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2008 Governor General’s Medals
in Architecture
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Winnipeg Centennial Library Addition |
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 The Winnipeg Centennial Library is
a three-storey building that along with
a public park occupies a city block. Expanding the library into the park would have destroyed valuable green space. Thus most of the added space is contained in a new fourth floor. At
the park edge, new elevators and a system of stairs and reading terraces tie existing floors to each other and to the new fourth floor. The glazed wall
of this multistory space opens every level to light, landscape, and the city.
All public and collections space is accessible from this route. The highly visible, interactive terraces generate
a radically new identity for the
library.
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Jury Comment:
This project skillfully utilizes a multivalent glass veil that masks the eroded face of the existing brutalist concrete library, which is blown open to invite in the adjacent park. Rather than expanding the three-storey building, a fourth floor is cleverly added in order to maintain the minimal footprint and leave unoccupied the valuable adjacent urban green. The economy and simplicity of this gesture interestingly creates a complexity in the interconnectedness of newly programmed spaces where degrees of reflectivity, transparency and opacity render a layered, urban experience. |
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Pina Petricone, MRAIC |
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