National Arts Centre Redevelopment | Completed

[kevinbottawa]

This sounds like a nice project.

NAC wants to put a new “transparent and inviting” entrance on Elgin Street

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

By Maria Cook, The Ottawa Citizen

The NAC wants to “rethink how a relatively windowless and opaque presence along Elgin can be transformed into something that connects more to the city and establishes more transparency, visibility and access,” says architect Don Schmitt.

The National Arts Centre is quietly studying the creation of a new “transparent and inviting” entrance on Elgin Street, the Citizen has learned.

“It is the intent of the NAC to commence a national fundraising campaign leading to the realization of the architectural renewal project,” says an internal NAC document. The aim is to open for the celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary on July 1, 2017, it says.

“The project will focus on the creation of a new entrance complex facing Elgin Street and Confederation Square,” says the document. “This renewal also focuses on future links to a new light rail transit (LRT) station to be constructed adjacent to the centre on the north side.”

Situated across Confederation Square from Parliament Hill, the NAC opened in 1969. Built at a cost of $46 million, it was the federal government’s flagship Centennial project and one of the key institutions created by then-prime minister Lester B. Pearson.

A request-for-proposals (RFP) document issued last month to six architecture firms outlines the project. The NAC invited the firms to compete for a contract to prepare drawings that would “serve as the inspiration for the implementation of the architectural renewal project,” and “illustrate the vision and play a central role in the national fundraising campaign.”

Last week, the NAC hired Diamond + Schmitt Architects of Toronto, whose recent work includes the new Algonquin College Centre for Construction Excellence in Ottawa.

The NAC wants to “rethink how a relatively windowless and opaque presence along Elgin can be transformed into something that connects more to the city and establishes more transparency, visibility and access,” says architect Don Schmitt.

“I think it’s been an idea for a long time but the arrival of the LRT station galvanizes them to actually want to do it,” he says.

The firm has made sketches looking at what a transparent building pavilion of up to four storeys might look like on the sidewalk in front of the NAC.

“You’re at the back of the existing performance spaces and those have to remain windowless, but there’s an opportunity to introduce building along there,” says Schmitt. “It’s really a study to figure out how can it be done and how could one enter and get to the lobbies which are down on the Canal.”

The cost of the study is less than $100,000, says the NAC.

The Crown corporation wants “a transparent and inviting entrance complex that will contain new functions designed to attract a new generation of users,” according to the RFP paper.

It envisions “an animated hub along Elgin Street that can host events, showcase informal performances, rehearsals, visual art exhibitions and commercial activities that will reinforce the NAC’s profile, identity and presence in the national capital.”

NAC spokesman Carl Martin, says the LRT system, due to open in 2018, will bring more pedestrian and commuter traffic to the area.

“We may want to attract more of those people to stay downtown after they finish work and come in to see a play, a performance,” he says. “It may mean that we increase programming.”

Martin downplayed the project as “just a planning exercise. We’re looking at possibilities. There’s no commitment to changing anything at this point, no plans for constructing anything new there. This is very early days.”

He noted that previous studies have been done and shelved.

“We’re just looking to see how connecting the transit station to the NAC could work. We’re looking for ideas. We want to make that corner more appealing. It’s just to develop how can we better use that space along Elgin Street.”

The project has been kept under wraps because “we need the space to look at these things quietly,” said Martin.

The NAC building was designed by one of North America’s foremost theatre designers — Fred Lebensold, of the Montreal architecture firm Affleck Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold and Sise.

In 2006, the Monuments Board of Canada recognized it as a national historic site, citing it as an outstanding example of design which features striking geometry and sophisticated use of concrete.

The NAC notes that any change must respect the architecture, heritage value and character defining elements.

“There are many out there who malign the NAC’s architecture,” says Carleton University architecture professor Paul Kariouk. “In my estimation it’s an extremely fine building. It’s built with incredible quality of construction. It’s weathered the last decades fantastically. It has extremely elegant and gracious interior spaces.”

However “the one thing that doesn’t work is the entrance,” says Kariouk. “It used to have a more dynamic Elgin Street facade when it had commercial space. It’s beautiful in the warmer months to walk to the NAC along the Canal, but in winter, coming along Elgin Street, it’s pretty dismal.”

The doors open to a corridor that winds to the lobbies on the Canal side. “You don’t quite know where you’re going,” he says. “It looks like a service corridor.”

Kariouk says that any addition should contrast with rather than mimic the 1960s architecture. “I’m imagining a very glassy illuminated lantern. Given our long dark winters, it would be such a beautiful thing on the streetscape.

