Refined for a third time, the contentious design for the expansion of Ottawa’s iconic Château Laurier will be presented to the city’s Built Heritage Sub-Committee on June 18th, with the scaled down project published on the city’s website last week. Designed by Toronto’s award-winning architectsAlliance, the addition has been revised to feature more limestone, breaking up the apparent bulk of the new building while creating an aesthetic dialogue with older hotel.
The newly released design follows three previous iterations, which were criticized strongly by some local voices for lacking a contextual relationship with the Châteauesque hotel, which dates to 1912. The development proposal retains the Château Laurier in its entirety, and replaces the remaining walls of the parking garage with an L-shaped addition, which will abut limited areas on the Château Laurier?s east and west wings. This proposed addition will also be connected to the existing hotel via an enclosed glass link running along the western edge of the hotel?s east wing. The development proposal also includes a landscaped courtyard between the Château Laurier and the proposed addition, modifications to original ground floor window openings to provide access to the courtyard from the hotel ballroom and banquet room, and a new stairway that will provide access to the courtyard from the public terrace on the west side of the Rideau Canal.
The proposed addition will feature a contempora...