WIDC Wins Award
Prince George, B.C.- The Wood Innovation and Design Centre at the corner of 5th Avenue and George Street in Prince George, has been awarded a Governor General’s Medal for Architecture.
The medal recognizes outstanding achievement in recently built projects by Canadian architects. “The recipients of the Governor General’s Medals in Architecture have distinguished themselves as visionary Canadian architects” says Governor General David Johnston. “They have designed spaces where communities are forged, memories are enshrined and identity is created in built form. Few architects are able to realize their philosophies so fully in practice and in such diversity of project type and geography.”
WIDC , designed by Architect Michael Green, is one of 12 projects awarded a medal. The jury panel which chose the winning entries made the following comments about the building:
“This Centre celebrates wood as a handsome and sustainable material, and demonstrates its viability for tall buildings. It is more than just a technological experiment; the project combines intelligence, beauty, and innovation in its approach to features such as the engineered wood curtain wall system, interior finishes, and modulation of sunlight. The jury applauds this exceptional structure that exhibits one of the unique contributions made to design and construction research in Canada and beyond.”
Michael Green also received a medal for designing the new Ronald McDonald House in Vancouver.
The medals will be presented in September. Dr. Dan Ryan, Interim Vice President and Provost at UNBC, commented on the award this afternoon.
“I think it’s fantastic for Michael Green, it’s fantastic for the government, they own the building. Michael Green was an honourary degree recipient here at UNBC in 2014 and we’ve been very fortunate to have some space in that building, especially for our program, which is a Masters of Engineering and what they’re learning is how to build buildings like this, all the engineering that goes into them.”
Comments
the windows covered with wood are not attractive though, part of it looks great, some of it looks like its waiting to get real windows installed
Frankly the building comes in second to the new police station as for wood and design. Really the people that make these decisions must have their head up their ass or hand only one pick.
Or maybe no one submitted the new RCMP building for consideration?
Obviously beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the new RCMP building is absolutely ridiculous. The “architectural features” of the building are art pieces only and have nothing to do with the actual structure of the building. In my opinion, that’s a major fail.
I’m disappointed how it turned out. The black colouring makes it look like burnt wood and the boards over the windows make it look condemned. They should have kept its natural colour.
The black wood siding actually is burnt wood!
Exactly. I think the burned wood is pretty neat, but the unfortunate part is that not all pieces are as blackened as all the others. I agree with the other posters though…the un-treated wood really does look like borded up windows.
I still hope that Photofax across the street goes out of business. Those guys are so lazy and don’t give a s#it about how their building looks.
Better then what was there.
“Better then what was there.”
One neutral comment amidst the usual negativity! A reason to perhaps quietly celebrate. Congratulations to Mr. Green!
Whoever chose that as worthy of architectural recognition should get their eyes checked. That building looks like someone did a drive-by and the owners couldn’t afford to replace the glass. I guess the designers wanted it to fit right in to the downtown area, so they made it an eyesore right off the bat instead of waiting for dry rot to take it’s course like the rest of the buildings down there.
That GG award must be the architectural equivalent of a Razzie because that is one butt ugly building. Can’t believe politicians get sucked into ridiculous expenditures by snake oil salesmen posing as “nouveau artiste”. Have they not heard of The Emperor’s New Clothes or the point behind that fable?
Where’s the little kid of a visiting dignitary to yell out at the most timely point possible “hey that looks like crap!” So they will give it a facelift?
So, lets forget the outside of the building for a minute. Is there anything going on inside, or is it empty.???
The Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations has three floors, and then the UNBC wood engineering program and Emily Carr have the other floors.
It must be the engineering inside the building mostly that the award was given for.
I certainly wouldn’t expect the outward appearance would win much of anything.
Doesn’t look like it has won the hearts of many people here.
I was expecting much more given how creative you can be with wood. Then they build this? I’ve been and looked up close. Huge disappointment. The exterior looks like sh%t. I hope the interior is much better.
You would think an architectural award would take the immediate geography into consideration. The proposed park will look out on the back garage entrance, HVAC, and bare walls of WIDC. Why on earth didn’t they make the park (now a parking lot) side more attractive ?
The immediate geography is a city laneway and a property on the opposite of the laneway. It is in an urban area and that property can be developed in many different ways. The architect and the then owner and present owner of the building have no way of controlling what happens there.
More so than that, think your statement through from a functional point of view.
All buildings have to be serviced by loading areas/docks, service entrances etc. The larger the buildings the more prominent such areas become. That is what laneways are for.
