The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery was originally designed by Patkau Architects and was awarded the RAIC Governor General’s Award in 1997. The building has been an iconic landmark in the City of Waterloo since its inception. It is truly one-of-a kind cultural facility, dedicated to the ceramic arts and it serves as a hub for public education and space for large events. Renovating such an iconic space has been both technically challenging and a tremendous responsibility for all those involved.
After completing the gallery’s first major renovation in 2018, our firm, WalterFedy, acted to serve as the Architect to replace the prominent Caroline Street storefront and main entrance due to the deterioration of the stick built window frames. The latest phase was successfully completed in the summer of 2024, thanks to an amazing collaboration with the City of Waterloo, Zehr Construction, and Glass Canada.
One of the most complex aspects was replacing the original 27-year-old wood windows with a High-Performance Timber Curtain Wall system by Unicel, crafted from British Columbia douglas fir. The Architect and the City explored multiple material options and chose the timber curtain wall for better performance, low maintenance, while in-keeping with the look of the original windows. Achieving a perfect match with the interior wood required multiple painstaking stain iterations. The skilled trades deserve recognition as the disassembly of the original windows, preparing the substrates to receive new work required meticulous attention to detail.
Every joint was seamlessly trimmed, and every material component of the storefront was assembled with great care.