Architecturally Speaking
Architecturally Speaking pulls back the curtain on the ancient profession of architecture. Through interviews with industry leaders, it explores how architecture impacts our lives each and every day. It is presented by the Ontario Association of Architects and hosted by Ryan Schwartz.
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Architecturally Speaking
Rivers of Change: How Water Can Shape Community Design
In this episode of Architecturally Speaking, host Ryan Schwartz talks with Barry Hobin, founding partner of Hobin Architecture, about the vital role of water in architectural design. With over 40 years of experience, Barry shares how rivers, canals, and lakes influence urban planning, particularly in Ottawa, Canada’s capital.
Their conversation explores the historical significance of Ottawa's waterways, the city’s evolution from industrial roots to a more sustainable future, and exciting projects like the redevelopment of LeBretton Flats and the Kanal project.
Join us for a fascinating look at how water shapes cities and communities.
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Architecturally Speaking
Episode 10 Rivers of Change: How Water Can Shape Community Design
Ryan Schwartz: 00:04.39 - 01:34.7Hi and welcome back to another episode of Architecturally Speaking. I'm your host Ryan Schwartz and this podcast series is presented as always by the Ontario Association of Architects. We pull back the curtain to give you a look behind the scenes with architects and other professionals to explore housing, urban design, construction, sustainability and everything else related to architecture and the buildings that you spend time in. Today's episode will be an interesting one. We're talking about the role of water in our built environment and the impact that canals, rivers, and lakes can have in architectural design. We're lucky to have Barry Hobin joining us. He's the founding partner of Hobin Architecture, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. Big milestone. He's the former president of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. He served as the site selection director for Habitat for Humanity. He was the building program chair for Carleton University's Board of Governors. He also received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal, and he developed a TV series called Homes by Design, and he was recently awarded a Lifetime Design Achievement Award by the Ontario Association of Architects. So Barry, thanks for joining us. Glad to be here. And thanks for your patience while I read off your career highlights there. That's quite a long list. I don't usually look at that, but for air. And that wasn't all of them. I'd be here, you know, we'd be here all day if I kept going. So that's kind of a good place to start is where did such an accomplished career in architecture start? How did you get into architecture to begin with?
Barry Hobin: 01:34.77 - 03:20.10
Oh, that's very interesting. Well, I was actually the second graduating class from Carleton University. You know, I honestly, it was in an era where people just went to university and I actually didn't know where it was going to go. My dad was a contractor, sort of had some exposure to seeing things built, also a creative person, so was able to see how you could create something out of nothing. In fact, both my parents were very creative from that perspective. And I think the first three or four years of School of Architecture was pretty much a process of just attending, and then suddenly a few things clicked. And, you know, about five years after I graduated, I went into private practice, not knowing what that would bring, but it was kind of a leap of faith. You know, within a couple of years, we had received some provincial awards. So things just matured one step at a time after that. One thing I should mention is that practicing architecture in Ottawa, it's not a major city, so it's highly based on relationships and slow growth. And what started as a single practitionership now has grown into a practice of 45 people, diverse interests, and people who want to stay in Ottawa are committed to Ottawa being a place of high, high quality of life. And we find a lot of people moving back to Ottawa after pursuing careers in other major cities. It's an interesting place to attract talent.
Ryan Schwartz: 03:22.11 - 03:42.43
And for those who don't know, I'm sure most people listening are familiar with Ottawa, but it's the capital of Canada and it really is a beautiful city too. And it was originally built, you know, has a long history and was originally built around three different river systems, which is kind of our focus today. So I'm sure we'll be talking a lot about Ottawa, but maybe you can take us back a little bit to the beginnings of the city and give us some history.
