Terrasses de la Chaudière | Renovation | U/C
 

I stumbled on this article from January 9th about a 175$M exterior renovation of Terrasses de la Chaudière.

Feds readying $175M rehabilitation of Terrasses de la Chaudière in Gatineau
Maybe they'll be able to make it look a little "nicer". :)

For sure they need to work on the street level, but the towers are iconic (IMHO)!

Wouldn't Place du Portage be the country's single largest federal office complex?

Thank God for Liberal spending habits. A different, recent government might have been looking at recladding in vinyl siding! :D

[QUOTE=J.OT13;7677487]For sure they need to work on the street level, but the towers are iconic (IMHO)!

Wouldn't Place du Portage be the country's single largest federal office complex?[/QUOTE]

I believe it may be the largest Canadian Government building in the whole world! :tup:

Meh, what could they do with the current architecture of the buildings. Any idea ?

[QUOTE=kwoldtimer;7677595]Portage is apparently only second to the Pentagon for the number of public employees in a single location.

The whole Portage-Chaudiere-Place du Centre complex area is a massive disaster. The buildings are confusing bunkers that are very difficult to navigate and the integration with streets are almost completely non-existent.

Last I went there to renew my passport, I got so hopelessly lost trying to figure out how to get out of the building and find the return bus stop that I ended up going outside, following the location of the sun to figure out which way was south, and kept going as straight as a I could until I saw the bridge, and got on the bus when I got back to the Ottawa side.

Not only is it butt ugly and a complete disaster in terms on integration, but the they still manage to make it worst by slapping those awful canadian flags on it. Why do the feds only do this in Ottawa? Never seen this crap in Montreal or Toronto.

Vibrant Canadian flags for all Canadians?

Man invented a device for this purpose; it's called a pole.

It's not Chaudière, but I doodled an idea of what a Portage reconstruction might look like:

http://i63.tinypic.com/13zbseh.jpg

(I put the existing buildings in darker blue, proposed in lighter blue and I drew some quick outlines of a redevelopped Kruger site, just for kicks.)


For these kinds of megastructures, you don't really need to demolish the whole thing in order to make some pretty significant improvements. As human beings, we don't really notice anything above the fourth or fifth storey unless we're making an effort to notice it. So you can do a great deal by just improving the outside spaces and rebuilding the ground floors that meet it. Even if the rest of the building is hideous, most people will hardly notice.

Well, this would be interesting:

http://images.radio-canada.ca/w_635,...-chaudiere.png

http://images.radio-canada.ca/w_635,...haudiere-3.png



Cure de rajeunissement pour les Terrasses de la Chaudière

Wow! It would radically change the Gatineau skyline.

NCC launches Nepean Point rejuvenation, approves Ottawa western LRT plan

By Kate Porter, CBC News
Posted: Jan 19, 2017 5:06 PM ET Last Updated: Jan 19, 2017 5:06 PM ET

<snip>

New look proposed for Terrasses de la Chaudière

NCC board members also gave federal design approval to a plan to reclad a government complex in Gatineau where 6,500 public servants work.​

The brick façade of the Terrasses de la Chaudière is falling apart, and bricks have even fallen off the building twice since 1997, creating a liability for Public Services and Procurement Canada, according to a NCC report.

The overall project is still at an early stage, but board members received a presentation from NCC senior architect Chris Hoyt about how the complex could be made more pedestrian-friendly, and how its buildings are letting in more light and how they could let in more.

"We went from a very dry cladding project to creating a new place in Gatineau," said board member Michael Pankiw, who commended staff.

Fellow board member Norman Hotson acknowledged there was a shift in direction for the renovation.

"The original vision was a family of buildings," said Hotson, who wondered if that cohesive look shouldn't be maintained.

The NCC will still have to approve other stages of the project, but the idea is for the recladding at Terrasses de la Chaudière to start early next year and finish by 2021.

https://i.cbc.ca/1.3943202.148485210...-chaudiere.png

https://i.cbc.ca/1.3943215.148485189...ew-facades.png

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa...nsit-1.3942853

Wow. I don't think I would have even dared to dream about something like this.

Well, that's... special. I don't know what to think about it.

I think it would take a few days to get used to, but I don't think that it would be worse than the current cladding by any stretch. It might even be quite tasteful.

I'm especially happy to hear that they're going to be completely renovating the ground floor. Hopefully they'll move to make it more transparent and welcoming from street level. If done correctly, it could end up becoming a real asset for Eddy and Portage.

Very cool. That would look great. The recladding they are doing in Winnipeg is really making a difference in their skyline.

I like the red brick, it adds warmth and diversity to the skyline. The ground floor interiors definitely need renovating and could be more open and brighter, but the general exterior to me is not so bad. It reminds me of heritage factory buildings and mills which fits in with the industrial past of that area. The detail of the bricks is also part of how the scale is perceived from a small building block you can hold in your hand to a large complex of buildings that fill your view. I think cladding it in a light, more monolithic material will make the whole thing look massive, and will always look like an awkward re-clad because the materials won't match the original composition of the building forms.

In a way, it's like a modernist interpretation of Châteauesque style, a Minecraft version of the Chateau Frontenac :)

This is kind of sad. Skyline will be all glass and concrete. At least this was different, iconic even. I would have instead opted to only reclad the lower building on the south-west side and build a proper glass atrium and podium. Keep the brick on the towers.