Architecture of Ottawa
The architecture of Ottawa is most marked by the city's role as the national capital of Canada. This gives the city a number of monumental structures designed to represent the federal government and the nation. As a historic city, the most significant architecture in the city centre tends to be Gothic Revival, Romantic and other Picturesque styles of architecture, with the Parliament Buildings, dating from the 1850s, being an example of Gothic Revival. Other buildings in the city follow formalistic and functional architectural styles.
Ottawa has always had a mix of different architectural styles, varying considerably based on what era a building or neighbourhood was constructed in. While founded in the early nineteenth century, few buildings outside of the Byward Market, Ottawa's old town, survive from that era and the vast majority of the city's structures date from the twentieth century. Much of the downtown was also greatly transformed in the 1960s and 1970s, and the swath of suburbs that surround the city also date from this period. Most of the city's remaining 19th century buildings are in the Byward Market, Parliament Hill, Sandy Hill, New Edinburgh, and to a lesser extent in Centretown. Areas such as the Byward Market and Parliament Hill allow the city to retain a certain European character despite the dominance of modern architecture.
Urban planning
Unlike several other national capitals, such as Paris and Washington, D.C., Ottawa was never built to a master plan. However, several commissions have played a role in determining the shape of the city. Colonel By envisioned building several grand boulevards but the difficulties of expropriation and demolition prevented this from happening. In the late 1880s, Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier developed a 50-year vision of the city's future development and created the Ottawa Improvement Commission. The early years of the OIC under the direction of Montreal-born architect Frederick Todd saw the removal of industry along the canal, the definition of Patterson Creek and the transfer of Rockcliffe Park to the federal government. In 1913, Sir Robert Borden appointed the Sir Henry Holt Commission which was the first to state the need for a national capital region and also the removal of railway lines from the downtown core.Twenty years later, the Federal District Commission and Prime Minister Mackenzie King urged the federal government to acquire land, which eventually led to the creation of Confederation Square. In 1939, King invited Jacques Gréber to create a master plan for the city. This plan proposed new parkways along the Ottawa and Rideau Rivers, included the idea for the Greenbelt, and urged the need for a ceremonial route to Parliament but the plan was not approved until 1951 by the government of Louis St. Laurent. Gréber's Plan has mostly been implemented and still affects the city today.
In 1958, the National Capital Commission replaced the Federal District Commission. As a federal agency, the NCC worked along with were then many individual municipal governments on the Ontario and Quebec sides in planning and designing the city. It acquired the lands for the Greenbelt and in the 1960s it removed the railway tracks from downtown, making rail travel less accessible, but also opening the Rideau Canal as a scenic tourist destination. The NCC continues to have a major role in planning and does have a long range plan for how to showcase the region as a national capital, but has limited legitimacy as an unelected bureaucracy.
The streets of central Ottawa follow a grid pattern, but it is frequently disrupted by the Rideau River and Rideau Canal, ensuring that few streets in most of the older neighbourhoods are very long. Outside of the core, the roads follow the modern standard of large avenues forming a grid, interspersed with a network of crescents and cul-de-sacs which create low-traffic, suburban neighbourhoods. The Queensway, a major highway, crosses almost all of the city from east to west, going just south of downtown. It was built in the 1960s, mostly over former railway tracks, and thus did not entail the same urban destruction as expressways in other cities. There are five road bridges, and one rail bridge, crossing over the Ottawa River, four of which are in the downtown area, ensuring that much of the interprovincial traffic, including many large trucks, pass through the centre of town.
Several planning decisions have played an important role in the development of Ottawa and its architecture. One long standing rule that had a great effect on the downtown core, was a prohibition on buildings being taller than the tall Peace Tower. It was instituted to prevent the Parliament Buildings from being dwarfed by more modern structures. Therefore Ottawa's central business district does not have the towering buildings found in most other North American cities, instead having a considerable number of mid-sized towers.This rule however is relaxed outside the downtown area, resulting in tall structures across the city, such as the Claridge Icon in Little Italy.
Ottawa is home to a large Greenbelt circling the entire urban core. It was created as an attempt to limit sprawl and encourage density, with mixed success. The Greenbelt has remained largely intact, but Ottawa's newest suburbs such as Kanata, Barrhaven, and Orleans have jumped over the belt. The Greenbelt is increasingly becoming a wide avenue of green between two developed areas. Prior to amalgamation in 2000 the region was divided into several communities each with its own planning guidelines and the suburbs have distinct characters. Kanata is especially notable as developer Bill Teron's attempt to create a modern suburb embracing garden city principles.