Barry Hobin: 03:42.97 - 05:07.16
Well, yes, Ottawa is grown to what we call a city. It's kind of a large village if you extract the federal civil servant from it. It has its unique, it's a unique character city. There's no question about it. It's very different from Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Canada's preeminent cities and international cities. Ottawa being a place of government, but I think really Ottawa is, real founding thing is based upon the notion of the river, as most great North American cities were founded around river systems or lake systems because of transportation before the introduction of railroads. And so, oh, but historically meeting places with rivers, as you mentioned, the Rideau River, the Gatineau River, and the Ottawa River, was a meeting place for the Algonquins indigenous people. The river provided easy transportation up and down the river. And when Champlain actually settled in Quebec and created Quebec City, his travel logs include traveling up the Ottawa River. And the river was basically a transportation network, including the courier while harvested. Hard to believe that most of North America was based on harvesting of beaver pelts, but that's a reality.
Ryan Schwartz: 05:07.16 - 05:09.08
If you go back far enough, yep.
Barry Hobin: 05:09.08 - 07:49.51
If you go back far. And the river really is everything. And then we moved more into the harvesting of natural resources. The timber industry was foundational to the creation of Ottawa, as it was in a lot of other places. Early Ottawa attracted many many entrepreneurs out of northern Vermont and New Hampshire, the Northeast United States, because they'd run out of timber. They came here. J.R. Booth was one of the richest men in the world because of his timber rights and exporting timbers. There's a long exhausted history of how timber shaped our river. Over time, with industrialization the river becomes about power and it becomes industry and it becomes other things and it's evolved ever since until more recently we're seeing the removal of industry from the center of the city. I think in terms of Ottawa what's unique is that the presence of industry in the very early stages and probably true of most North American cities, and I would say, in some cases, Scandinavian cities. Industry dominated, and as a result, the connection, as we know, between the sea and the waterfront was a very different relationship, and it was an interrupted relationship. In the case of Ottawa, what we now know as LeBretton Flats was a place of industry, rail transportation, power generation. And before the introduction of the automobile, the neighborhoods around that place of industry were working class. modest neighborhoods, which allowed them to walk to work, basically. So the immediate neighborhoods of McCasksville, Entenberg, Centertown, et cetera, were actually the labor force, and actually in case of the LeBretton Flats, which is right on the river, a place where up to 5,000 people lived up until 1960. So, I mean, that's the historical notion of Ottawa City. I, you know, I visited cities in Scandinavia, Helsinki, Stockholm, Narnal, Sweden, Copenhagen, where their cities were founded around the boat industry. And now they're in, now all that industry is basically gone and those lands are being reinvented and the city is being reinvented, being close to the water.
Ryan Schwartz: 07:50.64 - 08:18.89
Yeah, I think it's really fascinating when you look at a lot of these North American and European cities and how the water really was the economic hub for these cities to, the sort of the reason for them to be where they are and for them to grow. And if we skip forward a little bit to today, what are some of the projects and interventions that are happening in Ottawa today as we sort of move away from that industrialized era into the next phase?
Barry Hobin: 08:20.31 - 17:09.60
Well, there's one interruption in that progression, and that's because Ottawa is a capital city. And the National Capital Commission, and before that the Federal District Improvement Commission, I think it was called, controlled what they thought was the beautification of the city. And so, like Washington, there were plans that were developed that superimposed it on the city. And in the early 50s, Jacques Brevet, a French planner, rolled out a plan for Ottawa. which involved the demolition of the LeBretton Flats, involved the creation of parkway systems, and I would describe that as post-war fascination with the automobile and the new road planning. where the net result of that is it separated the river from the city. And in a lot of other cases, the city gets to embrace the river system, particularly the Ottawa. That sort of has been interrupted. It's even been interrupted by the canal system. And I think the other big shaper historically in Ottawa is the Rideau Canal. The Rideau Canal is a product of the War of 1812, where they're providing safe access from up the river to Kingston. And so, over time, and it allowed you to go, for instance, by boat from the Alderby River all the way to Kingston by boat, and people do that from leisure activity today. But it, and it's now designated as a World Heritage Site. But again, the notion of parkway has followed the river system, the canal system, and somewhat separated from the canal. The canal is one of those beautiful items