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contents

20 shops at don Mills a new 21St-Century model oF the ShoppinG mall emerGeS in a poStwar Suburb oF toronto. teXt John bentley mayS

26 FairMont paciFic riM

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news

ateral Office wins the Professional Prix L de Rome in Architecture; campaign for Hylozoic Ground at the Venice Biennale.

16 insites

thiS maSterFul new downtown vanCouver proJeCt repreSentS an exCeptional aChievement in the Career oF arChiteCt JameS ChenG. teXt trevor boddy

34 60 richMond housing co-op teeple arChiteCtS proveS that Street-wall arChiteCture Can be hiGhly enGaGinG in thiS reFreShinGly SCulpted buildinG in downtown toronto. teXt elSa lam

Ian Chodikoff discusses John MartinsManteiga’s recently published Peter Dickinson, a lovingly researched book that provides astonishing details on the late, great architect who reshaped mid-20thcentury Canada.

41 calendar

huGh robertSon/panda

Bent Out of Shape: Canadian Industrial Design 1945—Present at the Design Exchange; FABRICation: Studio Production Textiles for Interiors at Cambridge Galleries Design at Riverside.

42 Backpage Thomas-Bernard Kenniff provides an update on the magnificently evocative Borough Market in South London.

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auGuSt 2010, v.55 n.08

the Fairmont paCiFiC rim in vanCouver by JameS K.m. ChenG arChiteCtS inC. photo by JameS K.m. ChenG.

coVer

The NaTioNal Review of DesigN aND PRacTice/ The JouRNal of RecoRD of The Raic

08/10 canadian architect

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dIvIsIon teCh

viewpoint

when CoMbIned wIth GeoGraPhIC data, aCCurate Census InforMatIon Is beCoMInG InCreasInGLy IMPortant for arChIteCts to Make InforMed deCIsIons. above

Most Canadians will have experienced the media’s recent coverage of the intense anger expressed over the Conservative government’s decision to scrap the mandatory long-form census and replace it with a voluntary one comprised of a few basic questions. Unless the proposal is reversed or drastically altered by the end of August, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s stubbornness will yield a meaningless information-gathering exercise that will deny statisticians, economists, charitable groups, municipal governments, developers, urban planners and architects a critical resource to accurately gauge the ways in which Canadian society is evolving. A voluntary census will hinder the decision-making processes relating to future design projects such as parks, community centres, hospitals and health-care facilities, schools, commercial and residential developments, and specialized mixed-use facilities.

Without an adequate census, formulating important and intelligently programmed city-building initiatives will be radically compromised.

Currently, there are two methods for accurately tracking a country’s population: a mandatory long-form census and a registry system. Registry systems are common in most Scandinavian and some European countries. They typically involve a cross-referencing system that gathers data from its tax, employment, education and population registers. In these countries, registers are constantly updated because citizens are obliged to report matters such as any change of address, job, vehicle or marital status. A recent article in The Economist noted that these countries consider census-taking obsolete, preferring to gather information from centralized government databases, in addition to periodic polling.

Registers have an advantage over censuses in that they allow countries to evaluate their demographic structure at much shorter intervals. This 6 canadian architect 08/10

is very useful, given the increasingly global nature of society, and the fact that today, Canadians switch jobs and change addresses much more frequently. The government’s lame excuse for eliminating the long-form census in Canada is that it is an invasion of privacy, but they already keep considerable amounts of detailed information on Canadians. If we follow the reasoning that a census isn’t the best way to gather data, then our government should make a concerted effort to leverage the existing information available, improving it as required.

Sadly, Stephen Harper has already been reducing the budget and eliminating surveys on various aspects of Canadian society—one being the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, which collects data on people with disabilities. In this instance, the government seems to believe that it is sufficient to collect information only from disabled people who receive welfare, given that Canadians with disabilities are more likely to be either unemployed or low-income earners. As Susan Ruptash, a principal at Quadrangle Architects and expert on barrier-free design noted at a recent seminar, architects still have not fully addressed the needs of users who have physical or cognitive impairments. Clearly, if we no longer track this segment of the population with accurate and complete data collection, then how can we ever make informed decisions regarding changes to building codes and by-laws so that our built environment becomes fully inclusive?

Complete census data can also enhance a design practice’s ability to produce presentation and working drawings. Tools like Geographic Information Systems and Building Information Modelling are becoming increasingly prevalent in contemporary practice. They rely upon spatial and demographic data to create impactful visualizations that clients can understand. Current software is able to integrate geographic and census data with a range of impressive mapping tools, allowing architects to zoom into different areas across Canada and obtain population and dwelling counts, thematic maps and a number of additional data characteristics. Today, it is practically mandatory for architecture students to incorporate sophisticated census information into their studio projects.

Should he continue with his foolhardy plan to abolish the long-form census, let us hope that our Prime Minister realizes that there are preferred alternatives to replacing the current form of census-taking with a voluntary questionnaire, but this is unlikely to happen. As a progressive society, we require complete demographic data to make informed decisions about the future of our built environment.