Walk along the laneways of the downtown blocks. No matter whether the building is one storey high or 10 storeys in this city or 60 storeys in downtown Vancouver, they are faced with the same challenge.
The west side of the WIDC building is a laneway which services the building. The property to the west of the laneway is a property on which another building could be built and it would be no different than the RBC building, Federal Building, HBC, Telus, Scotia, BDC, Plaza 400, Inn of the North, etc. Walk around all those buildings and see what happens on the laneway sides at ground level and see what would happen if the development across the lane were to be a park.
It is the City’s choice to use the property for a transit “park”. It is actually a transit terminal much more than a park. The laneway will have to be respected from the point of view of function for the WIDC building. There is absolutely no guarantee that the space will remain a “park” in the future. I fact, if the City grows another 20,000+ in size I very much doubt that the transit terminal will remain there and that the park portion will remain a park since there will be much more appropriate places where a downtown park could be located. The Smart Growth plans provide some hints of that. The area would likely become another higher density office, residential, hotel development or one which integrates all three with ground floor retail.
BTW, the property used to be a parking lot. Ask the City what they will do to replace the lost spaces once the park is built. Where will the new parkade be built to service that area once the rest of the vacant properties in that area get developed.
Drove past it today. It’s as ugly as the unfinished looking new Sandman hotel on Hwy 16.
The RAIC Governor General’s Medal for Canadian Architecture is a juried award. As with prizes such as the Pulitzer, the Nobel, and many others, it is not a populist award, it is an award of architectural merit as judged by experts in the field.
Pulitzer prize winners are selected by the Pulitzer Prize Board from a list of 3 finalists in each category who are selected by the Pulitzer prize jury.
Canadian Home Builders’ Association awards for housing excellence are selected by a panel of judges.
Nobel Prizes are awarded by the four Nobel Committees from a list of nominees.
Governor General’s Medals in Architecture are selected by a jury of peers from submissions by Canadian Architects.
The jury for the 2016 awards were:
• Annmarie Adams, FRAIC – William C Macdonald Professor,McGill University School of Architecture (Montreal, Quebec)
• Vanessa Miriam Carlow – Founder, COBE Berlin (Berlin, Germany)
• Gary Hack – Dean Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania School of Design (Philadelphia, USA)
• Richard Henriquez, FRAIC – Founding Partner, Henriquez Partners Architects (Vancouver, BC)
• Todd Saunders – Principal, Saunders Architecture (Bergen, Norway)
Medals are awarded for excellence in the art of architecture. The primary criterion is the architectural artistic merit of the design, including such elements as: conceptual clarity; compatibility with the site; detailing; innovation and uniqueness; sustainable design.
None of these types of awards are selected for what is popular. They are awards selected by a jury who understand the complexities of what makes architecture what it is.
raic.org/awards/governor-generals-medals-architecture-%E2%80%94-2016-recipient-12
Michael Green (in partnership with a larger firm) was also a winner of the 2009 award for Innovation in Architecture. His firm also received an RAIC Governor Generals award for the CNC Campus at Quesnel as well as for the PG Airport.
canadianarchitect.com/features/prince-george-airport
Green is a very gifted architect whose work follows the international style of architecture which was founded by the Bauhaus about 100 years ago. It basically follow the principle of “form follows function.”
For those who think the Performing Arts Centre pretending to be an RCMP station will never make it whether it was submitted or not.
Architecturally speaking, it is a building which is blatant “façadeism” – in this case an applied façade of huge wooden columns supporting a wood pergola of gigantic proportion which has absolutely no relationship to the structure or the function of the building behind it.
It is an artifact that was added to the building at considerable cost which serves no functional purpose other than to fleece the purse strings of the citizens of the city. It is pure architectural kitsch.
In addition, neither of the two glazed compartments which were to house the living wall of greenery which were to enhance the air quality of the building have been installed. They likely never will be.
We know far too little of the building’s systems to be able to evaluate whether they function as they should. Finally, unlike the WIDC building, it appears that the staff have less access to direct daylight.
The chief problem with the WIDC building is that it does not add to the street’s functional value. That is, there is no retail or similar public space on the ground floor on what should be one of the main shopping streets of the city. If we continue to build buildings like that, similar to the RCMP station, the Scotia building, the Federal Building, HSBC, Telus, etc. the downtown will keep dying.
We need to turn that around.
Not an easy task for Council and a City Planner, if we had one, but we need to attempt it and stick to the guidelines in the OCP. In the last 30 years, no one has managed to do that for our city.
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