Originally published on November 7, 2022.
On November 7, 2002, the former head office of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) at 1500 Bronson Avenue in Ottawa, Ontario, was designated a Classified federal heritage building. This modern six-storey office block was purpose built in 1964 for the national public broadcaster.
The federal government established the CBC in 1936 as a Crown Corporation and successor to the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Act, 1936, the CBC was to provide a national broadcasting service and act as a regulatory authority. It continued in the latter role until the formation of the Board of Broadcast Governors in 1958. By that time, the CBC had significantly expanded radio coverage across the country and established the first Canadian television network.
Chair of the CBC Board of Governors, Davidson Dunton, led an initiative in 1956 to centralize the CBC’s administrative operations in Ottawa, which at the time were scattered across seven different buildings. Many government offices were then undergoing similar consolidation into suburban office complexes to reduce congestion in the downtown core, following the guidance of Jacques Gréber’s Plan for the National Capital (1950). The federal government had already purchased farmland at Junction Gore in 1949, previously owned by the prominent Heron and Billings families, for the construction of a new campus. It boasted vast greenspaces and a view of the Rideau River, and its close proximity to the downtown core—located just five kilometres south of Parliament Hill—made it an ideal location for government offices. Renamed Confederation Heights, this would be the site of not only the CBC head office, but also the Sir Charles Tupper and the Sir Leonard Tilley government buildings.
The new CBC head office was among the first planned for the Confederation Heights campus and was designed by David Gordon McKinstry, chief architect of the CBC. The distinctly curved building is reminiscent of the UNESCO building in Paris—a great example of the mid-century fusion of the Neo-Expressionist and International Modernist architectural styles. The building is unusually striking and finely detailed for a federal building, and pushes the boundaries of traditional form, making a strong statement about the modernity of the CBC. The steel and reinforced concrete structure experienced a delicately calculated construction process which included distributing the weight of evenly throughout every stage of construction. The building has three wings, giving it a flared “Y’ footprint. Its principal façades are comprised of dynamic glass curtain walls extending in parabolic curves, crowned with a white concrete canopy. Internally, the building was designed with “quiet” ventilation, thanks to architect McKinstry’s expert knowledge of acoustics. The building is surrounded by a green, park-like landscape at 1500 Bronson Avenue. The best-preserved component of the Confederation Heights campus, the elegant structure stands in contrast to the rectilinear massing of the surrounding government buildings.
The CBC Building, which has housed Communications Security Establishment Canada since the 1990s, is a Classified federal heritage building, while the Sir Charles Tupper Building and Sir Leonard Tilley Building are Recognized federal heritage buildings. The Minister responsible for Parks Canada designates federal heritage buildings on the recommendation of the Federal Heritage Buildings Committee.