Château Laurier expansion | Approved

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Except it isn't.

It is though. Something will get built. The zoning allows for it. There are no heritage protection rules to protect the current view.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

It is though. Something will get built. The zoning allows for it. There are no heritage protection rules to protect the current view.

Yes exactly. A more confident city might propose a slender 15 story tower in exchange for giving up the rights to develop the rest and adding a permanent public amenity there.

I know dreaming in technicolour but even a bit of height in exchange for something narrower would have been a better solution.

Agree this is an improvement.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by DarthVader_1961

Out of curiosity...

The roof on the Chateau is copper. As it ages, it turns green. Will the roof in the addition be roofed in copper as well?

It's unclear. They (Heritage Ottawa, Larco, Media) seem to interchange copper and bronze constantly. Not sure if they're talking about the colour or materials.

I agree, they should go with copper. When the addition is built, the roof of the old hotel should be changed at the same time so that the entire building matches. I wish they would do the same on Parliament (at least match the West, Centre and East Blocks and the other buildings individually).

[OTownandDown]

...proving once and for all that if you present your renderings correctly, anybody will buy it.

[harls]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

Landswap this tiny site with something much bigger next to Pimisi station where they can build anything and barcode to their heart’s content.

Hey, it's not a barcode. It's the QR code for my winning lottery ticket.

[McKellarDweller]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

I wish the NCC would just “bribe” Larco with a prime piece of LeBreton to build nothing here Landswap this tiny site with something much bigger next to Pimisi station where they can build anything and barcode to their heart’s content.

This was my outlandish fantasy too. Was happy to see it written!
I think it would have been way more palatable to taxpayers than some other options to steer the process.

[suburb]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

It is though. Something will get built. The zoning allows for it. There are no heritage protection rules to protect the current view.

In all fairness, the latest proposal is vastly better that the absolutely disgusting parkade that we all had to live with for so many years. I actually can't believe people didn't protest against that prior addition.

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by suburb

In all fairness, the latest proposal is vastly better that the absolutely disgusting parkade that we all had to live with for so many years. I actually can't believe people didn't protest against that prior addition.

The parkade was disgusting inside but on the outside it was clad in limestone and matched the beltline above the second floor of the Chateau very well. It was pretty low-key. Most of us didn't even realize that it blocked an elegant courtyard until it was gone. I don't think it was a huge juxtaposition like the new addition will be. Hell, I'd take it back over what they are planning.

[J.OT13]

In terms of the visual impact on the historic hotel, I too much preferred the old parking garage. They actually put in a decent amount of effort in the design, especially considering when it was built.

An expansion that would have been 4 of those garage arches wide along the canal, to create the proposed courtyard; the Major Hill's face aligned with the exterior walls of the two original wings; and the height (maybe slightly higher) of the protruding staircase at the back of the 1912 wing. That would have resulted in about the same volume as the parking garage, persevered the important views fully, and, from my point of view, been fully compatible.

[rocketphish]

New Château Laurier design is evidence of a system that failed

Peter Coffman
Publishing date: Aug 17, 2020 • Last Updated 1 hour ago • 3 minute read

After nearly four years of resistance, re-design, protest and even legal action, we now have a proposal for the addition to the Château Laurier that has met Heritage Ottawa’s approval. Is it better than what city council approved last summer? Yes. Is it a truly outstanding design that will be a jewel in the crown of the parliamentary precinct? No. Is it the best outcome possible given our inadequate heritage processes? Probably.

Let’s look at those questions one at a time.

We’ve only seen two renderings of the design, so there’s still a lot we don’t know about it. But it does appear to be a significant improvement. The design approved by council is a horizontal block that sits across the opening to the courtyard like a giant deadbolt. The twin pavilions lift the deadbolt and re-open the door between the park and the Château. Their asymmetrical massing offers some echo of the picturesque quality of the older building. This is all good, as is the more abundant limestone and strong horizontal divisions, which connect the new to the old without compromising the addition’s distinctiveness.

So, is this what real excellence looks like? No, it’s not. The most successful additions to historic buildings I’ve seen start by understanding the old building and imagining what its present-day architectural descendants might look like. It’s a method that has stood the test of time. Christopher Wren did this at Oxford’s Tom Tower in 1681, as did Arthur Erickson at Ottawa’s Bank of Canada almost exactly 300 years later. Their designs look less like “additions” and more like offshoots that grew naturally from the original at a later date. From the start, the Château Laurier addition was conceived as an independent entity, retrofitted with as many compatible features as the design could manage. That works to a point, but will never result in excellence.

