March 2009 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Peter Mensinga of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada sends in this humdinger, the Hespeler Library of Cambridge, Ontario.
It's a little hard to tell what's going on here.
We'll let him explain:

"...The original building was constructed in 1923 with funds from the Carnegie endowment; and it was expanded in 1981. In 2007 the City of Cambridge decided to expand the building yet again. The city specified that the winning design would have to preserve the historic nature of the building. Phew, no radical changes to the original building, right? Wrong!!

Apparently, additions that compliment the original architecture and don't draw attention to themselves do not win awards. So the solution was to build a giant glass box around the original building. Ta da! The old building is "preserved" and the architects won an award for Design Excellence from the Ontario Architects Association in 2008!

Everyone wins, except the occupants. The triple glazed wall panels were apparently "value-engineered" out of the design in favour of cheaper double glazed panels that have a poorer ability to mitigate heat loss/gain during cold overcast/sunny weather respectively.

Here's a view of how it looks inside the glass shell:

By the way, the Library's own website does not show a photo of the building. (The Hespeler Library)

And here are the nice-looking munchies served during the opening reception: