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City staff has decreed that the latest design for an addition to the Château Laurier meets the standard of compatibility with the historic hotel imposed by city council last summer. They are supported in this by heritage consultants ERA Architects, whose report — this cannot be stressed enough — was paid for by the very people proposing the addition. The reality is that the design is still lightyears away from genuine compatibility, because it fails to understand how compatibility is achieved.

There are two ways for an addition to harmonize with a historic building. It can, of course, simply use the style — with a little or a lot of interpretive license — of the existing building. Most modern architects would rather chew on a pack of thumbtacks than design in a historical style, but this solution actually has a long and honourable pedigree.

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It’s what several architects in the ninth and 10th centuries did when adding to the Great Mosque of Córdoba. It’s what Sir Christopher Wren did when building the Tom Tower at Oxford in the 17th century, and what his student Nicholas Hawksmoor did the following century when designing All Souls College next to an existing Gothic chapel. It was the approach taken for additions made to the Château Laurier in the 20th century.