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A Tale of Two Buildings - In One City
Jan. 25th, 2020 03:27 pmOn Thursday, the new design for the new Library and Archives Canada plus Ottawa Public Library Main Branch was unveiled. It looks and sounds very promising! Unlike another building a few blocks east of it, the Chateau Laurier.
There are of course some valid reasons for this. The Chateau, although widely regarded as a historic and iconic building on the national capital landscape, has been privately owned for several decades, whereas the site at 555 Albert Street (formerly 555 Wellington) was already government-owned. Moreover, it's an extension to an existing building that is the subject of such ongoing distaste and controversy, whereas the new central library will be a whole new custom-built structure.
Still, the process whereby the final design, in each case, was arrived at is instructive.
In the case of the Chateau, the owners got to pick their own architects to come up with a design that fit the image they wanted to project to the well-heeled tourists they hoped to attract, only later dealing with pesky details like getting all the necessary zoning and heritage approvals from the powers that be. Ordinary folk like us may claim you can't fight City Hall but if you happen to be a big-name developer with a lot of money and other incentives to toss out, the rules somehow tend to be a bit different. Certainly they had to go through a few iterations before it all got approved and possibly they had to make a few token compromises, all no doubt well mapped-out in advance as part of their "negotiating" strategy of getting to yes.
But the central library, right from its inception, was meant to be designed by the people for the people. Of course it benefited from having more than one level of government on board, as well as some well-respected champions. But more importantly, it sought public input from all stakeholders on almost every imaginable aspect of its design, through its Inspire555 process, right from day one. It held in-person focus groups and online consultations and kept people informed through their preferred channel(s) of communication. To use a much-overused adjective, though I find it perfectly apt in this case, the process was very TRANSPARENT. What a contrast with, say, the LRT. Or the rest of Lebreton Flats.
The building respects the unique topography and location of the site, too. It's designed to be "green" and energy-efficient and to have the necessary spaces to appeal to different demographic and cultural communities. Perhaps the worst public controversy it generated was over how "central" it was, given that it will lie somewhere west of what is widely considered to be Ottawa's downtown "core". But in a metropolitan area of our size (in terms of population, geography and politics), the core is ever-expanding. Geographically, I understand the mid-point of the city would actually be somewhere around Carleton University, certainly farther west than Lebreton Flats. We're very spread out. While the city has technically only recently surpassed the million mark in terms of population, if you include the Quebec municipalities - Gatineau (including Hull and Aylmer), Chelsea, Buckingham and so on - we've had over a million people for quite some time.
So personally I'm very much looking forward to the new building. If I were to cite one concern, which I hope can be overcome, it would be that in spite of all the wonderful research resources, cultural and entertainment and cosy and luxurious indoor and outdoor spaces it is to include, we may become so preoccupied with security checks and street violence and terrorism and other big-city problems that people will all be required to enter and exit through the same door and submit to so many rules and regulations that it will no longer be a pleasant place for any of us!
I credit our recently-retired Librarian and Archivist of Canada, Guy Berthiaume, with bringing this project to fruition (or at least the planning phase to fruition). Along with Marianne Scott, who is still very active in the Friends of LAC activities, I think he ranks as one of the best heads of the organization that it's had. During his tenure, he had all kinds of day-time activities open to the Friends - panels of international guests from other national libraries and cultural organizations, for example; lunchtime speakers and interviews; book launches; all of which I really appreciated as a retired person. I'm hoping that Leslie Weir will get more into these kinds of things as well. She's certainly well qualified for the role, having worked both at the LAC and as uOttawa's university librarian, as well as in the School of Information Studies there. In fact, she was one of the people I suggested in this blog as a worthy successor to Berthiaume's rather disastrous predecessor. She's only been in the position for a few months - since September 2019 - so it's early days yet.
Anyway, back to the new building, slated to open in 2024. I have high hopes that if anything can finally spark a vibrant new people-place-style redevelopment of Lebreton Flats, this may be it.
