A documentary film on the historic Dyde House in Edmonton, Alberta—accompanied by rare tours of the house—will be making a debut during MADE’s Edmonton Design Week on October 12.

The Dyde House, which is a modernist home designed by Arthur Erickson, was built in 1960 and sits on 50 acres of land.

According to Erickson’s website, the house is surrounded by 190 acres which were all purchased in 1958 by Henry Alexander (Sandy) Dyde.

A total of 80 acres were later donated by the Dydes to the University of Alberta to establish the Devonian Botanic Garden, which opened in 1959. One year later, in 1960, Erickson was hired to design their country home on the property.

The additional 110 acres were sold to the university by the Dydes in 1975 and 30 of those acres were used to build the Kurimoto Japanese Gardens, among other buildings. The remaining 50 acres containing the house designed by Erickson were gifted by the family to the Devonian Botanic Garden in 2014 to fulfil Sandy Dyde’s wish.

For the last eight years, architect Barry Johns has been working on a file pertaining to the Dyde House, and has worked alongside Trevor Boddy and Sticks & Stones Productions for the last four to shine light on this project through a documentary film. 

Johns and Boddy worked together to serve as researchers, script, and visuals consultants, and are the executive producers of the film. Both are also directors of the Arthur Erickson Foundation.

In 2021, the duo aired a short Zoom video screening of Dyde House of the RAIC, as well as at an international Historic Buildings Preservation Conference. Sticks & Stones in Edmonton recently finished the production of the full length documentary, which has been nominated for seven 2023 Alberta Media Production Industries Association awards, and was given the “Best Documentary Over 30 Minutes” 2023 prize at the Alberta Film Awards on October 3.

The documentary will be premiering on October 12, 2023, at the Art Gallery of Alberta during MADE Edmonton Design Week. The screening will be followed by guided tours on site that weekend. A panel discussion and Q&A that Johns and Boddy will moderate will also follow the screening of the film.

The duo also hopes to air it on public television and throughout the profession to build awareness. 

The public will also be able to participate in a fundraising tour that will include the 1962 Dyde House interior, the Erickson-designed gardens surrounding it, and The Aga Khan Gardens and The Diwan. “Should the University proceed with building stabilization and conservation work, it may be the last time in a long time where the public will be able to see the interior as Erickson intended,” notes Boddy. Tickets for the tour are available through the AEF website.

To purchase tickets to the documentary screening, click here.

The post Dyde House documentary to premiere during MADE Edmonton Design Week appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT Windermere Fire Station No. 31, Edmonton, Alberta

ARCHITECTS S2 Architecture (Prime Consultant) with gh3* (Design Architect)

PHOTOS Raymond Chow, gh3*

Located in Edmonton’s far southwest, gh3* and S2’s Windermere Fire Station #31 casts a mountainous silhouette—capped with glimmering solar panels—against the vast Prairie sky. Windermere’s built form is remarkably close in execution to its early design, which won a 2018 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence. It delivers on dual promises: creating an expressive form that anchors its community, and performing as a net-zero building that wears its sustainability credentials on its sleeve.

As the design architect, gh3*’s team was faced with an uninspiring suburban site lacking the contextual depth of the firm’s other projects in Edmonton. In response, they decided to explore the archetypal idea of the firehall as a community building that blends technical and domestic space. While firehalls are first and foremost pieces of infrastructure for ensuring the safety of their communities, they are also second homes for the firefighters who live there while on duty, waiting for the next crisis to snap them into action.

The pairing of an apparatus bay for trucks and equipment with domestic dorms housing places to sleep, bathe, cook, and relax, results in two programmatic areas with significantly different heights. This invites the architectural response of designing the building as two distinct masses: “big volume, small volume,” as gh3* principal Pat Hanson puts it, a response that “is not very successful, in my mind.” In contrast, she notes that Windermere’s bold profile arose from the initial desires “to find a consolidated, unified form between these two very different programmatic pieces of the building […] combined with trying to find an approach that was expressive and sustainable.”

Working within the constraints of a municipal budget, Hanson and her team approached this task with the attitude of “just being respectful of the program and getting it right” and only having “one or two moves that carry the architectural idea, while being strategic about the other things so that they don’t take over.” On the exterior, these key moves included developing a unified mass, fitting the south-facing roof with an extensive solar array, and cladding the building in dark, woven masonry. On the interior, the program is arranged along a corridor circuit, and a glazed courtyard brings daylight into the central fitness area.

Achieving net-zero involved a blend of passive systems—thick insulation, high-performance windows, and atypical folding doors for the apparatus bay—along with two active ones, namely, geothermal heating/cooling and solar photovoltaic electricity production. While most of these features are all but invisible, the solar panels offered a chance to express the building’s net-zero status, and their optimal configuration helps define the gentle curve of the south roof.

The firehall’s pitched roof also sought to evoke façades of historic firehalls—the kind that still appear in children’s storybooks. “Firehalls ground communities,” says Hanson. “The emotional response to the firehall as a structure—particularly the old ones—is quite strong.”
Edmonton City Architect Carol Bélanger echoes this, arguing that firehalls can serve as meaningful “gateways to a community” instead of just being “located in a light-industrial area.”

How can a firehall be both an architectural landmark and a place of community pride? That question recalls architectural historian Kenneth Frampton’s comment, in a 2013 lecture on Alvar Aalto, that the most fundamental challenge facing architects today is “how to provide for a liberative modern environment, while still being able to embody a sense of security and rootedness without descending into kitsch.” 

On this measure, Windermere partially succeeds. Without question, it’s a surprising, evocative form offering a sense of strength and security. The heavy visual presence of the black brick paired with the sloped profile, however, seems more likely to evoke Alberta’s beloved Rocky Mountains than historic firehalls. Imagining the same form constructed in red brick is an interesting exercise: the historic connection suddenly reappears, but now the building no longer appears contemporary, and even starts to recall the red brick masses of later Aalto projects.

This is no accident, since gh3* shares Aalto’s interest in the expressive and textural possibilities of brick. Hanson notes that brick was always the obvious choice for the project: it offers “feelings of permanence, security, wellbeing, comfort, and longevity”—exactly the values one would hope to find in a firehall. Brick also affords an incredible play of scale. “Because of the size of it, it allows for a form to be absolutely monolithic; you just don’t get that from metal panels.”

The sculptural possibilities of brick are apparent in the switch at the window datum from a regular bond to an open, woven pattern. The latter provides rich visual texture while toying with the solidity of the mass and making the most of the harsh Prairie shadows.
As you approach the building, the contrast between the fine-grained detail of the woven brick and the monumentality of the entire building is delightfully staggering.

Windermere’s interior boasts a smart, well-organized plan that ensures firefighters can achieve rapid response times. The domestic area is organized around a corridor circuit, with the changerooms and fitness centre in the middle, and the sleeping areas, kitchen, lounge, and offices around the perimeter. Given the fraternal lifestyle of firefighters on duty, there is also a large south-facing courtyard for outdoor activities and cooking. A floor-to-ceiling glazed hallway links the courtyard to the gymnasium, bringing natural light into this deeper part of the plan.

The darker, monochromatic colour scheme of the domestic area—save for the orange accent of the gym floor—is a surprising contrast to the light, airy quality of the apparatus bay. One has to hope that the firefighters will bring some much-needed colour into these spaces as they occupy the building.

I toured Windermere with the project team shortly before it was occupied, and they discussed how the building was already garnering a lot of interest, perhaps ushering in a new paradigm for fire stations in the region. Using dark, patterned masonry for this typology already seems to have caught on: Edmonton’s under-construction Fire Station #3 Rehabilitation, by Winnipeg office 5468796, deploys charcoal concrete masonry units with rhythmic horizontal notches that enliven its facades.

Taking a long view, Edmonton’s fire stations have historically kept pace with progressive trends across the decades—from Moderne and the International Style, to Brutalism and Post-Modernism. Windermere points to a compelling next phase in this architectural evolution.

Greg Whistance-Smith is an Intern Architect in Edmonton, and author of the recent book Expressive Space: Embodying Meaning in Video Game Environments (De Gruyter, 2022).

PlanCLIENT City of Edmonton | ARCHITECT TEAM Linus Murphy, Ivan Sorenson, Grace O’Brien, Eric Klatt, Pat Hanson (FRAIC), Joel DiGiacomo, Mark Kim, Nicholas Callies | STRUCTURAL RJC | MECHANICAL/ ELECTRICAL Smith and Andersen | SUSTAINABILITY Ecoammo | CIVIL | LANDSCAPE gh3* / Urban Systems | INTERIORS gh3* / S2 | CONTRACTOR PCL | AREA 1,532 m2 | BUDGET $17.2 M | COMPLETION June 2023

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 94 kWh/m2/year (with solar panels operational, EUI will be 0 kWh/m2/year) | WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 104 m3/m2/year

The post Solar Flair: Windermere Fire Station No. 31, Edmonton, Alberta appeared first on Canadian Architect.

When Dub Architects set out to redevelop a block in Edmonton’s warehouse district, just west of downtown, the designers were faced with an intriguing challenge. At the south end, the block was capped by a relatively narrow, 15-metre lot—an undeveloped leftover.

“As a result,” says architect Gene Dub, “you ended up with a wall that had to be a blind wall—you couldn’t put windows in it unless they were set well back from the property line.” Turning that constraint into an asset, he decided to clad the south façade of the new 10-storey building, called The Edge, with an array of 560 photovoltaic panels. 

The massive array generates 80 percent of the building’s electricity. Moreover, it creates a striking presence in the city: a black monolith, adorned with vertical aluminum strips that underscore its sculptural appearance.

In contrast to this solidity, the north wall of the building is entirely glass—comprised of triple- and quadruple-paned units to reduce heat loss. Each floor is bookended by equally airy balconies, constructed with thermal separations in the floor slab and fitted with solar screens facing south.

From inside, the effect is dramatic. For the past four years, Dub Architects has used the top two floors of the building as their office, keeping the space as an open-plan design, with a lightly suspended stair and atrium hovering over a double-height lobby. “It was almost like a Paris garret with north-facing skylights,” says Dub, recalling how the orientation meant that no window coverings were necessary. “You could watch a storm pass from one end of the building to the other—it was a really magical show.”

The dramatic design is facilitated by Dub’s ownership of the adjoining parcel: the block of warehouses has been repurposed as a series of loft condos, and won’t be redeveloped for the next 50 years. Dub himself lives in a suite right next to The Edge, enjoying views of the building from both inside and out throughout most days.

That will soon come to an end, though: MC College’s Edmonton campus, which currently occupies the bottom eight storeys of the building, has enjoyed a high degree of success—perhaps in part because of the visibility of its facility—and will be taking over the top two floors to expand its program.  

This will put Dub Architects on the move again. This time, says Dub, they’ll be moving “to a 1950s building that we’re redoing.” It’s a brutalist-era precast design, he adds, “with sloped glass all over the place.” Doubtless, it’ll be soon transformed into a space that’s as special as The Edge.

The post At the Edge: The Edge, Edmonton, Alberta appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT The Aga Khan Garden and The Diwan, University of Alberta Botanic Garden, Devon, Alberta

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS (Aga Khan Garden) Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects

ARCHITECTS (Diwan) AXIA Design Associates (Design Architects), Arriz + Co. (Architectural & Interior Design), and Kasian Architecture, Interior Design, and Planning (Executive Architects)

TEXT David Down

Carved out of a boggy Alberta forest outside the rural town of Devon, south of Edmonton, the Aga Khan Garden with its new pavilion, known as The Diwan, is a design revelation of exceptional grace, tranquility, spirituality and precision of execution. Masterfully balancing cultural and historical references with local topography, climate, vegetation and materials, both the garden and the building sit perfectly composed in their unexpected context. Together, they comprise the world’s northernmost Islamic-inspired garden, rooted in an ancient and distant culture, yet completely connected to their Canadian home.       

Located within The University of Alberta Botanic Garden, the 4.8-hectare Aga Khan Garden was gifted to the University of Alberta in 2018 by His Highness the Aga Khan. The gift nods to Canada’s historic welcoming of Ismaili Muslims in 1972, and is part of the work of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which has created and restored important gardens around the world, including Aga Khan Park in Toronto. The Aga Khan himself speaks of gardens as a central element in Muslim culture—places where human creativity and divine majesty are fused, and our responsibility to nature and stewardship of the natural world are put into action. 

Thomas Woltz, whose Charlottesville, Virginia firm Nelson Byrd Woltz (NBW) is among North America’s foremost landscape practices, recalls the design of the Aga Khan Garden as one of the most intellectually and emotionally rewarding journeys of his professional career. 

The commission began with an invitation from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture to submit a narrative describing NBW’s proposed design approach. Deeply involved in all his projects, His Highness the Aga Khan insists that design must grow from dialogue, and the process built around a relationship. Nine months later, NBW was summoned to Toronto, where His Highness himself posed the life-altering question: “How can 1,800 years of Islamic culture and landscape tradition be made relevant to the 21st century?” 

The NBW team was then given a full year to research the project, including travelling to the great Islamic gardens of Cairo, Jaipur, Delhi, and many more. In a moment of revelation outside Jaipur, Woltz envisaged the whole continuum of garden design stretching back to traditional methods of controlling and using water, right up to current issues of flood control, food insecurity and climate extremes. The task was not just to create a pleasure garden, he realized, but to reflect a history of the stewardship of productive landscapes. This approach could connect ancient practices, teachings and poetry with 21st-century life and issues in a way that both those of the Ismaili faith and all Canadians could understand.  

