SAINT-EUSTACHE LIBRARY BY ACDF*

"Il nuovo edificio sarà il ponte tra la città e la natura, tra la tranquillità evocata dai fiumi e la vita frenetica della città.” Con queste parole il Sindaco di Saint-Eustache, a nord di Montréal in Canada ha presentato nel 2010 il progetto della nuova biblioteca.

Un progetto che simboleggia la riconciliazione tra la forma urbana attuale di Saint-Eustache, e la storia del luogo lungo il fiume. Il nuovo edificio funziona come un ponte tra la cultura, città e natura, la tranquillità e il movimentodella comunità.

 La biblioteca si trova lungo il fiume Îles Mille al crocevia di due importanti strade urbane con una posizione geografica vantaggiosa e funzionale a divenire il cuore culturale della città con una proposta culturale che raddoppia nelle dimensioni la biblioteca preesistente, non è più conforme agli standard di qualità riconosciuti per le biblioteche pubbliche in Québec

La proposta progettuale si basa sull'idea di "vivere insieme", promuovendo lo scambiocontinuo tra gli utenti della biblioteca, il personale, e gli abitanti di Saint-Eustache. Un luogo d’incontro tra cultura e socialità che diventa un importante centro urbano e si adatta alle necessità di una comunità in crescita.

La biblioteca è dotata di uno spazio polifunzionale che può ospitare mostre ed eventi anche per ragazzi e bambini, ai quali sono state dedicate apposite sale lettura.

È dotata di postazioni internet, aree gioco e di allattamento con arredi appositamente studiati da condividere tra genitori e figli creando un ambiente confortevole e familiare.

L'edificio offre una vista unica del fiume Îles Mille, con una luminosità eccezionale. La sua architettura integra diversi principi eco-compatibili, con un’attenzione al risparmio energetico e con l'utilizzo di materiali di qualità per garantire la sostenibilità del progetto.

Il concetto volumetrico del progetto è basato su un semplice tubo estruso rettangolare che viene piegato due volte. A ciascuna estremità del tubo elevata,superfici vetrate aprire completamentealla vista sul fiume a livello delle cime degli alberi abbondanti.

Unasala di lettura è a sbalzo di 3,5 metrisopra la riva del fiume in pendenza, rafforzando i punti di vista e fornendo copertura per la terrazza esterna.

La finestratura e l'articolazione dei due prospetti laterali è strategicamente minima, ponendo una maggiore enfasi sulla trasparenza della parte anteriore e posteriore del progetto.

 

Location: Saint-Eustache, Canada
Architects: ACDF* Architecture
Design Team: Maxime Frappier, Joan Renaud, Laurence Lebeux, Martin Champagne, Marc-André Plourde, Matthew Belaen, Robert Dequoy, Laurence Lessard, Véronique Taillefer
Structure: SDK
Civil Engineering: Marchand Houle
Landscape: Plannex
General Contractor: OPRON Construction
Area: 2,600 sqm
Year: 2012
Photographs: Courtesy of ACDF* Architecture

PRINCE ARTHUR’S LANDING BY BROOK MCILROY

The City of Thunder Bay is home to one of Canada’s most historically significant sites on the north shore of Lake Superior.

In March 2006, the City of Thunder Bay commissioned a team led by Brook McIlroy to undertake the design of a new mixed-use village that extends Prince Arthurs Landing to the edge of Lake Superior.

The redesign of the City’s historic port provides residents with a truly unique waterfront destination that embodies the spirit of this spectacular setting.

In 2009, the City was awarded the second largest contribution in Ontario under the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund program. Through a $22 million investment, the City successfully leveraged a comprehensive revitalization project with a construction value of $130 million.

In the space of two years, its downtown waterfront has been radically transformed into a hybrid between a mixed-use village and a highly animated waterfront park that reconnects the Lake Superior shoreline to its downtown.

The project demonstrates innovation in creating activities, forms and spaces that integrate local culture and reflect the uniquely indigenous opportunities of sustainable city building in Canada.

