Home / Chateau in Distress
Friday, July 5, 2019
Many of you will have read about Barry Padolsky's open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the Château Laurier. Here is the letter in full, with illustrations, reproduced with Mr. Padolsky's permission. WHY THE PROPOSED ADDITION TO OTTAWA'S CHATEAU LAURIER SHOULD BE REDESIGNED AN OPEN LETTER TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN... More
Thursday, July 4, 2019
In a piece in today’s National Post, Larco representative Dennis Jacobs used what I call the “Disneyland Cliché”: What they want to see is a replica Disneyland version of the hotel. We can’t give them Disneyland, but they still want it. He doesn’t say who “they” are, nor how he knows what “they” want... More
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
The vote on the Château Laurier that City Council will have tomorrow is profoundly important. Not because of its potential impact on what gets built (I remain pessimistic about that), but because it is City Council’s last chance to atone for evading its responsibility a year ago, when it voted to “conditionally accept” the... More
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Heritage Ottawa’s exhibition of student designs for an addition to the Château Laurier was a memorable event. People came, saw, asked questions, gave their views… this is what public consultation looks like. You can read some of the press coverage of the event in the Ottawa Citizen, Radio-Canada, and le Droit. Visitors were invited... More
Monday, December 3, 2018
I’ve believed for a long time that the proposed addition to the Château Laurier was based on faulty premises that need to be re-thought. So, just what are the ‘premises’ that inform what a building might look like? First, there’s what’s known as the building’s program. This defines what job the building is required... More
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
https://vimeo.com/301929976 Remember the first proposal for an addition to the romantic, picturesque Château Laurier? It was two boxes. Remember the second version? It was one long, low box. Remember the third? It was a long, low box with fins. Impressed by that variety of design ideas? Neither was anyone else. Throughout this excruciating and... More
Friday, June 29, 2018
Anyone who wrote to the mayor recently expressing concerns about the proposed addition to the Château Laurier received exactly the same boilerplate reply, regardless of the specific nature of their concerns. It began with a stern reminder that the Château was private property, and went on to enumerate the many changes the design had... More
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
The proposed extension of the Château Laurier lurched one more step towards a bad conclusion on June 26, when Planning Committee approved a motion by the Built Heritage Sub-Committee to accept the current design on the condition that it be made ‘more compatible’ with the historic Château. I know this sounds kind of vague,... More
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Today (June 26) the City’s Planning Committee met to vote on the Built Heritage Sub-Committee’s motion on the Château Laurier. I had a scheduling conflict and was unable to attend, but below are the remarks I submitted. My thanks to Linda Hoad for reading them to the Committee on my behalf. The Standards and... More
Friday, June 22, 2018
Several objections were raised at last Monday’s meeting of the Built Heritage Sub-Committee to the proposed extension of the Château Laurier. The thread that ran through them all was the issue of compatibility. Or more precisely, the complete lack of compatibility of the extension with the historic building. The first three speakers were... More
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
I said in my last blog that Monday’s meeting of the Built Heritage Sub-Committee (BHSC) at City Hall had an unusual outcome. They met to discuss the recommendation by City staff that the current iteration of the proposed expansion of the Château Laurier (above) be accepted. Normally, the committee would vote to either accept... More
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
I found myself back at City Hall on Monday. The Built Heritage Sub-Committee met to consider City staff’s recommendation that the latest design proposal for the extension of the Château Laurier be accepted. I was one of several speakers who signed up to argue against the recommendation (apart from the architect and his associates,... More
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