Looking for the first time at our Alberta landscapes, Woltz saw the petroleum industry moving vast landscapes, which subsequently required rejuvenation. The Aga Khan garden could be part of that regeneration, by cultivating and supplying seed for the now-rare Indigenous plantings required in landscape restoration. This brought a productive element to the garden—and, in the distribution of the seeds, a poetic metaphor for the radiating influence of the Ismaili Muslim faith.

For visitors, the journey through the garden begins at a low, perfectly polished and incised limestone entrance wall—a first clue to the quality of materials and fineness of detail to be found throughout. Beyond, a steel grate pathway floats above the forest understory, just as the paths through traditional Islamic gardens are raised above adjacent plantings. The pathway provides a quiet, calming forest walk that encourages a receptive state of mind while also building anticipation. The visitor is rewarded with the woodland bagh, persian for garden: an elliptical polished granite pool of perfectly still water that silently mirrors the sky, while recalling the shapes of canoes and Inuit carvings. By this time, we know we are in a landscape unlike any other. 

The path then leads upward to the majestic talar, or entry porch, with its imposing Portuguese limestone columns slung with bright orange sails, recalling both nomadic tents and the permanence of ancient desert palaces. At the centre of the talar, a low cubic polished granite fountain, carved with Islamic geometries, is the symbolic source of the garden’s waterworks. From this dramatic point, the entirety of the plan is laid out before us: from the symmetrical chahar bagh, or foursquare garden, to the calla pond and bustan, or orchard, beyond.   

The main space of the garden is the chahar bagh, a deeply spiritual form rooted in ancient agricultural traditions. Its quadripartite pattern of raised granite pathways represents the order of the universe, and frames beds filled with a clever combination of Indigenous plantings and annually changing plants that recall warmer climes, such as artichokes. NBW worked with the University of Alberta’s skilled team of horticulturalists to build a successful palette of locally hardy plants which subtly reference the ancient world, while tantalizing all of the senses with colour, texture and scent.   

The garden design is woven throughout with contemporary details that link us to ancient traditions. The designers carefully studied geometries based on the numbers four and eight, representative of paradise, and created new interpretations. These patterns are rendered with exceptional precision in high-performance concrete balustrades and granite paving, and engraved into granite walls and steel screens. Every motif feels authentic to the Islamic garden tradition—but is in fact original to NBW.  

As a final touch, His Highness insisted that the Garden must include touches of whimsy. To achieve this, the team commissioned to-scale bronzes of local fauna—frogs, lizards, and various types of fish—which particularly delight younger visitors.  

The recently opened Diwan sits at the terminus of the east-west axis of the chahar bagh. Designed by Toronto architect Taymoore Balbaa of Axia Design Associates together with Arriz + Co. and Kasian Architecture, the pavilion was always envisioned as part of the completed garden. The placement of the pavilion is critical to the garden’s axial plan, and it provides a space for year-round programming to engage the broader community.  

The pavilion’s design team was chosen through an international RFP process managed by the University of Alberta. Balbaa, who led the design, grew up in Egypt and the Middle East, and studied the Islamic architectural traditions of Sub-Saharan Arfrica as part of his Prix de Rome research. As a result, he brought to the project a deep understanding of Islamic architecture and the integration of its decorative arts and building craft traditions. 

Balbaa found inspiration in the pavilion’s site—between the symmetrical garden and the forest beyond. In his view, this provided an opportunity to blur the boundary between the formal and the wild, between ancient notions of paradise and the untouched Alberta forest. The completed building bridges the two realms by bringing them into and through the building, creating a sense of being between—and within—both conditions at once.  

In both plan and section, the building responds seemingly effortlessly to the geometric power of the garden and the implied need for symmetry, while satisfying the demands of an asymmetrical program. Balbaa says that the intent was to achieve a “balanced asymmetry.” The strong horizontality of a generously cantilevered entry façade firmly roots the building, strongly terminating the axial vista, while deferring to the garden. The pavilion sits naturally and lightly at the edge of the forest, while matching the solidity and permanence of the garden. 

The cladding responds to the motifs and materiality of the garden. Above a limestone base, mashrabiya-patterned metal panels are set into a rainscreen of crisp extruded porcelain panels. Both budget and weight precluded the use of the garden’s Algonquin limestone throughout, but the resulting effect is still seamlessly complementary.  

The building’s simple program—an event space for up to 220 guests, with associated service functions—is appropriately and masterfully elevated through the strategic use of good materials and elegant details. In the lobby, a custom ceramic tile “carpet” and integrated donor wall reflect traditional geometries. In the main space, which feels more outdoors than indoors, one set of windows pulls striking axial garden views into the room, while other openings frame the quiet backdrop of the forest. Overhead, a hovering black frame centres and defines the room, while hinting at traditional ceiling forms. 

Bespoke touches include custom-patterned wall coverings whose motif, like that of the mashrabiya screens, recalls Alberta’s provincial flower, the wild rose. On the upper level, a roof terrace is lit at night like a golden lantern, providing additional event space with a sweeping view of the garden. The result is a building, inside and out, which feels simultaneously connected to the richness and formality of ancient design traditions, and to the contemporary preference for the simple zen of clean finishes against unspoiled nature. 

It is rare in landscape architecture and architecture to find a successful fusion of the formal and informal, the natural and the ordered. Equally rare are contemporary interpretations of traditional forms which do not cross the line into kitsch. The Aga Khan Garden and the Diwan achieve the balance beautifully, with designs that are rooted in ancient heritage while feeling completely comfortable in the contemporary Canadian landscape. The result is a wonderful gift indeed—a place that embodies the Aga Khan’s goals of dissolving barriers, encouraging broader understanding, and bringing cultures together.

Architect David Down is the City of Calgary’s Chief Urban Designer.

The Aga Khan Garden | CLIENT Aga Khan Trust for Culture | LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT TEAM Thomas Woltz, Breck Gastinger, Nathan Foley, Sandra Nam Cioffi, Jen Trompetter, Alisha Savage, Siobhan Brooks, Fraser Stuart, Kari Roynesdal | ARCHITECT Dialog Design | CIVIL ISL Engineering and Land Services | FOUNTAIN CMS Collaborative Inc. | IRRIGATION Ion Irrigation Management Inc. | DESIGN ENGINEER FTL Design Engineering Studio | ENVIRONMENTAL Spencer | AREA 10 acres | BUDGET $763 K | COMPLETION 2018

The Diwan | CLIENT University of Alberta | ARCHITECT TEAM AXIA—Taymoore Balbaa, Chris Wong, Michael Good, Leisdania Reynoso, Justine Houseley. Arriz + Co.—Arriz Hassam; Jason Lue Choy. Kasian—Aziz Bootwala; Emme Kanji; Chad Kern. | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Williams Engineering, Edmonton (Chad Musselwhite, Alexey Kalinin) | STRUCTURAL RJC, Toronto (John Kooymans, Matt Deegan) | CONTRACTOR Clark Builders | BUILDING AREA 695 m2  | SITE AREA 725 m2 | PROJECT BUDGET $5.5 M | COMPLETION Sept 2022

The post Recalling Paradise: The Aga Khan Garden and The Diwan, Devon, Alberta appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT Calder Branch Library

ARCHITECTS Atelier TAG and the marc boutin architectural collaborative

PHOTOS Adrien Williams

PROJECT Capilano Library

ARCHITECTS Patkau Architects + Group2

PHOTOS James Dow

TEXT Greg Whistance-Smith

The public library is a uniquely democratic space. Regardless of socio-economic status, visitors are invited to partake in the incredible abundance of modern media: books, films, music, video games, magazines, manga, and more. While “institutional architecture” often carries the negative association of faceless bureaucracies, the space of public libraries suggests a different—and far more egalitarian—world, with a luxurious public realm.

The Edmonton Public Library (EPL)’s progressive spirit is reflected in the range of exceptional libraries constructed in the city in recent years, many of which have already graced these pages. A sprawling city like Edmonton requires a decentralized architectural response, and the EPL has woven itself into the life of the city by deeply investing in its branch libraries.

Edmonton’s collection of new libraries invites a comparative view: how can the architecture of the branch library best embody the contemporary vision of a community gathering place that gives access to diverse media and forms of expression? Two libraries that opened just before the pandemic, Calder and Capilano, have many things in common—total areas of around 1,000 square metres, budgets of about $11 million, similar programs, sites in postwar suburban neighbourhoods, and even expressive metal-clad forms—while offering distinct architectural approaches to this question.

A Floating World of Media

Designed by Atelier TAG and the Marc Boutin Architectural Collaborative, Calder Library is located in Edmonton’s northwest, sharing a large suburban park with a school, community hall, and playground. Despite its relatively compact size, “we wanted the library to feel like an expansive place,” says Atelier TAG principal and co-founder Manon Asselin. 

This initial impulse pushed the designers to explore a building that branches out on its site, resulting in an iteration on the hub-and-spoke floor plans often found in libraries—“our little flower in the landscape,” says Asselin. The asterisk-like plan simultaneously defines outdoor areas around the building, allows for acoustically cloistered zones that are visually connected, and generates an interior experience where the space of the library feels like a superimposition of layers.

While developing the project, the architects also uncovered resonances between their design and the area’s history. The branching plan recalls the network of the Grand Trunk Railway that spurred the creation of Calder in 1910, and the intimate interior nods back to a converted tram car that once served as a bookmobile to the neighbourhood.

Approaching the building, one is struck by its sense of elegant rest, floating between earth and sky. Calder’s façade is a refined grid of metallic panels, often with glazing below; its peaceful simplicity serves as a counterpoint to the dynamic plan and interior. The panels are further animated by a back-lit metal mesh that creates a sense of visual diffusion, particularly during Edmonton’s long winter nights.

Visitors arrive at the library through an eastern plaza defined by two wings. The entrance is highlighted with soft pink panels behind the grey mesh—a colour that recalls the winter sky at dawn and dusk, and Alberta’s provincial flower, the wild rose. Cherry trees dot the plaza, amplifying this pink with their blossoms each spring. 

Once inside, visitors find themselves at heart of the library, with program areas fanning out in all directions. A circular information desk is located at this convergence, but its central position is intentionally diffused by the space-age fireplace suspended from the ceiling nearby. “The plan has a weaker centre than a library with a central control point,” says Asselin. Surrounded by lounge chairs, the fireplace suggests that the library is to be enjoyed as a community living room.

Calder’s clean interior has a limited palette of white, grey, and metallic-framed glass: the walls, faceted ceiling, and much of the furniture are all bright white. This was intended to allow the changing tones of Edmonton’s natural light to define the space. However, the bold patches of colour provided by EPL’s wall graphics, some seating, and the library’s collection result in a layered, graphic quality. Scanning the room feels akin to flipping through a magazine or scrolling a website, and Calder’s architecture invites visitors to wander this floating world of information and expression.

A Folded Profile Among the Trees

Heading east of Edmonton’s downtown, Capilano is sited in a mature suburb along an orphaned ravine that once connected to the North Saskatchewan River Valley. Designed by Patkau Architects and Group2, it embraces the found potential of this site by pairing a bold sectional profile with a linear plan that gets as close to the ravine and road as the city would permit.

While Calder branches out in plan, Capilano is boldly sectional: its folded profile is extruded 77 metres along the ravine with articulation only present at the ends, resulting in a monolithic form grounded in its landscape. This sense of repose is strengthened by the slanted wall facing the neighbourhood, whose street-level windows have been cleverly screened with perforated metal panels that emphasize the mass and modulate views.

Aiming to both protect the ravine and extend its ecosystem towards the street, Capilano’s monolithic form will fade into the trees as the landscaping grows in. The strategy was influenced by John and Patricia Patkau’s years living in Edmonton early in their careers. “Edmonton has a limited landscape palette, and it takes a long time to establish a mature landscape there,” says John Patkau. “We [principal Greg Boothroyd and I] had a strong reaction during the initial site visit that the building should serve as a buffer to help preserve the ravine.” This becomes particularly clear in winter storms: the western façade gains a thin layer of snow in blowing wet conditions, transforming the library into a landform.

Arriving from the road or parking lot, visitors encounter Capilano’s evocative profile, here carved out to form a generous entry canopy that gives a taste of the warmth to be found inside. The inner surface of the folded roof is lined in a beautifully rhythmic pattern of Douglas fir, using the woven wood vocabulary developed in Patkau Architects’ material research and also explored in their Whistler and Thunder Bay art galleries. The wood effectively recontextualizes the metal envelope in these projects, resulting in an aesthetic pairing of organic and industrial that speaks to life in the Canadian Northwest.

Capilano’s section brilliantly organizes its plan while washing the interior in warm light. Responding to the flexibility desired by modern libraries, its peaks create three zones that carry through the building: an intimate strip facing the ravine, an airy hall down the middle, and a residential-scaled area facing the suburb. The program areas naturally gravitate to their appropriate zones, and the consistent section belies the lovely spatial diversity to be found inside. Perhaps most surprisingly, Capilano’s design can be read as a nave with aisles, and it brings the pleasant modulation of scale that this ancient form offers.

