval timeline

City of Winnipeg building-permit review adds real business days on top of design time. Commercial and small-institutional plan review commonly runs an additional 2–4 months past submission before occupancy — a fact stated here as a band per project type, not a guarantee.

Reading these bands

Project type, zoning confirmation, development permit, building permit review
Project type Zoning confirmation Development permit Building permit review
Laneway / garden suite 1–2 weeks Not typically required (accessory use) 3–6 weeks
Residential infill (duplex / single) 1–2 weeks 4–6 weeks, if a variance is needed 4–8 weeks
Multi-family infill (4+ units) 2–4 weeks 6–10 weeks 2–4 months
Small institutional / commercial 2–4 weeks 8–12 weeks 2–4 months

Approval sequence

A genuinely different chronological list from the design-process phases above — this is the regulatory path a project's paperwork follows, not the design work itself.

  1. Zoning confirmation Confirms the proposed use and massing are permitted on the lot before a development permit application is drafted.
  2. Development permit application Submitted where zoning relief, a conditional use or site plan approval is required — skipped for most laneway and garden suites.
  3. Building permit application The construction-documents drawing set, stamped, submitted to the City of Winnipeg for building-code review.
  4. Plan review City reviewers check the drawing set against the Manitoba Building Code — the stage the timeline bands below describe.
  5. Permit issued Construction can legally start once the permit is in hand, not before.
  6. Construction start Site mobilization — the point contract administration (20% of the fee) begins in earnest.

Winnipeg, on purpose

About the studio

Emmanuel Reyes, MAA leads Reyes Architecture Studio, a three-person practice in Winnipeg, MB — home to 5468796 Architecture and the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation, a real, checkable small-practice architecture scene.

Registration

Reyes is a Registered Member of the Manitoba Association of Architects (MAA), which requires Registered Membership via education, a period of supervised experience (internship) and the ExAC examination, plus 70 hours of continuing education every two years.

Scope

The studio takes on residential infill, laneway and garden suites, and small institutional work; it doesn't take on large commercial or high-rise commissions — three staff can only carry so much at once.

The team

Emmanuel Reyes, MAA

Principal architect

Priya Nazir

Intern architect

Marc Fontaine

Architectural technologist

Hours

Closed Sundays and statutory holidays.

Three people in hard hats and hi-vis vests reviewing a full-size drawing at a concrete-frame construction site
Contract administration Site review, mid-construction — 20% of the fee, per the RAIC convention above.
A parallel rule and two metric set squares laid out on a drafting table
The drafting kit Metric set squares throughout — the persona practises in Manitoba, not in feet and inches.
A wooden scale ruler laid across a blueprint floor plan
Checking a scale A scale rule laid against a working drawing, the same way the graphic scale bar on the sheet above reads.
A wood-framed house under construction, structural framing exposed against the sky
Framing A residential infill project mid-framing — the point where a DFM-style review of the drawing set actually pays off.

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Contact

LinkedIn is fastest — email works too. The inquiry form below collects enough for Emmanuel to reply with what happens next, not a price: a specific dollar fee needs a construction-cost estimate this form can't produce.

Message on LinkedIn landix.ninal@gmail.com

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