I've given it some thought, and I've decided that I quite hate this proposal. Not because of it's prominence, but because the design itself is terrible, it's eliminate 2 retail spots just off of Bank Street and reducing another in size, and because it prioritizes parking more than anything. At such an important location downtown, the standard for architectural and urban design needs to be much higher.
Podium
First, let's talk about the existing brick building. It looks to have been a 3-storey residential building with a carriageway beneath it. At some point the 3rd floor as seen in the picture below, the third floor seems to have disappeared and some of the architectural detailing, like the tympanum above the middle window was lost. The ground floors would have been renovated with an addition added to bump out the front for 3 retail spaces. The carriage way is narrow enough that one car can pass at a time.
Photos courtesy of
Urbsite Blog
This proposal suggests a 3-storey brick podium that nods to the original building they wish to demolish. They will only construct space for one shop, they will widen the carriageway so that two cars can fit side-by-side, and the main entrance into the building will be accessed from Slater, where C'est au Japon/ Suisha Gardens is located. It's unacceptable that they would eliminate 2 of the businesses on this site, which is just off one of Ottawa's most important retail streets for parking access and an entrance. It's silly that, in order to preserve 9 parking spots and build 6 for the building that they would propose such a wide carriage way. There should be no parking for this building, given it's location in the centre of downtown where driving is not necessary and where there are bike lanes and LRT stations (and buses), coupled with how few parking spots are even provided. The developer should have spoken to those in the Jack Layton Building about buying out the parking lot behind the site and eliminating those spots.
They could have looked at redesigning the podium to include the existing building or design a new podium identical to the original 3-storey building, taking a page out of
22 Eddy or
90 George. By eliminating the parking spaces, they can move the entrance to the building inside the the carriageway, thus preserving space for 3 retail spots along Slater and using the carriageway to mark the primary entrance to building. The parking in behind could be turned into a courtyard greenspace for residents. I believe it is critical we preserve retail spaces in Ottawa, especially downtown on or around commercial main streets like Bank. This project should keep them. In the site plan, the carriageway for the cars is around 6m (if I read it correctly), while the sole retail spot is only 5.24m wide. That's unacceptable. The podium design is also so banal that hardly any thought went into its design. In fact, they propose 8 windows along the front when the original had only 7!
Tower Design
The podium also is incredibly lacklustre. It's right beside a (presently subpar) urban plaza and right around the corner of Bank Street such that it will be especially visible to any person walking along Bank or sitting in the plaza. As they propose a significant amount of glazing on the west side, I hazard a guess that they don't expect a developer to purchase the Sunburst Building to propose a highrise ever. Thus, it will never be blocked. Under these conditions, the architectural design needs to be stellar. This is where the architect needs to be a visionary and create a tower that stands out beautifully. The options are endless, but you can have curved walls that undulate like
Hariri Pontarini's building in Toronto that integrated a new midrise with heritage houses; they could
rotate the floorplates every few floors. They could add balconies in certain spots to create interesting projections from the wall like
56 Leonard, or they could add and subtract volumes from the initial rectangle like
MahaNakhon. They can play with colours and materials. Literally, the options are endless. This site is downtown, incredibly prominent from certain important locations that architectural design
needs to be much higher.
I may send an edited version of this to Councillor McKenney as this needs to be understood and voiced lest we get stuck with another "carbuncle". Ottawa is regularly saddled with poor designs. We have so much potential, but the architects (and developers) don't seem to care or aren't capable of producing good quality designs. It's time we demand and get better!
Linear Mode