In a move recalling the light monitors of Aalto’s libraries, strips of west-facing windows are located along two roof peaks to capture the low winter sun. The wooden screen filter creates a spectacular display of light and shadow in the interior that evokes the qualities of Edmonton’s forests in the warm hues of autumn. Circular columns echo the dimensions of nearby trees, and a radiant red carpet grounds the interior like the dogwood underbrush of the ravine, reinforcing the library’s warm embrace.

Two Visions

While Calder imagines the library as a diffuse space of abundant media, Capilano settles into its ravine-side location, offering a sheltered oasis to read, study, and enjoy views of nature. Both respond to the need for contemporary branch libraries to be robust community spaces with diverse media, rather than simply repositories of books, and both offer visitors a strong sense of place. As young Edmontonians grow up with these exceptional buildings, one hopes they will develop a passion for the library as prior generations have, guiding its evolution through this century and beyond. 

Greg Whistance-Smith is an Intern Architect in Edmonton, and author of the recent book Expressive Space: Embodying Meaning in Video Game Environments (De Gruyter, 2022).

Calder Branch Library

CLIENT City of Edmonton | ARCHITECT TEAM Atelier TAG—Manon Asselin (FRAIC), Katsuhiro Yamazaki, Jason Treherne, Ange Sauvage. MBAC—Marc Boutin (FRAIC), Nathaniel Wagenaar | STRUCTURAL Fast + Epp | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Williams Engineering | LANDSCAPE PFS Studio | INTERIORS Atelier TAG and MBAC | CONTRACTOR EllisDon | LEED Morrison Hershfield | AREA 935 M2 | BUDGET $6.1 M | COMPLETION September 2019

Capilano Library

CLIENT City of Edmonton | ARCHITECT TEAM Patkau—Greg Boothroyd (FRAIC), Shane O’Neill, John Patkau (FRAIC), Patricia Patkau (FRAIC), Thomas Schroeder. Group2—Anneliese Fris, Eric Hui, Gareth Leach, Jennifer Nederpel | STRUCTURAL Fast + Epp | MECHANICAL Williams Engineering | ELECTRICAL WSP | LANDSCAPE Design North | INTERIORS Patkau Architects | CONTRACTOR PCL Constructors | TRAFFIC Acumen, Bunt & Associates | CIVIL ISL | ACOUSTICS RWDI | AREA 1,130 M2 | BUDGET $11.8 M | COMPLETION November 2018

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 107 kWh/m2/year

The post The Community Library, in Plan and Section: Calder Library and Capilano Library, Edmonton, Alberta appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Winner of a 2023 RAIC Advocate for Architecture Award

In the past decade, Edmonton has become a hotbed of contemporary Canadian architecture. At the centre of this transformation is City Architect Carol Bélanger. In 2005, then-mayor Stephen Mandel stated, “Our tolerance for [architectural] crap is now zero.” This gave Bélanger—who started working with the City of Edmonton in 2005 and became its City Architect in 2009—a clear mandate to demonstrate architecture’s vital role in the growth and transformation of the city. 

Bélanger has since facilitated the design and construction of public spaces and facilities that have improved the daily lives of many Edmontonians, and in doing so, garnered excitement and respect for what good architecture can mean for a growing city.

Radically revamping the procurement procedure has been fundamental to the City of Edmonton’s architectural revitalization. In the quality-based process developed by Carol Bélanger, the first stage goes beyond typical proposal requirements to include applicants’ previous design awards and publications, the firms’ design process (including parti diagrams, renderings, technical details and final photography), and proponents’ experience presenting to Design Review Committees. The scoring of these additional sections allows the City to objectively measure architectural quality. 

In the second phase of the procurement process, the quality-based model is further advanced by including a section related to a vision for the project—which may include a parti sketch, a site strategy, or precedent images—allowing the City to determine how a firm might start to think about the design. Between the two stages of this process, a significant amount of a firms’ score is determined by their ability to demonstrate design quality and thinking. Fees make up only 10% of the overall score, and fee score is determined by adherence to the provincial fee guidelines, disincentivizing under-bidding on projects.

A further innovation instigated by Bélanger is the inclusion of the client on the selection committee, so they understand the complexities and nuances of the procurement process, and take responsibility for the selection as the project progresses. “That way they have skin in the game and they understand the breadth of consultants we have to pick from,” says Bélanger. “You want to make sure there’s a good relationship.”

As proposals develop into projects, Bélanger has a unique ability to support and help navigate architectural teams through complex public processes. Bélanger and his staff are involved in projects from concept design through to the completion of technical drawings, as facilitators and advocates. Their presence is key in supporting creative freedom for design teams while ensuring critical oversight.

As another means to champion architectural excellence, Bélanger initiated and managed one of the only open national design competitions that Canada has seen in the last few decades. The competition for five relatively small park pavilion buildings drew the attention of architects across Canada, resulting in 130 entries from firms ranging from emerging talent to highly experienced. The completed structures have all been recognized with local or national design awards—including one which received a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture. More importantly, they are appreciated by the public, and are a testament to a burgeoning interest in civic buildings. 

Bélanger sees the mentorship and support of emerging architectural firms as fundamental in ensuring that the culture of design grows and matures in the City of Edmonton. Firms can qualify for the city’s standing roster for small projects with similar criteria to the larger procurement process, in which demonstration of design judgement and commitment is as important as the firms’ portfolios.

While Bélanger is respectful of his position as a public servant and is careful in his advocacy, he has spread the word that all Canadian citizens should be re-energized and re-engage with urban design. He has been in speaker in academic settings where he informs students about the role architects can have in influencing the public sector, to conferences where he advocates for the importance of the City Architect position. At the symposium Les temps de la Qualité in Montréal, he was part of examining four project to determine criteria for architectural quality; at a roundtable convened by Jennifer Keesmaat, then Chief Planner of Toronto, he advocated for a rigorous, impartial and transparent procurement process structured to produce design excellence.

Bélanger can be credited with initiating an era for change in Edmonton, with an influence which has gone beyond the city’s boundaries. His advocacy throughout Canada has established new benchmarks for Canadian architectural excellence. Through championing architectural quality and ambition, Belanger has effectively transformed public policy and public opinion—as well as the City of Edmonton’s reputation.

Jury Comments :: Carol Bélanger is not just an advocate for architecture, but an advocate for procurement reform, design excellence and civic life. Since his appointment, Edmonton has become an exemplar of contemporary Canadian architecture. The projects he has shepherded through the city shape the public realm, and are marked by high-quality design and construction. Whether located in the urban centre, a community park, or a suburban mall, the resulting work encourages citizens to engage with architecture and city building—and demonstrably improves the lives of those who use it. 

Bélanger’s advocacy and support for the procurement and execution of great design is an inspiring example to municipalities, professionals, and the public, and sets a beautiful example for improvements in procurement processes across the country. 

The jury for this award included Brent Bellamy, Charles-Mathieu Brunelle, Michael Green, Jenn McArthur, Shallyn Murray, and Betsy Williamson. 

The post 2023 RAIC Awards: Carol Bélanger appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage, Edmonton, Alberta

ARCHITECTS gh3* (design architect) with Morrison Hershfield (prime consultant)

PHOTOS gh3*

One of the few lazy diagonals in a hard-working grid-iron city, Edmonton’s Fort Road is well-named. Dating from the 18th century and by far the oldest street in the city, Fort Trail—now renamed to the blander Fort Road—is a former First Nations then Settler ox-cart trail that meandered from Fort Edmonton to Fort Saskatchewan. During the past hundred and fifty years, first a rail line, then a light rail transit corridor arrived to flank its path.

Fort Road is also the unlikely location of two pioneering works by top Toronto architects, separated by two generations. A spirit of innovation and of taking workplaces very seriously links the two buildings constructed on this site: Eric Arthur’s 1936 Canada Packers Plant and Pat Hanson’s Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage, completed last year in its place.

When Canada Packers planned an ultra-modern meat-packing plant at the height of the Great Depression, they turned to Eric Arthur, a New Zealand-born University of Toronto architecture professor who had worked for Sir Edwin Lutyens. They asked him for a contemporary, no-nonsense design, which was realized in association with the workhorse firm of Anthony Adamson.

Built in red brick just as this building material was falling out of favour in Alberta, the resulting building—with its unapologetic programmatic expressionism, rounded corners and bold massing—earned my appraisal, in Modern Architecture in Alberta (1987), as Edmonton’s first pure example of modernism. Arthur’s design was published and exhibited internationally as a paradigm of the new functionalist style, winning a Gold Medal at the 1937 London Exhibition of Architecture and Allied Arts. The same is true of the recently demolished Calgary concrete grain terminal so beloved by Le Corbusier, and published by him in Towards a New Architecture. These two remain the most famous and influential Alberta buildings of the first half of the 20th century.

Eric Arthur went on to become a prominent preservationist and author of the classic book Toronto: No Mean City. The Canada Packers plant, for its part, fell into disuse in the 1980s, and was bought by a devel­oper and demolished in 1995, save for its landmark 50-metre-high smokestack (which had long spread a perpetual smell of bacon over this entire quarter of the city!) Vancouver has a smaller sister Canada Packers building by Eric Arthur on Terminal Avenue, which is also now threatened with demolition, despite its similar renown. Unlike mayor’s houses, churches and art galleries, workplaces are Dangerfields that don’t get no architectural respect.

Fast forward eighty years, and a similarly distinguished Toronto architect was awarded the commission for a massive transit bus facility on the site of Arthur’s Canada Packers plant. Pat Hanson and her firm of gh3* are one of the beneficiaries of Edmonton’s enlightened procurement program for civic buildings, under the direction of City architect Carol Bélanger (see CA, August 2021 and July 2015).  Hanson and her firm have designed two park pavilions, a fire hall and the Borden Park natural swimming pool for the City of Edmonton. The project for Edmonton Transit is larger than all their public buildings combined.

Twinkling mischievously when seen passing by on Fort Road, the new Kathleen Andrews Transit Centre is a beguiling and serene sight, with its long walls of shimmering reflective metal skin punctuated by stairwells. On their public sides, these stairwells are capped by topographic contours set vertically, a highly successful public art installation. The design by gh3*, in association with Morrison Hershfield Consulting Engineers, is no dumb big box—it’s a far cry from a generic Amazon fulfillment centre or Canadian Tire mega-warehouse. At a time when major employment hubs like these have become the crudest of space enclosures, with barely an inflection evident from their architects, Hanson and her team have applied architectural sophistication to the Andrews Garage’s every element, inside and out, floor plan and elevational grandeur.

The entire layout shows deep respect for the important civic business of driving, repairing and storing city buses, including both conventional gas-powered vehicles and a growing fleet of electric buses. Since contaminated soil from previous uses (imagine what dripped down during 50 years of slaughterhouse operations!) had to be removed, bus drivers can park under the main bus level in this excavated zone converted to employee’s garage, avoiding outside treks at -35°C from a staff parking lot. The atrium-lobby, locker and change rooms, and meeting spaces for the union and community groups are all unusually dignified and handsome. 

Part of the same sensibility of deep respect for the art and craft of driving buses, the complex is named after Kathleen Andrews, Edmonton Transit’s first female bus-driver in the 1970s, after a campaign by her daughter advocating for the building to be named after an employee, not some civic worthy or forgotten bureaucrat. Not only is this tough and functional piece of urban infrastructure designed by one of the leading women in Canadian architecture, but it is named after a woman who wheeled out her bus daily from a less amenable bus barn—there were no female washrooms, at first. From its palette of finishes, landscape embellishments, and amenities for workers to its very name, the Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage is a proud burnishment of Edmonton’s deserved reputation as a blue-collar city.

The Garage sits at a good spot to send buses on their way—the intersection of the Yellowhead Trail (the Highway 16 version of the Trans-Canada Highway) with Fort Road. According to Pat Hanson, both the overall site layout and internal organization of the building “are all about vehicular movement—from the booker’s shack [where staffing is set], to the caddyshack [where drivers check in], to where they drop their accumulated coin fares at the end of a shift.” From the girdling circuit of bus routes into and out of the garage, Hanson and her team were determined to “let the footprint be what it wants to be: perfect for the maneuvering of buses.” The roadways are set on a circuit, with a huge room for the storage of up to 300 idle buses, packed head to tail, and another section of 35 diagonal drive-through bays for maintenance and repairs, a string of inductive plate charging stations for electric buses, a gas-station for conventional ones, and a bus-wash, much needed in dusty and mucky Edmud-town. Set on a largely diagonal plan at the northeast corner of the complex are the support spaces for the drivers, while the offices for administration and management occupy 5,000 square metres conforming to the exterior grid.

A surprisingly elegant atrium is located at the junction of the diagonal and orthogonal floor plan geometries. Within this cubic, daylit room graced with brightly coloured furniture, a sculptural feature stair adheres to the diagonal layout of the driver’s zone, an almost political gesture of reconciliation between the social classes of workers, both being represented through architecture. The original plans included board rooms and an executive suite for senior managers for the entire Edmonton Transit Service. (This particular garage supports routes solely in the northeast quadrant of the city.) But in the course of construction, senior ETS management decided—in my view, foolishly—that they would rather be in an office tower closer to City Hall than near their own drivers. Consequently, much of this office wing—along with an on-site daycare—remains in an unfinished state, awaiting a re-allocation of other City staff and funding. Like Kathleen Andrews waiting for her washroom, drivers will wait for the on-site daycare that will make family life easier.