While Prince Arthurs Landing demonstrates the potential to transform former industrial property along Thunder Bay’s Waterfront – there are many other sites along the coastline with structures – grain elevators, railway sheds and other shipping related structures that are abandoned.

These lands have the potential to become destinations along a connected waterfront public space system. Once perceived as derelict and disregarded land plots, are now the foundation of a revitalized downtown waterfront, and also subject to a theoretical investigation on themes of urban intensification, transformation and re-inhabitation.    

The project is based on a philosophy of urban design which embodies the spirit, materiality and culture of northern Ontario and this magnificent waterfront setting overlooking “Nanabijou” / the Sleeping Giant – a landform on the horizon, which is one of Canada’s most powerful and iconic natural vistas.

Inspiration was drawn from thousands of years of aboriginal settlement history; the western threshold of the greatest and largest freshwater ‘sea’ in the world; the launch-pad of settlement of Western Canada; the junction between the western railways and ships of the Great Lakes; and, the place where western and northwestern Canadian troops bid farewell as they headed off to WWI and WWII.  

 






Location: Thunder Bay’s, Canada 
Architects: Brook McIlroy 
Intern Architect: Ryan Gorrie 
Consulting Architects: Leonard Alfred Wood Architects 
Aboriginal Community Consultation: Aboriginal Strategy Group 
Artist: Randy Thomas 
Photographs: David Whittaker 
Awards: International Downtown Association, 2012 Pinnacle Award 
Royal Architectural Institute of Canada National Urban Design Award, Medal, Urban Fragments Category for Gathering Circle, 2012

SQUISH STUDIO BY SAUNDERS ARCHITECTURE

The Squish Studio is located just outside the small town of Tilting on the eastern end of Fogo Island. First settled in the mid-18th century, Tilting is known for its strong Irish culture and its recent designation by Parks Canada as a National Cultural Landscape District of Canada.

The Squish Studio’s white angular form, sited on a rocky strip of coastline, that could rival Italy’s western coast, offers sharp contrast to the traditional vernacular architecture of the nearby picturesque community of Tilting.

As its architect, Todd Saunders, has commented on the studio’s siting, “…it is out of sight, but close.” The approach to the front entry of the studio is dramatic, as the most southern end of the studio rises twenty feet above the ground, in sharp contrast to its most northern tip that measures only half that dimension.

The compact, trapezium shaped plan of the studio is augmented by the extension of the east and west exterior walls to create a sheltered, triangulated south entry deck and a north terrace that overlooks the ocean.

From a distant view, the streamlined form of the Squish Studio becomes apparent with its high back and low (squished) front designed, in part, to deflect the winds from the stormy North Atlantic. As we approach the entry of the studio we are greeted by Silke Otto-Knapp, a London-based artist and the first occupant of the Squish Studio.

As Silke brings us through the studio, the spatial compression of the tall and narrow entry area gives way to the horizontal expanse of the main room. The downward angled roof leads the eye to the full height oblong glass window focused on a splendid view of Round Head. The vertical white planks that line the interior walls are interrupted by a playful series of narrow windows integrated with an expanse of built in cabinetry.

Silke’s quick figurative studies on paper are posted on the walls, as well as, several large scale canvasses. She is delighted to work in such an architecturally inspired space, especially when it is stormy and she can experience the immediacy of the sea and, on some days, observe the dramatic shift of the island’s weather.

The Squish Studio, like most of its other counterparts, is equipped with a compost toilet, a small kitchenette and wood-burning stove. Power is supplied by stand- alone solar panels, mounted on an adjacent hilltop. Both the interior and exterior of the studio, including the roof, is clad with spruce planks that are painted white.

At night, the studio, illuminated by the soft glow of its solar-powered lighting, appears as a lantern or a lighthouse placed strategically on a rocky cliff to over- look the North Atlantic.

In its isolation, one can also imagine a sole occupant, vulnerable but protected from the elements – inspired to work late into the night, occasionally distracted by the crash of the waves, or perhaps, fully immersed in the work at hand, the first glimpse of the sunrise through the Squish Studio’s slot windows that face the north-eastern horizon.

