Place du Portage III

Country Canada
City Gatineau
Customer Public Services and Procurement Canada
Surface area 130,000 m²
Year 2027
Certification LEED Gold + ZCB-Design (targeted)

The renewal of Place du Portage III is founded on a premise of repairing its legacy in many dimensions.

The building is one of the largest federal office buildings in Canada and is the headquarters for both Public Works and Procurement Canada and Shared Services Canada. The renewal of Place du Portage III is founded on a premise of repairing the legacy of PDP3 in many dimensions.

In the dimension of the city, the project reconnects the complex with the surrounding fabric, creating a universally accessible experience for workers and visitors. In an ecological dimension, the project restores balance by achieving carbon neutrality and enhancing wellness through enhanced indoor air quality and user-responsive, intelligent building systems. And in the historic dimension, the project preserves and enhances the character-defining elements of a late-Brutalist-style megastructure, while addressing the human scale and making the building function as a contemporary, high-performance workplace for public servants. The project also confronts the indigenous history of the site, contributing to the government’s quest for reconciliation with First Nations peoples.

Urban Integration and Accessibility

The asset renewal confronts a major challenge of the existing complex, which is its lack of a clear and universally accessible public entrance.
The design emphasizes permeability, creating new ground-level entry points at Laurier Street and Maisonneuve Boulevard. This new public face is linked with a continuous landscape ribbon that contributes to a higher quality streetscape, making PDP3 a good neighbour in the urban fabric of central Gatineau.

The design is predicated on removing barriers, making the entire site and building more inclusive. The new entrance on Laurier connects through to a renovated atrium, which connects to new elevators and up to the public concourse one level above. The concourse has been completely rationalized, providing occupants and visitors with an intuitive journey from front door to lobby to each office floor.

General site plan of Place du Portage III

PDP3 is designed to achieve LEED Gold and comply with the federal Greening of Government Strategy. The building is near-net zero carbon in its operations and is designed to exceed the Department’s target of minimum 24% better than National Energy Code for Buildings 2017. By retaining the existing structure, the building also saves a considerable amount of embodied carbon, compared with new construction (a total of 45,000 tonnes CO2eq).

Provencher_Roy and Perkins&Will engaged Two Row Architects, an indigenous-owned design firm from Ontario. Together, this team is integrating a series of indigenous design elements that enrich the building and pay homage to the human history of the site. The design team has worked with indigenous stakeholders in this process to inform the design and bring authenticity to these interventions.