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Home » Snapshots

Building Reflections

Written by on August 10, 2009 – 9:52 am13 Comments | 5 Read this

Ottawa’s city cen­ter is basi­cally divided into the busi­ness dis­trict and the touris­tic dis­trict. And one thing I absolutely love in the for­mer is the huge build­ings with mirror-like facades.

These build­ings reflect any­thing: the sky, the clouds, other build­ings, passersby… Walk­ing around this part of the city, around fed­eral gov­ern­ment min­istries, feels like walk­ing in a ghost town or a twisted mirror-maze. It’s impos­si­ble to see any­thing inside yet we are feel­ing watched! Look­ing at my own pic­tures, I can barely tell which build­ing was a reflec­tion and which build­ing was actu­ally in front of me.

Appar­ently, these build­ings use the heat-mirror tech­nol­ogy: a glaz­ing sys­tem that pro­vides high light trans­mis­sion, low solar heat gain and low heat loss. Makes sense con­sid­er­ing Ottawa is the cold­est cap­i­tal in the world…


Building Reflection Building Reflection
Building Reflection Building Reflection
Building Reflection Building Reflection
Building Reflection Building Reflection
Building Reflection Building Reflection
Building Reflection Building Reflection
Building Reflection Building Reflection

Related arti­cles:

  1. Win­nipeg Adven­tures In Friendly Manitoba
  2. Pic­ture of the Week: Lost Something?
  3. A Walk In Ottawa
  4. Woman On Top
  5. Pic­ture of the Week: 42ºC

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13 Comments »

  • Zhu says:

    @Tulsa Gen­tle­man — You have a nice pic­ture too! I love these mir­ror maze… that’s some­thing I can’t find in Europe !

    @shionge — I’d be scared too! It hap­pened to my mum a few years ago, for­tu­nately she wasn’t hurt.

    @Adam — I had never thought of that! Poor birds… no won­der there are none downtown!

    @Scarlet — Ottawa is very clean, espe­cially for a big city!

    @Seraphine — Yes, exactly! Although on bad hair day, I avoid look­ing into these buildings.

    @kyh — I have always been told Ottawa was the coldest!

    @Linguist-in-Waiting — You know what, I had been told that so many times, I actu­ally believed it. But you are a right, appar­ently Ottawa only ranks 7th because we do have hot sum­mer. Damn! No brag­ging rights! :lol:

    @beaverboosh — Not that cold appar­ently :lol:

    @Seraphine — Inter­est­ing! Never seen a bird being con­fused by a window.

    @Adem — Thank you!

  • Cuckoo says:

    Those are some amaz­ing reflec­tions Zhu ! I didn’t know Ottawa could be so beau­ti­ful.
    One more thing.…… they really clean the exte­ri­ors of build­ings. :P

    I am late here because I was trav­el­ing. :)
    .-= Cuckoo´s last blog ..Palan­quins at Ele­hanta Caves =-.

  • Seb says:

    Awe­some! Ottawa is on my ‘to visit’ list :)

    makes me want to take some pics of the Phoenix down­town, has some cool build­ings from the 20s to the 50s that are quite fun.
    .-= Seb´s last blog ..Ben­e­fits of Smok­ing. =-.

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