Ian ChodIkoff

ichodikoff@canadianarchitect.coM

editor Ian ChodIkoff, OAA, FRAIC associate editor LesLIe Jen, MRAIC editorial advisors John MCMInn, AADIpl. MarCo PoLo, OAA, FRAIC contributing editors GavIn affLeCk, OAQ, MRAIC herbert enns, MAA, MRAIC douGLas MaCLeod, nCARb regional correspondents halifax ChrIstIne MaCy, OAA regina bernard fLaMan, SAA montreal davId theodore calgary davId a. down, AAA Winnipeg herbert enns, MAA vancouver adeLe weder publisher toM arkeLL 416-510-6806 associate publisher GreG PaLIouras 416-510-6808 circulation Manager beata oLeChnowICz 416-442-5600 ext. 3543 custoMer service MaLkIt Chana 416-442-5600 ext. 3539 production JessICa Jubb graphic design sue wILLIaMson vice president of canadian publishing aLex PaPanou president of business inforMation group bruCe CreIGhton head office 12 ConCorde PLaCe, suIte 800, toronto, on M3C 4J2 telephone 416-510-6845 facsimile 416-510-5140 e-mail edItors@CanadIanarChIteCt.CoM Web site www.CanadIanarChIteCt.CoM Canadian architect is published monthly by bIG Magazines LP, a div. of Glacier bIG holdings Company Ltd., a leading Canadian information company with interests in daily and community newspapers and business-tobusiness information services. the editors have made every reasonable effort to provide accurate and authoritative information, but they assume no liability for the accuracy or completeness of the text, or its fitness for any particular purpose. subscription rates Canada: $52.95 plus applicable taxes for one year; $83.95 plus applicable taxes for two years (hst – #809751274rt0001).

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Postmaster: please forward forms 29b and 67b to 12 Concorde Place, suite 800, toronto, on Canada M3C 4J2. Printed in Canada. all rights reserved. the contents of this publication may not be reproduced either in part or in full without the consent of the copyright owner. from time to time we make our subscription list available to select companies and organizations whose product or service may interest you. If you do not wish your contact information to be made available, please contact us via one of the following methods: telephone 1-800-668-2374 facsimile 416-442-2191 e-mail privacyofficer@businessinformationgroup.ca mail Privacy officer, business Information Group, 12 Concorde Place, suite 800, toronto, on Canada M3C 4J2 member of the canadian business press member of the audit bureau of circulations publications mail agreement #40069240 issn 1923-3353 (online) issn 0008-2872 (print)

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news

PrOjects Kasian to design the largest rcMP divisonal headquarters in canada.

Kasian Architecture Interior Design and Planning Ltd. will design the new Royal Canadian Mounted Police E Division Headquarters in Surrey, British Columbia. This integrated, purpose-built complex will provide consolidated office and support space for 2,700 police personnel, currently housed in 25 separate locations throughout the BC Lower Mainland.

The new 76,162-square-metre facility will enhance the RCMP’s ability to provide integrated, intelligence-based policing, and will improve overall communications and response times.

This landmark project is a public-private partnership (P3) between the Government of Canada and Green Timbers Accommodation Partners, a consortium formed by Bouygues Bâtiment International, HSBC Infrastructure, and ETDE FM Canada. Kasian was appointed by the design-and-build joint venture between Bouygues Building Canada and Bird DesignBuild to lead the design of the facility. ETDE Facility Management Canada will provide all management services. A fixed price of $966 million has been agreed upon to design, build, finance and maintain the new headquarters for a term ending 25 years after construction.

Kasian Principal Michael McDonald will oversee the design for the new headquarters. Full building construction on the RCMP E Division Headquarters began in July 2010, and the estimated date of completion for the project is December 2012.

The h2Office in Winnipeg and The MOnTrOse culTural cenTre in grande prairie, alberTa each received an aWard Of excellence in The 2010 prairie design aWards, unveiled aT The recenT raic fesTival Of archiTecTure held in saskaTOOn.

aBOVe, LeFt tO riGht

awards Lateral Office wins the Professional Prix de rome in architecture.

Toronto architecture firm Lateral Office is the winner of the $50,000 Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture for 2010. Administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, this award recognizes excellent achievement in Canadian architectural practice. Lateral Office’s founding partners, Lola Sheppard and Mason White, will use the prize funds to travel to the Arctic to pursue their research proposal entitled Emergent North. The travel research continues an ongoing investigation and documentation of cold-climate settlement forms, issues, and vernacular innovations in the circumpolar region. Emergent North looks at the challenges and opportunities of the public realm, civic space, landscape, and infrastructure emerging from a unique geography. Sheppard and White will conduct two travel routes through Nunavut, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories, as well as Alaska and Greenland, to gather firsthand knowledge and documentation of far northern settlements. This research will inform a series of ongoing design projects responding to social, political, economic and ecological issues confronting the far north. The Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture is awarded to a young architect or practitioner of architecture, an architecture firm or an architectural design firm that has completed its first buildings and demon-

strated exceptional artistic potential. Founded in 2003, Lateral Office is an experimental designresearch studio that operates at the intersection of landscape, architecture and urbanism. Lateral Office seeks direct engagement with the difficult questions of contemporary urbanism, the public realm and infrastructures demonstrated through design competitions, publications and exhibitions. Born in Montreal and based in Toronto, Lola Sheppard is an architect, writer, and educator as well as a member of the Ordre des architectes du Québec. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. Mason White is an architect, writer, and educator born in Washington, DC and based in Toronto. He is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. design exchange awards 2010 call for submissions.

The Design Exchange Awards program promotes Canadian design excellence and recognizes the critical role of design in all types of organizations including commercial entities (large and small businesses), not-for-profit organizations, and the public sector. These Awards are designed to: expand national understanding of design as an essential resource; demonstrate that investment in design impacts overall business success; celebrate effectiveness in all design disciplines; highlight the critical role of design in enhancing quality of 08/10 canadian architect

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2010 AwArds of ExcEllEncE Canadian Architect invites architects registered in Canada and architectural graduates to enter the magazine’s 2010 Awards of Excellence.

Eligibility

4. Please do not submit any material in CD, DVD, or any other audio-visual format not confined to two dimensions, as it will not be considered.

