Platform-19: University of Ottawa Cenovus Courtyard Revitalization
Platform-19: University of Ottawa Cenovus Courtyard Revitalization
Platform-19: University of Ottawa Cenovus Courtyard Revitalization
Platform-19: University of Ottawa Cenovus Courtyard Revitalization
Platform-19: University of Ottawa Cenovus Courtyard Revitalization
Platform-19: University of Ottawa Cenovus Courtyard Revitalization
Platform-19: University of Ottawa Cenovus Courtyard Revitalization
What do you do with a courtyard that nature has already reclaimed? At the University of Ottawa’s Biosciences Complex, a once-intentional boreal forest teaching space had become overgrown and inaccessible, its concrete pavers heaved by roots, its slabs collapsed. Montreal-based KANVA’s proposal doesn’t restore the original; it learns from what the courtyard became. A lightweight
platform of galvanized steel and cedar hovers above the existing ecosystem, its circular openings — the largest one 19 metres across — cut precisely to accommodate tree canopies and root zones below. An educational railing indexes the site’s more than 85 plant species, making the structure itself a teaching tool. The ground remains permeable, the wilderness curated but not tamed.
