Critics lament ‘bland, Soviet’ coverings
Could some creative hoardings spruce up parliamentary precinct during construction?
By Don Butler, OTTAWA CITIZEN January 23, 2014 7:01 PM
OTTAWA — Kay Stanley was walking on Parliament Hill just before Christmas when she spotted a large group of Chinese tourists snapping pictures of the Centre Block.
“I almost spoke up and pleaded with them to stay focused to the north,” Stanley, a member of the National Capital Commission’s board of directors, said this week. “Don’t turn to the south or in any other direction, because it wouldn’t be a very attractive picture.”
Parliament Hill and Wellington Street resemble a vast construction zone these days, as Public Works and Government Services Canada proceeds with an ambitious program to preserve and restore the Parliament Buildings and other prominent structures in the parliamentary precinct.
On the block of Wellington Street between Bank and O’Connor streets alone, work is underway at the National Press Building, the Sir John A. Macdonald Building and the Wellington Building, in some cases for years. On the Hill, rehabilitation work is proceeding at Parliament’s West Block.
As well, work began this month on a major renovation of the Bank of Canada headquarters at 234 Wellington St. and repairs to the National War Memorial.
The work is certainly necessary. But what dismays Stanley was what prominent Ottawa architect Barry Padolsky calls the “bland, Soviet” appearance of the wooden hoardings surrounding the structures.
While the hoardings are temporary, they’re with us for years, Padolsky pointed out. “We need to always pay attention to the quality of our public realm at all times.”
Stanley, who raised her concerns at this week’s public meeting of the NCC board of directors, said many people are impressed by the eye-catching “iceberg” enveloping the National Gallery of Canada’s Great Hall as part of its window replacement project.
The monumental art work by Greenlandic artist Inuk Silis Høegh has a surface area of more than 4,600 metres. It was part of the gallery’s summer exhibition of indigenous art, so there was no additional cost to deploy it as an eye-catching cover for the work in the Great Hall.
After admiring the gallery’s solution, Stanley said she “looked longingly at Wellington Street and thought, ‘Why can’t we do something other than green canvas or whatever to ensure that there’s a more attractive façade for all of this construction?’”
Experts say plenty of creative things are done in cities around the world. When buildings in London and Paris are renovated, Padolsky said, “You see some great artwork or great marketing ideas. We certainly deserve to do the same thing here.
“It’s an opportunity for public art, for doing something daring, because it’s temporary,” said Padolsky, whose firm designed hoardings adorned with prehistoric animals and giant bugs when it restored exterior stonework at the Canadian Museum of Nature in the 1990s.
Cost shouldn’t be a deterrent, he said. “The cost of temporary graphics is not significant at all. It’s lack of will, really.”
David Leinster, a Toronto landscape architect who serves on Ottawa’s urban design review panel, said he saw an “amazing” treatment of a hoarding around a historic building in Havana last year.
“The hoarding was designed to exactly align with a part of the building you couldn’t see,” he said. “When you stood back and looked at the building, you could see the whole thing, right down to the ground. It was a pretty creative way of dealing with an important public space.”
The NCC has standards for hoardings along Confederation Boulevard, which includes Wellington Street. The minimum standard calls for grey and green wood panelling cut to mimic the Gothic architecture of the Parliament Buildings.
Fred Gaspar, the NCC’s acting vice-president, said the commission works with Public Works and other proponents to encourage them to do as much as possible to make hoardings attractive, though “We always try to be mindful of the project realities” such as budgets and time frames.
As a result of concerns raised by Stanley and others, Gaspar said the NCC is reviewing its hoarding guidelines, last updated in 2005. “We’re going to be working with our partners to see what they can do to kick it up a notch,” he said.
NCC chair Russ Mills pointed out that the next big Public Works project is the $190-million makeover of the Government Conference Centre on Confederation Square into a temporary home for the Senate during the Centre Block renovations. “Perhaps that could be used as a model for how to do this,” he suggested.
In an email, Public Works said its primary focus when erecting hoardings “is to ensure a safe and secure environment for construction workers and the public.”
The use of printed tarpaulins to enclose scaffolding would have increased costs, it said. “A case-by-case analysis is always done on the choice of hoarding, with safety and security being the key considerations, and will be done on future construction sites.”
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