Projects must be in the design stage, scheduled for construction or under construction but not substantially complete by September 16, 2010. All projects must be commissioned by a client with the intention to build the submitted proposal. All building types and concisely presented urban design schemes are eligible.

Entry fee

Judging criteria

Publication

Awards are given for architectural design excellence. Jurors will consider the scheme’s response to the client’s program, site, and geographic and social context. They will evaluate its physical organization, form, structure, materials and environmental features.

Presentation

1. Anonymity. The designer’s name must not appear on the submission except on the entry form. The project name and location should be identified.

2. Each entry must be securely fastened in a folder or binder of dimensions no greater than 14´´ 5 17´´; oversized panels will not be accepted. One (1) copy of this entry form must be enclosed within an envelope and affixed to the front of each folder, preferably without the use of Scotch tape or adhesives. Clips are ideal.

3. Each project folder must include: a) first page—a brief description of the project (500 words or fewer) b) second page—a brief description indicating the project’s ability to address some or all of the following issues (1,000 words or fewer): i) context and/or urban design components ii) integration of sustainable design iii) innovation in addressing program and/or the client’s requirements iv) technical considerations through building materials and/or systems c) drawings/images including site plan, floor plans, sections, elevations and/or model views

$85.00 per entry ($75.22 + $9.78 HST). Please make cheques payable to Canadian Architect. HST registration #809751274RT0001.

Winners will be published in a special issue of Canadian Architect in December 2010. Winners grant Canadian Architect first publication rights for their winning submissions.

Awards

Framed certificates will be given to each winning architect team and client.

Details to follow upon notification of winners. notification of winners

Award winners will be notified after judging takes place in October 2010. deadline

Entries will be accepted after August 12, 2010. Send all entries to arrive by 5:00 pm on Thursday, September 16, 2010 to: Awards of Excellence 2010 Canadian Architect 12 Concorde Place Suite 800 Toronto, Ontario M3C 4J2 return of Entries

Entries will not be returned.

name of Project name of firm Address Telephone

city & Province fax

Architect/Architectural Graduate submitting the project

E-mail signature

according to the conditions above client

client Telephone

Postal code

life; reinforce the value of strong client/designer partnerships; and promote the critical role of design in sustainability. A jury of leading business executives, designers and community leaders will select a Gold, Silver, Bronze and two Honourable Mentions in each of the 12 categories, including architecture, engineering, fashion, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, landscape architecture and urban design. The final submission deadline is September 30, 2010. The awards ceremony will be held on November 23, 2010. www.dx/org/dxa winners of the 2010 Prairie design awards announced.

The winners of this year’s Prairie Design Awards were announced at the recent RAIC Festival held in Saskatoon in June 2010. The award is presented every two years by the Alberta Association of Architects (AAA), the Saskatchewan Association of Architects (SAA) and the Manitoba Association of Architects (MAA). The Awards were presented at the kickoff to the RAIC/SAA Festival of Architecture in Saskatoon at the end of June.

In the Recent Work category, an Award of Excellence was given to Teeple Architects in association with Kasian Architecture for the Montrose Cultural Centre in Grande Prairie, Alberta, and to Cibinel Architects Ltd. for H2Office in Winnipeg.

Five Awards of Merit were given to the following: Cohos Evamy Integratedesign for the Calgary Zoo North Gate; Cibinel Architects Ltd. for the Apotex Centre at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Pharmacy in Winnipeg; LM Architectural Group for the University of Manitoba’s John A. Russell Building Exterior Envelope Replacement in Winnipeg; Cohlmeyer Architecture Ltd. and 5468796 Architecture Inc. for the Bohemier Residence in Winnipeg; and Cohos Evamy Integratedesign for the Royal Canadian Pacific Entry Pavilion in Calgary. In the Interior Design category, an Award of Excellence was given to Dub Architects for the 2nd Avenue Lofts in Saskatoon, and an Award of Merit was given to Bernard Flaman for tiny + heritage + green = home in Regina, a small-scale residential heritage restoration and redesign project. In the Small Projects category, two Awards of Excellence were given to spmb_projects for Table of Contents in Winnipeg, and to David Penner Architect for Corogami Hut, also in Winnipeg.

Lubor trubka associates architects wins wan health-care award.

World Architecture News announced the winners of its awards in the health-care sector for both built and unbuilt projects. Located on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Tseshaht First Nation Health Centre and Multiplex by Vancouver-

based Lubor Trubka Associates Architects took the prize in the built category, and the Shenzen Third Peoples’ Infectious Disease Hospital by TRO Jung Brannen was declared the winner in the unbuilt category. Juror Phil Nedin of Arup Associates stated that Lubor Trubka Associates encapsulated “the way to be going forward—a message about the importance of health care on a very local community-services level.” The WAN Awards program is organized by World Architecture News, the international online magazine and UIA media partner. www.worldarchitecturenews.com 3rd international holcim awards.

The 3rd International Holcim Awards competition offering a total of $2 million US in prize money is open to: sustainable building and civil engineering works; landscape, urban design and infrastructure projects; and materials, products and construction technologies. The Awards are an initiative of the Swiss-based Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction. Entries must be submitted online by March 23, 2011. The competition celebrates innovative, future-oriented and tangible projects and visions from around the globe and is open to anyone involved with approaches that contribute towards a more sustainable built environment. www.holcimawards.org

cOMPetitiOns eVolo skyscraper competition.

eVolo Magazine invites students, architects, engineers, and designers from around the globe to take part in the 2011 Skyscraper Competition, a forum for the discussion, development, and promotion of innovative concepts for vertical density. Multidisciplinary teams are encouraged.

