By IAN ROSS
Like most Northerners, Dennis Castellan has an admitted “hard-wired” connection to the landscape.
As one of the founders of Castellan James + Partners, the Sudbury architect takes a philosophical approach in his process of design in linking the spiritual interaction between humans and their location.
He likens his method to that of famed architect Louis Kahn in taking the dreams and aspirations of a client and making them into a tangible thing “so that the experience creates magical feelings and memories.”
Castellan has his hand in a number of landmark Sudbury buildings including the downtown YMCA, the massive expansion and renovation of Sudbury’s airport terminal, and the upcoming $6.3 million facelift to Sudbury’s Elm Street courthouse.
At the airport, he designed the passenger holding room as an ellipse representing the shape of Sudbury’s nickel basin. He replicated it at the main entrance using granite and native wood species.
The airport’s large floor-to-ceiling windows represent transparency which is also evident in the downtown YMCA. Passersby on the street at night can view activity inside the two-storey building.
“Making a building public is more than making it physically accessible,” says Castellan. “People who’ve never been in that building know what it looks like inside.”
As an exhibited painter, sculptor and holder of a physics degree, he sees all these fields intertwined.
“Art provides me with a broader cultural perspective to architecture.”
There’s a “poetic dimension” that can be expressed conceptually and through choice of materials.
He embraced "green building" concepts about eight years as a manner of "informed design" that addresses the issue of our region in speaking to the use of materials and processes. “And it was the responsible thing to do as a design profession.”
His current project is at Laurentian University’s new School of Education, a Silver LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building now under construction and scheduled for spring occupancy.
He will also be project architect for Cambrian College’s Sustainable Energy Centre. It will be the first of its kind in Ontario, developed within the Living Building Challenge concept and beyond LEED requirements. Castellan calls it an “alternative pathway to sustainable design.”
“It’s a very holistic concept.”
It’s a daunting task to create a zero energy and zero waste water structural footprint using salvaged building materials sourced within a certain distance.
But Castellan says these buildings are demonstrating how our consumptive society may be turning a corner.
“It’s important for what it draws attention to, beyond the project.”
Though many professionals are leery about sustainable design, viewing it as an encumbrance to development, Castellan presents it as a “life cycle snapshot” of a building, factoring in costs of construction, operations, maintenance and energy consumption.
By far, he says, the most satisfying part of his work is finding an idea for a project and then making it happen.
“We believe that big ideas can occur within any client’s budget. Big ideas can go into any size.”