Then maybe we'll see a new downtown Via Rail station again? A new thirst for an underground city in Ottawa, along the lines of those in Montreal and Toronto, for example? Will we finally come of age as an interesting metropolis, instead of the town that fun forgot?
We can always hope.
There are of course some valid reasons for this. The Chateau, although widely regarded as a historic and iconic building on the national capital landscape, has been privately owned for several decades, whereas the site at 555 Albert Street (formerly 555 Wellington) was already government-owned. Moreover, it's an extension to an existing building that is the subject of such ongoing distaste and controversy, whereas the new central library will be a whole new custom-built structure.
Still, the process whereby the final design, in each case, was arrived at is instructive.
In the case of the Chateau, the owners got to pick their own architects to come up with a design that fit the image they wanted to project to the well-heeled tourists they hoped to attract, only later dealing with pesky details like getting all the necessary zoning and heritage approvals from the powers that be. Ordinary folk like us may claim you can't fight City Hall but if you happen to be a big-name developer with a lot of money and other incentives to toss out, the rules somehow tend to be a bit different. Certainly they had to go through a few iterations before it all got approved and possibly they had to make a few token compromises, all no doubt well mapped-out in advance as part of their "negotiating" strategy of getting to yes.
But the central library, right from its inception, was meant to be designed by the people for the people. Of course it benefited from having more than one level of government on board, as well as some well-respected champions. But more importantly, it sought public input from all stakeholders on almost every imaginable aspect of its design, through its Inspire555 process, right from day one. It held in-person focus groups and online consultations and kept people informed through their preferred channel(s) of communication. To use a much-overused adjective, though I find it perfectly apt in this case, the process was very TRANSPARENT. What a contrast with, say, the LRT. Or the rest of Lebreton Flats.
The building respects the unique topography and location of the site, too. It's designed to be "green" and energy-efficient and to have the necessary spaces to appeal to different demographic and cultural communities. Perhaps the worst public controversy it generated was over how "central" it was, given that it will lie somewhere west of what is widely considered to be Ottawa's downtown "core". But in a metropolitan area of our size (in terms of population, geography and politics), the core is ever-expanding. Geographically, I understand the mid-point of the city would actually be somewhere around Carleton University, certainly farther west than Lebreton Flats. We're very spread out. While the city has technically only recently surpassed the million mark in terms of population, if you include the Quebec municipalities - Gatineau (including Hull and Aylmer), Chelsea, Buckingham and so on - we've had over a million people for quite some time.
So personally I'm very much looking forward to the new building. If I were to cite one concern, which I hope can be overcome, it would be that in spite of all the wonderful research resources, cultural and entertainment and cosy and luxurious indoor and outdoor spaces it is to include, we may become so preoccupied with security checks and street violence and terrorism and other big-city problems that people will all be required to enter and exit through the same door and submit to so many rules and regulations that it will no longer be a pleasant place for any of us!
I credit our recently-retired Librarian and Archivist of Canada, Guy Berthiaume, with bringing this project to fruition (or at least the planning phase to fruition). Along with Marianne Scott, who is still very active in the Friends of LAC activities, I think he ranks as one of the best heads of the organization that it's had. During his tenure, he had all kinds of day-time activities open to the Friends - panels of international guests from other national libraries and cultural organizations, for example; lunchtime speakers and interviews; book launches; all of which I really appreciated as a retired person. I'm hoping that Leslie Weir will get more into these kinds of things as well. She's certainly well qualified for the role, having worked both at the LAC and as uOttawa's university librarian, as well as in the School of Information Studies there. In fact, she was one of the people I suggested in this blog as a worthy successor to Berthiaume's rather disastrous predecessor. She's only been in the position for a few months - since September 2019 - so it's early days yet.
Anyway, back to the new building, slated to open in 2024. I have high hopes that if anything can finally spark a vibrant new people-place-style redevelopment of Lebreton Flats, this may be it.
Then maybe we'll see a new downtown Via Rail station again? A new thirst for an underground city in Ottawa, along the lines of those in Montreal and Toronto, for example? Will we finally come of age as an interesting metropolis, instead of the town that fun forgot?
We can always hope.