The exponential increase of the world’s population and its unprecedented shift from rural to urban areas has prompted hundreds of new developments without adequate urban planning and poor architectural design. There are no restrictions in regards to site, program or size. The objective is to provide maximum freedom to the participants to engage the project without constraints in the most creative way. Participants must register by January 11, 2011. Participants may submit various projects, but must register each entry. There is no limit to the number of participants per team. Individual entries are accepted. The project submission deadline is January 18, 2011. The 1st place winner receives $5,000 US; 2nd place receives $2,000 US; and the 3rd place winner receives $1,000. www.evolo.us/architecture/registration-2011-skyscraper-competition/

a rendering frOM laTeral Office’s research prOjecT enTiTled eMergenT nOrTh. The 2010 prix de rOMe Winners Will be exaMining ecOlOgical and sOcial issues unique TO The far nOrTh.

aBOVe

what’s new iideX/neocon canada goes national.

Big changes have been underway since the 2009 IIDEX/NeoCon Canada exposition and conference.

One of the most important changes is the transfer of ownership of IIDEX/NeoCon Canada to IDC, the Interior Designers of Canada, creating Canada’s largest national exposition and conference for the design, construction and management of the built environment. The 2010 edition welcomes the return of the Green Building Festival and Light Canada, and will also feature many new products and exhibitors, expanded feature areas, special events, tours, awards ceremonies and the ever popular international keynote lecture series plus a CEU-accredited conference covering all aspects of design, architecture, facility management, lighting and sustainable design. Additional highlights include the following: Think: Material, showcasing the most innovative and creative materials from around the world; Kitchen Concept 2015, which offers a look into the future trends of kitchen design circa 2015 based on the four main principles of increased convenience, improved ergonomics, state-of-the-art wiring, and multimedia networking; LEDiscovery, an annual conference dedicated to informing and empowering designers to incorporate energy-efficient lighting solutions; and a Fractal Garden installation designed by Legge Lewis Legge Architects. This year’s lineup of keynote speakers includes Arik Levy of Ldesign in Paris as the Design Keynote; Jeremy Rifkin of the Foundation on Economic Trends as Environment Keynote; Avi Flombaum of Designer Pages in New York as Innovation Keynote; and Craig Dykers of Oslo- and New York-based Snøhetta as Architecture Keynote. IIDEX/NeoCon Canada runs from 08/10 canadian architect

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a phOTO and deTail draWing Of an OrgOne, a cOMpOnenT Of philip beesley’s HylOzOic grOund, canada’s Official enTry TO This year’s venice biennale.

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September 22-25, 2010 at Toronto’s Direct Energy Centre. www.iidexneocon.com campaign for Hylozoic Ground at the Venice Biennale.

Participate in the campaign for Canada’s official entry to the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Hylozoic Ground, Canada’s official entry to the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, runs from August 29 to November 21, 2010. The installation is an astounding blend of architecture, art, science and technology, an empathic living organism that interacts with individuals entering its space. Please help Canada shine on the world stage with a $100 donation, and help build Hylozoic Ground one frond at a time, one of the delicate leaf-like building blocks of the installation.

Or, join as a Friend, Supporter or Sponsor. No donation is too small or too large, and all will receive a charitable tax receipt. Your name will be featured in Hylozoic Ground’s publicity, on the website, and on the sponsor wall in Venice. www.hylozoicground.com/opportunities/index.html ryerson University’s Master of architecture program granted initial accreditation.

For the first time in 35 years, a new professional program in architecture has been granted initial accreditation in Canada. Ryerson’s Master of Architecture (M.Arch) program recently achieved this major milestone, granted by the Canadian Architectural Certification Board (CACB), the sole agency authorized to accredit Canadian professional degree programs in architecture. The accreditation means graduates of the program will have a vital prerequisite for licensing as professional architects. Accreditation recognizes that a program meets the established professional qualifications and educational standards of CACB. Ryerson’s program earned the maximum term allowed (three years) for initial accredit-

ation and is the 11th Canadian university to receive the professional status. The Ryerson M.Arch program consists of a pre-professional undergraduate degree and a professional graduate degree, which, when earned sequentially, comprises an accredited professional education.

All sanctioned architectural societies and institutes require a degree from an accredited professional degree program as a prerequisite for licensure for candidates educated in Canada. A team of CACB experts visited the Department of Architectural Science to evaluate the program, its facilities, faculty and student work. After review, CACB granted the accreditation based on the relevance and validity of the curriculum, physical resources, and the contributions made by students, staff and faculty. Ryerson’s M.Arch program began in fall 2007. archiVe launches housing and health campaign for haiti.

On the six-month anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, the international charity ARCHIVE (Architecture for Health In Vulnerable Environments) has launched the campaign Kay e Sante nan Ayiti (Creole for Housing and Health in Haiti) to raise awareness of how innovative housing designs can reduce the transmission of airborne diseases such as tuberculosis (TB). The one-year campaign starts with a global design competition calling on architects, engineers, health specialists, and the general public to pool together their knowledge and submit housing designs which can mitigate TB transmission and are sensitive to the local culture. An interdisciplinary panel of judges and the local community will choose five winning designs for construction in an integrated community development and health-care pilot project in the coastal port town of Saint-Marc in western Haiti. The registration deadline is September 20, 2010. www.archiveinstitute.org/haiti

archigram archival Project.

Almost 10,000 images from one of architecture’s most revolutionary groups, Archigram, went online in a free website in April 2010. This initiative, from the University of Westminster’s Department of Architecture, creates probably the richest digital resource for modern architecture in the world.

Now the astonishing range, sheer volume and continuing challenge of Archigram’s work can be seen as never before through the openly available information technology they helped to predict. http://archigram.westminster.ac.uk world congress of the international Union of architects to be held in tokyo next year.

