Released yesterday afternoon, following a community open house on April 26, and with the announcement that the city’s Finance and Economic Development Committee has given the go-ahead to send the Bayview Yards Redevelopment project to City Council, the project’s collaborative design team PrototypeD published renderings and a short film showcasing the architectural plans for the site.
Most visually stimulating, the scripted 3 minute film, complete with hollywood soundtrack, begins with establishing shots of the site and its surrounding context, followed by fish-eyed, wide-angled framing of the existing building, and detailed fragments of the interior materials, fixtures, and overall existing condition. This leads to the time-lapsed digital animations of the proposed architectural scheme for the building and its site, with images of the urban-chic interior of glass walls, lofted spaces, and open concept organization.
The design itself, which features outdoor gardens, interior living walls, solar panels on the roof, and an adaptive reuse of the original structure and its cladding – all the hallmarks of its hip, enviro-conscious target market – also includes private meeting spaces, a light-filled cafe, and sculptural ceiling details. The plan calls for the creation of zones, given trendy names such as ‘The Nest’ and ‘The Well’, and the published renderings also include the tower component of stage 2.
Based on the marketing and design scheme alone, it can be assumed that projects such as the cinematography, film work, and digital design modelling showcased in the short film, along with their creators, will all be well at home in this new building once completed. And it is projects such as this that start to bring light to the creative undercurrent and subculture of ‘Official Ottawa’ that is perhaps most exciting – especially if the city is so willing to back it – not to mention how nice it is to finally have a redevelopment project in Ottawa not flagged with controversy. This is a much needed project for Ottawa.
Slated to be a centre for innovation, the Bayview Yards project is working to turn a vacant industrial site into a hub for creativity, entrepreneurship, and new ideas in the National Capital. Next step? City Council May 14.
Images: PrototypeD