SML Studio Architecture has designed the interiors of Ellipsis in Vancouver, Canada.

Ellipsis occupies a 2,882-square-foot bar and café space within a 1996 Arthur Erickson and Nick Milkovich building on the edge of Granville Island.

Once a gallery, now a 47-seat café by day and cocktail bar by night, the design strips away decades of accumulated interventions to restore Erickson's modernist clarity: its sloped glazed façade, flooded with natural light and a courtyard waterfall.

Twin bars anchor the entrance while geometric forms drawn from circles, triangles and rectangles echo the building's original language.

The result is a space that honours architectural legacy – while serving contemporary community life.