“There are all kinds of really beautiful terraces and garden spaces that do address the Elgin Street side,” adds Kariouk. “Maybe this new construction will make these places more obvious and populated. It’s not just about revving up the NAC as a performance centre, but also about revving it about as a beautiful urban presence. I’m thrilled they’re doing this.”

Marco Polo, an architectural science professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, finds the Elgin Street entrance “circuitous” and “inscrutable” but warns against changing the building too much.

“One of the things that’s powerful about the building now is that it’s almost like a piece of landscape, almost like a force of nature,” says Polo, who is conducting research on Canada’s Centennial projects.

“They should be cautious about undermining the severity of the building. I know that’s probably exactly what they want to do.

“It’s a very important building,” he says. “I know it’s never had a lot of love from the public. We have to be careful. Fifty years ago we didn’t value Victorian architecture very much.”

The other firms considered were The Arcop Group of Montreal, BBB Architects of Ottawa, Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects of Toronto, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects of Halifax and Perkins + Will of Vancouver.

The NAC is calling for a “schematic design concept” which includes a site plan, floor plans, elevations, sections and exterior and interior perspective.

The firms were judged on relevant experience, qualifications, understanding of the project, design approach, work schedule and fees.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

[gjhall]

Originally Posted by kevinbottawa

This sounds like a nice project.

Agreed. We just need to be VERY careful with this I think.

The NAC is a gem of its era, and must be preserved. However, that shouldn't stop us from enhancing it, and correcting the anti-urban bias of the building.

I didn't realize that the Elgin frontages had a commercial element at some point? I would love to see that re-introduced, especially with the street frontage stores in the new Finance building across the street, they could be successful, especially with the LRT station right there.

I would also love to see a large atrium that could be used as a venue for performances as well as official functions on the northern portion of the site, attached to the LRT station entrance. I would say this would be better official greeting centre than the former US Embassy, as currently envisioned by the feds.

[McC]

Originally Posted by gjhall

Agreed. We just need to be VERY careful with this I think.

The NAC is a gem of its era, and must be preserved. However, that shouldn't stop us from enhancing it, and correcting the anti-urban bias of the building.

I didn't realize that the Elgin frontages had a commercial element at some point? I would love to see that re-introduced, especially with the street frontage stores in the new Finance building across the street, they could be successful, especially with the LRT station right there.

I would also love to see a large atrium that could be used as a venue for performances as well as official functions on the northern portion of the site, attached to the LRT station entrance. I would say this would be better official greeting centre than the former US Embassy, as currently envisioned by the feds.

agree x 3!

[acottawa]

It would be nice if they could find a way to move the main entrance to the Elgin side and get rid of that extension of queen street on the canal side (although it is a sweet shortcut).

[amanfromnowhere]

...and the winnner is Toronto's Diamond + Schmitt Architects:

Light-rail plans prompt NAC entrance redesign proposal
Winning Toronto firm's bid was under $100K
Ottawa's proposed light-rail system was the catalyst for a proposed "new entrance complex" for the National Arts Centre on Elgin Street, officials said.

Topics : National Arts Centre , Toronto
Toronto's Diamond + Schmitt Architects will be paid less than $100,000 to do the design work. It won the contract through a "competitive invitational" request for proposals over five other companies, the NAC said. The competitors' names and bid amounts were not disclosed.

With the city of Ottawa planning a transit station with two pedestrian access points "right outside the NAC" for 2018, the partially federally funded arts institution determined it was a good opportunity to make changes to the area, said spokesperson Carl Martin.

"The NAC has hired Diamond + Schmitt to look at how those access points can be maximized as we expect millions of transit users to use the LRT system and have easier potential access to Canada's largest performing arts centre," he wrote in an e-mail to OBJ.

Although the design work is being done, there is no guarantee that this will translate into an actual construction project, he cautioned.

"There has been no commitment made for any design or construction work at the National Arts Centre," he wrote.

"This is part of routine long-term planning that the NAC does from time to time. For example, back in 2002 the NAC went through a similar exercise and commissioned a series of schematic design concepts. Those concepts were studied and never developed for various reasons."

Should the project move forward, it would be ideally ready in 2017 for the 150th anniversary of Canada's founding on July 1, noted the request for proposals on the NAC's website.

The NAC, noted the documents, is seeking to "enhance the architectural visibility and appeal" of the 42-year-old building with a "transparent and inviting entrance complex ... to attract a new generation of users to the NAC."