 

Location: Fogo Island, Canada 
Architects: Saunders Architecture 
Team Architects: Attila Béres, Ryan Jørgensen, Ken Beheim Schwarzbach, Nick Herder, Rubén Sáez López, Soizic Bernard, Colin Hertberger, Christina Mayer, Olivier Bourgeois, Pål Storsveen, Zdenek Dohnalek 
Associate Architect: Sheppard Case Architects Inc. (Long Studio) 
Size: 130 sqm 
Year: 2011 
Client: Shorefast Foundation and the Fogo Island Arts Corporation 
Photographer: Bent René Synnevåg

GATHERING CIRCLE AT THE SPIRIT GARDEN BY BROOK MCILROY AND RYAN GORRIE

The Gathering Circle is an open-air pavilion located within the Spirit Garden at Prince Arthur’s Landing on Thunder Bay’s Downtown Waterfront. The Spirit Garden is a headland extending into Lake Superior and is one component of a larger revitalized public park.

The Gathering Circle is the main structure within the Spirit Garden, and gives expression to the deep cultural and historic roots that link Aboriginal peoples to the Lake Superior shoreline. Its design reflects an adaptation of a traditional Aboriginal bentwood building technique, using modest means of construction and sustainable building practice.

Young spruce trees were harvested in the spring by a local Aboriginal craftsman and were bent and lashed to create twenty arched, truss-like column supports. The trusses were then mounted along the circumference of the circular platform and layered with a pattern of curved cedar strips creating a semi-enclosed shroud.

The platform is a circular drum-shaped concrete retaining wall that also provides seating for viewers into the circle. Four radiating tentacles emanate from the drum into the undulating landscape. The pattern echoes imagery associated with Anishinabe woodland art.

The design was created as a collaboration between Brook McIlroy and a young Aboriginal intern architect/artist, Ryan Gorrie from Thunder Bay. The outer wall of the drum is lined with ten weathering steel laser-cut panels designed by local Aboriginal artist Randy Thomas.

The Gathering Circle tucks into the south hillside providing a natural amphitheater configuration. Large ash tree logs drape across the hillside – recycled from a nearby park. The eighty-foot diameter Gathering Circle provides the City’s residents and visitors with an event space for ceremonies, blessings, music, story telling, theatre and gatherings.

A main pedestrian path connects with the Circle’s archway entrance at the cardinal east and west points inviting visitors in, while a circular footpath circulates between the twenty bentwood arches. The shroud is a ‘light-catcher’– a patterned surface of overlapping, divergent planes that enables views through its wooden frame onto the adjacent waterfront as well as the City’s downtown.

By night, a network of soft lighting highlights the curving, luminous shell form that can be seen from many vantage points throughout the City. The bentwood shroud transforms depending on the season and time of day - reflective of the profound beauty and spiritual resonance of Lake Superior’s north shore. 

Thunder Bay has a significant Aboriginal population, yet the presence of this founding culture (which has inhabited this shoreline for 9,000 years) in the fabric of the cityscape is virtually invisible. The design evolved from a series of workshops hosted by the City of Thunder Bay that drew together community representatives from Fort William First Nation, communities of the Robinson Superior Treaty and Red Sky Métis.

The Gathering Circle gives expression to a rich culture and strives to serve as a common ground – a place of meditation, mediation and celebration – gathering together all cultures. The Gathering Circle reflects Aboriginal concepts of the inclusive circle, peaceful co-existence and respect for the natural world created through adaptations of traditional building methods. 

Location: Thunder Bay, Canada

Architect: BrookMcIlroy and Ryan Gorrie

Engineer:Blackwell Bowick 

Client: City of Thunder Bay

Awards: Ontario Association of Architects Award, Artifact Category, 2012 Royal Architectural Institute of Canada National Urban Design Award, Medal, Urban Fragments Category, 2012 

North American Wood Design, Award Citation for Gathering Circle, 2012