Enclosure for the Kathleen Andrews Garage is a tour-de-force of effective simplicity. Similar to the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg (designed by David Penner Architect, Peter Sampson Architecture Studio, and DIN Projects), the whole complex is wrapped in one of the most cost-effective walls going—freezer panels, normally used for cold-storage warehouses. The Sobotec panels deployed here have a corrugated stainless steel skin. Under the architects’ hand, the corrugations are set vertically, and are variegated in width, adding visual interest at the vast scale of this garage. The building’s most dramatic element is a set of five rooftop light wells and stairs along the Fort Road elevation—a string of unexpected lanterns giving civic scale to this civic building, an effect seldom achieved by infrastructure projects. Hanson speaks of the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant in Toronto and Edmonton’s Rossdale Power Plant as precedents from the early 20th century of civic infrastructure with high architectural ambitions.

The roof lanterns are faced with that rare public art installation that works at city scale, even when driving by, whether in bus or car. Selected from a call for proposals, Berlin artist Thorsten Goldberg researched on Google Earth to find five mountainous locations around the globe at Edmonton’s latitude, starting with Alberta’s Mount Chown, and including peaks in Alaska, Russia, China, and Ireland. He then crafted their local topographies in three-dimensional steel panels, and set them vertically to crown gh3*’s building. At certain times of day, these topographies have the drama of glaciers calving off the coasts of Greenland, and share a same-but-different visual quality to the corrugated steel walls running below them. Dear Vancouver, with your lame identi-kit public art and your banal Biennale occupying public spaces with elsewhere-unwanted large sculptures, please look to Edmonton for how to commission significant public art, or for that matter, civic buildings.

Goldberg’s conception here was generated by what the artist calls the “globe game”; putting one’s finger on the sphere, then spinning it to see what other places share roughly the same latitude.  When this architectural historian/critic played the game, he came up with the astonishing revelation that the following crucial global design centres are all at the same latitude as Edmonton, plus or minus three degrees: London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin and Moscow.  In other words, Modernism in architecture is overwhelmingly the creation of latitude 53.  Glenn Gould understood the “nordicity” of Modernism, but few in our own field have explored this.

Some powerful landscape embellishments—also designed by gh3*—complete the conception. Set out from the building are metal mesh gabion baskets filled with Alberta river stones. These provide sensual counterpoint to the metallic glimmer, while in places providing some protection from vehicular attack on this essential services building. Providing more security are emergency generators set out from the building for functional reasons, but finished in flat black panels, giving them a sculptural quality that could have them mistaken for even more public art.

Alberta sunlight is laser-like, and reflections off the steel elevations are accentuated by a contrasting ground cover of matte black granulated rubber tires. I came around to this idea, as a native Edmontonian remembering that grass is green there only from May to September, and more often patchy brown with melting snow blobs. As installed, the black ground cover (which is porous to rainwater and aids the recharging of aquifers) is a brilliant framing device, but I wonder what it will look like after several decades of prairie dust settles upon it.

The same rubberoid ground cover is set around the carefully preserved foundation fragments of Eric Arthur’s meat-packing plant, with its heroic smokestack remaining as a reminder of that building’s defiant act of optimism. Feet in the rubber, standing in the shadow of this brick cylinder, and looking across at the Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage glinting in the prairie light, I became convinced that Arthur would approve of what a fellow Torontonian has done here.

Vancouver architecture critic/consultant Trevor Boddy FRAIC has collaborated with Barry Johns FRAIC to co-write and co-produce a feature video on Arthur Erickson’s 1962 missing minor masterpiece, the Dyde House, located near the Aga Khan Garden west of Edmonton, to be released by Sticks and Stones Productions in 2022.

CLIENT City of Edmonton | ARCHITECT TEAM Pat Hanson (FRAIC), Raymond Chow (MRAIC), Louis Clavin, Byron White, Elise Shelley, Joel Di Giacomo, Jeffrey Deng, Bernard Jin | STRUCTURAL/MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL/CIVIL/LEED Morrison Hershfield | LANDSCAPE gh3* | INTERIORS gh3* | HERITAGE CONSULTANT David Murray Architect | CONTRACTOR Graham Construction | COST CRSP | AREA 50,000 m2 | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION March 2020

The post A Workplace Shines: Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage, Edmonton, Alberta appeared first on Canadian Architect.

This past year and a half, the pandemic revealed racial and social equity shortcomings in our cities. Anxieties and fears around virus transmission were expressed as racial stigmas, with negative perceptions of people of colour, and the avoidance of ethnic enclaves like Chinatowns. Public health orders to physically distance or isolate at home were difficult for many to follow—especially for those living in precarious housing conditions, working on the frontlines to stock our grocery shelves, or caring for our loved ones in hospitals and seniors’ homes. Already overcrowded homeless shelters quickly became more taxed, with many of their clients unable to safely space themselves. Depending on where they lived, many individuals found it challenging to access basic amenities like groceries and healthcare.

Insurgence seeped into our city streets, homes, hearts, and minds, with protests and social movements calling for rapid action and solidarity. In the AED and planning sphere, we saw new conversations emerge on the role of public policy in shaping cities. How do the practices of planners, engineers, architects, and other designers contribute to exacerbating—or reducing—inequality? How have the biases of designers led to uneven outcomes for marginalized and disadvantaged communities? The lived experiences of both the “haves” and “have nots” came into sharp focus across our civic landscape.

“It starts with us.”

Throughout this past year, conversations on these topics with City of Edmonton staffers led us to reflect on how we might hear and heed the voices of underrepresented people in the planning of our city. How might our policies, programs, and services adapt and evolve to support greater equity outcomes? Colleagues across city departments shared a desire to place themselves in the “shoes of others”; to educate themselves; and to acknowledge how their work can unfairly impact others. One individual noted: “Equity is a fundamental part of our jobs. We can’t select out of this work.” They saw the path towards city-wide equity as long and winding—yet the destination within reach. The work would be challenging, though not impossible.

Towards inclusion and compassion

In the City’s Urban Planning and Economy department, our attention focused first on Edmonton’s City Plan, a municipal development plan that articulates land use, growth patterns, and transportation and mobility systems. We asked: “How will we create a healthy, urban, and climate-resilient city of two million people?” Municipal documents like Edmonton’s City Plan invite big-picture thinking on questions like: How do we welcome more homes and people into our neighbourhoods? How do we make our spaces and places accessible to people of all backgrounds, races, ages, and abilities?

Updating the document with an equity lens has resulted in a plan that envisions 50 percent of new housing added through infill city-wide; two million new urban trees; the elimination of chronic and episodic homelessness; walkable and, bikeable mixed-use communities, and more. We aspire to create an Edmonton that can serve those here today, and support and nurture those who come after us.

Edmonton’s City Plan imagines a greener, efficient, connected, competitive, coordinated city. Its overarching priorities are to improve equity, end poverty, eliminate racism, and make clear progress towards Truth and Reconciliation. Throughout its pages, the City Plan makes the case for equity.

Considering equity can help to ensure that spaces and places are accessible and open for everyone; to provide housing that is diverse and affordable; to connect people with meaningful services and amenities; to welcome and embrace multiple people and perspectives; and to foster a spirit of collaboration and co-creation. Considering equity can help to support those who are isolated or marginalized; to ensure everyone feels safe, secure, and welcome; to support movement and mobility; and to ensure we thoughtfully respond to the impacts of climate change.

The City Plan and the Zoning Bylaw

Moving beyond the aspirational City Plan, there are multiple tools that need to be leveraged to confront inequity. One of the more impactful tools is our city’s Zoning Bylaw. This is because zoning is everywhere—from our parks and playgrounds, to garden suites and the downtown core. The purpose of zoning is to determine what can be built where. It sets the rules for where new buildings should go, what types of buildings they can be, and what types of businesses and activities can happen on a property.

Confronting our past

Since the early 20th century, communities have used zoning to organize land use and minimize conflicts between different activities, in order to protect public health, safety, and the welfare of citizens and the environment. But zoning has sometimes been used to separate more than just land uses—it has also been used to segregate people and disconnect them from places, practices, and production. Whether intentionally or not, zoning rules have led to disproportionate impacts for some segments of the population. For this reason, zoning has a dual legacy: of both promoting the public good and of causing exclusion.

Edmonton’s first set of land use regulations were introduced in 1933. Premised on a western view of land management, Zoning Bylaw 26 resulted in the displacement of many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people, including the Enoch and the Papaschase. The most recognizable content from Zoning Bylaw 26 that is still present today is the city’s “Zone A” Metropolitan Recreation Zone, which encompasses the North Saskatchewan River valley and tributaries. Retaining “Zone A” is symbolic of what was—and still is—important to the city, to its identity, and to its people. But there remain many other relic regulations that do not reflect the Edmonton of today or tomorrow.

Adapting our present

Since 2016, Edmonton has been undertaking a comprehensive reappraisal of its Zoning Bylaw, focusing on whether regulations were creating avoidable, but disproportionate negative impacts. A series of amendments were undertaken. Sometimes these were shaped by precedents in other cities, but in several cases, Edmonton was shaping practice too. Many of our changes are firsts in Canada.

For example, in 2018, an amendment to the bylaw made semi-detached and duplex housing permissible in Single Detached Residential Zones (RF1), as well as allowing basement and garden suites to coexist as additional dwellings in the same lot. Across North America, restrictive Single Detached Residential Zones have acted as deterrents to housing diversity, choice, and affordability, by only allowing stand-alone homes in large sections of cities. This has meant that low- to medium-density housing forms—which often fit in well in these neighbourhoods and allow for people of different social-economic groups to share amenities—have been uncommon in these zones. This has led to a concentration of affordable and supportive housing in other sections of the city—resulting, over time, in a spatial segregation of people based on income, age, gender, race, and ability.

Through a simple yet powerful zoning change, many types of housing are now an as-of right in Edmonton. The importance of diverse housing to welcome a diverse demographic of people was emphasized by this change—which was unanimously approved by Edmonton’s City Council.

In 2020, Edmonton removed parking minimums city-wide. The requirement that all buildings come with a certain number of parking spaces was introduced decades ago, when car ownership was considered a norm. But parking supply had often become a financial constraint for developers, inadvertently leading to unaffordable housing for the end user. An overabundance of parking can also lead to an unwalkable built environment.

The new change allows homeowners, businesses and the development industry to decide how much on-site parking to provide on their properties, based on the particular lifestyle of residents, their activities, and the building’s operations.

That same year, the City of Edmonton’s administration brought forward an amendment to increase Edmonton’s current supply of supportive housing options, in order to allow for more supportive living across the city. Previously, shelter operations and supportive housing were permitted in very few zones across the city, preventing entire segments of the population from accessing housing in more established neighbourhoods. Introducing a new definition of “supportive housing” in the Bylaw creates the opportunity to locate supportive housing more widely across the city.

The urgency and rationale for these changes was strengthened through the contributions of architects, politicians, residents, builders, and community organizations, who enlivened the debate and called for change. Their inspired ideas have given us a preview of how the city will be improved with medium-density housing, carbon-neutral design, culturally sensitive supportive housing, the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings, and mixed-use developments. Edmontonians have stretched our imaginations of what is possible, demonstrating what can be done to make our cities more vibrant, healthy, connected, and inclusive.

Imagining our future

Renewing Edmonton’s Zoning Bylaw provides an opportunity to re-draft the substance of regulations. But it also presents an opportunity to draft regulations in ways that are easier to understand and interpret, enabling more people to engage with zoning and use it to the benefit of their communities.

To support this work, the City has created a Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA+) and Equity Toolkit. This has been helping the Zoning Bylaw team in considering the social impacts of policies and regulations, and in taking thoughtful action to create inclusive, welcoming urban spaces and places. The barriers and inequities connected to zoning are cumulative and wide-sweeping, and the team recognizes that institutional change takes time. The GBA+ and Equity Toolkit provides a place to start, in beginning to identify how individual actions can have an impact.

As University of Alberta planning professor Dr. Sandeep Agrawal notes, “humanely developing inclusive cities depends on legal guarantees and on their judicial enforcement, and [on] planners’ commitment to incorporating them into their practice.” This work has begun to reshape our thinking, and has enhanced our ability to write regulations that support more equitable outcomes. It  is also being embraced throughout many other areas within the City of Edmonton.

The City is also advancing equity through District Planning, a multi-year project to establish communities throughout the city that can access their daily needs locally. Edmontonians are expressing a strong desire for a greater mix of local housing options, schools, recreation opportunities, amenities and transportation options. District Planning envisions communities that are as diverse as the people who live in them, and which foster a sense of belonging for all those who call Edmonton home.

“Advancing equity will be challenging, but not impossible.”

Shaping an inclusive, compassionate and equitable city is a collaborative effort. Yet, some voices in city-building processes have traditionally been heard more loudly than others. Many individuals have felt excluded from these discussions; participating in them has felt like a privilege afforded to those with more resources, time, ability, and income.

Inspired by the phrase “nothing about us, without us,” we actively sought the voices of community members throughout 2020. They shared their lived experiences, their aspirations for their communities, and their perspectives on how to address equity in our natural and built environments. Explicit attention was given to ensuring that people from Black, Indigenous, racialized, underrepresented, and marginalized communities were invited to participate—those who have been historically left out of zoning considerations, and are disproportionately impacted by them.

