Ok, finally found it. Had to use the Wayback Machine. This is why some full articles should be posted. News sites will not publicly archive them and the history will be lost. Got lucky on this one. Unfortunately no photos but the print evidence is there.
Early stadium design wins kudos from panel
Don Butler, The Ottawa Citizen May 1, 2010
If Rob Claiborne has his way, a sculpted “stadium in the park” will replace the rotting hulk of Frank Clair stadium by 2013.
Claiborne is the architect chosen to design the stadium as part of the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park. He works for Cannon Design, the firm behind the much-admired Olympic Oval in Richmond, B.C.
His conceptual design for the new Frank Clair stadium has already won kudos from experts on the review panel overseeing the design of the Lansdowne Park plan.
George Dark, the renowned urban designer who chairs the panel, calls Claiborne’s design “quite cool. There’s quite an imaginative stadium being cooked up here.”
Another panel member, Rick Haldenby, the head of the University of Waterloo’s architecture school, is even more effusive.
If Claiborne’s design is accepted by city council on June 23, Haldenby says, “it’s going to be an instant architectural feature in Canada — the most interesting stadium in Canada by far.”
Claiborne knows he’s got something special. He describes his design, which he’s been working on since December, as a “gift to the city of Ottawa. I’m just thrilled, because people seem to be enjoying it.”
Its most striking feature is a sinuous $7.5-million “veil” of glued laminated Alaskan yellow cedar that rises up from behind new southside stands and curls over the top, creating a flowing system of enclosure and roofing.
Claiborne uses the same veil motif at the entrances to the northside stands. It recurs as well behind the end zone scoreboard, creating a bandstand that could be used during outdoor concerts in Lansdowne Park’s proposed “front lawn” urban park.
“I always saw this project being done in wood,” Claiborne says, proudly showing off his plans in Cannon Design’s 12th floor offices overlooking University Avenue in Toronto.
In part it’s a reference to Ottawa’s lumber-town past, but it also fits Claiborne’s daring concept of a stadium in the park. To do that, he says, “you have to be much more natural.”
Claiborne chose Alaskan yellow cedar for the veil because it withstands the weather well.
“It will turn a beautiful silvery colour over time, but in all our conversations with the manufacturers, they’re quite comfortable that this will maintain its structural integrity.”
In Claiborne’s design, the southside stands seem to emerge organically from a steep grassy berm that rises seven metres from the Queen Elizabeth Driveway. “You can actually see the park bending up, merging into the stadium,” the architect says.
It’s all part of his concept of “laminar space, a space that literally flows. The parklands become sculpted, undulating, flowing. That became really important to me.”
The wooden frames of the veil are part of that idea of flow, he says. At the concourse level of the southside stands, the public can walk or ride bicycles right through the veil, even on game days.
“Typically a stadium’s going to have a very clear border, a buffer,” Claiborne says. “There’s a public side, and there’s a stadium side. Not the case here. It’s not just lip service about being in the park. It is in the park.”
Lansdowne Park, he says, has never really been a park. “It was a fairgrounds, it was a carnival site, it was a series of venues, but it was never actually parkland. Now, for the first time, it’s a park.”
To improve spectator sightlines and enhance the stadium’s bowl appearance, Claiborne proposes to lower the current playing field by about one metre. “That one’s still a cost issue,” he cautions, “because it’s expensive to lower the field.”
On a pragmatic level, lowering the field makes it easier to widen it to 75 yards, the standard for FIFA soccer games. The current field is only 70 yards wide.
Under Claiborne’s plan, the remaining southside stands — Dark describes them as a “hideous lump” — would be demolished and replaced by new stands.
The existing northside stands would stay, but get a retrofit.
New wider seats would be installed and the heavy metal roof would be replaced by the same translucent fabric used on the southside roof.
Claiborne is considering two possible suppliers for the roof fabric. His preferred choice is a German-Italian company called Vector Foiltec, which made the clear exterior panels for the Beijing Olympics’ aquatic centre, dubbed the Water Cube.
The stadium would have seating for 24,000 — 13,000 in the northside stands and 11,000 in the southside. It would offer three levels of seating — general, club seats and seats in 28 box suites.
For events such as the Grey Cup, temporary end zone seats could be installed, raising the stadium’s capacity to 45,000. Otherwise, the end zones would be grassy berms where people could sit or enjoy a picnic.
Claiborne’s plan calls for a two-storey retail component that would provide improved entrances to the arena and enclose the mammoth steel frames on the north facade of the Civic Centre.
Those sloping steel frames disrupt the view of the Aberdeen Pavilion, with its soft curves, Claiborne explains. “The second you put a vertical face here, it calms the entire vista.”
While the arena, home to the Ottawa 67’s, needs considerable work to address a long list of mechanical, electrical and structural problems, its design would remain essentially unchanged.
“If we turn it into a first-class arena,” Claiborne says, “the ticket prices have to go up considerably. The Ottawa 67’s are a very successful club, but they would be less successful if they had to double their ticket price.”
So far, Claiborne says cost estimates for the project are on target. “We have a budget of $85 million, not a penny more, for the stadium,” he says. “We’re right where we should be.” (The price tag rises to $110 million when “soft costs” such as professional fees are included.)
Dark says Claiborne’s thinking is “quite magical. He’s a smart guy.” Based on the design work he’s seen, Dark says the new stadium has the potential to rival the Richmond Oval as an iconic Canadian sporting venue.
Claiborne isn’t entirely at ease with the word icon, though. “An icon carries so much gravity with it. I would be more comfortable if this was a building people looked at and just had a comfortable, warm feeling about. If it was close to being universally liked, that would make me happy.”
Before joining Cannon Design about a year ago, Claiborne, a California native, worked for years for acclaimed architect Daniel Libeskind. He’s also an adjunct professor at McGill University’s school of architecture.
He’s acutely aware of the controversy surrounding the Lansdowne project.
He has relatives in Old Ottawa South — the area, along with the Glebe, where opposition to the redevelopment is concentrated — “and they hate me. They think I’m the devil because I’m working on Lansdowne Park.”
But Claiborne is hoping opposition will abate once people see his design. “Good architecture can be a great appeasement for everybody. People can actually enjoy it. And that’s the goal.
“It’s a building for the people. I’ve never lost sight of that for a second.”
For now, Claiborne’s stadium is just a concept on paper. But he’s optimistic that by 2013, it will be home to a new Ottawa CFL team.
“I go home every weekend and I’m having a glass of wine with my wife and I say, ‘Carolyn, you’re not going to believe this. This might actually get built’.”
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