Jesse Winter, Centretown News
The James Michael Flaherty Building recently received a design excellence award.The Ottawa Urban Design Awards have honoured two Centretown-based buildings for enriching the architectural value of the community. The City of Ottawa hosted a ceremony on Oct. 3 recognizing the design excellence of the Sir John A. Macdonald Building on Wellington Street and Elgin Street’s James Michael Flaherty Building.
Although both were constructed recently, the two buildings have roots deep in Ottawa’s history. What is now the Sir John A. Macdonald Building used to be the Bank of Montreal location that, according to Mark Thompson Brandt, an architect who worked on the rehabilitation, had the highest rating that a heritage site can possibly receive.
While the other project was the construction of a new building rather the rehabilitation of a heritage structure, the James Michael Flaherty Building occupies the same space that used to be home to the National Gallery of Canada.
The original National Gallery site at 90 Elgin St. was torn down in 2011 to make way for the new 17-storey tower. Last year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the development would be named after the late Jim Flaherty, former federal Conservative and Ontario Progressive Conservative finance minister.
The new building houses the federal Department of Finance and is encircled by retail and food services. The glass façade promotes a sense of openness that the former National Gallery did not convey, according to James B. Lennox, an architect on the project. He also says the building was such a “unique design challenge” because the difference between the levels of Albert and Slater streets — which bookend the Flaherty building — is a full storey.
David McRobie, another architect involved in designing the Flaherty building, says he was confronted with finding ways to “knit this building into the downtown” because he had to consider the city’s height requirements and the federal government requirements for office space.
The Ottawa Urban Design Awards granted the James Michael Flaherty Building an award of merit for its contribution to the downtown core. The jury noted that the building “anchors the backdrop to a future National Monument on the Mackenzie King Bridge triangle at Elgin Street.”
McRobie says he thinks part of the reason the Flaherty building won an award of merit was because of the building’s permeability. “You can get into it from a number of ways and you can also get into the facilities right off the street, so it’s more like a traditional streetscape with storefronts,” McRobie explains. He says this was an important feature that was heavily supported by the city and the National Capital Commission, which has authority over building designs along the ceremonial Confederation Boulevard, which includes a northern stretch of Elgin Street.
Like the Flaherty building, the Sir John A. Macdonald Building is also accessible from different points. Brandt says the structure has an impact on the three streets it faces: Wellington, Sparks, and O’Connor. It is situated across the street from Parliament Hill and is part of a wall of buildings intended as a foil to the somewhat empty Hill, according to Brandt.
The federally-owned Macdonald building, now part of the Parliamentary precinct and intended to be used for ceremonial and celebratory functions, also had a set of challenges Brandt and the other architects had to overcome. The biggest, Brandt says, was the building’s heritage rating. He explains that the Federal Heritage Buildings Review Office called the former BMO location “a document of Canadian architectural accomplishment.”
The original Bank of Montreal building was constructed in 1932. Even then, the building was recognized for its architectural contribution to the cityscape. The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada awarded a gold medal to Ernest Barrott, the bank’s architect, for its impeccable design. The rehabilitated heritage site received the most prestigious award in the urban infill category for restoring “the somewhat dilapidated former bank to its original glory and filling in the adjacent empty lot with a contemporary insertion.”
Brandt says he was humbled by the award and makes it clear that the rehabilitation was not just about filling a gap but adding to the community. “You really have to respect the context in which you’re operating.”