>>REVIEW
FOSTER AND PARTNERS: WORKS
Runs until March 31
Glenbow Museum
You owe it to yourself to spend an hour or so roaming around the Glenbow Museum to see Foster and Partners: Works, an engaging new display of projects that transfer dreams into concrete, steel and glass. Taking time to examine the architectural models of this London-based, nearly 40-year-old international company will give you a glimpse into the future of Calgary’s downtown.
No, the exhibition does not have a model of what the consistently inventive architects plan for the EnCana corporate headquarters complex. However, examining the models of innovative restoration of historical buildings enlivened by new structures that are futuristic, ecologically sensitive sculptures, you do begin to understand why more and more land is being acquired by EnCana. Originally slated to have frontage on both 1 Street and 6 Avenue S.E., the land holdings now include the old York Hotel, the St. Regis and the Calgary Police Service parking lot between Centre and 1 Street S.E.
Foster and Partners work in 50 countries, designing and implementing unique structures, so giving EnCana a building to bring employees from five scattered locations together into a complex on the scale of Bankers Hall won’t tax the design team’s resources.
The architectural firm’s current mega-project is the dragon-shaped Beijing Airport, scheduled for completion before the 2008 Olympics. It can be viewed on the DVD presentation projected in the middle of the 27 architectural design models, large-scale photographs and sketches. Making architectural models is an art in itself, as is writing the succinct, often poetic descriptions of the projects.
The largest photograph spans a long wall and imitates the experience of being inside one of the buildings. The DVD makes extensive use of the technology that Foster and Partners use in assisting clients to experience the completed project, with 3-D people and movers gliding through the space. Also on the DVD, chairman Lord Foster lauds technology as a major aid in determining the effects of the elements on buildings, achieving the usual goals when constructing them and still maintaining the values and approaches essential to the firm: visual impact, small footprints, natural ventilation, fuel efficiency, meeting deadlines, cost efficiency and ecologically sensitive buildings. One of the better existing examples is the German Reichstag, which creates more energy than it consumes – the transparency of buildings lit at night becoming more visually distinctive.
One intriguing model is the Swiss Re-headquarters, a spiral or rocket shaped building in London, which has green spaces within it that act "as lungs," cleaning and recycling the air. It has been called "the London pickle."
All the models indicate the infinite variety of responses, as the firm puts it, to relate in scale and character to historical buildings or the scale and fabric of neighbouring buildings. A functional viaduct, the Millau Bridge (1993), became a spanned community of spider webs on girders that seem to tiptoe across the Gorge du Tarn between France and Spain while carrying a highway.
The project that is most aligned with the EnCana intent is the Commerzbank (1991) in Frankfurt – the new symbol of that city. It took six years to build this first ecological office tower. At 53 storeys, the triangular building is the tallest tower in Europe and relies on natural systems of lighting and ventilation. The variable Chinook climate of Calgary may challenge this concept, but re-creating inviting spaces for apartments, restaurants, cafés and a new route through social and cultural spaces at the street level would be possible. And perhaps, in Calgary, there will be restoring, refurbishing and rebuilding of the perimeter buildings that will honour the historical character of the block. |
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