pushing the water agenda
review | city of calgary water building by peter osborne + joylyn teskey
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program (LEED) rating system has standardised the green agenda, provided architects with a tool to rate and pro- mote sustainability and has given cities a way to quantify and describe sustainable design. Calgary’s Water Centre will meet or exceed the LEED silver standard.
metaphor civic branding expressionism sustainability calgary
branded
Everything in [architecture], from its fondness for certain shapes to the ap- proaches to specific building problems which it finds most natural, reflects the conditions of the age from which it springs. –Sigfried Giedion 1 Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth , Richard Branson’s $25,000,000 prize for greenhouse gas removal, and the highly publicised appointment of John Baird as Canada’s new environment minister have kept the environment front and centre on the 6 o’clock news. Sustainable de- velopment, green building and our environment are important issues these days. Environmental events such as Hurricane Katrina, 2006’s boil water order in Vancouver, and rapidly melting polar ice sheets have directed our focus onto water. Once thought of as a renewable resource, water is now perceived as a scarce commodity. Architects have long been contributors to the environmental problem; lately they are increasing- ly aware of a groundswell of consciousness about the environment. However there have always been some architects designing sustain- able buildings. Manasc Isaacs Architects and Sturgess Architecture have collaborated in a new sustainable architecture project for the City of Calgary, the Water Centre, currently under construction on the edge of Stampede Park in the Manchester industrial area. architects + public interest + our environment + LEED = sustainable build- ings The new Water Centre amalgamates four hundred waterworks and waste water department administrative staff from across the city. Although it is an office building, not a water treatment plant, the Centre’s functional design strategies and building systems make a one-to-one connection between the worker and water as a resource. Several LEED points come from water-related strategies — capturing water on site, and using it in low-flush toilets, waterless urinals and for irrigation, reduces water use by 59% and wastewater production by 72%. Architecturally, the building is detailed to reveal water. Rainwater downspouts, commonly hidden inside buildings or camouflaged on the façade, here are proudly freestanding, travelling in a straight, diagrammatic line from the curved roof to the xeriscape below. The building’s floor plan bends fluidly to the curve of the road. An arc of galvalum-clad roof starts at the street edge and curls over the build- ing, cresting over a south-facing courtyard. The wave continues out over the entrance as a thin arch of roof supported by a lone column. The shining silver wave of wall-come-roof is supported by a variegat- ed blue-green curtain wall which cants towards the courtyard — the aquamarine atrium is like looking through water to the outside world. The building narrows to the east like a travelling wave cresting over the courtyand. From the street however, the building appears to be a typical office building. Rectangular office spaces puncture the curve, distorting the reading of the wave.
global markets + branding + metaphor = Bilbao effect Giedion suggests that the zeitgeist inspires architecture. Although architects are being inspired to build ‘green’, our age is defined by more than just the quest for a sustainable future. The effects of a global market and its demand for unique branding, are shaping the built environment. Architects are commissioned to produce iconic buildings whose images can be reproduced and easily associated with a particular idea and place. Their buildings must convey a message, often in direct contrast to the their functional requirements. It is not news that architecture conveys a message. Gothic forms and ornament explained Christianity to illiterate masses; an extremely rational architecture articulated twentieth century fascism in Italy and Germany; more recently architects have used increasingly expressive, metaphoric and often irrelevant forms to create image and brand recognition for cities and corporations. Metaphor gives expression to forms; sometimes it relates to a message or brand and sometimes it does not. Frank Gehry describes his work, ‘I was looking for move- ment earlier, and found it in fish’. 2 Gehry’s metaphors of fish or luffing sails do not necessarily add meaning to the function of an art gallery, but they do bring identity to the building’s brand. In Sturgess Architecture and Manasc Isaac Architects’ first col- laboration, the 1990 Yukon Visitor Reception Centre in Whitehorse, metaphor both reflected the culture of the place and brought meaning to the building. Lisa Rochon described the structure as ‘arched glue- laminated beams to echo a skeleton of a whale or the curved ribbing of a kayak’. 3 Here, the metaphor gives the building an identifiable image and refers to the culture in which it resides, even if the visitor centre is neither a whale or a kayak. Metaphor is also a form generator in the Water Centre. Water, abstractly, gives the building its shape. From a distance, the rising wave form is the first and most obvious indication of the metaphor; it gives the builidng an easily understadable image, bringing atten- tion to the City of Calgary’s green agenda. As the scarcity of clean water increases, so will the legibility of the sustainability message. However, the Water Centre only metaphorically connects both observ- ers and users to the resource of which they are stewards: the building does not produce cleaner water for Calgary, it only represents cleaner water. Its metaphor brings attention to the greater issue but does not contribute directly to its solution. D 1 Sigfried Giedion. Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition . 5th ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982. p.19. 2 Mildred Friedman, editor. Gehry Talks: Architecture + Process . New York, New York: Riz- zoli International Publications Inc., 2005. p.42. ibid , p.43. 3 Lisa Rochon. Up North: Where Canada’s Architecture Meets the Land . Toronto, Ontario: Key Porter Books Ltd., 2005. p.239.
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