Dangerous Dreams
OF SOMERSET HOUSE
Does Architecture Dream of Upheaval? — Part III
The Site:
The accident in 2007 during a structural retrofit left Somerset House dysfunctional. The rear of the building was removed with only the street façade standing. It is like an architectural taxidermy preserved by I-beam exoskeleton. Safety is once again secured with barricades. The remains of the house that was considered as an eyesore, now is an opportunity for a hit on publicity. In June 2014, the collapsed portion of the Somerset House was used as a backdrop for Somerset Ward, Martin Canning’s voting campaign. “Together, we’re going to witness urbanism meet art, imagine what our ideal neighbourhood looks like, and see it come to life on the East-facing construction wall of Somerset House.”34 The barricade becomes a canvas for “creating art” and “participating together”. Note the existing graffiti at the site that are calling a rebellious dream: a dream that is not of a choreographed event to participate, a discovery of under-used space that can become an infrastructural space to target common issues.
The Story:
The name Ottawa originated from Algonquin word adàwe which means “to trade”. The city of Ottawa has a long history of timber trading and processing. In the 1890s, Ottawa was still semi-industrial and the area where the current Somerset House situates was once a timber mill owned by Daniel O’Connor Jr. Later, as Bank Street became an area of middle-class settlement, the owner of the timber mill sold the corner of Bank Street and Somerset Street and moved further south on Bank Street. The house that takes the corner of Bank Street and Somerset Street was built in two portions. The oldest portion was built in 1896 to welcome the Crosby, Carruthers Company Dry Goods with its store on the sidewalk. In 1902 a four-storey addition was constructed as the Somerset House Hotel and Somerset Apartments, giving the building its current name: Somerset House.
The building was later acquired by C.W.Mitchell, a veteran of the U.S. Civil War and owner and editor of the Ottawa Free Press. His son Edgar inherited the building in 1936 and turned it into the Ritz Hotel. Not only did he transform the dry goods display into a streamline façade, a basement was excavated in order to open a dining salon where dancing and full-course meals were served. The Mitchell family ran the building for 68 years and dedicated their energy to the liveliness of the neighbourhood. In 1979, the grandson of Edgar Mitchell, Edgar Mitchell II renovated the hotel rooms and opened C.W.’S, a jazz lounge. In the process of repair works on the hotel rooms, one of the bay windows had to be replaced. Later, he opened the Lockmaster and Duke of Somerset, a tavern and a pub where one could find entertainment ranging from live music, karaoke, to sports. The hotel business also turned into apartment rooms for rent in the 1980s. A mural depicting the transient, lively Somerset Street was painted to the back of the Somerset House in 1991.
This building at the intersection of Bank Street and Somerset Street holds a long history of housing a heterogeneous volume: a hotel, apartments, restaurants, bars, and other activities. The transient population that occupies the spaces temporarily continuously stimulated the area unlike a building of a homogeneous program. The occupancy ranges from a spontaneous event to an extended stay for years. The spontaneous kind, such as watching a game over a few pitchers of beer with friends at the bar, or a short stay at the hotel, engages more interactions of strangers, in opposition to the long-term occupancy that develops a stronger bond amongst other long-term residents. In a heterogeneous space where the two coexist, the building is neither independent nor dependent. It is a permeable enclave that allows the exchange of values, creating a platform to host a greater diversity of population in a shared time-frame. Unlike a closed community, a heterogeneous space like such has no defined borders therefore there will be no inclusion or exclusion. The boundaries of elasticity allow the interior spaces to engage with the urban spaces through inviting the urban dwellers to participate in the encoded program.
The elastic boundaries do not reflect a set form defined by “commercial” or “residential” that separate the outward and inward functions. In fact the liveliness comes from a mixture of activities distributed throughout its occupied spatial volume and its time of operation. Short-term occupancy relates directly to the more permanent occupants, as distinguishable in the drawing of the façade of the Somerset House: the hotel addition right against the apartment floors of the original 1900s building as one singular property owned and managed by the Mitchell family. The juxtaposition between spontaneous and permanent is elaborated during the boom of sharing communities such as Airbnb [37] in the 2010s. Airbnb is branded to offer “authentic cultural experiences” by staying at a room offered by the local (permanent) dwellers in opposition to a stay in a chained-hotel which by public perception, a non-local entity. The boom of Airbnb cornering the hotel industry is not only a result of the more personal and economical stay for travelers, but it shows that the “local identity” has become an attraction on top of traditional traveling destinations such as museums and monuments.
In 2004, Edgar Mitchell II stated that “The sense of hospitality, of being a publican, of running a place where people socialized and interacted in their community — we’re losing it,” and sold the building to Tony Shahrasebi, an Iranian immigrant who he believed to have the interest, capability, and resources to renovate Somerset House.
Heritage Ottawa granted Somerset House its status as a fabric heritage due to the level of architectural detailing preserved, and the shared memories prior to its collapse. The formed-tin cornices, the bay windows, and the corner turret made Somerset House one of the most unique buildings in Centre-town Ottawa.
