Abstract

The disruptions in architectural design development typify the significance of unexpected and apparently less pressing factors in reaching comprehensive solution. The impact of constraints and reverse salients have been extensively studied through an array of empirical and theoretical analytics. Less examined are what might be termed the superficially trivial and/or utilitarian problems encountered in course of moving through the mediated processes of conceptual to practical and comprehensive design solution. The importance of such minor difficulties in the revision of initial and advanced design strategy is examined with respect to a multi-purpose public building erected at Kamloops, a regional centre in British Columbia in Canada. Opened in 1998, the Thompson-Nicola District Regional Building was designed by the Vancouver-based architect Peter Cardew in a Modernist architectural idiom frankly revealing structure, plan and new materials. Besides the government offices, Cardew and his assistants had to include a seperate public library and an art gallery. The final layout, external composition and formal appearance will be shown to result as much from apparently insignificant issues such as the placement of bearing columns in the underground parkade and public lavatories as by formal and aesthetic objectives.