Is that the best result that our heritage protection process can deliver? Actually, even that conclusion is too generous. Our official process ended with city council’s approval of a design so outstandingly bad that public and expert opinion were united in opposition. It took hundreds of people, donating thousands of dollars, plus legal action from Heritage Ottawa, to nudge the design toward something minimally acceptable.

This is for a building that enjoys the maximum heritage protection that our laws provide. The outcome is evidence of a system that failed, not one that works.

We should give credit where credit is due. Without the dogged determination and tireless efforts of a handful of volunteers at Heritage Ottawa, the council-approved design would already be under construction (full disclosure: I am on the board of Heritage Ottawa, but was not part of the process that reached this agreement). And building owner Larco, faced with a PR disaster that must have surpassed its worst nightmares, commissioned one new design after another, some with substantive changes, apparently doing its best to follow directives given by city staff.

We need to ask, though, how this process went so wildly off the rails. How did council come to approve a design that was almost universally panned? How was Larco, having produced a first design that was widely criticized, allowed to veer wildly off in all design directions for years, before ending up with a solution that was really just an improved version of that first design? Nothing in this process suggests the city ever had a coherent vision of what was or was not appropriate, never mind a rudder to steer us there.

Some people are very enthusiastic about this design, which is great news. Others clearly loathe it, which is inevitable. For many in between, it is simply the least bad solution possible under the circumstances. Must we always aim so low?


Peter Coffman is the supervisor of Carleton University’s History and Theory of Architecture program, and past president of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada. He can be contacted at peter.coffman@carleon.ca or @TweetsCoffman.

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/co...-76d5e317f377/

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

New Château Laurier design is evidence of a system that failed

Peter Coffman
Publishing date: Aug 17, 2020 • Last Updated 1 hour ago • 3 minute read

...


We need to ask, though, how this process went so wildly off the rails. How did council come to approve a design that was almost universally panned? How was Larco, having produced a first design that was widely criticized, allowed to veer wildly off in all design directions for years, before ending up with a solution that was really just an improved version of that first design? Nothing in this process suggests the city ever had a coherent vision of what was or was not appropriate, never mind a rudder to steer us there.

Some people are very enthusiastic about this design, which is great news. Others clearly loathe it, which is inevitable. For many in between, it is simply the least bad solution possible under the circumstances. Must we always aim so low?


Peter Coffman is the supervisor of Carleton University’s History and Theory of Architecture program, and past president of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada. He can be contacted at peter.coffman@carleon.ca or @TweetsCoffman.

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/co...-76d5e317f377/

Direct those questions to Mayor Watson. He knows...

[OTownandDown]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Direct those questions to Mayor Watson. He knows...

Unfortunately the Mayor has little to do with the system in place.

When dealing with bureaucrats, its always handy to know the process and what boxes to check before you start out. If you can make it through and keep them happy, you're good to go.

[rocketphish]

The Château Laurier will change. But will Ottawa?

Alex Bozikovic - Architecture Critic
The Globe and Mail
August 19, 2019 - Published 17 hours ago

The battle of the Château Laurier may, at long last, be over. For years now, some Ottawans have been attempting to stop an addition on the back of the 1912 hotel that is a national historic site – and, to some in the city, a place just this side of sacred. The debate has been both technical and tub-thumping.

It has also revealed just how people in the nation’s capital think about architecture and about their city. And that has not been pretty.

The opponents of the addition won, sort of. Last week, the local advocacy group Heritage Ottawa announced a settlement with the hotel’s owners, Larco; they had agreed to a new (sixth!) version of the design, and everyone will call off their lawyers. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has signed on.

The details (despite the heated rhetoric) are subtle. The existing hotel is roughly U-shaped. The gap in the U faces Major’s Hill Park and the Ottawa River. The main technical issue in this debate has been about where a new addition should go and what form it should take. The new version by the Toronto firm architectsAlliance extends the two arms of the U, with a single-storey event space in between. This allows the back end of the existing building to be seen.

“This is a victory from our point of view,” said Carolyn Quinn, a member of Heritage Ottawa’s committee on the Château. The non-profit group raised $150,000 in donations to support its fight against the previous version of the project – which would have closed up the back of the hotel’s U. In that respect, “We managed to get the owner to ditch what we hated,” she said. “What we have now is structures that emerge in a more complementary way that already exists.” (Full disclosure: I gave a lecture to the group in 2019 on an unrelated topic.)

This is all true; the changes to the form of the building, as well as increased use of the older building’s Indiana limestone and copper, link it conceptually to the fanciful 1912 building.

But the addition remains a modern building, with a rectilinear form, and facades designed with an irregular pattern of solids and voids – the characteristic work of architectsAlliance principal Peter Clewes.