But the design, the document added, will need to be respectful of the NAC's 2006 designation as a National Historic Site by the Monuments Board of Canada.

The brown-sided building was designed by the architectural firm Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold. Fred Lebensold, which the NAC called "one of North America's foremost theatre designers," led the project.

The NAC receives half of its funds from the federal government. The other half is raised through ticket sales, parking fees, food, performance hall rentals and fundraising.

It is managed by the National Arts Centre Corp., which Parliament established through an act in 1966.

http://www.obj.ca/Local/2011-11-30/artic...-prompt-NAC-entrance-redesign-proposal/1

[waterloowarrior]

I like the glass front of the four seasons centre for performing arts that D+S did

[MaxHeadroom]

All but one of the homes on the south side of Westmount Avenue, all bought by MTO for realignment of the Parkdale ramp, have been demolished. The last one should be gone by the end of the week.

[ThaLoveDocta]

Originally Posted by amanfromnowhere

...and the winnner is Toronto's Diamond + Schmitt Architects:

http://www.obj.ca/Local/2011-11-30/artic...-prompt-NAC-entrance-redesign-proposal/1

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

I like the glass front of the four seasons centre for performing arts that D+S did

Having reviewed the plans for a whole slew of D&S buildings, one will notice a few common trends.

1. LOTS of glass and curtain wall facades (as seen above). Transparency, visually open concepts and and often stunning, attractive and impressive from a pedestrian viewpoint.

2. D&S LOVE Intricate staircases. Here are a couple examples in Ottawa:
a) The Algonquin ACCE building contains a large sweeping staircase cantilevered from floor to floor without visual supports.
b) The MacOdrum library at Carleton University, currently under construction. contains a 4 level spiral egg shaped steel staircase hung from above and tucked behind a 4.5 storey glass facade wall.


They might just be a great fit for this project, as the streetscape on that corner could be stunning if properly handled.

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

I like the glass front of the four seasons centre for performing arts that D+S did

Another pic:

Four Seasons Centre For The Performing Arts


And the New Mariinsky Opera House in St. Petersburg, Russia (another D+S design)


And let's not forget the new Montreal Symphony Orchestra concert hall. Now THAT'S pedestrian friendly. (not D+S)

[phil235]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

I like the glass front of the four seasons centre for performing arts that D+S did

This might be the perfect job for D+S - just designing the front of a building.

The front of the Four Seasons Centre is great, but the other three sides are terrible.

[waterloowarrior]

Announcement tomorrow
http://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/local-arts/nac-expected-to-get-a-new-look

edit: rocketphish and I both seem to have created threads for this, so I merged them

[rocketphish]

NAC expected to get a new look

Peter Robb, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: December 9, 2014, Last Updated: December 9, 2014 7:01 PM EST



A press conference called by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Heritage Minister Shelly Glover set for Wednesday morning at the National Arts Centre is expected to announce a long-discussed new entrance off Elgin Street for the centre.

The NAC is headed towards its 50th birthday in 2019 and is also about to mark Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017 with a massive cultural event called Canada Scene, the culmination of a series of provincial scenes over the past decade or so.

The proposed new entrance is intended to raise the profile of the NAC on Confederation Square. The original plan had been to connect the centre to the new light rail service but the City of Ottawa decided not to build an underground station near the NAC.

Architect Don Schmitt of the Toronto firm of Diamond Schmitt is said to be leading the project design.

The new entrance seems the most likely project to be undertaken because it is the most advanced. The NAC has also been considering a renovation project for the inner workings of the centre, but those plans are in a more preliminary stage and unlikely to be ready in time for 2017.

The announcement would be part of a string of decisions by the NAC over the past two years. The centre recently launched a new logo replacing the 45-year-old mark that mimicked the building as part of a rebranding plan. It also hired the 35-year-old Alexander Shelley to be the new music director for the National Arts Centre Orchestra, replacing Pinchas Zukerman. Shelley takes over next fall.

In an interview in 2013, NAC CEO Peter Herrndorf acknowledged that the centre was in need of repair.

“By 2019 this building will be 50 years old, the production equipment and the facilities will be 50 years old. It was a building that was absolutely state-of-the-art when it opened in 1969, and now you don’t have to look very closely to see (it fraying at the edges). We are looking at all of that to see what we may be able to do to improve that as part of 2017 (the 150th birthday of the country) or as part of 2019.”

Herrndorf said that he was determined to have the NAC “embrace the national capital and not have its back to the national capital,” hence he indicated the NAC was pushing for an Elgin Street entrance.

