HMCS Carleton Naval Reserve

Country Canada
City Ottawa
Customer Department of National Defence
Surface area 5,805 m²
Year 2015

The project is located on a waterfront sites at Dow’s Lake in Ottawa, replacing the original facility constructed in the 1940’s.

Program elements include offices, classrooms, training areas, stores, galley kitchen and boathouse area.

These elements are housed in a two-storey structure which surrounds a double height drill deck area suitable for unit meetings and presentations as well as training and recreation. The key urban design challenge for this project was to resolve the relationship of a secure, utilitarian and largely opaque military facility to a very prominent civic location with a very high level of public use in the vicinity. The key urban design concept was to organize the building design and site design in a manner that would leverage its design potential in a way that improved the surrounding urban environment. The imagery of the building obviously refers to the design of ships and the vocation of the building as a naval reserve – but this approach is also based in naval history. The design organization of the building is also traditional – based on the historic pattern of naturally illuminated drill halls. Embracing the idea of “building as ship” lends a somewhat playful and enjoyable demeanor appropriate to the water and recreational setting.

Utility areas are located at the rear façade, screened by vegetation and fin walls, in order to maintain the character of the setting and preserve the image of the building. The optimum functional organization of the building was a two storey rectangular mass, with a somewhat un-promising form. The architectural design entirely mitigated this effect with a façade design organized into tiers of zinc above stone. The zinc was articulated as a separate mass – with ‘fins’ at the port and starboard emphasizing the effect of a ‘ship-shape’.

HMCS Carleton is a secure facility and on this basis required to be separated from public open space by a security perimeter. Rather than circumnavigating the building with a fence - the building was organized so that the lobby space could be situated outside the security line, and programmed as a non-secure public display area – visible to passers-by and an important amenity for members of the public invited to use the facility, with views to Dow’s Lake.