time + place temps + lieu - CSLA :: AAPC

ESSAY
When
JULIAN SMITH
THE CURTAINS came
down at RIDEAU HALL…
FR_www.csla.ca
LES RIDEAUX DE RIDEAU HALL
At this year’s CSLA Congress in Halifax,
Julian Smith became an honourary member
of the CSLA. Mr. Smith is a highly regarded
architect who is internationally recognized
for his contributions to the field of heritage
conservation, in particular, to cultural landscape
theory and practice.
His work and his ideas are referenced
repeatedly in this issue, in large part because he
has emphasized the importance of landscape
and landscape architecture throughout
his career. His use of a cultural landscape
framework allows him to move across the
boundaries between architecture, landscape
and urban design. Julian Smith’s thinking is
perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in
this piece first published in Phillips Farevaag
Smallenburg’s excellent book, “Grounded.”
The essay describes work done with PFS at the
Governor General’s residence, Rideau Hall.
Rideau Hall began as a private residence,
and, in the mid-nineteenth century, was
designated the official residence of the
Governor General of Canada. The project
involved the preparation of a landscape
master plan for the 29-hectare (72-acre) site.
As with Confederation Square, there was a discernible tension between
heritage advocates and contemporary design advocates from the start. This
site was fresh from controversy over a recent memorial rose garden, and
there was an inevitable sense of “either/or.” Julian Smith & Associates and
PFS needed a cultural landscape approach to overcome these suspicions. The
key factor at this site was the difference between initial observation and
subsequent experience. It is in how a place is experienced that continuity and
change can intersect in fruitful ways.
The focus on observation had led the National Capital Commission to
propose a large new visitor centre at the entrance to the site, with large
windowed public areas providing dramatic views of the Rideau Hall grounds
and entrance drive winding up to the house in the distance. The house was
seen as an object in the landscape, and the visitor centre was meant to frame
this view. The problem was that the visitor centre would solidify the idea of
the residence as an object to be observed, rather than allowing it to be an
experiential environment. As the historians pointed out in our discussions
with them, the primary intent of the original landscape design was to draw
one in to the centre of the site and then organize the landscape from that
point outwards. It would not be possible to understand the subtleties of
the design from the outside. One had to enter the site and experience it
from the inside.
The pivotal moment in the design process occurred when Greg Smallenberg
asked if we could enter all of the rooms inside the house to view the landscape
from the interior. It was explained, with some embarrassment that, in fact,
all of the windows had had sheer curtains fixed in place for years, and that
one was not really able to see the landscape from inside. It was then that we
realized that the reason the landscape was in danger was that no one was
experiencing the landscape the way it was intended to be experienced. Tens of
thousands of visitors every year were reinforcing what the governors’ general
themselves had been feeling: that the residence was an object set entirely
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