National Arts Centre
Canada's national performing arts complex beside the Rideau Canal, with four halls and a resident orchestra
The National Arts Centre opened in June 1969, having been commissioned as a project for the centenary of Canadian Confederation. Fred Lebensold of the Montreal firm ARCOP arranged its halls around a grid of hexagons in board-marked concrete, terraced down towards the Rideau Canal at the foot of Elgin Street. The complex holds the 2,000-seat Southam Hall, the Babs Asper Theatre, the Azrieli Studio and the Fourth Stage, along with rehearsal rooms and a canalside terrace.
The centre produces work in seven streams, including the National Arts Centre Orchestra, English Theatre, French Theatre, Indigenous Theatre, Dance and Popular Music and Variety, and it also presents touring companies. A rejuvenation completed in 2017 for Canada's sesquicentennial added a glazed entrance pavilion on Elgin Street by Diamond Schmitt Architects, with three illuminated lanterns and new public foyers that opened the building towards the street and Parliament Hill.
Highlights
- Hexagonal Brutalist plan in board-marked concrete by ARCOP
- Southam Hall, seating about 2,000, home of the NAC Orchestra
- Glazed 2017 entrance pavilion facing Elgin Street
- Indigenous Theatre, the first national department of its kind
