Third-year studio dives into landscape and climate for Ottawa River project

Third-year students are designing a River School this term for a studio project that emphasizes site, landscape, and climate and was developed in conversation with the Ottawa Riverkeeper.

“The studio has prioritized an ethic of reciprocal care for human and non-human clients on the Ottawa River, material stewardship, community, and public accessibility,” says Professor Ozayr Saloojee, the studio coordinator.

There are 66 Bachelor of Architectural Studies students in the fall 2024 studio, also taught by Associate Professor Johan Voordouw, Instructor Ali Navidbakhsh, and Instructor Reem Awad.

The project site is the NCC River House, a newly renovated, former boat club built more than 100 years ago on foundations set in the Ottawa River, just off the shore along the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway. It offers public recreation and houses the Ottawa Riverkeeper’s Learning Lab.

The final studio project focuses on adaptive reuse of the NCC River House and design of a new Ottawa Riverkeeper Float Lab, an expansion of the organization’s citizen-science program. The learning lab is to be expanded, exhibition space added, and four-season use and accessibility enhanced, including a water taxi dock.

While the requirements seem straightforward, Dr. Saloojee tells students that landscapes are “entangled, messy, thick, complicated, layered things,” that are much more than places to put buildings.

The River School sits in a watershed that is bigger than many European countries, overlaid with recent legal and jurisdictional lines, with deep Algonquin Anishinaabeg history, and now is threatened by climate change and the loss of biodiversity. 

Before considering design, students were asked to grapple with such questions and consider environmental justice in light of the many entanglements raised by using land and water for a building.

“Buildings complicate, and are complications, in the landscape,” says Saloojee.

Nicole Schwab

The image depicts the concerning reality of rising water levels and low flood plains, highlighting their impact on communities and the need for buildings to be constructed differently in today’s world.

Hanna Manzano

The project, titled Flow, features a canopy tree walk and ramps that flow seamlessly to the new public gallery, Ottawa Riverkeeper Lab, and NCC River House. It emphasizes creating an experiential journey that connects the architecture, land, and water.

For their first project, students were asked to prepare a drawing, using a combination of analog and digital media, that engages with the Ottawa River, its watershed, geologies, and more-than-human worlds.

The drawing they made during the first week of school for the Murray & Murray Competition on the theme of Open City, became one panel of a three-panel triptych. Two additional panels consider where water and land meet. Fish, infrastructure, time, history, geology, occupation, and mapping could be investigated to deliver a set of ideas or meanings.

Students were then asked to invent tools for a tool atlas to expand their thinking about the project and its themes. A tool could be something practical like a fishing rod or test for the pH levels of water. It could also be a master plan, bus route, or climate change projection.

 Always the human figure and scale need to be shown in relation. Ideas like adaptive reuse, heritage preservation, or zoning could be considered ideological tools as they condition how we might interact with the River House.

“This complicated entanglement, of scale, place, ideas, themes, situations, circumstances, is what can, potentially, enrich architectural practice — particularly if it’s grounded in an ethos of care and tenderness,” says Saloojee.

Amelie Murphy

This sketch explores preliminary planning of the River House site, with consideration of slope and natural topography. It also explores gable roof structural systems. The project seeks to imagine sensitive ways of interacting with the site — notably, the ground, the wildlife and the water.

Nikki Sond

Experiential visualization of the NCC River House situated in the Ottawa River.

Nikki Sond

Site Analysis of the NCC River House and surrounding area of Rockcliffe Park. 

The studio has been contextualized with a seminar lecture series with guest lectures on climate change, climate mitigation, and resiliency. The speakers include:

• Erika Mayer, (B.Arch ’99), Manager, Sustainable Development Programs, National Capital Commission

• Sami Rehman, Environmental Planner, City of Ottawa

• Karen Lutsky, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Minnesota, and Director of the Great Lakes Design Labs

• Jamie Vanucchi, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University

• Ten X Ten Studio, Minneapolis-based landscape architecture, and urban design practice who are part of the curatorial design team representing the United States at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale