The Humanities Centre
11121 Saskatchewan Drive
Architect: John McIntosh
Constructed: 1971-73
The 1970s were a boom time for the University of Alberta. Student numbers rose drastically as the ‘60s came to a close, and by the 1971-72 academic year more than 18,300 full-time and 8,984 part-time students had registered. To meet the demand for space University administration authorized the campus’ biggest building programme to date, and no less than eight new projects were approved. Among their ranks was the Housing Union Building, the Rutherford Library addition, a new Fine Arts Building, the Law Building, a Chemistry Building addition, phase one of the Medical Sciences Building, and a new Humanities Centre.
Originally proposed in 1965, Humanities — then known as “Arts II, Phase I” — repeatedly gave way to more pressing developments until September 1970, when administration finally authorized its construction. Groundbreaking and pile-driving began the following March, with a targeted completion date of July 1972. “Until then,” noted the student paper Folio, “it will be the joy of construction watchers and daydreamers in the Tory Building.”
Delays, a contractors strike, and one death — that of William Clandening, a twenty-four year-old Alta-West Construction worker who fell three stories — held back work, and the building’s official opening shifted to September 27th, 1973. That wasn’t the only problem; by then Humanities’ cost rose to $4,000,000, some $1,200,000 over budget. Regardless, students and staff anticipated the news. With its opening another 78,000 net square feet of space came to campus.
Ceremonies took place in two parts; “a special lecture at 11 a.m. in Lecture Theatre I, by Dr. Walter H. Johns, past president of the University and professor emeritus of classics; and the ceremony at 2 p.m. in the second floor lobby of the centre, with a recital by the U of A String Quarter as a highlight,” reported The Gateway. In attendance was J.W. Grant MacEwan, Lieutenant-Governor, R.G. Baldwin, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and Aylmer A. Ryan, Provost of the University.
Architecturally, the building represents one of Edmonton’s best examples of Brutalist design. As A Guide to Canadian Architectural Styles writes, Brutalism sought to examine “the beauty and power of concrete.” Designs favour “weightier, monolithic masonry forms,” with complex plans “expressed in irregular, juxtaposed masses… Variations on this theme include buildings with more highly finished surfaces and expressive shapes, some of which include symbolic content.”
A contemporary issue of Folio described Humanities’ beautifully Brutish layout thusly:
“The building will be six stories high, each storey cantilevered over the one beneath., with a round two storey audio visual centre. The interior of the building will have an open air gallery with plantings. The purposes of the gallery are to provide open wells for daylight to the interior offices and classrooms and to add a sense of open space to the long narrow corridors. The width of the corridors will be varied by the use of study space for students, waiting areas, and crossovers.”
Humanities’ brash interior is significant for its hierarchical design pitting offices on the upper four floors against classrooms on the lower two. This, along with the lack of a central stairwell, and few large common areas, was, as Dean George Baldwin described, a combative “legacy of the militant years of the late 1960s.”
Conversely, “great pains were taken to ensure that the users of the building [had] their input” heard, and the University “decided on [an] approach so that we could make classes as informal as possible.” Lecture theatres had “no seats, but rather steps, amphitheatre-fashion, on which students can sit,” and what few common areas exist helped express “the job of humanities,” Baldwin explained; “to ask questions, talk a lot, have bull sessions, and feed the eye and ear.”
Sources:
“The Humanities Centre Is 1 Per Cent Complete,” Folio, April 8, 1971.
“Lonely Task,” Edmonton Journal, July 25th, 1971.
“‘Enrolment Will Govern U Priority’,” Edmonton Journal, April 13, 1972.
“Worker Falls Three Stories To Death,” Edmonton Journal, April 22, 1972.
“Construction Proceeds at U,” Edmonton Journal, July 28, 1972.
“The Cage That Could Have Saved A Worker,” Edmonton Journal, August 30, 1972.
“Humanities Centre Opens Thursday,” The Gateway, September 25, 1973.
Marc Horton, “Dean Praises New Humanities Centre,” Edmonton Journal, September 27, 1973.
“Humanities gala opening,” The Gateway, October 2, 1973.
Leslie Maitland, Jacqueline Hucker, Shannon Rickets, A Guide to Canadian Architectural Styles (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1993), 185.
“John McIntosh F.R.A.I.C. of McIntosh / Workun and Cherchenko: Humanities Centre, University of Alberta,” SOS Brutalism, accessed April 11, 2020,