In the current proposal by Derek Crain Architects, the new design stresses the use of replica to restore the Bank Street façade to reflect its original 1896 design. The address 352 Somerset Street, once refurbished, will be used as office spaces and ground floor retail. The current house is an artificial ruin constructed by both the structural failure of the physical and spatial architecture. The artist rendering depicting the new construction shows a misalignment between history and future. The future drawn out to be the new renovation does not reflect the former architecture although inheriting the same skin. The façade will be restored into its original state with the bay windows and ornaments reconstructed. The walls of the addition will be stabilized in order to house the new function as a four-storey commercial space. The completion of the physical restoration of the street fronting is only a matter of time; however, will the house continue to be a site of vibrant activities enjoyed by both the local dwellers and the travellers?
In an issue on February 20th 2015 of Centretown News, an article elaborated the urgency for the Somerset House to anchor tenants [38], filling the large spaces at 6000sqf on each floor. By so doing, the so-called “anchor tenants” that are capable of filling up the spaces and generate stable revenue will facilitate the upcoming renovation in June 2015. The current owner, Tony Shahrasebi has previously been working with a national retailer, but the long process has lead him to seek alternatives. The house was considered an eyesore for the community, explained in the news journal. It has attracted various political voices to participate in “fixing the problem”. However, there seems a new ruderal ecology within the “eyesore”, the unwanted. A ruderal species, in botanical terms, describes plants that thrive and colonize in disturbed area or waste spaces. The urban reaction to the unwanted artificial ruin of the Somerset House gives a similar expression: artist’s graffiti on the barricades, layers of posters take over the broken windows and doors, and an occasional person who wanders and peeks into the locked spaces of the ruined house. [39]
The house is not unwanted. Its valuable spaces provide a ground for local inhabitants to manifest their view in an unsolicited fashion. The currently abandoned spaces allow transient participation at different times by different individuals. The familiarity, recognized as “the eyesore”, does not come from an anchoring object that occupies the space permanently, but comes from the constant regeneration of materials such as posters and graffiti tags layering and overlapping onto the barricades. Here, the barricades are the infrastructural backbone that enables such regenerations of visual stimulus to take place and renew themselves due to timely constraints of either the events promoted by the posters or the deterioration of the pigments of the graffiti tags. The temporal spatial engagement of a person with the house is no larger than the volume of one’s own body and no longer than the length of time to poster or paint. The actions that generated the layered visuals onto the “unwanted” Somerset House are extremely transient and ephemeral, with the participants’ very existence only traceable via the reminiscence of their actions: posters and coloured pigments on the barricades.
The ephemeral participation at the ruined Somerset House leaves a reminder of the sharing economy led by the trending Airbnb model of hospitality. Airbnb is not a hotel yet the network of Airbnb, utilizing the Internet as its infrastructural backbone, has enabled homeowners or tenants of rental properties to participate in the constant regeneration of its flesh: a freshly made bed revealing no traces of the past travellers in an authentic cultural context. Although the spaces are rearranged anew each time a traveler comes for a short stay, they leave traces behind in related spaces: a gift for the host, a comment on the Internet page etc. The action of engagement and exchange here is visually manifested and added to the “authentic cultural context” that Airbnb is branded upon. The exclusive space for the transient travelers is narrowed down to a bed, and the rest a shared space with the owner as part of the “authentic cultural context”. In contrast, a hotel room inherits no visual traces of its past occupants. The clean, pristine appearance of a hotel room creates an illusion of exclusivity at a larger scale: the room that is cleaned and arranged on a daily basis as a generic space just like every other room within the building, or even within its chain-brand management. The passage to connect with the “context” is erased with the cleaning services, unlike in an Airbnb property, while the bed is exclusively made for the guest, the guest may engage with the cultural context visually through the setting of the room and through interacting with the host in person. Through minimizing exclusive spaces, a variety of scenarios can occur thus resulting in completely different sets of experiences that constantly excite the journey instead of the “standard hotel room” containing what is always expected.
Similarly in Cities, events area promoted via posters throughout the scattered devalued spaces in cites, for example light posts and barricades. The devalued spaces become the infrastructure enabling unsolicited actions, in this case postering, resulting in a better connected artist’s community by promoting individual events. Unlike common publicity, these devalued spaces require minimal efforts and costs to propagate advertisement yet always in the most un-ignorable position to be seen: they coexist with the everyday life of people. Not only in itself the act of propagating posters is an action of transiency, the viewers participate to validate the valued transient engagement.
Commercial Break
Next >> Upheaval as an Architectural Performance
35. “A Digital History of Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec, Canada Including the Cities of Ottawa and Hull / Gatineau
1600 to 2014”. Bytown or Bust, date accessed January 17 2015, http://www.bytown.net/ottawaname.html
36. “The House They Called Home” The Ottawa Citizen, December 7, 2009, accessed January 17 2015. http://www. canada.com/story_print.html?id=6e3f7abf-0dd9–4239-be25- 7d2338644070&sponsor=
37. Airbnb is an online platform to provide alternative options of hospitality established in 2008. The sharing model of Airbnb originated from providing an airbed (or a bed/room not being used at the moment) and breakfast for short-term guests. By utilizing and reactivating redundant spaces in a private property or an apartment leased long-term, profit can be generated through providing hospitality services as per availability.
38. Anchor Tenants are usually the first, and the leading, tenant in a shopping center whose prestige and name recognition attracts other tenants and, it is hoped, shoppers. Anchor tenant generally pays rent rate lower than that paid by ancillary tenants.
“Anchor Tenants”. Business Dictionary. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/anchor-tenant.html.
39. Khan, Adella. “Somerset House seeks tenants.” Centretown News, February 20, 2015: 1–2.