“The second thing is that the National Arts Centre simply does not have the visibility that it should have downtown. And the third thing is, after almost 50 years a building gets tired. And (a bold architectural statement) has a way of refreshing. You get the best with the old and the new.”

In the interview, Herrndorf said he expected to be able to start bringing a proposal to the City of Ottawa, the National Capital Commission and the federal government by the end of 2013.

Herrndorf admitted at the time to being very impressed with how the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto managed to marry the old and the new when it folded a sleek glass and steel concert hall around its 19th century facility on Bloor Street, near the Royal Ontario Museum.

In 2011 the Citizen first raised the idea that the centre was trying to create a new entrance on Confederation Square.

“It is the intent of the NAC to commence a national fundraising campaign leading to the realization of the architectural renewal project,” an internal NAC document obtained by the Citizen said.

In the document, the NAC said it wanted to “rethink how a relatively windowless and opaque presence along Elgin can be transformed into something that connects more to the city and establishes more transparency, visibility and access.”

Early sketches of the new entrance were said to show a transparent pavilion of up to four storeys sitting on the sidewalk in front of the NAC.

The NAC wanted “a transparent and inviting entrance complex that will contain new functions designed to attract a new generation of users.”

It envisioned “an animated hub along Elgin Street that can host events, showcase informal performances, rehearsals, visual art exhibitions and commercial activities that will reinforce the NAC’s profile, identity and presence in the national capital.”

The NAC building opened in 1969. It was designed by Fred Lebensold, of the Montreal architecture firm Affleck Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold and Sise in the so-called Brutalist style.

In 2006, the Monuments Board of Canada recognized it as a national historic site, citing it as an outstanding example of design which features striking geometry and sophisticated use of concrete.

The NAC has said that any change would respect the architecture, heritage value and character defining elements of the centre.

“There are many out there who malign the NAC’s architecture,” Carleton University architecture professor Paul Kariouk said at the time. “In my estimation, it’s an extremely fine building. It’s built with incredible quality of construction. It’s weathered the last decades fantastically. It has extremely elegant and gracious interior spaces.”

However “the one thing that doesn’t work is the entrance,” he said. “It used to have a more dynamic Elgin Street facade when it had commercial space. It’s beautiful in the warmer months to walk to the NAC along the Canal, but in winter, coming along Elgin Street, it’s pretty dismal.”

http://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/local-arts/nac-expected-to-get-a-new-look

[rocketphish]

An old, but still relevant, article that never made it into our original threads:

A posterior for posterity

The NAC's inelegant Elgin St. rear end is a maddening shortcoming of a wonderfully evocative building, writes Rhys Phillips. Fixing it requires a deft, but not delicate, hand

Rhys Phillips, Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, December 03, 2011

In the nation's capital, commissioning public architecture seems best done in whispers rather than exuberant shouts. The Citizen's story this week on the National Arts Centre's selection of Diamond + Schmitt Architects to rethink how the heritagedesignated complex engages Elgin Street and Confederation Square made it abundantly clear that NAC officials do not want anyone to get too excited and certainly not too optimistic. So, the selection process was breathtakingly quick using a quiet, limited invite process that eschewed the kind of design competitions similar European institutions take for granted. One can appreciate the NAC's shyness, however, given the decades-long ebb and flow of failed proposals to "fix" the NAC's posterior.

And the Elgin façade is indeed a posterior, albeit not a totally inelegant rear-end, but an elevation that both lacks an engaging relationship with the street and offers no sensible grand promenade to the Centre's fine, multilevel lobby. This major shortcoming is maddening because, carefully considered, the NAC is wonderfully evocative architecture, a truly iconic building that speaks to the city's unique sense of place.

Its arrangement of stunted towers clad with pebble-faced concrete panels creates a craggy profile from the street with sharply angled nooks and crannies tied together by meandering terrace layers extruding trees and bushes. This gathers and interprets rather than simply replicates the experience of residing between the ancient ice-sculpted cliffs of the Eardley escarpment and the hard, gritty landscape of the Canadian Shield. At the time of its construction in the mid 1960s, it represented a boldly evocative regionalism that thumbed its nose at the formalistic blandness of the socalled ruling International Style evident in the now demolished National Art Gallery's Lorne Building just across the street.

It seemed, however, that the architects just couldn't resolve the site's ultimate dilemma - two very public but different fronts. On the west, Elgin Street demanded a more formal, street friendly face while on the east side, the heavily used Rideau Canal quay suggested a more casual composition. In the end the picturesque Rideau Canal side won out with the NAC's striking, bow-shaped profile wrapped around a broad "plateau" terrace best viewed from across the canal.