in the city. It makes it a real lively place. You know, in the winter, when we actually get a real winter and there's ice, The canal is plowed and it's not unusual to see 10,000, 15,000 people out skating on a Sunday afternoon on the canal, which really makes a public engagement place, which is very different than the Ottawa river. So all I would say is that the intervention of the National Capital Commission and the the beautification of the waterways has not allowed the city to actually up and engage with the river edge. And there have been a few attempts to improve that, certainly in our work. One of the most entrepreneurial adventures was the redevelopment of LeBretton Flats. And for those who don't know, the National Capital Commission held a competition. We were a part of a team that included a big architectural team that was involved in the bringing of hockey stick in downtown to be on LeBretton Flats, of the reinvention of LeBretton Flats to be a live work, environmentally friendly place that embraced the river system. And you probably have images of that, but you know, in our case, we were trying to actually bring the river close to redevelopment and to make the redevelopment more engaged with the river and break down the effects of the parkway system that comes into the center of the city. That enterprise failed because the owners started suing each other. But it was a great opportunity to work in a multidisciplinary team which included Dowel Estage out of Montreal, Rossetti out of Detroit, Perkin Will out of San Francisco, Mullen Factory out of Montreal, ourselves, and a comprehensive design team to actually look at what we could do to make the river and presence of water more connected. And that was not just the river system, was also the introduction of our existing aqueducts that come off of the Ottawa River, which were used for fresh water originally, but were reinvented in that scheme to be aesthetic elements. Now, the NCC has continued They couldn't use our plan, so they reinvented another plan, which attempts to do exactly that same, most of those things, and try to auto up to the river. So, I mean, that's the Ottawa River, and it's because it's a, by the way, the Ottawa River is one of the big important rivers in North America. It's hard to, and certainly the early development of North America, it's a very significant river. The other rivers are less regimented, like I would say the Rideau River meanders through the city south towards Mananjik, and there's cases where the river allows for single family homes to actually be on the river. In fact, the canal system is valued as a real estate necklace, so to speak, that works its way through the city. You know, people really like to have a house or a small building and parking building on the canal system. There's a few examples where we've done work like that. We just finished a project at 115 Echo called The Echo. We filled in a low-rise project close to Landsdowne Park. And in fact, the whole redevelopment of Landsdowne Park is trying to knit the relationship to the canal system to the public functions that exist at Lansdowne. I should mention about Lansdowne because it's worthwhile. It's another big planning piece that we were involved in. Lansdowne Park had evolved. Lansdowne Park was always a meeting place. Historically about agriculture, innovation, display, sport, all of those things happened in Lansdowne Park and there were many buildings that were there and they often moved around over time. Moving initially from agriculture, as I said, to innovation, but over time it lost its place. And about 20 years ago basically it was essentially shuttered with a chain-link fence around it, open, the only reason you would go there was to go to a football game or to walk your dog late at night, because there really was no other activity happening there. The city took on a limited competition, which had prized two parts. One is an international design competition. That was won by PFS to redesign park and then a separate group, Haudenosaunee Sports and Entertainment Group, made a case to redevelop Lansdowne with more of a mixed-use approach, which involves sport, residential, commerce, and special activities, as well as the retention of the historic buildings, which are of the Aberdeen Pavilion and the horticulture boat, two strong components that actually anchored. It has evolved slowly into becoming a real people place. In the area of sport, we now have reinvented football, soccer, women's hockey, junior-a hockey, basketball, and then special events. So it's slowly coming back. There are many detractors who refer to it just simply as a commercial enterprise, and I would fight back and suggest that it's now become the number one meeting place in Ottawa. and we're a safe place that encourages people to come and enjoy sort of outdoor markets, City Folk Festival is held there, the number of festivals that are held at Lansdowne Park. It's become a real vibrant meeting place. It's totally adjacent to the Rideau Canal, and I would suggest we're still struggling with that parkway interruption, which is controlled by the NCC, and proper engagement between Lansdowne and the canal. At one point in time, before the parkway system came through, along the canal edge were serial boathouses. It was very much, the canal edge was very much an activity geared towards.
