This project is a design for the first of a series of internationally networked centres dedicated to fulfilling the United Nations’ mandate for global cooperation. Spearheaded by a society of scholars from around the world, including members of the Parhad Society at the University of Calgary, the centres are conceived as fora for the discussion, debate, and dissemination of world affairs, with the ultimate objective of facilitating greater global cooperation. The client’s mandate was to create an architecture that symbolically and functionally evokes a bringing together of diverse people to share and celebrate their differences and similarities, with the goal of promoting tolerance and understanding.
The site is a residual space occupied by the Canadian Pacific Railway’s main line that bisects Calgary just South of the downtown core.
The project’s global and local aspirations of bringing things together synergistically pointed to an architecture that could be both inclusive and suturing. The design is conceived of as a topography that sutures the city, defines a public space and garden as a continuous 24 hour route amenity, activates this public space, and awakens a sense of place. Therefore, the architectural parti is made up of the continuous public route as an extension of the city, connected to the public programming of the centre, and covered with a sheltering louvered zinc canopy that reflects the shifting light of the prairie sky by day, and illuminates the public space and garden by night.
This project is a design for the first of a series of internationally networked centres dedicated to fulfilling the United Nations’ mandate for global cooperation. Spearheaded by a society of scholars from around the world, including members of the Parhad Society at the University of Calgary, the centres are conceived as fora for the discussion, debate, and dissemination of world affairs, with the ultimate objective of facilitating greater global cooperation. The client’s mandate was to create an architecture that symbolically and functionally evokes a bringing together of diverse people to share and celebrate their differences and similarities, with the goal of promoting tolerance and understanding.
The site is a residual space occupied by the Canadian Pacific Railway’s main line that bisects Calgary just South of the downtown core.
The project’s global and local aspirations of bringing things together synergistically pointed to an architecture that could be both inclusive and suturing. The design is conceived of as a topography that sutures the city, defines a public space and garden as a continuous 24 hour route amenity, activates this public space, and awakens a sense of place. Therefore, the architectural parti is made up of the continuous public route as an extension of the city, connected to the public programming of the centre, and covered with a sheltering louvered zinc canopy that reflects the shifting light of the prairie sky by day, and illuminates the public space and garden by night.