So while Heritage Ottawa (a non-profit which effectively took over the file for the city) may be happy with this technical victory, it hardly appeases other critics of the project.

Many locals held a simplistic idea that new is bad, and old is good. This was expressed in many forms. A highbrow version came in an open letter last year from Margaret MacMillan and three other historians – published by Heritage Ottawa. They argued the hotel’s architecture “draws on history – the past of the chateaux of the Loire, light and Gallic and elegant.” The addition would “transform” the Château, and so it is “an attack on Canadians and their history.” The four worried that “a civic and national treasure will become a civic and national eyesore.”

This letter neither understands nor interrogates the real history of the building, which was confected to give 20th-century tourists a taste of ersatz royalty. These arguments would seem bizarre to a historian in Paris, or Madrid, or the European capitals to which (we are often told) Ottawa can compare itself.

In these places it is a given that new architecture can “transform” the older buildings it accompanies. New buildings express the ideas and the techniques of their time. This ideal is good enough for the Louvre, and the CaixaForum cultural centre in Madrid. It’s also good enough for a railway hotel.

But it doesn’t seem many Ottawans (aside from the heritage professionals) have absorbed this central lesson. Cities change. New architecture should not always defer; it can interject and respond. The Château addition is a polite compromise. It won’t do that.

Unfortunately, none of the other major buildings in contemporary Ottawa will do so either – the new public library and archives, the recently completed temporary homes of Parliament, the 2017 renovation to the National Arts Centre, which subverts the spirit of that important building. All could have gained from the intervention of citizens to make them more ambitious and beautiful. But in Ottawa, it seems beauty is history.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cana...t-will-ottawa/

[FutureWickedCity]

I agree with some of the critic's sentiments, but not the examples he chose. I think the new library is an awesome design and I think most people are happy with the updated NAC. More disappointing to me (in terms of exteriors anyway) was the Ottawa Art Gallery and the buildings at Lansdowne Park. In any case we definitely do need to aim higher. I'd like to see a mayor run on a campaign promise to stop ugly bland architecture.

[J.OT13]

Can we place the first proposals roof on the latest proposal?

[Truenorth00]

His criticism also ignores context. The hotel is not on some random lot in a distant suburb.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by FutureWickedCity

I agree with some of the critic's sentiments, but not the examples he chose. I think the new library is an awesome design and I think most people are happy with the updated NAC. More disappointing to me (in terms of exteriors anyway) was the Ottawa Art Gallery and the buildings at Lansdowne Park. In any case we definitely do need to aim higher. I'd like to see a mayor run on a campaign promise to stop ugly bland architecture.

I agree the NAC's addition is very well done. It respects the original architecture while opening it up to the city. That was the intent, and it succeeded.

Any sort of addition to the original Parliament Buildings would be unacceptable, so I'm quite happy with what was added so far (House of Commons in the courtyard, underground office space and committee rooms, underground visitor's centre with an entrance that respects the old architecture).

For the Senate Building, I agree we could have done more. A full, modern addition to the side, replacing the Corry Block, would have been better than the slim addition that looks tacked-on (makes Old Union look like façadism from certain angles, when it's not). It could also have solved the long standing issues with the underpass.

The new Central Library will be a great addition to the city, culturally and architecturally. It could have been bigger and grander, but would it have been necessary?

I agree that there something missing with the Art Gallery. The tower's design is better than standard Ottawa, but not great. Needs more colour.

Lansdowne, I don't care quite as much. It's outside the traditional city centre. It serves its purpose.

We could have a long conversation about the Confederation Line stations. The initial plans called for grand spaces with amazing architecture, but we ended up with the "Chevy", as the Mayor called it. Functional, but mediocre in nature.

[Harley613]

the 2017 renovation to the National Arts Centre, which subverts the spirit of that important building

The writer lost me right there. The NAC renovation is absolutely brilliant. Not only did it fix mistakes of the original design, it ushered the whole building seamlessly into the future.

[mykl]

The NAC blends well on the outside, but the inside does not flow beautifully like the original building does. And tucking the box office away in the basement is unfortunate. The little stairs at the new entrance and the second level runway creating an area with a low ceiling in a space with a huge height are both really unfortunate. Love the floor though.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by mykl

The NAC blends well on the outside, but the inside does not flow beautifully like the original building does. And tucking the box office away in the basement is unfortunate. The little stairs at the new entrance and the second level runway creating an area with a low ceiling in a space with a huge height are both really unfortunate. Love the floor though.

That would be my only criticisms as well; the low ceiling at the Kipnes Lantern entrance and the location of the box-office, which should have been moved in or near the Elgin entrance.