Ryan Schwartz: 17:11.83 - 17:12.65
The neighborhood, so to speak.
Barry Hobin: 17:12.65 - 19:10.91
Local people. Yeah, local people. Over time, and in fact, they had a commercial, some commercial work that happened on the canal. The huge trusses that formed the north side stands were actually brought to Lansdowne Park by canal up the, from Montreal and up the canal system to this site, so construction that do it. So there's Smith Street, let's go there. But Lansdowne is very aspirational. I think what most people would like to see happen at Lansdowne is a greater connection to the canal. And so actually the notion of bringing water from the canal into the park so you could canoe into the park, that you could actually waterboard. There are some cases along the canal system Brown's Inlet, and Patterson Creek being one of them where you actually can actually skate into an outlet from a canal. And people really, really, really connect with that sort of visceral connection with water. I'd put it that way. Now the canal is active. You can canoe on the canal. As mentioned, you can skate in the winter, you can paddleboard, you can often see Bezier boats that come up and down the canal, because it's a great way of seeing the sea. And for the average visitor around the world, they're coming to see Parliament Buildings, the Rideau Canal system. Gatineau Park, the museums, the art galleries that exist in Ottawa. And most of the ones, like even you take the case of the National Gallery, it has this wonderful glass rotunda that lets you see both Parliament Hill and the river. And so it has great There's a great promontory of government to the river, but not so much the sea to the river.
Ryan Schwartz: 19:10.91 - 19:33.10
Yeah, it's interesting that this connection with rivers and how it really becomes the identity of a city. And they are these assets that a city can really use that oftentimes are not used to the best of their ability, and they really can become the centerpiece of a city and the identity of a city. Would you say that's kind of the case with Ottawa?
Barry Hobin: 19:33.50 - 21:33.52
I think that's very much the case. And, you know, if you look at other cities, obviously Toronto is doing a lot of work on its waterfront to kind of make that, but it keeps model of the combination of the river and the canal system and the Rideau system, they actually make it a very should be a lot more water-friendly than it is. I look at the work that they've done in Calgary along the river's edge and how they've actually made that a little bit more urban, but I don't know. I think Ottawa has a ways to go to actually fully engage. I think the public is just dying for this to happen. I think one of the most interesting things is the NCC took the redevelopment of the essentially new Ottawa Rowing club, and reinvented it so you could swim there, and put active facilities like a small cafe, et cetera. And when it first opened, I think it's Riverhouse was called, when it first opened, you couldn't get a parking space anywhere close to here. And the pike access was just off the charts. So, one thing Ottawa does really well, along, even though the city doesn't engage with the river in terms of an active frontal engagement, the encouragement of pedestrian walking, running, but cycling has really taken off because of that parkway infrastructure. So if someone lives in Orleans and maybe 10 clicks away, they might cycle to work. Or people in our firm who live in Chelsea, which is on the Quebec side, would cycle cycle to work. And so the cycling network in Ottawa is actually strong and becoming stronger because the parkway systems have encouraged it.
Ryan Schwartz: 21:33.52 - 21:46.33
So these are huge projects and they take years and years and, you know, it sounds like Ottawa still has a way to go to really embrace the waterfront and make it, you know, a centerpiece of the city. There's still some room for improvement, would you say?
