Join Heritage Ottawa next week for a presentation of research on adaptive reuse case studies! The work will be presented by former TRACE team member Melissa Lengies, alongside Dana Mastrangelo and Professor Mariana Esponda from Carleton University.
As a community partner in the project, Heritage Ottawa is pleased to present the research of participating graduate students from the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism for this year’s Emerging Scholars Connect event.
In response to the socio-cultural, environmental, and economic benefits of building reuse, the Carleton research team has been developing a nationwide inventory of adaptive reuse projects from the past ten years, starting with Ottawa, to better assess which building typologies may have a better propensity for certain types of conversions, and what facilitates those conversions.
Research chair Professor Mariana Esponda will introduce the study — an extraordinary collaborative effort creating connections between hundreds of students and communities of practice across Canada. Graduate students will introduce some of the findings of the study, along with the benefits and barriers experienced by some of their case studies in Ottawa. This research was recently presented to an international audience at As Found: an International Colloquium on Adaptive Reuse in Belgium, and will be the source of further discussion during a Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals (CAHP) Workroom at the National Trust Conference on October 26, 2023.
Two familiar TRACE projects, the Sir John A. Macdonald Building and All Saints Church, are among the adaptive reuse case studies that will provide topics for discussion.
From 2008-2015 TRACE worked on the Sir John A. Macdonald Building, converting the historic bank into the new Confederation Room for the House of Commons. The project saw the reuse and rehabilitation of the historic structure to meet modern functional requirements and standards.
TRACE was involved in 2017 with the concept study to bring the All Saints Church into a restaurant and event space to serve the greater community. TRACE’s work included massing studies for a contextually appropriate residential development that retains the historic church, and new condo development for the site which has recently been approved.
The presentation will take place via ZOOM next Wednesday, October 18, at 7pm. To register, click here!
