Senate Flag

As part of their design for the rehabilitation of the Government Conference Centre in Ottawa - now the temporary home of Canada's Senate - Diamond Schmitt Architects and KWC Architects (DSA/KWC) proposed incorporating two images of undulating Canadian flags in the Senate Chamber. The images were conceived as relief carvings cut into walnut panels. CIMS worked closely with DSA/KWC to resolve the technical and aesthetic challenges around transforming the flat images to 3D digital files suitable for computer-controlled milling. The final fabrication was the work of the architectural woodworking masters, Beaubois.

The floor-to-ceiling panels are on the east wall of the chamber, framing the Speaker's Chair and the Monarch's and Consort's Thrones. Each panel measures four meters across and is composed of walnut boards running horizontally. The boards are connected to each other using ship-lap joints. This type of joint allows for the necessary expansion and contraction needed for the wood. However, it makes the allowable cutting depth needed to represent the flags a very shallow 8mm. Both the size of the panels and the method of their assembly posed problems for developing an effective solution.

The engraved lines were cut into the wood using two different angles of V-Groove tools: sixty and ninety degrees. These tools cut a triangular profile into the wood along the 2D contour lines generated from the NURBS surface. By using trigonometry, we were able to determine the different depths at which both angles of V-Groove tools would be at the same width. This ensured that the grooves of the contours remained continuous across the flag while varying in depth to differentiate between red and white portions.

Once this workflow was tested numerous times, and all challenges pertaining to manufacturing were understood, CIMS prepared the digital files for production. The final full-scale panels were then manufactured off site by Beaubois, adhering to the standard of quality achieved in the prototypes created by CIMS.