Barry Hobin: 21:48.41 - 25:40.80
I think there's great signs of future change. I should just reinforce, as the canal meanders through the city, it doesn't affect just the edge condition, it affects the neighborhoods that are around the canal. You know, I'm very fortunate to actually live on the canal so I could walk to work along a canal experience. I can cycle to work along a canal experience. I can actually skate to work. I can believe that as part of the canal experience. And one thing that was really, really reinforced is the value of the canal system during the pandemic, where people couldn't go to work, but they walked a lot. And working from home, I could just see endless, endless walking that occurred in and around the canal system. And people came either from outside the city to walk the canal or the neighborhoods around it. And for those who, you know, like Lansdowne Park, it's an easy walk there, but that really has, that's really emboldened the whole pedestrian cycle experience as part of the sounding city. It's not what you'd find in Barhaven or the suburbs or Orleans, et cetera, but it makes the center of the city identifiable and market, if I could use those words, and marketing a city is a tough one because it has to do with tourism, but you get my point. Yep. I think it's hard to develop new projects in proximity to the river. One of our projects specifically has been incredibly successful in doing that. That's Greystone, which is ecclesiastical lands that were owned by the Old Blade Fathers that were positioned in between two established inner city neighborhoods, which back on the Rideau River system. And we were engaged in that process probably for the last 10 years in terms of planning. We basically then reinvented a new suburb, a new inner city suburb, which includes a much greater diversity of housing types. It involves condominiums, row houses, townhouses, apartment buildings, retail, and mixed use and cultural facilities that all occur within that neighborhood. And it's adjacent to the river. So one of the things that we wanted to do is make sure where we laid it out that you had penetration points that led from the high street through the development to the river edge that made the river edge relevant. Bring that connection. At the same time, there were restrictions on the river edge because of the Rio Valley Conservation Authority, which controls development along river systems. They're mostly concerned about keeping development back and preserving a naturalized edge. And so we took that on as a mechanism to make it a natural environment. And the whole neighborhood that we reinvented basically became what was LEED certified under the new standards for LEED neighborhood. And that was very successful, and it's been totally embraced by the neighborhoods on either side. So we didn't get all that nimbyism that we normally get as a result of new development. It's become, again, a very walkable neighborhood. Cars are there, but it's not car-dominated. And it's basically kind of reinvented part of the city. It's a great model for other developments. Very rarely you get that case where you have a river edge, you know, substantial acreage where you can actually do that.
Ryan Schwartz: 25:40.80 - 26:11.79
A large piece that's, yeah, open for redevelopment. And what's your experience working, you know, on these projects with public engagement? And in a city like Ottawa where a lot of the space is, you know, for not necessarily private, a lot of it is public and people use it, you know, like you said, to bike to work, to just leisure time on the weekends. And people sort of want to have a say, I assume, in how their city is transforming. So what's your experience been with the public?
Barry Hobin: 26:12.80 - 28:15.38
Absolutely, and I spoke briefly about Lansdowne, Van Storm, it was a very polarizing public engagement piece. Grey Storm was very different. We took a proactive approach, that we actually put together a booklet of aspirational ideals about what we want to create. We wanted to embolden the main street, so those commercial activities, it's a food desert in that part of Ottawa. We wanted to have a range of typologies, a very open spoken, so we could deal with the full cycle of life, that young, old, aging could actually be in that neighborhood that have a diversity of unit types, very strong focus on sustainability, the river edge, and all of those things. We actually put together in a booklet and gave it to the neighborhood and then had a series of engagements that told them how we wanted to develop it. And by and large, very, very positive response from that because there was a little bit for everyone in it. And the diversity of ownership today is quite substantial because we have small apartments, we have condominiums, we have low rise. It's been very, very popular with very little objection from immediate neighborhoods. There's the odd little rumble, but by and large, a very positive response. If you spoke to the Leroy at Leroy's when it's finished, very, very satisfied with that process. In any neighborhood, there's always one or two that are- There always will be, yep. Are focused on very specific issues, but on the broader context, widely accepted, widely embraced. In fact, many of the houses that were for sale were bought by people who lived in neighborhoods that bordered on this, I wanted to move into a new dwelling in an existing context.
Ryan Schwartz: 28:17.15 - 28:43.38
And these are sensitive sites. Like you said, there's a lot of ecology at play. They're culturally sensitive in terms of there's indigenous groups that have long histories of living in these areas. There are sort of public private spaces and there's also that industrial history and heritage. So how do you attempt to balance all that? Do you attempt to even balance that? Is that even possible? Like how do you sort of bring all that information and history together?
Barry Hobin: 28:44.05 - 28:52.45
Well, and the other part is that you're balancing the aspirations of a developer who sets expectations.
