Winnipeg City Hall / Hôtel de ville de Winnipeg
1959
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada- Public building
- Building
- Town hall
The new building which is the subject of this Competition will be the third City Hall for the City of Winnipeg since its incorporation in 1873. The present one, completed in 1886, has long since outgrown its usefulness in terms of size, efficiency and significance as a "proud expression of its function as the centre of civic government."
A City Hall has been defined as "the physical embodiment of what the city is, what it stands for, and what it aims to be." Today it must assume the dual functions of an efficient office building and of a muncipal government administration centre. Its significance in the growth of a city results from its expression of the purpose and nature of municipal government as well as from its impressive monumentality. True, its functioning must be both efficient and convenient; it must be flexible and readily adaptable to changing conditions and requirements; it must be economical in initial cost, in operation and maintenance; but, above all, it must be attractive, expressing the dignity of its use, at the same time avoiding meaningless stylistic
ornamentation. Appropriateness should be the keynote and objective of its design. It should achieve a friendly dignity through discrimination and restraint, and avoid the architecturally sensational which so often results from aesthetic or technical connoisseurship.
This Competition for the design of a new City Hall for Winnipeg is a challenge to the architects of Canada to create a building which will fulfill the physical requirements of both the legislative and the administrative branches of the City's government and will at the same time be the physical embodiment of the qualities traditionally associated with civic government.
(From competition brief)
All visual documentation is taken from the book "Report on the competition A CITY HALL FOR WINNIPEG, Canada"
A City Hall has been defined as "the physical embodiment of what the city is, what it stands for, and what it aims to be." Today it must assume the dual functions of an efficient office building and of a muncipal government administration centre. Its significance in the growth of a city results from its expression of the purpose and nature of municipal government as well as from its impressive monumentality. True, its functioning must be both efficient and convenient; it must be flexible and readily adaptable to changing conditions and requirements; it must be economical in initial cost, in operation and maintenance; but, above all, it must be attractive, expressing the dignity of its use, at the same time avoiding meaningless stylistic
ornamentation. Appropriateness should be the keynote and objective of its design. It should achieve a friendly dignity through discrimination and restraint, and avoid the architecturally sensational which so often results from aesthetic or technical connoisseurship.
This Competition for the design of a new City Hall for Winnipeg is a challenge to the architects of Canada to create a building which will fulfill the physical requirements of both the legislative and the administrative branches of the City's government and will at the same time be the physical embodiment of the qualities traditionally associated with civic government.
(From competition brief)
All visual documentation is taken from the book "Report on the competition A CITY HALL FOR WINNIPEG, Canada"