To digress, although the architects' mandate includes only the Elgin podium and the streetlevel Freiman Lane terrace, there is a strong argument for considering a pedestrian bridge spanning the canal. Think of the NAC, the cheeky new convention centre and the train station - re-adapted as a cultural venue - all spun around an eastside piazza and linked by a powerfully sculpted bridge.

Rethinking the NAC's west elevation will take a deft - though not necessarily delicate - hand. The site available for redevelopment is limited and carving out a suitably impressive Elgin entrance and promenade to the lobby given the existing interior configuration will take imagination and more than a bit of re-engineering. But the proposal also envisages new spaces for informal performances, visual arts exhibitions and commercial activities. A link to the north with the West Rideau LRT station, already conceptually developed by the city as an underground, multilayered "gallery" space capped by a flared glass canopy emerging from the landscaped slope, is also required.

Diamond + Schmitt should prove an excellent choice. This internationally renowned Canadian firm has extensive experience adapting concert halls to tight urban fabrics and Jack Diamond is a legendary figure in Toronto's urban renaissance. They also understand that theatre and concert halls are always about the social conceit of "to see and be seen." The Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, Detroit's Fisher Centre, the new Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and Toronto's Four Seasons opera house all involve significant moments of dramatic transparency. At the Four Seasons, opera goers play their own role as actors in a rich, moving tableau on view though the building's soaring transparent University Avenue façade.

The architects are explicitly mandated to provide transparency, but they also need to be bold. This may not mean employing startling crystal shards of the kind Daniel Libeskind crashed into the Royal Ontario Museum's (ROM) rather stuffy Beaux Arts building in Toronto with dramatic if controversial effect. But it is unlikely a seamless contextual addition is either desirable or possible. It should not be delicate, but should respect the centre's robust form while providing transparency, luminosity and a sense of arrival. Yet maybe, like their Algonquin Centre for Construction Excellence building, whimsical flashes of colour may play off the otherwise sombre hues of the NAC.

At the same time, it must engage the street, ensuring pedestrians feel both comfortable with its scale and stimulated by what is on show. It is reassuring to know Diamond + Schmitt are masters of visually rich and wonderfully tactile but never fussy modernist detailing. This includes, as demonstrated in both their Maison Syphonique de Montreal and Toronto's Four Seasons, an exquisite ability with wood.

Ironically, the possibilities for the NAC will emerge at the time the NCC will decommission its Wellington St. visitor centre with its "window on Parliament," an existing demonstration of the firm's ability to combine transparent modernism with very different architecture.

Rhys Phillips is an Ottawa architecture and urban design critic and a contributing editor of Building.

© Ottawa Citizen 2011
http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/new...?id=0de49e28-ca3a-40bb-ba67-88b3d56a71f9

[c_speed3108]

Announced. Including 110.5 million in funding:

http://nac-cna.ca/en/stories/story/re-imagining-canadas-home-for-the-performing-arts

Nice video there.

[waterloowarrior]

http://nac-cna.ca/

[Aylmer]

• Video Link

Like much of brutalism or modernism, the NAC has always been a pleasure from afar, but just a succession of blank, concrete walls up close. I think that opening it up making the building more legible (as in you can find a door with a minimum amount of frustration) could go a long way in making Elgin and the Mackenzie King Bridge less empty spaces.

[Kitchissippi]

That would have been nice integrated with an LRT subway station entrance The new logo sucks, though.

[McC]

Nice; that looks a lot like what I had always imagined, only in my mind's eye, it was built right on top of the ramp, wrapping down to the old entryway on the east side. I'm surprised there's room while keeping the ramp! No direct link to the LRT is a huge lost opportunity; they really need to add that short tunnel to the Conference Centre that has been mused about on occasion.

[movebyleap]

I hate to be a Negative Nellie here, but once again it looks like another very average building for our city. Where the OOMPH factor? The panache? This is an ARTS centre in the very heart of the capital. Nothing too inspiring about that glass block. I suppose that in true Ottawa fashion we could just say that it's better than what's presently there. But why do we keep putting up with this mediocrity? (I hope nobody decides to say that this is "world class" )

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by McC

No direct link to the LRT is a huge lost opportunity; they really need to add that short tunnel to the Conference Centre that has been mused about on occasion.

Why not some form of movable pedestrian bridge?
Like the rolling (curling) bridge in London:

• Video Link


Just an easy crossing which can be easily moved to allow for boats to pass occasionally.