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passion for the people and landscape of the Canadian arctic inspirit this project, dedicated to polar issues of building and
Interior hall, Nunuvut Legislative Building
architecture specific to place.The development of the Canadian content for this issue was awarded a grant in Assistance to Practitioners, Critics and Curators of Architecture by the Canada Council for the Arts .This support has enabled boundaries to be expanded and for images of our own northern region to be brought into the context of countries of similar latitudes and into the main- stream of architectural discussion. On the world’s architectural periphery, the Poles have escaped critical discussion since the frontier pressures of the 1970’s. Technical and social experiments litter the North’s landscapes, yet the built fabric depicted in these pages often reveals modern places of their own telling. Building on the very tip of the world, we are reminded that architecture is shelter and the successful weaving of human habitation with its environment —TM
Iqaluit, Nunavut
Relationship to the ground A building’s relationship to the ground affects accessibility and articulates the psychological connection of people to landscape.A large percentage of northern building stock sits on wood or steel piles, space frames or pads and wedges. The floor is lifted off of the ground so that air can circulate between the heated building and the permafrost in the soil below. However, this creates a separation between the act of dwelling and life on the land, a condi- tion foreign to northern life. An alternative to piles that allows building access to remain at grade is a thermosyphon system which is a passive ground loop charged with liquid CO 2 . This evaporates as heat is drawn from the surrounding soil and rises into vertical radiator fins that when exposed to a cooler exterior air temperature causes the gas to condense, releasing absorbed heat to the atmosphere and maintaining frozen ground conditions. A tem- perature differential is required for thermo- syphons to operate — they remain dormant otherwise. Although typically considered a technical issue, the foundation of a building and the relation- ship of the floor surface to exterior grade is very much about people and the functional fluidity of inside and outside activity.
Daylight Harvesting A day in Yellowknife (62º north latitude) has 20.7 hours of light in June and only 5 hours in December; Resolute Bay (74º north) has a three month summer where the sun never sets and three months of complete winter darkness.The lengthening or shortening of daylight in the north is really swift. In Resolute Bay it will extend or retract by about an hour a week . Summer sun is low in the sky, with maximum solar altitudes of 51º in Yellowknife and 39º in Resolute. This horizontal source of light and warmth brings light deep into buildings through south facing windows, and also results in overheating during the intense summer period, extreme glare, and north facing surfaces perpetually in cold and shadow. With a lack of balance in dealing with seasonal extremes, user-installed aluminum foil on south facing windows and blinds that are drawn during summer months, both responses to the unrelenting daylight, are a common sight in northern communities. South facing exterior areas rarely take advantage of the vertical surfaces of buildings that absorb heat and then re-radiate it. Life in the north revolves around the seasons and, ultimately, the arrival and departure of the sun. Allowing the sun to penetrate northern buildings, to warm exte- rior surfaces and play a role in the daily life of a building is critical.Type, location and angle of glass, building orientation, and the use of natu- ral, passive and user-controlled shading devices are the palette used to balance day lighting with heat gain and glare with an unhindered visual connection to the landscape. Daylight hours and altitude taken from Harold Strub’s Bare Poles; Building Design for High Latitudes , Appendix A 2.31, p165-166.
The physical and social requirements of the Canadian North for sensitive architecture are the most demanding in our nation, with the least forgiving physical environment. Climate, frozen ground, remoteness and the specif- ics of aboriginal culture with a very recent nomadic past create a different architectural playing field from that ‘south of 60’.
Northern Detail Tracey Mactavish
n orthern detail is defined through four concepts: daylight harvesting, relation- ship to the ground, cultural significance and response to the land. These concepts can be found in existing buildings but the subtlety of their impact on habitation is difficult to define.
On Site review 11
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Spring 2004
Architecture of the Circumpolar Region
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