CUPE Ottawa Office
The design of the CUPE Ottawa Office provides a leading example of how architectural and landscape disciplines can work in collaboration to enliven an environmentally degraded light industrial urban site. The generous planting in the urban courtyard provides human-scaled amenity space to benefit visitors, employees, and passers by. The new two-storey, 22,500 sq. ft. building provides accommodation for the relocated CUPE Ottawa Office on the ground floor with a second floor space for future program expansion. The ground floor programming includes 18 private offices, a main boardroom, three meeting rooms and supplementary support spaces. Private offices were distributed along the perimeter of the building to benefit from exterior windows and views. Key common spaces were placed in the central core of the building with glazed partitions to allow for visual connections and natural light to flow throughout the space. Clerical pods were strategically located for optimal productivity.
Sustainable features
Design of this new office building followed the benchmarks of LEED® standards including a focus on creating a healthy indoor environment for users. The building's systems were designed for reliability, durability, flexibility, accessibility, and operational economy. These systems allow the building to reduce energy consumption by up to 52% as compared to the National Energy Code for Buildings, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 32.9 tonnes per year. As well, intensive landscape design includes a stormwater plunge pool inline with an enhanced grass swale. This system captures 100% of the rainfall and snowmelt on the property and filters it before slowly releasing the filtered water into the ground and/or municipal system. This method of stormwater management helps mitigate the effects of urbanization on the hydrologic cycle.
