In the video recordings on WT's Youtube, you can see a draft list of upcoming items for the next meeting. On December's meeting, they anticipated that all those projects would return to the panel in January but they're not included in the agenda that was released today.
Any comments on aesthetics and preferences by anyone (me, you or Peter) are subjective in some measure. You can objectively discuss what a material is; or what a height is; but not so much one's preferences for one or the other...
That said, the idea than a subjective preference on architecture should be disregarded; by an architect no less, is concerning.
Spot on. Other people also complained about the aesthetics but they were met with the same response. I was mentioning projects like Aqualuna that I, and most other people on this forum, think is appropriate for our waterfront and encouraged them to try to evoke a waterfront language (not style, it's about advancing a certain identity) and to focus more on the public realm. I also asked them to consider materials that aren't glass.
I might say some of his passion contributes to some serious blind spots; and that he may at times be too dismissive of those who critique his firm's offerings.
Just look at the whole Château Laurier fiasco. Since 2016 (for five years), architectsAlliance has been going through a long process of submitting and resubmitting outrageous designs that ended up sparking actual protests and became one of Ottawa's biggest news stories. He knew no one liked the design, but insisted on making it stand out as much as possible, because apparently completely ignoring the
Chateauesque aesthetic is actually the right way to conserve heritage. The people of Ottawa wanted an hotel addition that either had a respectful contemporary addition or one that continued the existing hotel's playful style. What struck me even more was why they were doing this. Wouldn't they want to get on with building the addition, instead of waiting so many years for it to finally get approved? Of course, there are other issues at play such as the alteration of a National Historic Site, which apparently don't have any legal protections and, even though Liberals promised to change this as a result of this very project, the laws weren't changed. After all this time with so much controversy, they ended up with a design that uses limestone and a copper roof... but that's it. Peter Clewes explained that "fear" was why people didn't like his masterpiece, not because people want to preserve the character of our capital. Maybe he does care but that only extends to his minimalistic approach.
To capture my sentiment, Jane Jacobs has a great quote... “The most cunningly ignorant people I know are architects.”
Another one is from Paul Joseph Watson, who I personally don't like but makes a good point when it comes to architecture...
"Whereas our new buildings used to look like the headquarters of some kind of post-apocalyptic totalitarian dictatorship, they now look like the headquarters of some kind of futuristic post-apocalyptic totalitarian dictatorship. That's progress!"
