The project aims to restore the building to the grandeur envisioned by its chief architect, John Pearson, more than a century ago.
For more than five years, construction hoarding and steel fences have kept the public away from Parliament’s Centre Block as it undergoes a massive decade-long renovation. The project, budgeted to cost between $4.5 billion and $5 billion, will bring the building into the modern age, making it fully accessible and equipped with the latest technology while also meeting modern building codes.
But modernizing doesn’t mean forgetting the past, and the project aims to restore the building to the grandeur envisioned by its chief architect, John Pearson, more than a century ago.
This week, Public Service and Procurement Canada took the media on a tour of the Centre Block work.
Demolition is complete and all hazardous material such as asbestos has been removed, said Siavash Mohajer, a senior director of the rehabilitation program.
“We are now in the phase of rebuilding.”
Welcome to Parliament: A new visitor’s centre.
For the public, the most obvious work is the enormous excavation in front of Centre Block that will house Parliament’s new welcome centre.
About 40,000 truckloads of material have been blasted, hammered and dug from Parliament Hill. The new entrance will double the number of visitors who can be accommodated to 700,000 a year. Theatres and meeting spaces will be used to provide visitors a multimedia experience even when the main building is closed off, for example, during visits by foreign dignitaries.
Like the symmetry of Centre Block’s Beaux Arts design, the welcome centre will provide access to both sides of Centre Block, the Senate to the right and the House of Commons to the left and will link to Parliament’s West Block as well.
A mega-basement reno
The Centre Block has never had a basement, but the renovation will add new subterranean floors that connected to the visitor centre. There will be no blasting here. Instead, an intricate, carefully planned operation will create a temporary foundation to support the building while the old one is repaired and the basement is carved out.
Roughly 800 rods or pilings have been hammered into the bedrock of Parliament Hill, and they will eventually support a frame of structural steel carrying the entire weight of Centre Block. Once the weight has been transferred, remote control excavators will squeeze into the narrow spaces between the pilings and begin the Herculean task of removing 100,000 cubic metres of bedrock, in some spots to a depth of 24 metres.
“As a construction manager, you’d love to just open this whole area up and blitz through it, but it has to be very methodical and in a very prescribed sequence,” said William Coleman, structural lead for PCL Construction/Ellis Don. “The work is complex, and it’s a very confined space. We can only move as fast as structural engineers allow us to go.”
Evening Update
To keep everything level, engineers rely on a sophisticated monitoring system of liquid levels, laser beams and temperature sensors that can measure regular daily expansion and contraction as the building warms and cools with the weather.
The vertical movement can be no more than three millimetres and in some areas no more than one millimetre.
“We’re trying to keep it under three millimetres of vertical movement, and in some areas one millimetre,” Colemans said. “That’s very, very hard to do, but we have the best of the best helping us.”
The Ottawa Valley is one of Canada’s most seismically active zones and bringing the Centre Block up to modern seismic codes is one of the project’s most difficult challenges. When complete, the building’s weight will rest on rubber pads called seismic isolation barrettes that will keep the structure steady even as the ground around it shakes. It’s designed to withstand an earthquake of up to magnitude 6.5.
The Stone Work
A century of freeze-thaw cycles have played havoc on the hundreds of stone carvings on the Centre Block exterior. Bringing them back to life is the job of stone carvers like Danny Barber and Nicholas Thompson.
One buffalo head carving from the west side of the building had deteriorated so much that it was beyond saving. Barber spent most of the past summer carving a new one from a single block of sandstone. He used angle grinders and pneumatic tools to rough out the shape before switching to traditional mallet and chisels for the final, masterful carving. With its waving mane, glaring eyes, the final work is so lifelike that one expects to see steam coming from its nostrils.
“I’m very proud to have worked on this stone,” Barber said. “This isn’t the sort of thing we get on our work benches very often. There’s a lot of detail, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. You have to break it down into small pieces and pull back from the overall design. Midway through you get a little bit buried in it, but then you start to see the details emerge.”
Both Barber and Thompson trained in England.
“This kind of work represents many years of experience, and it’s a real honour to bring these skills back to Canada and use them on our country’s most important buildings,” Thompson said.
High Heritage Rooms
Anyone who has done a home renovation knows there’s always a surprise awaiting. In the Speaker’s Dining Room, one of 50 areas in Centre Block designated as “high heritage,” workers stripped fabric off the walls that was likely added in the 1960s (shag carpet anyone?) and found elaborate stencilling that had been long forgotten.
Restoration experts will work to bring the space back to the original vision of the building’s lead architect, Pearson.
“Over time, the building has gone through a transformation. Part of our job is to peel that layer back and determine what we think this room could look like, bringing it back to its original look,” said Darrell de Grandmount, director of the House of Commons.
Design experts are working to recreate the original paint scheme, restoring the dining room’s original gilted ceiling, for example. The original light fixtures are being restored or recreated when necessary, and modern LED lighting is being added to augment room lighting. Acoustic experts are working in the rooms to ensure sound carries when needed or doesn’t carry in areas where privacy is required.
The Senate Chamber
Stripped of its red carpet, elegantly carved desks and imposing artwork, the Senate stands virtually unrecognizable. Its heritage artifacts have been removed and taken offsite for storage and conservation. When the work is complete, however, the Upper Chamber will be universally accessible and fitted out for broadcast.
“It’s pulled back to the bare bones,” said Louise Cowley, director of long-term vision and planning for the Senate.
A new glassed in viewing area will allow tours to see and hear the proceedings without interrupting proceedings, while new windows high above the chamber will allow natural light. The old windows were deemed to have no historic value, so a competition will allow Canadian artists to submit new designs.
“If you think of the senators we have, they come from diverse backgrounds — socioeconomic, cultural — and we feel these windows have the opportunity to represent the diversity of Canadians,” Cowley said.
The House of Commons
Like the Senate, the House of Commons has been stripped to the bricks. A soaring network of scaffolding reaches to the ceiling.
Conservators have carefully removed the linen ceiling for restoration while planners figure out how to incorporate the needs of today in a century-old building.
“The heritage of this room must be maintained,” de Grandmount said. “The challenge we have is integrating the building infrastructure, making sure the functionality gets integrated into that heritage.
“As an example, how to we incorporate lighting for broadcasts, but do it in such a way that it doesn’t take away from the heritage aspect,” he said.
Another problem? Where will everyone sit as the number of MPs grows as required by the Fair Representation Act. When Parliament moves back to the Centre Block, expected to be some time in 2032, there will be more than the current number of 338 MPs. MPs may find themselves without assigned seats, sitting in fold-down theatre-style chairs or even squeezing onto benches as in Britain’s Westminster.
Photo Gallery
Our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark our homepage and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed.