These residents emphasized how our built environments, our planning processes, and our communication and engagement methods must be inclusive, diverse, and support belonging. They identified how vulnerable and marginalized people are negatively impacted by a lack of accessibility; a limited supply of affordable and diverse housing; and few resources for community economic development. They spoke about how greater priority needed to be placed on safety, amenities, and services. They shared how they wanted their communities to be walkable, bikeable, and have better transit, along with wider sidewalks and lower traffic speeds. Here are some of the comments and questions they shared with us:

“There is a perception that poor people live in duplexes, and that they will bring down property values. This works against intergenerational or multigenerational families.”

“If a newcomer was looking to start a small business, what should the Zoning Bylaw tell them?”

“Communities shouldn’t be allowed to voice who they don’t want in their community.”

“Why do we have to prove that we’re good neighbours?”

“How can you accomplish your daily needs if they are far from where you live?”

So how do we move forward—together?

As Kamala Todd, a Métis-Cree mother, community planner, and the City of Vancouver’s first Indigenous Arts and Culture Planner, eloquently wrote in Plan Canada:

Who gets to be the author of the city?
Dreaming the city, upholding the charter, inscribing the stories.
Who claims to be the founder, builder, caretaker?

We need to help people see themselves in our city—throughout the pages of our plans, policies, and programs. We need to hear their stories, we need to amplify their voices, and we need to make our planning efforts more accessible and approachable. This work will be challenging, uncomfortable, and ambiguous—all the more important for us to be relentless in the pursuit of equity.

Kim Petrin is the Branch Manager for Development Services at the City of Edmonton, which steers strategic growth and private sector investment through zoning, subdivision, servicing agreements, permitting, licensing, inspections and compliance.

Livia Balone is the Director of the Zoning Bylaw Renewal Initiative. Livia joined the City of Edmonton in 2008, previously working for the City of Saskatoon, planning consultants and various non-profit organizations, such as Community Futures, which provides small-business services to people living in rural communities.

Lyla Peter is the Director of Development and Zoning Services at the City of Edmonton. She is fascinated by how people, geographies, politics and culture shape our communities, which has led her to work in small and big cities across Canada, the United States, and the UK.

The post “It Starts With Us” appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECTS Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre and CO*LAB, Edmonton, Alberta

ARCHITECT Rockliff Pierzchajlo Kroman Architects

PHOTOS Adam Borman Photography, unless otherwise noted

In 2006, the City of Edmonton began the revitalization of a 40-hectare area just east of Churchill Square that is now known as The Quarters Downtown. Historically, this part of the city was called the Boyle Street neighbourhood, after John Robert Boyle (1870-1936), a prominent local lawyer and politician. The district is one of the city’s oldest and has been home to Indigenous and immigrant groups, including Edmonton’s early Chinese community. Today, the area suffers significantly from urban blight, and is occupied by many surface parking lots waiting for reinvestment. The area began its long, steady decline in the 1950s, and urban renewal in the 1970s added to its sliding fortunes.

In order to spark new development, the City of Edmonton has invest­ed substantially in infrastructure for The Quarters. A pedestrian-focused street upgrade called the Armature (96th Street NW, formerly Kinistino Avenue) and the recently completed Kinistinâw Park, with its striking red canopy, are intended to become vibrant public focal points for the district. The new extension of Edmonton’s LRT also runs through the area. Unfortunately, redevelopment has been slow to come, as The Quarters has had to combat its reputation as a down-and-out part of the city. It’s also had to compete for development dollars with other districts in Edmonton, including the Blatchford neighbourhood on the former municipal airport site, and even suburban communities such as Sherwood Park.

Despite the challenges of reinvigorating a failing urban district, there are indications of new energy in The Quarters with various projects completed in recent years. A fresh vitality is especially evident in two recently completed centres for young arts organizations. Both are renovations of existing structures, completed through partnerships with the City of Edmonton and various granting agencies. The Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre is one of the few art spaces in the country dedicated to Indigenous art, and Co*Lab is an organization devoted to supporting the community of artists who live and work in The Quarters.

Both projects were designed by Rockliff Pierzchajlo Kroman Architects (RPK) under the direction of its youngest partner, Jan Kroman. RPK was established in 1969 and has undergone many changes during the past half century. While the firm has long-established expertise in health care, affordable housing, and seniors’ residential design, Kroman’s appointment as principal five years ago has coincided with new forays into arts and cultural projects.

The Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre is located in a simple brick commercial building that appears to be from the 1960s. The building sits on a highly visible site off Jasper Avenue, fronting the Armature, and near the valley edge overlooking the North Saskatchewan River. The name Ociciwan comes from a Plains Cree word relating to riverways, that means “the current comes from there.” This fluvial inspiration is seen in the most striking aspect of the design—a dynamic façade made of locally fabricated aluminum composite material. The architects designed four different standard panels, skewed at varying angles, and specified two types of applied film to give the façade various reflective qualities. The resulting surface reflects the sky and surroundings and has subtly changing qualities reminiscent of flowing water. It is also very affective at night, when LEDs incorporated into the vertical channels create beacon-like strips of light. A planned mural by Winnipeg artist Kenneth Lavallee will give further vibrancy to the building’s south façade at street level.

Inside, most of the main floor is a multi-purpose gallery space that one enters directly from the street. It’s a simple space with some deft detailing and will help the organization realize its mandate to showcase the work of Indigenous artists—an important initiative for Edmonton as well as for surrounding communities. The Ociciwan collective also intends to use the adjacent public spaces for its programming initiatives. An elevator was inserted into the building as part of the upgrade, and is effectively the primary form of vertical movement, with existing stairs serving a secondary role. The lower level contains a workshop, along with a flexible space intended for performances and multi-media installations; upstairs are offices and a community space. All of the major interior spaces allow for smudging ceremonies—an important design consideration.

Nearby, the Co*Lab project on 102A Avenue NW is a somewhat more eclectic facility. This perhaps aptly reflects both the structure of the two existing commercial buildings it occupies and the community-led nature of the organization that administers it, the Quarters Arts Society. The renovation of the facility has resulted in three major spaces: a tall gallery space painted white; a large multimedia community space painted black; and an outdoor space dubbed the “backyard.” The two major interior spaces are connected through a compressed corridor, which is given its own vibrant identity with traffic-light-yellow walls, floor and ceiling. This same bright colour is used on stairs, handrails, and other feature elements throughout the building. The neatly arrayed floorplate includes support spaces, a workshop, a media room, and small studios for artists-in-residence on a second level.

The way the original facility had been adapted over time is reflected in the bric-a-brac assemblage of the principal façade, which has been carefully articulated by RPK through the strategic use of colour, new materials, and entry points. In a unifying gesture, the exterior is painted white, and several existing openings filled with glass block have been preserved. Three large garage doors—two on the front façade, and one facing the backyard—will facilitate the performances which are part of many of Co*Lab’s projects. Audiences will be able to flow in and out of the building, from street to event space. At the gallery end of the building, polycarbonate cladding conceals an older stucco façade, and reinforces the playful aspect of the design, especially at night, when this part of the building is set aglow with vertical stripes. Co*Lab has installed a jaunty, 1950s-style sign over the main entrance, adding to the feeling of welcome.

While these two arts centres were developed at the same time, and under the same city-backed initiative, the resulting buildings are quite different in both design and spirit. Each was developed to suit the character and aspirations of the organization it accommodates—and that’s already palpable, even though with pandemic restrictions, neither has yet been able to fully realize their cultural ambitions, nor the opportunities afforded to them by their newly renovated buildings. By rehabilitating and transforming two existing buildings into dramatically different places, Kroman and the RPK team demonstrate that architecture can be distinctive and successful on modest budgets.

As The Quarters develops, concerns about gentrification inevitably arise: however, a neighbourhood cannot thrive without investment. It is vital that the right kinds of buildings are developed to ensure that the existing inhabitants aren’t pushed out as newcomers move in. Supporting arts organizations and the city’s artists is a natural fit for this area, with its proximity to Edmonton’s major cultural organizations. It’s also key to preserving Edmonton’s reputation as a cultural centre, and to maintaining the vitality of its core. A thriving inner-city district can only benefit the entire city, and these two new art centres must be understood as a hopeful sign of things to come.

Graham Livesey, FRAIC, is a professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary.

PROJECT Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre | CLIENT City of Edmonton (Claire St. Aubin) and Ociciwan (Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, Halie Finney, Erin Sutherland, Alberta Rose W./ Ingniq, Becca Taylor) | ARCHITECT TEAM Jan Kroman (MRAIC) (Principal-in-charge, design architect), Dan Letourneau (job captain and contract administrator), Dania Atassi, Robert Maggay, Teagan MacNeil | STRUCTURAL Entuitive (Mohammad Moayyed, Monique Miller) | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL MCW Hemisphere (Russell Truesdell, Manan Kapoor) | CIVIL ISL Engineering (Darin Hicks) | 3D SURVEYING Urban Systems (Jing Jing Dou) | LANDSCAPE Rockliff Pierzchajlo Kroman Architects | INTERIORS Rockliff Pierzchajlo Kroman Architects | CONTRACTOR Delnor Construction (James Sousa) | OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVES Stantec (Peter Gegolick, Jim Slavin) | AREA 600 m2 | BUDGET $2.1 M | COMPLETION March 2020

PROJECT CO*LAB | CLIENT City of Edmonton (Claire St. Aubin) and Quarters Arts (Lorin Klask) | ARCHITECT TEAM Jan Kroman (MRAIC) (Principal-in-charge, design architect), Dan Letourneau (job captain and contract administrator), Dania Atassi, Robert Maggay, Teagan MacNeil | STRUCTURAL Entuitive (Mohammad Moayyed, Monique Miller) | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL MCW Hemisphere (Russell Truesdell, Manan Kapoor) | CIVIL ISL Engineering (Darin Hicks) | 3D SURVEYING Urban Systems (Jing Jing Dou) | LANDSCAPE Rockliff Pierzchajlo Kroman Architects | INTERIORS Rockliff Pierzchajlo Kroman Architects | CONTRACTOR Delnor Construction (James Sousa) | OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVES Stantec (Peter Gegolick, Jim Slavin) | AREA 550 m2 | BUDGET $1.8 M | COMPLETION September 2020

View the article as it appeared in our June 2021 issue:

The post Old Buildings, New Art: Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre and CO*LAB, Edmonton, Alberta appeared first on Canadian Architect.

The delicate dance that occurs among collaborators when tackling a design problem is a balance of ideas, communication and ego. Innovation can be sparked with a seemingly innocuous comment; heated debates can occur as different paths emerge. It can be exciting. It can be difficult. Emotions that run high must be acknowledged, then relinquished to refocus on the task at hand.

I learned this lesson—and many others—as a junior intern while working on a very large, complex project. Its success required close collaboration between several strong leaders. Sitting within earshot from two of the project’s architectural principals and working elbow-to-elbow with talented colleagues, the open studio working environment was a crucible of learning.  My actual tasks were simple, but by being surrounded by more experienced staff while doing them, I learned lessons of leadership, compassion and collaboration. It was in large part an unconscious process—by overhearing conversations, I understood the context of my-day-to-day work in a meaningful way.

My experience is not unique. In the book Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (1991), social anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger describe learning as a social process, rather than a matter of individual cognitive development.  Through apprenticeship, team members become part of a “community of practice” where “old timers” model behaviours and norms for learners.  Learners for their part, engage through “legitimate peripheral activities” – simple, stepping-stone tasks.  For example, an intern architect might be tasked with cutting out model pieces.  In doing this activity within a community of practice, they will also be exposed to the work of more experienced practitioners; overhearing discussions, and observing the work on their colleagues’ screens and desks. The context, interaction and social nature of these activities deepen the learners’ understanding of their practice and profession.

Like many other Canadian architects, I am approaching the one-year anniversary of working from home due to Covid-19.  One full year of being away from my beloved, energy-filled open studio workplace in Toronto.  And one full year of hearing predictions, projections, and postulations that how we work may never be the same.

Most of these discussions have highlighted how being physically together on a daily basis may not be as important as we once thought. Remote work and dispersed teams may create opportunities to increase flexibility and leverage faraway talent. There may be cost savings in reduced rent, and fewer commutes could help curtail greenhouse gas emissions.

But what about the impact on professional development? How will we replicate the invaluable informal learning experiences that come from being together, when being apart is increasingly the norm?

The answer may lie in one of Lave and Wenger’s central ideas: the community of practice. This concept describes an environment that allows for different perspectives, creates a sense of social fabric, and supports different levels of participation.  We can leverage Lave and Wenger’s research by identifying strategies that support these characteristics in the context of working remotely.

Cohort Learning

Learning cohorts are widely used by educational and business organizations and can support learning for architects as well.  A well-known case study from the 1980s shows the power of a learning cohort. In this study, an anthropologist followed Xerox copier repair technicians throughout their working day. While they were considered independent workers, in fact, it turned out that the technicians frequently met informally with each other. The anthropologist identified these informal chats as valuable learning moments—the repair technicians were sharing knowledge about how to repair machines better. As a result of this observation, Xerox reorganized the tech reps from being independent workers to being part of social learning units. [1]

In How to Help Your Employees Learn from Each Other,[2]  Kelly Palmer and David Blake describe how peer-to-peer learning leverages our natural inclination to ask a colleague or friend for help when learning a new skill. To develop a successful learning cohort, Palmer and Blake suggest that the group uses an outside facilitator and honors confidentiality to create a safe space for risk-taking and vulnerability.