The next World Congress of the International Union of Architects (UIA) will be held in Tokyo, Japan, from September 25-29, 2011. The UIA General Assembly will take place from September 29 until October 1, 2011. “Design 2050” is the theme of the congress, which is divided into three sub-themes: Environment, Cultural Exchanges, and Life. Architects from around the world are welcome to share their architectural visions for the second half of the century. www.uia2011tokyo.com architecture (art+architecture) residency for a project in Ghana.

NKA Foundation has an ongoing call for submissions from individuals or teams interested in participating in a residency program in form of a design/build and live-in project. The program is a part of the foundation’s arts village at Abetenim in the Ashanti Region of Ghana (about 15 minutes from Kumasi). The task of the ARchiTecture residency is to design, build and test-live in lowbudget, quality structures with earth and other materials from the environment. In the construction, participants will be assisted by a local master builder and local labourers. Length of residencies is usually from one month to 12 months. The application should include your work plan, CV/resumé, and a sample of completed works or a website. www.nkafoundation.org 08/10 canadian architect

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insites

the Life and times of Peter dickinson

hugh robertson/pAndA

A recent book produced by dominion modern entitled Peter Dickinson is both A colourful biogrAphy of An extrAordinAry mAn And An Awe-inspiring cAtAlogue of work documenting An Ambitious period of cAnAdiAn ArchitecturAl history.

teXt

iAn chodikoff

In the 1950s, the stars aligned for a young architect by the name of Peter Dickinson, and he eagerly seized the opportunity to engage in one of the most ambitious periods of city-building in Canada, designing countless projects that profoundly changed the direction of architecture in this country. From the time the 25-year-old Dickinson left Britain in 1950 to when he died of cancer in 1961, he had designed over 150 buildings and left an indelible architectural legacy, receiving five Massey Medals as a testament to his creative genius. A young man with a compelling personality and an appetite for the good life, Dickinson and his prodigious output have been thoroughly researched, studied and documented in the aptly titled Peter Dickinson, a recently published book by John Martins-Manteiga, founder of Dominion Modern and perhaps one of the most dedicated fans of Modernism in Canada today.

16 canadian architect 08/10

“Dickinson was everywhere and was a big part of the whole picture in Canada at that time,” notes Martins-Manteiga, who spent eight years preparing a superbly approachable book that is both a biography and a catalogue of work. Complete with interviews, along with a quasi-archaeological approach to uncovering the life of such an iconic figure, the book paints a detailed picture of a charismatic and aspiring young architect flourishing in a society that offered him an unprecedented opportunity unheard of by today’s standards. Having enjoyed an illustrious career that spanned the 1950s and the early ’60s, Dickinson easily fits into the highly stylized aesthetic world of Mad Men, an award-winning television series based on a Madison Avenue advertising agency set in the 1960s. Had his life not been cut short at the age of 35, Peter Dickinson Associates could very well have become the largest architectural practice in Canada, according to MartinsManteiga.

Born in Suffolk, England, Dickinson graduated from the Architectural Association in London and quickly entered private practice there. After marrying Vera Klausner, the young couple left Britain on a steamship bound for Canada two months later. Four days after landing in Halifax, Dickinson began working for Page & Steele Architects in Toronto where he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a senior partner in 1953. At Page &

hugh robertson/pAndA

Steele, Dickinson designed such buildings as Great West Life (1952), Toronto Teacher’s College (1954), Benvenuto Place Apartments (1955), Regent Park South Apartments (1956) and the Park Plaza Hotel (1957).

Shortly after the birth of his two sons—Trevor and Gregory —Dickinson left Page & Steele to form Peter Dickinson Associates in 1958. His associates— Colin Vaughan, Dick Williams, Rod Robbie, and Fred Ashworth—quit two years later when Dickinson reneged on his offer of partnership. According to Robbie in an interview with Martins-Manteiga, “So what he did [was take] the next layer, which [consisted of] these guys known as Webb, Zerafa, Menkes, Housden, Korbee and Tirion. Made a deal with them, made them sign agreements...” These newly minted associates eventually went on to form the Webb, Zerafa, Menkes, Housden Partnership (currently known as WZMH Architects). Such was the high-intensity world of Peter Dickinson in 1950s Toronto that compelled and motivated Martins-Manteiga to produce this book, one that is capable of reigniting the energy of the period—even for the most casual reader.

Despite the drama, tension and ego swirling around those who worked in Dickinson’s office from 1958 until his death in 1961, the firm produced a dizzying array of prominent buildings, including the Inn on the Park, the Workmen’s Compensation Rehabilitation Hospital, the Four Seasons Motor

herb nott And co.

photogrAphed in 1962, severAl months After peter dickinson’s deAth, the 43-storey windsor plAzA in montreAl is considered to be one of dickinson’s greAtest ArchitecturAl Achievements. aBoVe, Left to riGht photogrApher hugh robertson cAptures A cAndid moment in front of windsor plAzA; Architect peter dickinson completed over 150 projects before his untimely deAth six dAys before his 36th birthdAy.

oPPosite toP

Hotel, the KLM Royal Dutch Airline Ticket Office and the Windsor Plaza— which, at 43 storeys, was the tallest building in the Commonwealth when it was completed in 1962.

During the 1950s, there were a number of architects born and raised in the UK who left at varying stages of their careers to seek their fortunes in Canada. Architects such as Peter Caspari, Welles Coates, John C. Parkin, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel and Rod Robbie were among them, along with other British expatriates who helped develop Canada’s architectural culture at that time through their efforts in private practice, academia and public service. Dickinson may not have been the smartest of the British invasion, but few were as charmingly persuasive and focused as he had been.

