Lieutenant- Governor’s Award of Excellence in Architecture July 24, 2008
Charlottetown Guardian
P.E.I.’s inaugural Lieutenant- Governor’s Award of Excellence in Architecture has been awarded to the Charlottetown architectural firm of Bergmark Guimond Hammarlund Jones/HOK Architects in Joint Venture. Lt.-Gov. Barbara Hagerman presented the award to Joint Venture’s Larry Jones, a partner with BGHJ Architects, during a special ceremony at Government House in Charlottetown recently. The firm was singled out for its design of the Jean Canfield Building in Charlottetown. Designed to accommodate 500 federal government employees, the Canfield building is one of the most environmentally friendly structures in North America. It boasts such cutting-edge innovations as individual climate control zones for employees, integral in-floor heating and cooling capacity, rainwater collection for toilet flushing, high-performance electrical and mechanical systems, plenty of natural day lighting and operable windows. There are more than 600 square metres of roof-mounted solar panels and those panels generate nearly 10 per cent of the building’s total annual electrical requirements. “The building represents a milestone for both Prince Edward Island and for Canada,” says Jones, who is also the chair of Downtown Charlottetown Incorporated’s green committee. “To be able to take such a badly contaminated urban site and turn it into such a gem of a building — a dynamic, living example of the potential of environmentally sensitive design — speaks volumes of the dedication, hard work and vision of both our client and our very talented interdisciplinary design team.” Environmental stewardship was a key theme for the architectural jury which judged the award entries. Honorable mention was also awarded to one of Bergmark Guimond Hammarlund Jones Architects predecessor firms, Bergmark and Hammarlund, for The Ark Project. Designed and built by David Bergmark and Ole Hammarlund in 1976, The Ark was an ecologically designed bio-shelter powered and heated by the wind and the sun. It housed a research laboratory, living unit, family garden and a small commercial greenhouse and fish farm. It was the aim of that project to provide a comprehensible model for sustainable living and energy independence in the face of skyrocketing oil prices generated by the first Arab oil embargo. “We were very interested in the sources of inspiration for each of the submissions,” said jury spokesman Grant Wanzel, dean of the School of Architecture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “In several cases it was the vernacular, whereas in the case of the winner, the Jean Canfield Building, the parentage was far more direct — The Ark — which in its time must have seemed a very strange duck indeed.” Even 30 years later, the judges could still feel the significant influence of the now-demolished Ark, Wanzel said. “In fact, it was a revolutionary, totally self-absorbed building,” Wanzel said. “Where The Ark was clunky and funky, and way, way before its time, consider how much more refined and resolved is its offspring. The Jean Canfield Building is a sophisticated building which is very much of this time. It easily exhibits technologies only just anticipated by The Ark, but which in it are now fully resolved.” Seven entries, representing many of P.E.I.’s practising architects, were submitted for the design awards. In addition to the two award winners, other entries included the Cornwall Town Hall, Andrews of Stratford and Cymbria Summer Cottage, all by North 46 Architecture; the Greenwich Interpretive Centre, by William Chandler Architects; and the Atlantic Technology Centre, also by BGHJ Architects.
