Environmental HQ
This was the first project I did with such a large programme.
The building here was for an environmental agency HQ in Quebec City, and the programme included such requirements as research laboratories, auditoria, a restaurant, a public exhibition room, and offices for three different branches of the agency.
Furthermore, the site was extremely long and narrow, and part of the programme included the landscaping of the site.
This was not, I think, a particularly successful project.
However, it made me realise several things.
Firstly, I found that I can often recognise it when I am designing a dead space.
Christopher Alexander talks about a "quality without a name" which defines a space that is alive; here, I could sense with every stroke of my pencil the absence of this quality.
I called it, at the time, my "vision of concrete".
I had yet to read Christopher Alexander.
I think one of the aspects of the project which made it, for me, a "dead" space was the sheer, overwhelming horizontality and the disorganised sprawl.
At the end, the only portion of the project which I liked was the six-storey tower in one corner, meant to house the activist branch, one floor of which may be seen below.
The spaces here were efficient and intimate; there was a sense that all the spaces belonging to this area were, at each level, within easy reach.
In contrast, the rest of the building felt as though one had to do an excessive amount of travel to get from one point to another within the scope of the overall function of the area.
Thus, an efficient layout is one of the key components of what makes a building alive or dead.
Inefficiency breeds discomfort.
When it is inconvenient to travel, one generally doesn't travel.
This leads to stagnation. And that, in turn, creates a "dead" space.
Christopher Huang, February 2001
e-mail christopher.huang@mcgill.ca