As described in Martins-Manteiga’s book, one of Dickinson’s legacies 08/10 canadian architect

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courtesy four seAsons Archives of ontArio

completed in 1961 And long since demolished, the Architecture of dickinson’s four seAsons motel on jArvis street cAptured the spirit And elegAnce of its time. aBoVe designed with legendAry engineer morden yolles, the benvenuto plAce ApArtments (1955) remAins one of toronto’s most remArkAble modernist ApArtment buildings. the building hAs only recently been converted to A condominium. toP

was his ability to link his design vision with the aspirations of the development industry in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. He successfully and convincingly imported Modernism to Canada through his associations with progressive developers like Leon Yolles and Harry Rotenberg. He would continue to promote design excellence along with the efforts of their sons who were his contemporaries—engineer Morden Yolles and developer Ken Rotenberg. Dickinson “had the ability with clients to give them what they 18 canadian architect 08/10

thought that they wanted. When he would speak, he would draw the client in. They were mesmerized by what he concocted. Clients like Leon Yolles— who considered Dickinson to be like a son—and the Rotenbergs certainly carried on with Dickinson’s vision. They understood his legacy,” states Martins-Manteiga. Another developer, Isadore Sharp, became a good friend of Dickinson, and had him design the recently destroyed Inn on the Park while Dickinson was literally on his deathbed in 1961. It was one of the architect’s most famous designs and the second Four Seasons for Sharp’s fledgling hotel chain. “Certainly, the winds of change were coming in from the US and Europe. There was an atmosphere. Dickinson picked up on these currents. He was just so incredibly charming, and you believed in him. And he could produce on budget as well,” notes Martins-Manteiga.

With no formal education in architecture, and a desire to impress upon the general public a greater awareness of architecture, Martins-Manteiga continues to be a tireless promoter of architecture, largely through Dominion Modern, an institution that he founded in 2003. He has difficulty understanding why the general public continues to remain relatively ignorant of architecture, and he is even more dismayed by the fact that “significant architectural discourse is always kept in a locked safe by academia.”

Dominion Modern is a non-profit charitable museum and organization whose mandate it is to “collect, catalogue, preserve and disseminate” 20thcentury Canadian architecture and design. As such, it has amassed over 200 recorded interviews with architects, engineers and designers, and has produced several publications and exhibitions. Peter Dickinson is Martins-Manteiga’s fourth book to be produced through Dominion Modern, and according to the author, “If we had waited for academia to publish this book, I don’t know if it would have [ever been done]. People have been talking about publishing a book on Dickinson for 20 years.” A fifth publication on the history of the Montreal Metro is nearing completion.

One of Martins-Manteiga’s regrets was that he wanted the book to come out before Dickinson’s wife passed away. He adds, “The book came out three months after she died. Vera was the driver behind Peter. Many people have told me that Peter would have been perfectly happy to draw in his corner at Page & Steele, but she drove him to succeed. I see them as one person. Vera was certainly able to push people out of the way. Boris Zerafa was terrified by her.”

“I think that given time, Dickinson would have become more of an architect-developer. I think that he would have become more of a John Portman.

He would have operated both here and in the UK, and his firm would have become the largest architectural firm in Canada,” says Martins-Manteiga, adding, “I think that we’ve regressed. I think we’ve lost our confidence and the ability to think big when it comes to imagining ambitious projects in Canada.”

Martins-Manteiga continues his struggle to keep Dominion Modern alive, and desperately needs a greater financial contribution from the architectural profession—a profession that is surprisingly unsupportive of an institution whose leadership is devoted to disseminating the value of architecture to as wide a public as possible. It is unfortunate that MartinsManteiga’s efforts are neither understood nor appreciated by more architects, particularly those belonging to the firms whose history and reputation were borne during the exciting cocktail-laden and anything-is-possible era of Peter Dickinson. ca Donations are critical to support projects and programming at Dominion Modern.

To make a donation or to purchase a copy of Peter Dickinson, please visit http://dominionmodern.ca. John Martins-Manteiga’s book on Dickinson is also available at SWIPE in Toronto and at the CCA in Montreal.

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Courtesy of The Cadillac Fairview corp.

Shiny Happy People

Revamped as a lifestyle centre, the Shops at Don Mills provide a dynamic new hub for one of canada’s most famous postwar suburbs.

Shops at Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario Pellow + Associates Architects INc. DESIGN RUDY ADLAF FOR THE CADILLAC FAIRVIEW CORPORATION LTD. IN COLLABORATION WITH GIANNONE PETRICONE ASSOCIATES INC. ARCHITECTS AND PELLOW + ASSOCIATES ARCHITECTS INC. TEXT John Bentley Mays PROJECT

ARCHITECT

In the 200 years since the great shopping gallerias and arcades of Europe started to appear, the designers of consumerism have been on a quest for utopia. They first banished the haggling and jostle of the souk and market square. They invented the fixed-price department store, the strip mall, then the covered mall, all in pursuit of a shopping context that promised safety, comfort and predictability to consumers in the new civil society. But even the North American enclosed mall, that commercial marvel of the postwar era, has recently proven an inadequate vessel for the ideal of shopping perfection. Enter, circa 1990 in the US, the lifestyle centre, of which Toronto’s recently opened $225-million Shops at Don Mills is one of only two Cana­ dian examples: a mall with the protective roof lifted away, the interior streets exposed to the Canadian elements, and with some 100 mid- to highend shops on streetscapes that mimic the popular shopping avenues of the Model-T era.

