Urban Design award give you a chance to vote
Mark McNeil
The Hamilton Spectator
October 3, 2011
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It’s just one street in the west end of Hamilton, but over the past couple of years some very interesting construction projects have been happening at both ends of it.
At 183 Longwood Rd. S., the $100 million CANMET Materials Technology Laboratory officially opened in February to great fanfare. The building — with its 157 rooms and 145,000 square feet of space — is an important part of the McMaster Innovation Park, located on former Camco property.
Drive down the road to 170 Longwood Rd. N. and you’ll find the oddest little house in the village. It’s called Hambly House, and in a sea of Tudor-style homes, Hambly looks more like a ship. It’s a full-fledged Art Deco, Bauhaus voyage into eccentricity. It was built in 1939 and its current owner spent more than $100,000 to bring it back to former glory.
CanMet and Hambly are just two of 36 entries in this year’s Urban Design and Architecture Awards in a year that has seen a lot of interesting construction projects. And people in Hamilton have the chance to vote for their favourite projects in the People’s Choice category.
Among the entries this year, is the $72 million renovation of Hamilton City Hall that officially reopened in June.
Another entry nearby didn’t involve construction at all. It’s called Urban Sustainability — The Edible Landscape, a project that transformed City Hall gardens into vegetables instead of flowers. The harvest is going to city food banks.
Michelle Sergi, manager of community planning and design for the city, says entries come in many forms in the biennial contest. “We get a variety of submissions and they cross a variety of issues. They go from residential to commercial to industrial. There are new buildings, adaptive reuse of buildings. We also get landscapes submitted.
“It’s about recognizing excellence in design in Hamilton. The goal is to create great places or great spaces for people. Part of that is recognizing the architecture, the landscape, the urban design that goes into the spaces.”