Urban Design Review Panel
The Downtown Ottawa Urban Design Review Panel is a commission set up by the City of Ottawa to guide and raise architectural design standards within the downtown core. It was formed in 2005 and consists of seven architects and 3 landscape architects who review development proposals, suggest changes, and make approval recommendations. The panel is part of the city's official plan to improve the overall design standards through incentives such as awards and design competitions. But it received criticism for being ineffective. In December 2009, all seven architects on the panel resigned in protest to Ottawa City Council, stating "that they are wasting their time in a largely fruitless effort to improve architecture" and that "design doesn't matter to this pariticular council".The panel was restructured on October 6, 2010. Ottawa's Urban Design Review Panel is now a permanent advisory panel made up of volunteer design professionals who perform a formal design review process and provide design recommendations for capital and private sector development projects that fall within the city's Design Priority Areas. According to the panel's website, its purpose is to "enhance the City's capabilities in achieving architectural and urban design excellence."
Institutional architecture
Federal government
The presence of the federal government has shaped every facet of the city of Ottawa, and its architecture has been dramatically affected for both good and ill. Ottawa exists as a major city almost solely because it was selected to be the capital of the new nation of Canada, and the federal government remains the dominant employer in the city. Many of Ottawa's most acclaimed structures are the result of federal government projects, but the affinity for cheapness and blandness of recent government buildings has also played a central role in Ottawa's perceived architectural dullness.File:East Block and Langevin Block.jpg|thumb|left|After Confederation, the federal government constructed a series of monumental structures, including the Victorian High Gothic Parliament buildings, and the Second Empire-styled Langevin Block.
In the years after Canadian Confederation, the Government of Canada constructed a series of monumental structures in Ottawa. The most important of these buildings was the Parliament of Canada, unquestionably Ottawa's most famous building and one also acclaimed by architectural critics. The parliamentary complex consists of a series of Neo-Gothic structures. They are one of the world's most prominent examples of Victorian High Gothic, with no attempts to ape medievalism, but rather a recombination of Gothic forms into a wholly original style of building. Early civil service buildings were built in similarly high style with the Second Empire Style Langevin Block and Baronial Connaught Building being two prominent examples. The Government of Canada Visitor Welcome Centre, a built addition to the parliament buildings as one of many ongoing projects on the site, and works to combine Neo-gothic and contemporary architectural styles in a way that blends the new architecture into its historical context.
Subsequent decades saw the federal government embrace modernism. The attitude towards government buildings also changed. In earlier eras, all government buildings were considered to be important symbols of the country, and designed to be both monumental and functional. However, by the 1960s, efficiency and cost effectiveness were the main goals of government projects. The many government structures built during this era thus tend to be models of International Style minimalism, unornamented, with no attempt at distinctiveness. Moreover, in an era of political discontent over high taxes it was even a priority that the buildings not be cheap, but also look cheap so that visitors from the regions wouldn't feel that the federal government was wasting their money in Ottawa. In this era the federal government decided to erect many of its new buildings outside of the downtown core. Partially for political reasons, the government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau opted to build a series of massive federal government office towers on the Quebec side of the border, most notably the Place du Portage and Terrasses de la Chaudière. In the western part of Ottawa a cluster of government buildings were built at Tunney's Pasture. The downtown core did see a great deal of building during this era, especially after the city eased its 150-foot height restriction on office towers. Examples include the Department of National Defence Headquarters by the canal and the Place de Ville complex, built by private developer Robert Campeau but largely housing government departments.
File:TunneysPasture2022.jpg|thumb|Tunney's Pasture is a cluster of government buildings in the western part of Ottawa. Most government structures built in the 1950s and 1960s were designed in a minimalist International Style.
Today the federal government has stuck with modernist simplicity for its functional buildings, but has turned again to monumental architecture for projects of national significance. Most notable are the three museums that have been built in the national capital over the last three decades. The new homes of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, National Gallery of Canada, and the Canadian War Museum are unique examples of postmodern architecture. All cost vast amounts of money, but they have also met with international acclaim. They also have allowed the capital to become a showcase for buildings by three of Canada's most prominent architects: Moshe Safdie, Douglas Cardinal, and Raymond Moriyama. The OPL and LAC Joint Facility is an ongoing project by the City of Ottawa, designed by Diamond Schmitt and KWC Architects whose form rejects traditional rectilinear geometry. The building's design is strongly connected to the natural landscape of the LeBreton Flats Area and will hopefully add to the list of critically acclaimed architecture found in Ottawa.