There is considerable cynicism in architectural circles about such new20 canadian architect 08/10

fangled retail development in the midst of a well-established community: “part Disney, part Distillery District” (a reference to a disappointing pedestrian shopping enclave in downtown Toronto), one commentator has called the Shops at Don Mills. I do not share this view. If still incomplete, and marked by a new-suit shine that will probably be soon rubbed away by use, the Shops is a serious instance of place-making in old sub­urbia, and a thoughtful retail scheme whose architects have discarded histori­cizing doodadery—the curse of many a lifestyle centre in the US—in favour of a muted, serene Modernism that belongs to our time and place.

The architecture of the Shops at Don Mills, which is owned by the Toronto-based Cadillac Fairview real-estate empire, was crafted by Rudy Adlaf, the corporation’s senior vice president for architecture and design, in concert with Ralph Giannone, principal in Giannone Petricone Associates, and with Harry Pellow, principal in pellow + associates architects. Steered by highly detailed urban design principles assembled several years ago by Giannone, Adlaf and Pellow, this team has been responsible for the openair, lifestyle-centre configuration of the plaza’s 11 large, low buildings (one of which, the Metro store, has survived from the mall’s former incarnations), arrayed along an internal system of meandering streets cut into the 41.1-acre site. The other pre-existing buildings include an office tower slated for overhaul into a residential block, a Royal Bank office building and a city-operated hockey rink that will eventually be acquired by Cadillac Fairview and moved elsewhere.

These streets are furnished intensively—almost to the point of clutter— with stainless steel rings for bicycle parking, benches, permanent and portable planters, trees, light standards, bollards that emphasize intersections and pedestrian crosswalks, and other features. The street naming, which

Ben Rahn/A-Frame

recalls local notables, is clearly legible, and large maps posted on yet-tobe-leased storefronts afford instant orientation. Some façades have been fitted out with canopies, though not enough of them to protect pedestrians from Toronto weather at its foulest.

That defence against the elements is one valuable thing that covered malls provide and lifestyle centres do not. But in the opinion of designer Harry Pellow, the tradeoffs involved in creating a Main Street condition have made the exercise worthwhile. “The key features of [the scheme] were to create scaleable streets, higher-quality street character, storefronts that were different from what you would do in a regional mall,” Pellow said. “To take advantage of the light and sun and the outdoor climate, and ensure that it is enjoyable not only in the summertime when it’s at its best, but also in the three other seasons. The argument there, of course, is that we are Canadians, most of us shop out of doors, most of us dress for the weather, and as long as we can protect our shoppers from serious downpours of rain and keep our streets clean, we shouldn’t have a problem.”

If human use during a long, clear summer evening is anything to go on, the public square called for by the design guidelines is a great success. Children played on the lawn and in the interactive fountain, adults sat round and socialized at the tables distributed across the site, and everyone, as far as I could tell, was employing the open space as it had been envisioned. At times, this square becomes a venue for musical performances, plays and similar entertainments programmed by Cadillac Fairview. A clock tower by Vancouver artist and author Douglas Coupland—a tall sunburst sculpture with miniature bungalows modelled after typical 1950s house plans and attached to each metal ray—spells out the time in large illuminated numerals.

“We are trying to make the Shops at Don Mills a focal point for the commu-

with a farmers’ market in the background, children play with the new interactive fountain located adjacent to the town square. ABOVE a View of the restaurant pavilion across the town square punctuated by a Douglas Couplanddesigned clock tower inspired by 1950s house designs.

OPPOSITE TOP

nity,” Rudy Adlaf said. “We’re not out in the middle of a field somewhere, trying to create a new project. Don Mills was already established. We didn’t want a thematic centre, a little Victorian village or whatever. Don Mills was quite a contemporary community when it was planned. Our core commitment is creating places for people.”

Much effort has been expended by the team on making the avenues and façades closely resemble Main Street shopping districts. Streets in the complex offer front-of-store parking spaces for cars. More parking is available in the surface lots that ring the site, and in a new multi-storey garage. Commercial space has been added atop some buildings, and it has been successfully leased to dentists, doctors, real-estate agents, lawyers and so on—the usual gamut of professionals whose services are useful in a community such as Don Mills. But the architectural team’s suggestion that office space be included above the stores, the better to reinforce the Main Street ethos, was met with some resistance inside Cadillac Fairview. “When we first approached our office group, they said it wasn’t very good office space,” Adlaf said. “We argued that the more mixed use you do, the more it helps the office tenants. It’s like your old downtowns, with a little bit of everything. It’s worked out well.

We probably could have used three times the [office] space we’ve got.”

Then there are the large, picture-frame façades of the shops themselves, which present to the pedestrian a variety of textures, earthen colours, 08/10­canadian architect

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Lawrence Ave. East 5 8 9 est yW wa

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Site Plan—Urban Design Principles and Phasing town square fountain main street festival street urban parkette

6 promenade connector 7 parking structure 8 commercial/retail 9 retail/office 10 future mixed-use residential

11 future public park 12 existing post office 13 future community centre

a reasonable amount of variety is present in the design of each retail building while an overall sense of materiality and proportion for the lifestyle centre is maintained; The leaf motif used on many of the custom-designed concrete elements throughout the project is intended to evoke a 1950s-inspired graphic quality; the original mural depicting a postwar nu­clear family was salvaged from the original shopping centre and reapplied to the north end of the site facing Lawrence Avenue.

BELOW, LEFT TO RIGHT

22 canadian architect 08/10

Courtesy of The Cadillac Fairview corp.

Courtesy of The Cadillac Fairview corp.

