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Book Review – Planning Canada: A Case Study Approach
Editor: Ren Thomas (Oxford University Press, 2016) One of the easiest ways to learn something is by seeing how it was done before, somewhere else, with a similar context. We can understand abstract...
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Book Review: Citizen City
Edited by Robert Enright (Blueimprint Publishers, 2016) “The projects compiled in this book are the culmination of over 25 years of architectural experimentation, which stand firmly with the...
View ArticleNepean Place: Centretown’s elevated park
An easily overlooked building in Ottawa’s Centretown features a unique amenity which, while in plain sight from the street, generally goes unnoticed by passersby: between two 13 storey towers, on top...
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Book Review: Wild By Design
Author: Margie Ruddick (Island Press, 2016) Wild By Design: Strategies for Creating Life-Enhancing Landscapes recounts the work of Margie Ruddick’s self-named firm over the last 20 years, by sorting a...
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Canadian judge acknowledges anti-black racism in court
A Toronto judge has made history by explicitly considering anti-black racism as a mitigating factor in sentencing a young drug offender. Rather than receiving a year in jail as the Crown had wished...
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Book Review – Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary
Authors: Jill Desimini and Charles Waldheim (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016) Reflecting on the history of humankind, one is hard-pressed to find a form of graphic representation more influential...
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Book Review: Women, Modernity, and Landscape Architecture
Editors: Sonja Dümpelmann and John Beardsley (Routledge, 2015) During the through the Depression and Post-War eras, two coalescing movements—women joining the work force, and the rise of modernism as...
View ArticleStreet Names: Proposing an Intrepid Commemoration
There are many streets scattered across the city of Ottawa with names one can argue as being “generic” or “boring”. Setting aside the classic argument of one former Ontario premier that “boring works”,...
View ArticleFor the moment: The Prince of Wales Park
In 1880, a railway bridge was constructed, linking Ottawa, Ontario to Hull (now Gatineau), Quebec. This bridge, known as the Prince of Wales Bridge, spans the Ottawa River just west of the centres of...
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Book Review From The Stacks – The Miller|Hull Partnership: Public Works
“The Miller|Hull Partnership’s energy-conscious designs, love of local materials, and structural expressiveness helped define the essence of a new and exciting type of contemporary regionalism in...
View ArticleUrbSanity: Remedial lesson on sharing shared space
Now that I spend most of my time in Montreal, I rely more and more on media (social and traditional) to keep up to date on Ottawa’s goings-on. The one lesson I never seem able to learn: Don’t read the...
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How to Build Safer Cities for LGBTQ Residents
For many marginalized groups, ‘public safety’ is never assumed. Recent debates on bathroom access for trans people, accounts of police brutality targeting sex workers, a seemingly endless string of...
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Spacing announces the 2016 recipients of the Jane Jacobs Prize
It is with great pleasure that Spacing announces that Leslie Chudovsky and Luke Anderson are the 2016 recipients of the Jane Jacobs Prize. The Jane Jacobs Prize is an annual award that celebrates...
View ArticleConstruction/Destruction update from NAC
The grand upper level terrace overlooking the canal is the strongest clue to the building’s original intention to be a key piece in the master plan to create a civic centre for the city centred off the...
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Notes from Holland
As an architect on vacation, one does not travel merely to escape the ennui of change orders and field reviews. Time spent abroad in another city is an opportunity to witness firsthand the delicate...
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Legal Progress on the Right to Housing in Canada
According to the courts, there is no constitutional “right to housing” in Canada –at least not yet. This may be changing, however slowly, due to the direct citizen action and litigation challenging...
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Book Review – State of the World: Can a City Be Sustainable?
Author: Worldwatch Institute (Island Press, 2016) Every year since I started writing for Spacing, I have found myself anxiously awaiting the next State of the World book from the Worldwatch Institute....
View ArticleUrbSanity: Big and Small, Ottawa’s world-class obsession with being world-class
The Ottawa news cycle is a revolving door of controversies over architecture, landmarks, monuments, and mega- infrastructure and redevelopment projects. They all seem to follow similar patterns....
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Book Reviews From The Stacks – Snøhetta Works
Editors: Snøhetta (Lars Müller Publishing – 2009) These projects and descriptions together have been selected to show the wide range, at times informal directions, and sheer energy of some of...
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Book Review: The City That Never Was
Author: Christopher Marcinkoski (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016) The world captured within The City That Never Was by Christopher Marcinkoski reminds me very much of a JG Ballard novel titled...
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