I am lucky to be a part of a learning cohort with members from across the country. Our learning cohort flowed out of a 2019 leadership training program sponsored by the design practice I work for, DIALOG. Our in-person training included peer coaching and was externally facilitated to develop a secure, trusting environment. After completing our training, we decided to set up regular online meetings as we worked on independent projects. We shared and received feedback on our ideas, tested out some work scenarios, and commiserated on our setbacks. It was a place we could take risks. Despite not seeing each other in person during the pandemic, our comradery and friendship flourished, and we continued to learn from each other over a year filled with uncertainty.

Storytelling

Design organizations regularly leverage the power of stories for marketing and business development.  Most architects are very good at telling the story of how a project came to be, and describing how the physical building embodies a story. We love to share stories of how a seemingly insurmountable design problem resulted in a beautiful moment in a building; how a site inspired an entire concept; how a client’s life was improved thanks to our work. We are less familiar with the role of the story as a learning tool.

As Harvard University researchers Deborah Sole and Daniel Grey Wilson describe: “Stories can be a very powerful way to represent and convey complex multidimensional ideas. Well-designed, well-told stories can convey both information and emotion, both the explicit and the tacit, both the core and the context.”[3]

Project post-mortems or lessons-learned sessions are a good starting point for learning through stories.  These sessions can be further elevated by having project leaders model courage when being honest and open in telling the story of a mistake that was made and how it was addressed. There are also valuable personal and professional lessons learned from projects, which are not typically covered in these sessions.  For example, a lessons-learned session could include insights on how a client relationship was nurtured, or how a team member dealt with a stressful incident. Such stories provide additional context on the practice of architecture, going beyond the logistics of designing and creating a building.

From an organizational standpoint, architecture and design firms can develop and share stories that embody the vision or guiding principles of an organization. Through stories, a firm can differentiate itself from other organizations. Whether staff are working remotely or in-person, such stories also help them develop an understanding of the underlying values driving their work.  A foundational story can be an important aspect of the onboarding process. Further, “oldtimers” can be given opportunities to share stories about their careers, how they came to be in their current role, and what they learned from their own mentors and experiences.

Sharing stories can also provide a sense of connection when people cannot gather together physically. A growing body of research indicates that humans are wired to connect to each other through storytelling. Princeton University neuroscientist Uri Hasson found that when his subjects listened to an engaging story, their brainwaves began to synchronize with each other, as well as with those of the storyteller.[4]

Akin to drawing or project management, storytelling is a skill that may need to be actively developed. Lave and Wenger describe how members of Alcoholics Anonymous develop this skill over time and through practice. There are opportunities to hone storytelling skills through giving presentations or Ted Talks, and through formal courses and training with organizations such as Toastmasters and Second City.

Organizational Culture

There are dozens of ways to characterize organizational culture. My preferred definitions are from leadership consultants GothamCulture and Harvard Business Review’s Michael D. Watkins.  GothamCulture describes organizational culture as “the underlying beliefs, assumptions, values and ways of interacting that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization.”[5] This leads to, in Watkins’ words, a “consistent, observable pattern of behavior in organizations.”[6]  The studio environment of many architecture firms creates vibrant opportunities to observe an organization’s culture in action, with “old timers” and leaders regularly modeling behavior while newcomers observe them.

Though seemingly unrelated to a discussion about how architects learn, the story of the American POWS held in Hỏa Lò Prison during the Vietnam War provides surprisingly relevant insights into organizational culture and some of the challenges associated with remote work. Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton, by Peter Fretwell and Taylor Baldwin, describes the story of hundreds of American POWs held in North Vietnam from 1964 through to 1973. Following the prisoners’ release, physicians and researchers were surprised to find that, despite years of brutal torture and confinement, 61% of the men self-reported “favourable significant mental changes” compared to 32% of a control group. Further, the rates of PTSD among this group was surprisingly low. Long-term tracking found that a high proportion of these men went on to become some of America’s most successful citizens in their chosen fields, including military personnel, physicians and politicians.[7] What made the difference for the Hanoi Hilton POWs? Fretwell and Baldwin conclude that it was a virtual leader and an organizational culture sustained by a social network.

During the earlier years of confinement, the prisoners at the Hanoi Hilton were isolated from each other in individual cells. They were threatened with violence if caught speaking to each other. In this extreme environment, Commander James Stockdale established the mission “Return with Honor,” along with key principles for behavior and guidance for the POWs. The mission’s precepts were transmitted by a secret tap code. The prisoners quietly tapped messages between their cells at night, amplifying the sound using a drinking cup held to their ears. Because the men could only communicate directly with those located beside them, every POW knew that he was personally responsible for sharing, supporting and maintaining the mission and culture. If one person did not participate, the chain of communication was broken.

Though our current experience is not comparable to the hardships endured by the Hanoi POWs, the story highlights that an organizational culture can be created and sustained even in the face of isolation – if everyone clearly understands that maintaining an organization’s culture is part of their daily duties.  We can apply this lesson in the context of architectural practice by identifying behaviours and actions important to maintaining the organizational culture of a firm, and entrenching them as a key part of staff roles. In an all- or partly-virtual environment, the alignment of values between individual staff members and an organization will become increasingly important.

Though individual practitioners and organizations will differ in their assessments on what is to come for our industry, this past year of designing and building through a pandemic has shown that we can dramatically—and quickly—change the way we work. Some firms may enthusiastically embrace remote work and never go back. Some may hope that the end of Covid-19 will mean a quick snap back to the status quo. Most will likely land somewhere in the middle: accepting that significant change is afoot with remote work, dispersed teams, and a new role for our physical studios and office spaces.

As we reconsider our physical studios or offices and test out new modes of project delivery, we must also give thought to how apprenticeship learning will have to evolve. The informal, ongoing education of architects will have to shift from being a byproduct of working in a studio, to an activity that is planned, nurtured and supported. Luckily, there are researchers who study this phenomenon in detail. Their explorations and stories can help us navigate our current crisis—as well as a future brimming with opportunity.

Toronto-based architect Tracy Lee is an Associate at DIALOG.

[1]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242189756_Storytelling_in_Organizations_The_power_and_traps_of_using_stories_to_share_knowledge_in_organizations

[2] https://hbr.org/2018/11/how-to-help-your-employees-learn-from-each-other

[3]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242189756_Storytelling_in_Organizations_The_power_and_traps_of_using_stories_to_share_knowledge_in_organizations

[4]  https://www.cgsinc.com/blog/storytelling-and-its-impact-on-learning

[5] https://gothamculture.com/what-is-organizational-culture-definition

[6] https://hbr.org/2013/05/what-is-organizational-culture

[7] https://www.dodreads.com/lessons-from-the-hanoi-hilton/

The post A New Apprenticeship appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT Stanley A. Milner Library Renewal, Edmonton, Alberta

ARCHITECTS Teeple Architects (Design Architect) with Stantec (Architect of Record, formerly Architecture | Tkalcic Bengert)

TEXT Trevor Boddy

PHOTOS Andrew Latreille

After nearly a decade of design and construction, the Stanley A. Milner main branch of the Edmonton Public Library, by Teeple Architects in association with Stantec, finally opened last September, with pandemic precautions in place. One of our few major public buildings to open in 2020, the design may also be Canada’s truest indicator of where library architecture is headed. The direction it proposes, though, may not please fans of heroic made-from-scratch architecture, or for that matter, books. Here is my explanation of this unsettling conjunction.

Unlike other major downtown central library designs in Canada, the reopened Stanley A. Milner is a revamp of an existing structure, rather than a new build. And yet, its contents are a far cry from its predecessor. A large part of its second floor is devoted to makerspaces: a digital milling and printing lab; textile layout zones; sound recording and mixing studios; e-sports lounges; a teaching kitchen; video editing suites, and so on. Yes, there are rows of book stacks outside these, but the gathered machines are clearly the stars of this show. They’re swamped by eager young users after school ever since opening, many of them previously reluctant to darken the door of any library, and unable to afford even the most basic of this suite of largely digital tools. Moreover, there is a new breed of librarian at the ready to assist them, helping patrons operate the machines, locate online sources for ideas, and occasionally even suggesting references from a pulp-and-paper database—that is to say, a book!

As an Edmonton teenager who made a weekly pilgrimage to what was then called the Centennial Library, I would have been delighted with the prospect of this range of machines and minders to learn from. Lest I be typed as some dusty “keeper of the books,” one of the main reasons for my Saturday trips was the Centennial Library’s huge lending library of vinyl LPs, one of the largest on the continent. I loaded up every week with King Crimson, Thelonious Monk, Richard Thompson and my other faves. The building encouraged lingering with plush carpets, skylights and what had to be the first Barcelona Chairs in any Alberta public building—rehabilitated, they are still in use in the updated building.

Back then, the Edmonton Public Library was advanced in its embrace of technology and a social mission to spread knowledge to all citizens. It remains so today—their system was named “Best in North America” by Library Journal in 2014. I have no doubt that the tech-driven knowledge on offer to anyone with an Edmonton library card will spark careers for talented future designers—if there is to be an Alberta post-oil creative economy, it will be more likely born at the Milner Library than in any legislative corridor. Moreover, as a profession, architects hardly need convincing that knowledge can be created and transmitted in the form of materials, not just through words on a page. Our design schools talked a lot about phenomenology during the 1990s, but this new shift from passive reading to embodied activity marks a significant change. The maker-centric approach may be at the vanguard of larger changes in libraries, too. Raymond Moriyama’s 1969 Ontario Science Centre inspired experience-based, populist science museums around the world. In a similar way, the new Edmonton building—along with other projects of its type, such as RDHA’s Old Post Office in Cambridge, Ontario—could be signposts for a shift to experience-based large public facilities. A new word may be needed for buildings like this, instead of “library.” Time to bring back Buckminster Fuller’s “sensorium”?

The new Stanley A. Milner library is the product of two powerful and relentless personalities—Toronto architect Stephen Teeple and Edmonton Public Libraries CEO Pilar Martinez. Their collaboration began almost a decade ago, when Edmonton’s City Architect, Carol Belanger, catalyzed the choice of Teeple’s firm for what was initially thought to be merely a re-skinning of the 1967 building, designed by Fred Minsos. The Centennial Library was a graceful modernist-classical pavilion, disfigured by a gawky 1999 PoMo addition on its Churchill Square elevation. When design started for Teeple and associate architect Stantec, Martinez was a senior librarian on the building committee. As the project progressed from technical and program evaluation, through budget cutbacks and changes of government, she was eventually appointed to the top job—in large part to get the project done. Teeple had designed the immense Clareview Recreation Centre in northeast Edmonton, which included a large branch library, earning the firm points with clients at city hall and at Edmonton Public Libraries. Indicating how much things have changed in but a few years, that branch did not feature a single makerspace gizmo when it opened in 2014.

Like many other tendencies in Canadian public buildings, rethought downtown libraries here begin with a Raymond Moriyama and Ted Teshima design, the 1977 Toronto Reference Library, with its generous light and atrium. The next major downtown libraries are a mixed pair: Moshe Safdie’s popular/populist Vancouver Library Square, compelled by a shopping mall public vote to Colosseum-imagism; and the Patkau’s Grande Bibliothèque de Montreal (completed with Menkès Shooner Dagenais Le Tourneux and Croft Pelletier), a fine design bedevilled by technical issues. Schmidt Hammer Lassen and Fowler Baud & Mitchell’s Halifax Public Library was one of the first, and likely best transmission to Canada of the Nordic massing gimmick of displaced cantilevered boxes. The crown of the latest run of central libraries in Canada is Snøhetta and DIALOG’s Calgary Public Library, achieved with top drawer Nordic hutzpah, resulting in a rounded volume hovering over an active LRT line. Warmly finished and filled with light, it shone as a venue for a 2019 David Adjaye public talk I attended. The all-new Calgary library and the radically renovated library in Edmonton both have a similar floor area, at approximately 22,000 square metres and 15,000 square metres respectively. However, at $245 million, the Calgary library budget was nearly three times the $84.5-milllion cost of the Stanley Milner Library.

Armed with facts like this stark contrast between Calgary and Edmonton construction budgets, architects need to be increasingly skeptical whenever they hear claims that renovating an old building would cost more than building anew. After much discussion about demolition and a re-start de novo, the Edmonton clients and design team decided to remove all exterior windows and walls, while conserving the 1967 building’s concrete frame right down to the parking garage and foundations below. The finished design retains existing floors, elevator shafts, even escalator and skylight locales, plus much of the existing mechanical system. On the Churchill Square side, the library is expanded and wrapped with a new high-performance envelope. (Overall, the building attains LEED Silver.) There is no doubt that the interior finishes are banal, and the rhomboid zinc-clad exterior overexuberant. That said, with its programmatic tilt to makerspaces, its extreme parsimony with public funds, and the embodied energy conserved by recycling much of the old library, Edmonton’s example is much more the library of the future than Calgary’s, which history may soon regard as the extravagant final creation of that city’s greatest building boom.

