| Calgary just got a fantastic architectural Christmas present. The news that EnCana has hired Foster and Partners from London to design its new headquarters complex is incredibly exciting. It is a bold and long overdue move for the quality and calibre of Calgary’s built environment.
Norman Foster started working as an architect in the early 1960s. His first project to attract significant attention was a new building for the Willis Faber & Dumas insurance company headquarters in Ipswich, England in 1974. The client wanted to restore a sense of community to the workplace – to make it a better place. Foster’s solution included open-plan office floors (long before they were commonplace), roof gardens, a swimming pool and a gym. The building is wrapped in full-height glass and follows the existing medieval streetscape, which means it curves and bulges in unusual ways. It won numerous awards for architecture and energy conservation, and is now listed as a Grade 1 (the highest level) resource by the British Department of National Heritage – the youngest building in that category. Foster has said the building addressed four important relationships – "to history, the social dimension, energy use, and the appropriate use of technology" – which have continued to form the basis of the work he has done over the 30 years since.
Other major, world-renowned projects in Lord Foster’s portfolio include: the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters and Chek Lap Kok International Airport (the world’s largest) in Hong Kong; the Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt (the world’s first "ecological" high-rise building); the Millau Viaduct in France (the world’s tallest bridge); the New German Parliament at the Reichstag in Berlin; and the London Millennium Bridge (the first new crossing on the Thames in more than 100 years) and the Swiss Re Building, or 30 St. Mary Axe, in London. He has one other project in Canada, a new building for the faculty of pharmacy at the University of Toronto, which is on the verge of completion.
Foster is one of the most highly decorated architects in the world. He won the Pritzker Prize (generally considered "the Nobel Prize of architecture") in 1999. He has won the Stirling Prize, Britain’s highest architectural honour, twice – most recently last year for the Swiss Re Building. He won the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal in 1994. He was knighted in 1990 and made a life peer in 1999. In other words, an awful lot of people who know an awful lot about architecture think his work is pretty special.
His work is definitely modern, and usually categorized (for what it’s worth) as "high-tech" architecture, although he rejects the label, saying architects have always worked with the latest technologies in materials and methods. In his own words, "You can't separate technology from the humanistic and spiritual content of a building." Foster’s buildings are not as immediately and obviously recognizable as something by Frank Gehry, but they do tend to have a visual signature of extensive glazing in a light metal frame, with the structural system of the building being clearly expressed on the exterior.
To my mind, though, the more significant aspects of his projects are their commitment to the environment and their social and historical contexts. The Reichstag project in Berlin probably best encapsulates all three of those things. Foster won the job to rebuild the German Parliament building after the reunification of Germany and the decision to move the capital from Bonn to Berlin. The original 19th century building had been long neglected and had been extensively damaged by war and fire. The construction of a new national parliament was an incredibly sensitive and emotional project, with obvious and profound social and historical implications.
Foster preserved the original exterior and even many of the paintings from the Soviet era of East Germany. But he also created an entirely new interior, under a glass dome. True to his ongoing dedication to "green" architecture, the finished building is entirely energy self-sufficient. It burns only renewable fuels such as rapeseed oil to provide both heating and electricity. It uses geothermal technology to store heat below ground in summer, ready for use in winter. The new parliament is crowned with an enormous glass dome, which simultaneously makes historical reference to the building's original 76-metre dome and acts as an evocative symbol of democracy. The dome is accessible to the public, and the German people are welcome inside either to gaze out across their city or down from the helical access ramps into the main chamber to watch their parliament in session.
The building acknowledges and respects its historical context, but the transparency of the structure makes a deep and important symbolic statement about the social context – the transparency and accessibility of democratic politics. And all of this takes place within a building that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 94 per cent. Social, historical and environmental sensitivity in an incredibly challenging project – this is what architecture is capable of doing, and why the prospect of a Foster building in Calgary is so tremendously exciting.
In one fell swoop, EnCana’s selection of Lord Foster to design the company’s new headquarters has raised the bar for high-profile architectural projects in Calgary to the highest international standard. As Ald. Druh Farrell has aptly said, this will indeed put the city on the international architectural map. It’s high time public and private entities in Calgary took this kind of step to produce architectural representations of its growing global presence as a centre of creative and commercial excellence and innovation. Full marks to EnCana for, to use a good western metaphor, blazing the trail.
If – nay, when – other major projects in Calgary (a new public library, the University of Calgary’s Urban Campus Initiative, and any number of other public and private projects) follow suit, the next few years could be remarkable for the growth and development of the city’s built environment. The excitement and spin-offs will be fantastic. I just hope and pray that EnCana’s relationship with Foster does not fall apart. If it does, it could have precisely the opposite effect, with devastating consequences for the cause of architecture in the city. It would be a tragedy to come so close and fail. |
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