OTTAWA—Projects in nine cities across Canada have been honoured with urban design awards that recognize “remarkable urban design initiatives,” says the jury of the 2016 National Urban Design Awards.
The winning projects range from urban infill to renewed public spaces and playful installations.
Among the winners was Montreal’s sprawling Technopole Angus Phase II from the firm Provencher Roy of Montreal. It won for best Urban Design Plan.
Established on contaminated industrial wasteland, the Technopole Angus Phase II is an initiative in sustainable urban revitalization, a media release indicates. The development plan, steered by the Société de développement Angus, aims to foster job creation as the developers reclaim brownfields.
The projected year of completion is 2025. The plan proposes a denser built environment, an affordable on-site residential component and the creation of numerous public spaces.
The project consists of:
- construction of 15 buildings of which more than half are office and work space;
- a residential component with 60 per cent of units constituting affordable housing and 15 per cent social housing;
- a network of public spaces;
- integration of a pedestrian street, with ecological corridors linking Jean Duceppe Park to the vegetated railway embankment;
- an urban woodland; and
- two public squares lined with businesses.
The judges commented: "The design creates a public realm with a high degree of pedestrian connectivity and permeability."
A notable winner in the Civic Design Projects category was Ottawa’s landmark Lansdowne Park revitalization, a design project from PFS Studio.
Home of the CFL’s Ottawa Redblacks, the rebuild followed the theme Win, Place, Show and transformed the site of the former Central Canadian Exhibition into a new waterfront park.
The project cost $28 million. Key elements of the plan included a Great Lawn, an urban square for the Ottawa farmers, a market, events plazas, civic gardens and orchards, a children’s play zone and water plaza, a refrigerated rink and two integrated public art pieces. The adaptive reuse of the Horticulture Building includes a teaching kitchen, community hall and City of Ottawa offices. The football stadium is now called TD Place. The judges said the plan "successfully achieves feelings of leisure, space and delight."
The National Urban Design Awards are part of a two-tier program held in co-operation with Canadian municipalities.
The program members are the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), the Canadian Institute of Planners and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects. The winners were announced April 11.
The awards will be presented during RAIC’s Festival of Architecture to be held in Nanaimo, B.C. from June 8 to 11.
Other winners are:
- Civic Design Projects, Nathan Phillips Square Revitalization, Toronto, PLANT Architect Inc. | Perkins + Will Canada in joint venture, with Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architecture and Adrian Blackwell Urban Projects. The judges say it was "a successful revitalization of a civic heart that draws people in with an enduring, timeless, restrained intervention."
- Community Initiatives, The Bench Project, Calgary, developers and designers: anonymous.
The judges say: "This project offers a new and vibrant interpretation of this basic piece of public furniture and cuts directly to what community-initiated urban design should be."
- Student Projects, Impose, Edmonton, Brad Comis, Sebastian Sauve-Hoover, Danielle Soneff of Threshold Art and Design working with Jesse Sherburne.
The judges say this design "evokes thoughts of human habitat and urban wildlife while making a connection to the built fabric."
- Regenerating Rossdale, Edmonton, Michael Zabinski, designer.
The judges say: "…a thought-provoking reclamation of an artifact of a previously polluting industry. It is a powerful statement of urban renewal."
- Urban Architecture, Union Street EcoHeritage, Vancouver, SHAPE Architecture Inc.
The judges say it "achieves an elegant solution that is both simple and profoundly important in creating a precedent for infill densification."
- Urban Fragments, Entre les Rangs, Montreal, Kanva.
The judges say it’s "inviting, educational and playful."
- Impulse, Montreal, Lateral Office / CS Design.
The judges say it’s "innovative and playful and brings people out into the city."
Special Jury Awards went to St. Patrick’s Island Park in Calgary, a Sustainable Development Award, Calgary Municipal Land Corporation; and Kinsmen Park in Saskatoon, winner of the Small or Medium Community Urban Design Award, space2place design inc. Certificate of Merit awards went to Ottawa’s Lansdowne Park, PFS Studio; Toronto’s Queen-Richmond Centre, Sweeny & Co Architects Inc.; the University of Ottawa Master Plan, University of Ottawa / Urban Strategies Inc.; Montreal’s Quartier des spectacles, Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles; and the Gore Pedestrianization Initiative, Veterans’ Place, Hamilton, The MBTW Group.
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