Ryan Schwartz: 28:52.45 - 28:54.1
Somebody will have to pay for this at the end of the day.
Barry Hobin: 28:54.19 - 31:00.25
Yeah, exactly. I think the other part is in always this kind of meeting expectations all disappoint and stems from failed expectations and so setting expectations correctly I think is the key to that from a design perspective. As a firm we spend a lot of time both in the not-for-profit sector as well as in the entrepreneurial profit sector and we think that experience helps us in terms of trying to set reasonable expectations. We've done a lot of entrepreneurial work with developers. And depending on the developer, they listen to our expectations or they try to distort expectations. But I think getting everybody on the same page is a process. It's an engagement process. And I think the very start of that is to be open-ended in the sense of open to consultation on a free sharing of critical information. And that critical information often deals with things like soils and geotechnical and transportation, et cetera, and as well as meeting perceptions about what the negative things are part of the development. One of the classic examples of that missing the mark is when we redeveloped Lansdowne Park, the developers at that point in time weren’t keen on doing residential, and the neighborhood didn't want to see overdeveloped. The neighborhood lobbied against increased residential. And when residential was actually put in, quickly there was a bug face because they realized the residential on the site made a massive difference. And so, all the residential we did put, almost every counselor, community member said, you know, we could actually have more picky than Landsdowne Park. So, nothing's ever perfect in that public engagement process.
Ryan Schwartz: 31:02.028 - 31:24.309
I think that's an interesting approach and you mentioned the things like soils and there's obviously technical challenges when you're dealing with these river edges and sustainability and increased flooding. So that was kind of my next question was, you're building extra river, the first thing that people think is, oh, what if it floods? So, you know, how big of a consideration is that when you're looking at these spaces?
Barry Hobin: 31:25.12 - 33:35.91
Well, in the case of the Rideau River, there's an agency that deals with that specifically, the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority about setbacks. And then in addition to that is slope stabilization, what is a slope. But a really good example of that, Ryan, is the rebuildment of LaBretton Flats. LaBretton Flats is right next to the river. and it's on rock. It's a part of a rock plane that's actually dropped down and takes your air through. So while we were working on the redevelopment of a proposal for Labrador Flats, there are two things that are important. It wasn't so much that the water level was the issue, it was the groundwater though. It suggested you could only go down a certain level before you would begin to water. And in the case of when they were putting the stadium, the new home for the Senators there, the actual place that they were going to put it was actually a landfill where they, when they demolished all of Louboutin Flats in the 60s, they actually created a partial dike across uh, the bay, the PN bay, and then fill the garbage into everything behind it. So now, not only was it, uh, water level, it was groundwater and it was dealing with, uh, garbage. And, um, in case of LeBreton flats, because of its, his industrial past, it was heavily polluted. So the NCC had to take on all of those things gradually. So they took large sections of the LeBretton Flats and cleaned it up before they could offer it to development. And that's happening right now. It's actually, we're working on four different blocks in the LeBretton Flats. But the NCC has already taken care of the pollution that was on site and the water levels have to be taken into account. But those are all serious, serious issues in terms of when you're looking at any riverfront development.
Ryan Schwartz: 33:37.38 - 34:14.25
Yeah, they're complex sites and cities seem to be increasingly removing that industrial past as we sort of move ahead and they still want to keep these waterways as central to the city and an important economic hub for tourism and for residents and things like that. It seems like people are, cities are moving away from the highways and vehicles and there's some good examples of Chicago and Seattle and Ottawa, Toronto you mentioned as well. So how, in your opinion, how do cities best embrace water? You know, if they're on the water, if they have a river running through it, like what's, how does a city really take advantage of that?
Barry Hobin: 34:14.25 - 35:21.99
Well, I, there's no question that there's a public realm that needs to be, fostered, enhanced. It's the question of like, what does that edge condition feel like? I think a really great Canadian example is the Expo Lands in Vancouver. After Expo 86 vacated, one developer took on the whole thing. If you looked at there's a walkable experience. There's a tightness of some building forms to the water edge. There's room for dog parks and public parks, public arts, which enhances the whole public experience to engage with the edge. It's not just a pastoral notion that your buildings are set back you know, half a mile from the river edge. It's a much tighter engagement with lots of stimuli that are part of it that make it real, make a great engagement. Excuse me, I'm going to cough.