As the gun-metal grey Azengar zinc panel cladding started to be installed during late construction in 2019, a rare-in-Canada public debate about design erupted, ignited by a critical broadside from Edmonton Journal columnist David Staples. Television and social media soon chimed in, bringing with it a battle of metaphors, with hundreds of online speculations as to whether Teeple’s chamfered and faceted metallic design more resembled a Star Wars galactic cruiser or an Eastern Bloc tank. Martinez and her team realized they could not win against this type of media frenzy, so wisely turned it on its head. With cheeky advertisements and a social media handle of #THINKTANK, Edmonton’s clever librarians gave as good as they got. “The building opens up curiosity,” says Martinez, concluding that Teeple’s design is “a phenomenal space to inspire learning creativity and imagination.”    

The renovated library clearly draws inspiration from the aggressively angled massing of OMA’s 2004 Seattle Public Library. The most striking interior space of the #THINKTANK is its splayed and splined atrium, new construction pushed out along a narrow zone in front of the Centennial Library’s structure. The addition forms a better locale of orientation and entry than any space in Koolhaas’ design. Fast + Epp engineers were charged to find a way to hang the addition’s structure off the existing building’s frame and foundations, resulting in one of the building’s visual highlights—a storey-high truss exploding out of the most acute-angled corner and set on elegant Y-frame columns, their engineering logic vitalizing the entire room. However, this atrium that is so heroic up top comes with a distraction at its bottom, in the form of a storey-high interactive video screen—a digital embellishment at architectural scale.

When I returned a few weeks after the press preview to see the library in public use, that big screen was tuned dully to an educational television station, with noone watching anywhere along the ramps, balconies and gathering zones of the atrium. The questionability of the trying-too-hard populism of this mega-screen was doubled by the adjacent super-graphic designed by library staff (not Teeple’s office) proclaiming “IMAGINE” in six-foot-high cut-out letters. I cannot think of anything less likely to inspire my mind to ‘imagine’ than a big sign ordering me to do so, with a TV running mindlessly next to it, as in pandemic living rooms. Similarly oversized, multicoloured letters are installed in corridors outside the basement public meeting rooms. Likely, library staff have overreacted to the public critique of the sterility and monochromia of Teeple’s design. When visiting, look up from there to enjoy the atrium and its inspiring conjunction of Teeple’s spatial legerdemain, Fast + Epp’s structural brilliance, plus Things I Knew to be True, Peter von Tiesenhausen’s wall-mounted public art at top—consisting of various figure-like recycled steel elements, grouped into glyphic ‘words’ and ‘sentences.’

.

The architecture of the Stanley A. Milner Library is perhaps blunt and forcefully ungainly—but then again, these qualities are often thought to be virtues by the Prairie psyche—hey, they propel us through those snowdrifts! With huge oil refinery and petro-chemical complexes clearly visible to the east from downtown, a metallic palette makes sense in Edmonton. The provincial mammal may be the bighorn sheep, but the animals closest to the Albertan soul are the larger-than-life dinosaurs. Indeed, the architecture surrounding Sir Winston Churchill Square is the most diverse single collection of large buildings after modernism in our nation—a heroic dinosaur park for the architectural ideas of the past half century, even more interesting in its agglomeration than in its individual pieces. There is the triceratops of the voluptuous corner curves of the Art Gallery of Alberta, the late Randall Stout’s homage to former employer Frank Gehry. There is the Edmontosaurus of the Kahn-inflected City Hall by Gene Dub. Skidmore Owings & Merrill’s Edmonton Centre is the brontosaurus of the bunch, and the glassy wings of Diamond and Myers’ original Citadel Theatre take flight as a pterodactyl. Not surprising—because it comes from the talent who designed a fine Alberta museum for thunder-lizards—Stephen Teeple’s latest addition, a well-armoured and bold stegosaurus, fits right in.

Trevor Boddy (FRAIC) recently co-wrote and produced, with Barry Johns (FRAIC), a 30-minute video on a 1962 “missing minor masterpiece” by Arthur Erickson, located outside Edmonton. The Dyde House and Garden is being presented in virtual screenings with live commentary at architecture schools and professional associations in 2021.

CLIENT City of Edmonton; Edmonton Public Library | ARCHITECT TEAM Teeple Architects—Stephen Teeple (FRAIC), Richard Lai, Christian Joakim, Avery Guthrie (MRAIC), Omar Aljebouri, Will Elsworthy, Mahsa Majidian (MRAIC), James Janzer, Rob Cheung, Petra Bogias, Tomer Diamant, Sahel Tahvildari, Julie Jira, Tara Selvaraj, Dhroov Patel, Fadi Salib, Eric Boelling, Marine de Carbonnieres, Ali Aurangozeb. Stantec / Architecture | Tkalcic Bengert—Brian Bengert, Dawna Moen, Kristi Olson, Shaune Smith, Ian Colville, Carol Regino, Alyssa Haas, Derrik Kennedy, Ana Borovac, Ben Brackett, Joseph Chan, Ted Fast, Erika Hostede, Matt Roper, Bryanne Larsen, Taylor Bengert | STRUCTURAL Fast & Epp | MECHANICAL Arrow Engineering | ELECTRICAL AECOM | LANDSCAPE Scatliff+ Miller+Murray | INTERIORS Teeple Architects | CONTRACTOR Clark Builders | CIVIL AECOM | FAÇADE RJC | LEED WSP (Formerly Enermodal) | ACOUSTICS SLR Consulting (Canada) | ENVIRONMENTAL Gradient Wind | TRANSPORTATION Vinspec | CODE Kim Karn Consulting | AREA 15,326 m2 | BUDGET $84.5 M | COMPLETION September 2020

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 120 ekWh/m2/year | BENCHMARK (NRCAN 2014, non-healthcare institutional buildings after 2010) 278 kWh/m2/year | WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 0.1186 m3/m2/year | BENCHMARK (REALPAC 2011) 0.98 m3/m2/year

The post Think Tank: Stanley A. Milner Library Renewal, Edmonton, Alberta appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Edmonton City Council has voted to remove minimum parking requirements from Edmonton’s Zoning Bylaw. Starting July 2, 2020, developers, homeowners and businesses will be able to decide how much on-site parking to provide on their properties based on their particular operations, activities or lifestyle.

“Parking is a powerful, but often hidden, force that shapes how our communities are designed and influences every aspect of how people live, work and move around,” said Kim Petrin, Development Services Branch Manager, City of Edmonton. “Eliminating parking minimums delivers significant long-term benefits for Edmonton. It removes economic barriers to new homes and businesses, and improves choice and flexibility in how businesses and homeowners meet their parking needs. It also supports more diverse transportation options and climate resilience, and moves us closer to achieving the vibrant, walkable and compact city we heard Edmontonians want through public engagement for ConnectEdmonton and the draft City Plan“.

On-site parking runs anywhere from $7,000 to $60,000 per stall. This cost gets passed down in the rent or mortgage Edmontonians pay, goods bought and services used.

This high cost of on-site parking has also created significant economic barriers to affordable housing development and the ability for new businesses to open in Edmonton.

Removing parking minimums allows for businesses and homeowners to determine their parking needs and ensure they are met, making this approach more likely to result in the “right amount” of parking.

The change will be gradual as new rules will only come into effect as homes and businesses are slowly developed or redeveloped across the city in the decades ahead.

These new Zoning Bylaw rules also enable opportunities for businesses and homeowners to share parking or lease out space to nearby properties.

Allowing developments to share parking can also help ease potential on-street parking pressure in situations where an area may be experiencing a high rate of redevelopment. The City will monitor the impacts of shared parking and report back to Council in early 2021.

Under the new rules, barrier-free (accessible) parking will continue to be provided at rates comparable to today and bicycle parking requirements have increased. Maximum parking requirements have been retained downtown, and expanded in Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and main street areas, and design requirements for both surface and underground parking facilities have also been enhanced.

The post Edmonton city council votes to eliminate parking minimums appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Cities across Canada are exploring the missing middle as opportunities to welcome more homes and people in their communities. The term “missing middle” refers to multi-unit housing that falls between single detached homes and tall apartment buildings. It includes row housing, triplexes/fourplexes, courtyard housing and walk-up apartments. These housing forms are considered “missing” because they have been largely absent from urban streetscapes in Canada, including Winnipeg.

As planners working with the City of Edmonton, we too, are seeking to enable medium-density development in the city’s older neighbourhoods. Edmonton’s official plan, the City Plan, envisions a growth of over one million people by 2040, and will be up for public debate in fall of 2020. The City’s Infill Roadmap, which articulates a series of actions to enable medium-scale infill, is also in effect from 2018 to the end of 2021. What both of these policies and initiatives demonstrate is Edmonton’s interest in increasing housing choices, particularly in the missing middle housing range.

But does this development orientation align with industry and consumer demand? Planners and city-builders across the nation have questioned whether households prefer mid-rise housing, and if builders see these housing typologies as more profitable than single-detached or high-rise residential buildings.

Launched in 2019, Edmonton’s Missing Middle Infill Design Competition encouraged conversations around infill and helped the public and development community envision design possibilities — inspiring builders, developers, and architects to work in collaboration on medium-scale housing proposals.

The competition solicited and reviewed design proposals that considered how the missing middle (or medium-density housing) might work on a site of five lots owned by the City of Edmonton. The winning team, adjudicated by a national jury of architects, would be given the opportunity to purchase the site and build their design. The City of Edmonton, in its communications, articulated how it might support the winning team through the development process, inclusive of the rezoning, development permit, and building permit stages. The City of Edmonton envisioned the design as serving as inspiration and a prototype for further missing middle infill development throughout other parts of the city.

Nearly 100 renderings and 30 pro formas, representing more than half a million dollars of architectural design work, were received from Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Seattle, in addition to preliminary registrations from London (UK), Regina, Hamilton, Toronto, and Oklahoma City. The first-place winning design, The Goodweather, by developer Part & Parcel, builder Studio North, and Gravity Architecture, won because it was a good fit for the site, was considered likely to be successfully built and sold, and because its design could be reproduced on other sites. The Goodweather presented a well-conceived courtyard space, and situated its buildings close to the sidewalk — enhancing opportunities for interactions in the public realm. The Goodweather arranged existing housing typologies into a new, exciting configuration that hopes to bring together many demographics and generations into one pocket community. In total, there are 56 dwellings: 14 townhouses designed for young families, 21 single bedroom loft dwellings for students and young professionals, and 21 ground level dwellings designed for seniors. There are 14 single car garages and 6 guest parking stalls, all accessed from the alley.

Applicants to the Missing Middle Infill Design Competition were required to provide a pro forma. This is a document that shows how a development will spend, and make money. A pro forma ignores design and marketing language and gives the “brass tacks” of a project. It answers the critical question: “how much profit will this project produce?” Creating a pro forma requires a lot of assumptions about what materials and labour will cost, how people want to live, and what they will pay for real estate. The assumptions behind the numbers reveal some of the logic of real estate development.

By reviewing the thirty pro formas submitted to our design competition, we sought to answer three questions as part of an analysis on the financial viability of missing middle housing. What do the pro formas from the Missing Middle Infill Design Competition tell us about the most financially-feasible low and medium infill forms? What do the estimated profit margins tell us about the risks applicants see with building infill? What funding sources and financing structures are typical for infill development and how do these differ from greenfield?

What the numbers say

With land value held constant across all projects, the average profit margin for an apartment and row house is identical (11% of revenues). To test the impact of land value reductions, the land value was reduced by 25% for row house and stacked row house projects. Cheaper land makes row housing more profitable than apartments (15% vs 11% profit). Based on the data available for this study, row housing can be competitive with small apartments.

Submissions to the competition offered innovative building design and construction solutions, including mass timber prefabrication and factory assembly, and modular units that could be contracted or expanded to respond to the needs of the user and to site constraints. While these innovative techniques influenced the design of the buildings, none of them created a real edge when it came to estimates of construction costs. This means that developers are interested in innovation (at least in a public design competition), but do not expect these to cut costs.

Nine of the twenty-two projects evaluated proposed rental apartments. Three of these were among the most profitable developments (ranking first, second, and ninth). The remaining six rental projects were the least profitable of all projects. The average profit margin was lower for rental projects than for condominiums (7% vs 13%). However, maximum profit margin for rental projects was comparable to the maximum for condominiums (34% vs 32%). Overall, the financial data suggest that there is not currently a clear advantage for building rental or condominium projects, and that considerations other than pure financial return influence the developer’s choice.

Every developer will set a minimum acceptable margin that depends on what investment options they have and the risks involved. The most common margin used by policy makers, however, is 15%. The average profit margin for this site was only 11%, meaning that for most developers, it is hard to put together a successful project.

With profit margins so low, what can we say about project risk? We might assume it means that developers think infill is a slam dunk, and so they are willing to take a small return. However, when you look closely at project inputs like rent per square foot, construction costs, and condo sales timing in a slow Edmonton market, this does not seem reasonable. In fact, we found more evidence of aggressive targets (or wishful thinking) in the pro formas than conservative estimates. Would you pay $1,900 a month for an 800 square foot apartment in Edmonton? Or spend $380,000 on the same apartment, before condo fees? Would you spend $14 million on an apartment building that would earn you $670,000 annually?

Greenfield development can be done at scale and reproduced over and over, and with little engagement cost or risk. High-rise development is large enough to produce its own efficiencies through scale, and to attract investment from pension funds. Missing middle infill development never gets the scale, the momentum, or the attention to make it an easy win.

