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Canadian architect, landscape architect and urban designer Roger du Toit has been posthumously awarded the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s 2017 Gold Medal. The influential designer, who passed away in 2015, amassed a rich, diverse portfolio throughout his 45-year career, including Toronto’s CN Tower, Regina’s Wascana Centre, and 45 projects across 25 Canadian university campuses.
His RAIC Gold Medal, recognizing a significant and lasting contribution to Canadian Architecture, will be accepted by his widow Sheila du Toit and two sons at the RAIC/OAA Festival of Architecture in Ottawa in May.
On January 15, 2015, Allan Teramura, FRAIC, was named the 77th President of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC). The Ottawa architect is a principal at Watson MacEwen Teramura Architects, and has advocated for healthier, sustainable Aboriginal communities in Canada.
Urban waterfronts have historically been the center of activity for many cities. They began as economic, transportation and manufacturing hubs, but as most industries changed their shipping patterns and consolidated port facilities, many industrial waterfronts became obsolete. In Europe, smaller historic ports were easily converted to be reused for leisure activities. However, in North America, where the ports were larger, it was more difficult to convert the waterfronts due to logistical and contamination issues.
Over the past 40 years or so, architects and urban planners have started to recognize the redevelopment potential for waterfronts across the United States and Canada, and the impact they can have on the financial and social success of cities. Though cold-climate cities pose a unique challenge for waterfront development, with effective planning waterfront cities with freezing winter months can still take advantage of the spaces year-round.
ABSTRAKT Studio Architecture has won a nation-wide competition to design Canada’s national memorial to the victims of communism in Ottawa. Select from six finalists, ABSTRAKT’s provocative design superimposes 100 million singular pixel-like memory squares, each representing the fingertip of the lives lost, on a folded triangular concrete plane.
“As the most prolific communist murderer Joseph Stalin famously said: 'One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic’… This 'statistic' takes main stage in our design by realizing its sheer enormity, thus raising awareness that every human life is unique and precious,” stated ABSTRAKT.
Daniel Libeskind’s “elongated Star of David” has been announced today, the architect's 67th birthday, as the winner of an international design competition for Canada’s National Holocaust Monument. Selected from a shortlist of six, the winning "Landscape of Loss, Memory and Survival" monument is expected to be constructed in the Canadian capital of Ottawa on the corner of Wellington and Booth Streets sometime next year.
David Adjaye and Daniel Libeskind are among six interdisciplinary teams competing to design Canada’s National Holocaust Monument. Planned for an empty, triangular site adjacent to Ottawa’s Canadian War Museum, the monument designs are currently undergoing public review before a final decision that will be made by an international jury of design and art professionals this spring. Construction is expected to begin in 2015.
Review the proposals, after the break...
In this interesting report in the Ottawa Citizen, Maria Cook exposes the plan to renovate the Arthur Erickson-designed Bank of Canada Building in Ottawa. The existing building, which features a public atrium complete with a tropical garden, is being extensively remodeled to improve security and building performance, although arguably at great cost to the design. Cook exposes how the bank turned down a prestigious design award in 2011 as it was already at that point privately considering the changes, and explains how its privileged position - related to the government but not controlled by it - effectively means that the bank has nobody it has to answer to who might stop these plans. You can read the full article here.
Daniel Libeskind and David Adjaye, along with four other shortlisted teams, are competing to design the National Holocaust Monument in Canada. Planned to be built in a prominent site in the heart of Ottawa, near the Canadian War Museum, the $4.5 million monument is expected for completion in 2015.
The jury, made up of internationally renowned art and design professionals, a representative from the National Holocaust Monument Development Council and a Holocaust survivor, chose the following six teams as finalists:
Honoring the victims and Canadian survivors of the Holocaust, the National Capital Commission, on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is inviting teams of professional artists, architects, landscape architects, and other design professionals to submit their credentials and examples of prior work for the first stage of a two-phase competition to create a national Holocaust monument in Ottawa, Canada’s Capital. This monument will ensure that the Holocaust continues to have a permanent place in our nation’s consciousness and memory. The RFQ document is available now until September 4. To obtain the competition document, and for more information, please visit here.
.jpg?1431654800 "Lower Yonge project in Toronto. Image © Chris Foyd courtesy of Perkins+Will")
