Quebec’s provincial leaders are tripping over each other to support a new initiative, proposed by natural resource minister Claude Béchard, that would require publicly-funded buildings to be constructed out of wood. The idea is that incorporating more wood into our buildings would be a boon to Quebec’s flagging forestry industry. “Not only would constructing more public buildings and institutions out of wood help the struggling industry and create jobs, [politicians] argued, it is environmentally friendly and an excellent showcase for Quebec’s know-how in the business,” reports the Gazette.
Wood is a flexible building material that can be put to great use. But the idea of forcing any building project that uses public money to incorporate lots and lots of wood into its design, all in the name of propping up a declining industry, strikes me as a bit shortsighted. It seems clear that Quebec’s party leaders are supporting this move mostly to win more votes from the rural regions that rely on forestry. (Don’t forget that, thanks to Quebec’s imbalance in seat distribution, these regions have more political weight than Montreal.) Is this really a smart move? The government certainly has a role to play in supporting local industries, but that means it should foster innovation and adaptivity. It shouldn’t be creating artificial demand for a product that is failing because nobody else wants it.
More importantly, though, all of this wood talk makes me nervous for Montreal. The last time we built any significant wood-based structures was in the early eighteenth century, shortly before the entire city burned down and local officials ordered everyone to build with stone instead. I’m not suggesting that using more wood will be a fire hazard, but wood isn’t part of our local vernacular. It’s one thing to encourage government-funded products to use wood but quite another to force them. So far, the politicians are only citing Montreal’s future symphony hall, which would be built at Place des Arts, as one example of a publicly-funded project that would be built with wood. I hope I’m not the only one who’s sceptical about the chances of a wood building integrating well with the Modernist glass-and-concrete aesthetic of this important civic landmark.
Imagine if politicians had already drafted a law requiring government-funded buildings to use wood. What would this have meant for the Grande Bibliothèque, the Palais des congrès and the Caisse de dépôt et de placement’s headquarters? All are major public structures that have been built in the past five years; all have won plaudits for their designs, which incidentally contain little to no wood. If the forestry industry had been faced with a crisis five or six years ago, would the provincial government have forced their architects to incorporate wood into their construction? We would certainly have a different-looking set of public buildings if that were the case.
It all depends on how far our lawmakers are willing to go. We need to know exactly how much wood will be required and how it can be used.
Laval University’s Centre de transformation sur le bois ouvré, built in 2005, is the Quebec’s first major publicly-funded structure built entirely from wood.
Photos: Kathleen Marie and Laval University
8 comments
I don’t know if it’s possible, but last week the entire broadcst of La Semaine Verte was about the forest industry and the province’s steps to re-invigorate it.
One might try the Radio-Canada website to see if it’s available on the web. I watched it here in
Toronto and was fascinated by it.
The new Gehry-designed Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto will feature a 600-foot wood facade. So it’s not like architects shun the stuff.
Thanks for the link. Just to clarify, I definitely think there is a role for wood in architecture. It’s an interesting material. But I think it’s silly for the province to mandate that a certain amount of wood be used in every public building, not for the sake of encouraging good and innovative design, but for the sake of propping up a declining industry.
Correction: The Grande Bibliotheque doesn’t have any exterior walls of wood, but it does have a large wood wall (with rectangular holes) on the inside. If my memory is as good as i think it is.
I wonder if that was ordered from Quebec…
I don’t know whether the Grande Bibliothèque’s wooden wall was mandated by the province, but it was a conscious choice to support the province’s forestry. (If I’m remembering the art & design tour accurately…) I think it’s a great example of how wood, glass and concrete can be integrated successfully, though I have a hard time imagining how it could be done at a site like the Place des Arts.
I find it disturbing when politicians and bureucrats stick their noses in the domain of architecture and design, and well, real estate development of any kind. In that case of Montreal, it is potentially more disastrous; these guys are in another city.
What hasn’t been discussed is that the use of wood in public buildings is highly limited by the National Building Code, due to the fire safety issues.
The “wooden wall” at the Grande Bibliothèque is specially detailed to reduce its combustibility and the amount of smoke it would give off in the case of fire. The TOHU building (the long low part next to the big top) was supposed to be clad in wood, but is actually clad in “wood boards” made of some sort of cement because it is required to be non-combustible by code.
All decent Quebec wood has been cut down over the past hundred years. If we need high quality wood for use in public buildings it will have to be imported from Europe (expensive) or the third world (unsustainable).