University Centre - Jock Turcot building

As with the University of Ottawa's Montpetit building, the Jock Turcot building (or University Centre/Unicentre) is one of those buildings that looks great on paper in the renderings from a couple of angles, but when it's built looks like a big ugly concrete and glass behemoth 95 percent of the time. You have to go down (or up) a flight of shallow concrete stairs to enter the building, as though the architect were ashamed of letting people inside.

When I took this photo last July, it happened to be one of the rare times when you're looking at the building from the right angle, and the sun is in the right part of the sky, that it doesn't look ugly and dreary, but actually sort of--dare I say it--interesting.

Of course, on such a sunny day, these glass-enclosed meeting rooms that stick out to the south are stifling hot and the air conditioning just doesn't get it right.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]