Ottawa: Unique Designs for a Unique City

Designing on-street wayfinding products for the city of Ottawa; a year-round destination for locals and tourists alike, Canada’s capital is home to over 1 million people and many national institutions. We delivered a high quality design tailored to this unique city.

We designed and developed a monolith, midilith and finger-post signage system. Jedco carefully researched the architectural style of Ottawa, particularly the unique heritage gothic revival architecture; and reinterpreted these design features in a contemporary way. Ribbed extrusion detailing on the sides of the totems replicate linear detailing that can be seen across the city. The high quality material palette of stone, glass and aluminium was carefully selected to reflect the materiality of the surrounding buildings; a texturally rich cityscape of stone, bronze, brass and patinated copper hues.

We wanted to avoid designing a ‘generic’ product that could be found in any City, it had to be unique to Ottawa. So we focussed on distilling the essence of Ottawa’s unique urban aesthetic, to create products that perfectly complemented and enhanced the Cityscape.

Jedco collaborated with Steer, consulting with multiple levels of government, producing visuals and photo-realistic renders enabling the city authorities to gain feedback and acceptance of the scheme and developing a strong identity that suited Ottawa’s urban centre.

We then produced full technical drawings for manufacture, ensuring cost effective solutions, with appropriate detailing for vandal resistance and the high variables in temperature found in the city. These drawings were used for the production and installation of the first units in the busy ByWard Market area. The products continue to be rolled out across Ottawa.