What the industry says

To accompany our pro forma analysis, we invited architects, builders, and developers to share their perspectives and assumptions around profit and risk for medium-density housing, and associated financial and regulatory barriers.

Applicants to the design competition perceived their participation as a worthwhile venture and investment because of the opportunity to build their proposal. In fact, the ideas that developer-architect teams explored are, in many cases, being explored for other housing projects. The Missing Middle Infill Design Competition helped to expand our knowledge of what scale of density is preferred and reasonable for the missing middle in Edmonton. Participants noted how the design competition was an opportunity to test new design concepts, and to potentially challenge the City’s current regulations with new innovations.

Our interviews also revealed that members of the industry perceive land values as a challenge to making pro formas for medium-density housing viable. Municipal government affects land value primarily through the development rights (zoning) granted to each parcel. We typically expect that adding development rights will also increase the value of land. The land in the competition was priced at for low-rise apartments, but some projects proposed lower density development, like row housing. These projects could expect to acquire land with less permitted density for lower cost in an open market, as long as upzoning is not expected.

Builders, architects, and developers cited how servicing requirements need to be made clear so that these costs can be appropriately factored into their pro formas. Some of these participants made assumptions that since the competition was put forward by the City of Edmonton, that there would be leniency on permitting timelines and additional incentives to support the winning team’s advancement through the land development process.

The interviews illuminated how design features like amenity space and public space are potentially at odds with density requirements for developments to be profitable. While developers strive to include public space so that their housing projects can entice their intended user demographics, their pro formas did not perform well with them included.

The provision of parking was also seen as a significant expense. The City of Edmonton is exploring the possibility of removing minimum parking requirements, with amendments to the Zoning Bylaw scheduled for public hearing in 2020. If these regulatory changes were factored into the design competition, would the number of parking spaces put forward by architect-developer teams be reduced, and by what measure?

Several financing models were proposed through the Missing Middle Infill Design Competition. All projects require financing for construction, but some considered interesting sources of private equity, such as co-operative housing. All participants agreed that strong design is needed to maximize access to financing.

Given the nature of the design competition, all projects expected rezoning fee reductions or waivers, timely permits, and a positive neighbourhood response. While municipal fees were not a major project cost, interviewees indicated that the success of their proposal depended on minimizing delays and project uncertainty. Part of what made the competition desirable was that there was an assembled site, and the City of Edmonton was taking on much of the community engagement work, reducing uncertainty and timelines for proponents.

Sharpening our pencils

The development of new housing can be complex and costly in the best of circumstances. When it proposes a new form in an old neighbourhood, it can be very difficult to put together a project that can please neighbours, satisfy regulators, attract buyers or renters, and convince banks and investors to put their money in.

So what lessons can we draw from the City of Edmonton’s Missing Middle Infill Design Competition?

We learned that developers and architects are creative and interested in innovating when there is support from regulators, like city planners, to do so. We learned that different infill designs are possible, and even competitive — rental apartments, condominium rowhouses, and even modular, stacking, expandable co-op housing can be viable on paper. If cities want row housing, they need to zone land for row housing and use those zones as a commitment to communities and developers to prevent price creep from pricing out desirable projects. Cities can use their zoning tools, along with long-range planning and engagement, to set community expectations and reduce uncertainty for all involved.

The pro formas tell us that most of the factors affecting real estate development are determined by the markets for labour, investment capital, and housing, which are outside of a municipality’s hands. However, interviews with developers reveal that supportive policies, regulations and proactive engagement can make the difference between a successful infill project, and a failure to launch. Cities seeking missing middle development—like Edmonton and Winnipeg—will need to work with local developers to understand the challenges facing infill in order to find effective solutions. Cities, now more than ever, are eager to sharpen their pencils, and get moving on this type of work. We are excited for the possibilities.

Jason Syvixay is an urban planner currently completing his PhD in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Alberta. He has worked as the managing director of the Downtown Winnipeg BIZ, a planner with HTFC Planning & Design, and more recently, has joined the City of Edmonton to support the implementation of its Infill Roadmap. He has a passion for people and places, and engages in city building that listens to and empowers the community, builds knowledge and capacity, and works towards equity in urban places.

Sean Bohle is an urban planner at the City of Edmonton. He discovered a love for spreadsheets and financial models while completing graduate school at the University of British Columbia, and through subsequent consulting work on affordable housing development. At the City of Edmonton, Sean has worked on policies to provide affordable housing and community amenities from rezoning, and now leads the implementation of the Infill Roadmap.

The post Is ‘missing middle’ financially viable? appeared first on Canadian Architect.

The update of Edmonton Convention Centre’s iconic multi-level atrium that follows the slope of Edmonton’s river valley is nearing completion. The update includes Canada’s largest building-integrated photovoltaic system. The 35-year old skylight modernization, designed by DIALOG, makes a statement about the Centre’s sustainable ambitions and includes a poetic message for visitors of the Centre and the river valley. 

The pattern of the cells opens up to a circular oculus with lines of Morse code that spell out a poem. It is an excerpt of Gifts of a River by E.D. Blodgett, a former Edmonton Poet Laureate, that reads: 

BEGINNINGS JUST APPEAR
SO LIKE A DROWSY EYE 

SUDDENLY AWAKE
WHERE A RIVER WELLS UP 

UNCOILING FROM THE ICE
WHERE SNUG BESIDE THE LAND 

IT LAY DREAMING AT
OUR FEET IN QUIET SLEEP 

The poem is legible from left to right within the atrium, but the visual appeal extends outside and across the valley. 

The new solar cells will convert sunlight into clean electricity while maintaining the transparency of the Centre’s current glass atrium. All 696 sloped panels on the atrium have been replaced. Even with the PV cells covering approximately 50% of the surface, more light is getting through to the atrium compared to the previous tinted panels.  

“Not only does the installation help position Edmonton as an attractive destination for sustainable events, it encouraged us, our clients and our guests to set loftier goals that support the future of our industry and environment,” says Melissa Radu, Sustainability Manager of the Edmonton Convention Centre .

It is estimated that more than 200 Megaatt-hours of electricity will be generated each year and that the panels will reduce anticipated greenhouse gas emissions by over 150,000 kg. 

“The installation of the integrated solar PV system demonstrates true leadership and the City of Edmonton’s commitment to a sustainable future,” says Donna Clare, DIALOG Principal and Architect. “We’re excited to see this unique and important transformation of the atrium glazing come together. The poem provides Edmontonians delight to decipher during their river valley walks this summer.” 

The post Edmonton Convention Centre gets a poetic update with Canada’s largest BIPV system appeared first on Canadian Architect.

WINNER OF A 2020 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

LOCATION Edmonton, Alberta
ARCHITECT gh3 architecture
PHOTOS gh3*

The Borden Park Natural Swimming Pool is the first chemical-free public outdoor pool to be built in Canada. The project replaced an existing pool and includes a seasonal pavilion and landscaped pool precinct for 400 swimmers.

The challenge was to create a large-scale pool with high-quality water control, while also achieving an environmentally healthy, natural filtration process. The design process began with developing a pool technology that cleanses the water through stone, gravel, sand and botanic filtering processes. This inspired a materials-oriented concept for the change room facility. The result is a technically rigorous and aesthetically integrated design: the change pavilion’s gabion basket stone walls visually evoke the idea of filtration.

Canada’s guidelines for public pools are some of the strictest in the world. To realize the project, the architects needed to take a creative design approach grounded in a first-principles, science-based approach to the design challenge. The project was classified as “recreational waters,” with the building permit issued as a “constructed beach with variances”—the variances were the pools.

The project creates a balanced ecosystem where plant materials, microorganisms and nutrients come together within a gravel- and sand-filtering process to create “living water.” There is no soil involved in this process. Filtration is achieved in two ways: through a biological-mechanical system (the constructed wetland and gravel filter) and in situ (with zooplankton). The unsterilized, chemical- and disinfectant-free filtering system uses isolating membranes to contain water as it circulates and is naturally cleansed.

The cleansing process takes place at the north end of the pool precinct. On deck, water passes through a sand-and-stone submersive pond and a planted hydro-botanic pond. Adjacent to these ponds, a granular filter PO4 adsorption unit is enclosed by gabion walls continuous with the building.

In addition to the water filtration mechanisms, the seasonal building houses universal change rooms, showers, washrooms and staff areas.

The swimming program includes a children’s pool, a deep pool, on-deck outdoor showers, a sandy beach, picnic areas, and spaces for other pool-related recreational activities. The project’s materiality creates a fundamental, conceptual connection between the technical demands of the pool and the design of the built enclosure and landscape elements. The dark, locally sourced limestone and steel of the gabion wall construction defines the enclosure’s vertical dimension as filter-like or breathable, as granular and porous. The pool precinct is defined by a planar landscape: flush-to-surface detailing creates seamless interfaces among sandy beach, the concrete pool perimeter and wood decking. The gabion walls of the low rectilinear building terminate with a lid-like flat roof that frames the tree canopy of the park beyond and enhances the sensation of open-sky spaciousness within the pool precinct.

The elemental form and reductive materials ease the user experience and enrich the narrative of bathing in the landscape. The juxtaposition of the constructed elements invokes comparisons with the geology of the North Saskatchewan River and the flat topography of the Prairie lands’ edge.

:: Jury Comments ::  Clear, calm and modest, this project presents admirable restraint and control over form, materials and scale. Every element feels essential and thought has gone into every decision and detail. The pool evokes an elemental walled garden that welcomes the surrounding community. The jury salutes the City of Edmonton for commissioning it. It goes to show that if you support good civic design, you just might get it!

Read the Canadian Architect review of this project here.

PROJECT TEAM Pat Hanson, Raymond Chow, John McKenna, Joel Di Giacomo, Dae Hee Kim, Byron White | CLIENT City of Edmonton | SUPERSTRUCTURE/MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL/CIVIL Morrison Hershfield | GABIONS Associated Engineering | POOL ENGINEERING Polyplan GMBH | CONTRACTOR EllisDon | OCCUPANCY July 1, 2018 | BUDGET $14.4 M

The post Governor General’s Medal Winner: Borden Park Natural Swimming Pool appeared first on Canadian Architect.

WINNER OF A 2020 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

LOCATION Edmonton, Alberta
ARCHITECT gh3 architecture
PHOTOS gh3*

The built environment plays a central role in the sustainability and resiliency of our life on this planet. While climate change impacts many areas, foremost among the resources that humans must learn to use less of—and to care better for—is water.

Many regions of Canada are seeing hotter weather and more energetic storms, overwhelming existing municipal stormwater infrastructure. The Real Time Control Building #3 (RTC 03) is part of the City of Edmonton’s expanded urban ecosystem strategy. RTC 03 plays a central role in reducing untreated run-off and sewage flowing into the North Saskatchewan River.

Situated by the riverbank, on the corner of 84th Street NW and Jasper Avenue just east of the downtown core, the project invests in the design of its site and plant enclosure. It celebrates the importance of municipal infrastructure and recognizes the role infrastructure buildings play in shaping the city.

The facility is engineered for state-of-the-art handling and treatment of urban water, accommodating the dynamic loading of urban stormwater and wastewater. The architecture makes this below-ground process apparent: the form of the main underground shaft is notionally extruded to create the circular enclosure for plant equipment on the surface, and the location of secondary shafts, in-take tunnels, and out-take tunnels is telegraphed through the paving pattern. This imbues the site with an interpretive strategy and signals that RTC 03 is part of a larger, complex system.

The building envelope is made of structural steel and stud framing, a 10” cavity, and an outer skin of angled glass blocks. Using a familiar cladding material in a new way involved technical challenges, such as fabricating zig-zag control joints. The result is a simple, luminous veil laid over the inner workings of the building.

The cavity between the glass block façade and the inner structure acts as a thermal plenum. Through stack effect and mechanical ventilation, air is drawn through louvres at the base of the façade and vented at the roof edge.

The enclosure sits on a tarmac surface, accommodating service vehicles and lay-down areas for the building’s removable roof. The site’s surface water drains to a gutter at the base of the glass block wall, where it is then recirculated into the main shaft.

In addition to the water handling shafts, the building also houses gas monitoring and ventilation equipment, gate actuators, a generator room, noise control mechanisms, a motor control centre, a washroom and base building mechanical rooms.

RTC 03 is a model for civil engineering and architectural projects to lead the way in both performance and public profile. Instead of treating infrastructure as existing invisibly in the background, the design generates attention, curiosity and interest. It prompts us to learn about the essential role of water infrastructure in our urban environment, and raises public awareness of how we interact with our ecosystems.

:: Jury Comments ::  In one sense, RTC 03 is a humble piece of technical equipment—but it is also an intriguing and luminous sculpture in the city. Its precise details support a mysterious architectural experience, not dictated by scale or program. It also has a key function to play in the sustainable management of water resources in Edmonton. In this small but powerful project, the jury saw the potential to transform civic expectations of what engineering infrastructure can be.

PROJECT TEAM Pat Hanson, Raymond Chow, Joel Di Giacomo | CLIENT City of Edmonton | MECHANICAL Vital Engineering | electrICAL AB Electrical | civil V3 Companies of Canada Ltd. | STRUCTURAL Chernenko Engineering | CONTRACTOR Maple Reinders | OCCUPANCY november 1, 2015 | BUDGET $1.2 M

The post Governor General’s Medal Winner: RTC 03 appeared first on Canadian Architect.