Designing Exterior Spaces - Danielle Pottier

 

 

As architects, we spend a lot of time focused on the quality of interior spaces, with much less thought being put into the exterior. While we do put a lot of energy into detailing exterior elevations, these don't really give a sense of the human experience of approaching, entering and engaging a building. Particularly in an urban setting, the exterior quality of space created by a new building really changes the quality of the street, and effects more than just the people who use the building. 

Does the building frame the street? Does the building provide a sense being inhabited which makes people walking past feel safe? Does it provide people a place to gather and interact? Does it provide pedestrians place to sit and rest? Does it provide temporary shelter from the rain? There are several spots around Halifax's downtown that are simply unbearable to walk past because of the adjacent buildings, such as the wind tunnel around the Bell-Alliant building at the corner of Barrington Street and Spring Garden Road. The small green space in front of the current Spring Garden Road library is in almost continuous use, because it provides a spot to gather. The low retaining wall that runs around it simply provides a place to sit, and people are always there!

These images are from my thesis work, an adaptive reuse strategy for a hundred+ year old cotton mill in Yarmouth, on Nova Scotia's south shore. A big part of the project was designing how the building would become reconnected to the rest of the town. The interior spaces were stunning, but it was impossible for anyone to access them. The existing mill, currently partially used as an industrial park and rented storage space, is enormous in scale, and provides little in terms of creating a safe and pleasant streetscape around it. It is bordered on one side by Water Street, and on the other by the harbour (which in Yarmouth is quite clean!) One goal was to use the building's various levels as a giant landscape, and to create interesting spaces for different groups of people to experience the building from the outside (and hopefully find it interesting enough to visit the inside!)

A footbridge connects pedestrians from Main Street right into the building's third floor, a public gathering space. The terraced second level provides places for an exterior cafe and viewing platform for waterfront activities. The ground floor offers street level access to artist's workspaces and galleries, and opens out on the water side through a boat building shop. This is extended to the water's edge with a public pier. There are also many partial courtyards and other nooks and crannies that create interesting exterior conditions, and offer spaces for people in the community to gather.  

Not every site has this much going on, but every site offers an opportunity to think about how the building we are designing affects its surroundings.