Ryan Schwartz: 35:21.99 - 35:29.85
They make it a vibrant space. Yeah, I completely agree. It's not just an empty park that you look at. It's something that you're in and experiencing.
Barry Hobin: 35:29.85 - 37:57.45
You know, there are various parts of Vancouver that do this really well. There are other cities in North America that do a great job, but if you look at even, you know, world cities like New York, the work that they're doing on the water issues, et cetera. I know Toronto, but you know, just come back to Ottawa. Ottawa has a really high quality of live/work. The notion of using that to amplify your daily life and your daily travel experience. I think one of the unusual things that happens during COVID is that they shut down parts of the driveway system on the basis that it made it more walkable. In reality, they shut down the road, but where the people really wanted to be was over at the water edge. So the road, even if you were in cycle, a lot of cyclists would be not on the road, they would be on the bike paths that were next to it. And I just think that these moments... that make the city richer, as opposed to a pastoral evenness, kind of like having cultural events that happen next, cultural facilities happen next to the waterway, private. And we actually do a better job of trying to connect those two worlds together. And it's a bit of a dance. I think I really, you know, as an architect, you think the story is about your buildings. Increasingly, I think it's about the spaces that's between buildings and the interface between the building and the landscape in combination, which makes a better public realm. That in-between space. You know, it's that notion of what does your building say to the street or what does it say, what does it give to the city? In many cases, it's about that engagement of space and form. And how you actually, in a lot of our projects, we try to actually think about public space as a way of enhancing the building and organizing the buildings around the public space so there's a greater level of engagement.
Ryan Schwartz: 37:59.21 - 38:25.15
And this will be a trickier question and I don't really know how to answer it myself, but what is it about water and that sort of intangible connection that people have with it? Because that, like speaking from firsthand experience, I grew up in a small town that was on the water. I've lived in lots of cities with rivers and it seems like people just gravitate towards those areas and it's tough to say why, but what's your take on that?
Barry Hobin: 38:25.15 - 39:59.04
I think it's incredibly visceral. We have a small little pond in front of our office space. And when a parent is walking their child or dog or something down the street for a while regularly, there's a kind of a step side stepping off of the sidewalk, walking over to the pond, touching the pond. And then, and then in the off hours, it's the birds and things that actually come to the pond as a level of engagement. I, I think just it's kind of foundational. It's part of the one illness and our life is like fire and water just being that, that, that natural piece. And, uh, the other thing is that what water does, it's never static. Uh, water is, um, reflects the, the bright sky can reflect the morning sky. It has movement to it. It has all of these things. It's always changing and probably more changeable for anybody who has a cottage on a big body of water. It's almost the mood of the cottage or the mood of that experience is shaped by the water that's in front of it. Which is different every day. There's a mood that comes from the water. I think it just connects with you in some way. The other thing about water is that it's a great separator as well, right? So I'm not looking at another building. I'm actually looking at something that's a foreground that allows me not to focus on the other thing, right?
Ryan Schwartz: 40:00.26 - 40:05.07
That's kind of like staring into a campfire or something. It's always shifting and moving.
Barry Hobin: 40:05.07 - 40:09.69
I guess you could say that, although you wouldn’t want a campfire between two buildings.
Ryan Schwartz: 40:09.69 - 40:18.94
Yeah, exactly. I want to be respectful of your time. Is there anything else that you'd like to mention that we didn't get to? Any other projects or anything you'd like to discuss?
