Confederation Centre of the Arts Revitalization
WINNER OF A 2024 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
Thoughtful, elegant, and inclusive. This strong intervention into the Brutalist architecture of the Confederation Centre of the Arts is an example of how 1960s architecture can be elevated to today’s standards of community. Prioritizing a street-level entrance changes the proportions of the existing façade, creating an entry that feels like it has always been there. The additional masses reference the heritage forms while skillfully creating contrast through materiality, considered fenestration, and a slight reveal that allows the forms to visually slide past each other. Ultimately, the new intervention strengthens the entire site.
– Matthew Hickey, juror
LOCATION Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
The Confederation Centre of the Arts (CCoA), in Charlottetown, PEI, is a textbook example of how an initially acclaimed effort by architects of one generation to design something noble, egalitarian, and enduring can look exclusionist and problematic several decades later.
Designed by Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold and Sise and completed in 1964, this Brutalist National Historic Site—conceived as “Canada’s national memorial to the Fathers of Confederation”—originally consisted of library, theatre, and art gallery buildings, extruded up through a podium edged with terraced planters, and framing a sunken courtyard. “The original intent of Brutalist architecture,” as Abbott Brown Architects notes in the award submission, “was to dislocate it from the normative iconography of power and make it accessible and empowering to all.”
Today, however, the CCoA’s physical inaccessibility and aloofness feels alienating and out of step with Canada’s heterogeneity. Prior to design work on this project, Abbott Brown co-sponsored a conference at which artists and others from diverse backgrounds explained why the very cultural centres meant to embody their voices felt uncomfortable and unwelcoming.
Drawing from the insights of that gathering, the Phase 1 Revitalization will transform and expand the former library pavilion into a new National Cultural Leadership Institute, which will offer a hub for convening on important Canadian issues, arts and cultural learning programs, as well as spaces for Canadian arts creation and hosting community events.
Abbott Brown’s intent is to preserve the integrity of the original architecture, while subverting its impenetrable character. New construction is restricted to the interstitial zones between the existing volumes, and to the adjacent plaza. Removing a swath of the perimeter terracing along Richmond Street, inserting new glazing, and situating a new atrium floor at grade opens one of the pavilions directly to the street. Within, the mass timber structure of the new connecting volumes takes the chill off the existing expanses of exposed concrete. Removing portions of the original Level 2 and Level 3 floors and inserting a translucent, load-bearing stair just below street level creates new atrium space at street level. The interstitial interventions also establish a new opening to the CCoA’s sunken Garden Courtyard.
In contrast with the original complex’s monolithically blank sandstone exterior walls, the cladding of the new additions combines generous glazing with panels formed from irregular, glazed, terracotta ribs. While keeping within an overall bone-white tonal range, the ribs will vary in profile, texture, and glazing. In this way, the manufactured panels will recall the subtle variations that are celebrated in the traditions of Japanese and Korean handcrafted ceramics. “The cladding itself is a subtle, luminous mosaic, offering the onlooker lively shifts and divergent impressions at different scales,” the award submission states. “It is an intentional, experiential metaphor for the complexity and diversity of contemporary society.”
Targeting CaGBC Zero Carbon Building – Design certification, this first phase of the CCoA’s revitalization preserves most of the existing mass-concrete structure, while introducing large central skylights, stack-effect ventilation, PV rooftop arrays, and many other strategies for improved energy performance.
CLIENT Confederation Centre of the Arts | ARCHITECT TEAM Alec Brown (MRAIC), Jane Abbott (MRAIC), June Jung, Katelyn Latham, Karen Mills, Blake Klotz, Brittany Dwyer, Camila Lima, Saejin Lim, Celina Abba, Leanna Letterio, Kaley Doleman, Jack Ziemanski, Tony Rukongwa, Will McInnes | STRUCTURAL/CIVIL SCL Engineering | MECHANICAL MCA Consultants | ELECTRICAL Richardson Associates | LANDSCAPE NIPPAYSAGE | QUANTITY SURVEYOR QSolv | SUSTAINABILITY reLoad Sustainable Design | CODE LMDG | ACOUSTICS Fox Technologies | CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT Brighton Construction | AREA 4,000 m2 | BUDGET $60 M | STATUS Under construction | ANTICIPATED COMPLETION May 2026
ENERGY USE INTENSITY (EUI)116 kWh/m2/year | THERMAL ENERGY DEMAND INTENSITY (TEDI)34.9 kWh/m2/year | GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS INTENSITY (GHGI)24 kg CO2e/m2 | WATER USE INTENSITY (WUI) 0.17 m3/m2/year
As appeared in the December 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine
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You can read our jury’s full comments here.
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