Barry Hobin: 40:19.77 - 44:14.16
No, I mean Ottawa, as I say, Ottawa is a fairly modest place, so these kind of projects are increasingly important. One thing I would say is that when you ask me what attracts you about water is the notion that projects have nothing to do with water and how we introduce water into them to create a bit of a focus, an ecological focus in many ways. And there's a lot of technical things that developers used for, I don't want to do that. I don't want to actually, that's too much work. But whenever we see wire, when it's conveniently placed within a project, it has a way of making a project very attractive in another sense. And, you know, I think one of the most interesting projects right now is in the very center, we didn't talk about this, but in the very center of the Ottawa River is what we used to call the Dontar lands, which were industrial lands. There's a series of islands that go from what used to be Hull, which is Gatineau, in the middle of the OttawaRiver, there was a series of islands which were there originally, which were enhanced by industrialization. In other words, they grew under industrialization. And basically there's two of them as you go across the river. If you look at any of the historical photos, this is part of the great rapids, the Shodier Rapids, and obviously a meeting place for Indigenous peoples. They used the river as a system. With industrialization, they took over these components, and basically there was pulp and paper, there was manufacturers, a whole bunch of stuff would happen. 15 years ago, those lands were sold to private interests and a company called Windmill Development took them over and later brought on institutional investors. I believe it was Dream that's the one who's developing land, but they are transitioning those industrial lands. into mixed-use residential lands. And initially, they are still islands. So if you live there, they hadn't reached the full maturity of having mixed-use yet. There is now residential and some office space that is part of that. But they're right on the river. And they're accessing free, not free, but sustainable power because of their power of the river system. So they become almost zero carbon neighborhoods and highly sustainable. They're a bit of an island, so over time they will develop and fill in and they will actually result in connecting downtown Gatineau to the Ottawa edge. And it's the first time where we actually see buildings right on a canal system. So I think one of our projects called Kanal, it's K-A-N-A-L, is actually right on the water's edge. There's no other example like that in the city of Ottawa. And so that is very interesting in terms of how you actually can make a city engage with the water edge. It's Azimi, it's an Algonquin name and very much referential to the imports of the Algonquins in our city and in this region. And it's a great example of reinventing of industrial use, engaging with the river. And it is probably the most profound redevelopment in the city.
Ryan Schwartz: 44:15.85 - 44:20.07
Sounds like people should go visit and check it out. It sounds like a great spot.
Barry Hobin: 44:20.0 - 44:29.06
And over time, it will be incredibly visitable. It's one of those things that's emerging and it'll take another few years before that's fully developed.
Ryan Schwartz: 44:29.06 - 44:39.61
Especially if it's an intermediate between two other spaces and it starts to become that sort of connective tissue between. Yeah, it sounds great. Well, Barry, I appreciate... I'm sorry, go ahead.
Barry Hobin: 44:39.61 - 45:04.3
It has another aspect to it. From Zibi itself, You get to see the seat of government as you look east, northeast, and the prominence of the Peace Tower and the Parliament Buildings on the river's edge. It's a monumental kind of connection between town and crown right in one place on the river.
Ryan Schwartz: 45:05.99 - 45:28.43
Sounds great. Yeah, I haven't been to Ottawa for a few years. I'll have to make a trip up there and check it out. Hopefully it gets cold enough. Well, I don't know if I want to visit in the winter, but I really appreciate your time and your insights. If people want to get in touch with you or your firm, I guess they can search for Barry Hobin or Hobin Arch.
Barry Hobin: 45:28.43 - 45:30.01
Hobin Architecture you’ll find us.
Ryan Schwartz: 45:30.54 - 46:11.71
Yep, perfect. That's great. Thank you. That wraps up this episode. So if you've enjoyed it listening, please leave us a review and tell your friends. That'll help us provide more episodes in the future. Architecturally Speaking is available wherever you get your podcasts and also on the OAA's YouTube channel. So check that out for the full video of today's conversation. You'll see some images of the projects that we were discussing today as well. If you're interested in anything we talked about today, check out the Ontario Association of Architects website for all kinds of great information. It's an excellent public resource. You can visit oaa.on.ca. And until next time, I'm Ryan Schwartz, and this has been Architecturally Speaking. Goodbye for now.