Ben Rahn/A-Frame

1 2 3 4 5

roofline heights and decorative treatments in imitation of the street walls of yesteryear. Giannone was largely responsible for the development, detailing, and execution of this strategy. Each owner has been encouraged by Cadillac Fairview to create a distinctive symbolic storefront, and some have done so: one striking and strikingly un-Modernist example is the rustic log entryway to the rough-country apparel store Eddie Bauer.

The tone and tenor of the Shops’ prevailing Modernism was established in the 1950s, when financier and industrialist E.P. Taylor laid out the garden suburb of Don Mills on green fields north of Toronto. In addition to ordaining the contemporary styling, curving streets, low-profile street­scapes and earth-toned colouration of the houses and apartment blocks of Don Mills, urban planner Mack­lin Hancock—Taylor’s design mastermind—also saw to it that the whole subdivision was anchored by a complex of shops at its centre. The private car was enjoying the dawn of its immense postwar popularity when Don Mills was young, but Hancock believed that the development’s residential districts, as well as its shopping centre, should be easily walkable. And so it was that centralized shopping at Don Mills became something conducted in the open air, a communal place for strolling and browsing and socializing and relaxing.

In 1988, the shops were enclosed. Covered malls were flourishing, and the owners of Don Mills Centre (now Cadillac Fairview) were feeling the pinch of competition from nearby Fairview Mall and other regional centres.

“We wanted Don Mills to be something different,” Adlaf said. “Don Mills was the first suburban department store location in Canada, with Eaton’s.

Fairview Mall had the Bay and Simpson’s. We enclosed Don Mills, struggled along for a few more years until we lost Eaton’s, when it started going slightly downhill. The demographic we wanted wasn’t being attracted by the old Don Mills.”

BELOW This view of the redevelopment illustrates the two-storey office and retail building facing Festival Street and Aggie Hogg Gardens. The photo also illustrates the interactive fountain adjacent to the town square and the overall approach to managing a safe pedestrian-vehicular interface.

into prêt-a-porter lifestyles.

Nor is there a sheltered place here for the pensioner—that standard character in anti-lifestyle centre mythology—who brings his own coffee into the mall and nurses it all day long. But even this legendary foe of high-speed retailing will eventually have his spot. Over the next several years, the second phase of Cadillac Fairview’s scheme for the site will roll out—in the form of a community recreation centre to be located at the south-east corner of the site, as well as seven new residential towers and a conversion of an office block into a condo stack. This development will be accomplished through a joint venture between Cadillac Fairview and the Mississaugabased FRAM Building Group.

Cadillac Fairview’s vision for the Shops at Don Mills will not be realized until these condominium towers are fully occupied, and the moneyed young and style-savvy downsizers who will live there settle upon the Shops as their neighbourhood centre. The existing population of historic Don Mills, which is more well-off but also older than the Toronto average, probably cannot sustain all the youthful lifestyle shops in the complex indefinitely—though this problem will lessen in time, as well-rooted residents move on and their places are taken by young families.

Meanwhile, the sound design principles built into the Shops at Don Mills appear to be working to the advantage of Cadillac Fairview, the individual shop-owners in the complex, and the consumers of goods and services that this plaza is intended to serve. According to Harry Pellow, “The urban design was scale-driven, in the width of the street, the configuration of the streets, the concept of the park and public square being wrapped by the streets so they could open up into a public forum. Public space is an important element, to replace the communal space in the old mall. Don Mills was to be an integrated community where you lived, worked—and played. We are not changing that concept.” CA

CLIENT THE CADILLAC FAIRVIEW CORPORATION LTD. STRUCTURAL READ JONES CHRISTOFFERSeN CONSULTING ENGINEERS MECHANICAL THE MITCHELL PARTNERSHIP INC. CONSULTING ENGINEERS ELECTRICAL HAMMERSCHLAG & JOFFE INC.

LANDSCAPE QUINN DESIGN ASSOCIATES INC. CONTRACTOR ELLISDON CORPORATION PLANNING BOUSFIELDS INC. AREA 500,000 FT2 BUDGET $225 M (CAPITAL COST) COMPLETION APRIL 2009

Harold Clark Photography

As the mall declined in the quality of shops and consumer attractiveness, Adlaf added, the owners were approached by big-box retailers eager to see Don Mills become a setting for their oversized stores. “We’re not in the bigbox business,” Adlaf said. “One of our models is to be best in class. Sherway Gardens, Toronto Eaton Centre, the Toronto Dominion Centre—they’re all owned by Cadillac Fairview. We wanted to focus on the lifestyle kind of shopper.”

This emphasis is evident in the content of the Shops at Don Mills. In former days, the stores were mostly one-off enterprises operated by local entrepreneurs—a hardware store, a bakery, a drugstore, a Birks jewelry shop and so forth. At its zenith in the late 1970s, the centre contained 105 stores of this kind. Today, almost all the outlets are franchises for upmarket Canadian and multi-national chains. Starbucks has replaced Diana Sweets; Anthropologie, Coach and Banana Republic have supplanted the middlebrow Eaton’s, Sears and other enterprises that once served the Don Mills community.

A walk around the plaza today suggests that the target demographic is now composed of buffed urban professionals aged 18 to 40—people, in other words, with the disposable income (and trim figures) to buy chic dresses at Aritzia and Hugo Boss suits at Barbuti, guacamole and olive oil at the ultradeluxe McEwan food store, and fine wines at the well-stocked LCBO store.

The Top o’ the Mall family restaurant is no more, but its place as a local dining magnet has been taken by Glow, a reasonably priced ground-floor eatery that overlooks the Shops’ central square and fountain.

So far, some services are conspicuously missing in the contemporary mix: a toy store, a Baby Gap, an outlet for cutting-edge designer clothing, a newsstand. There is no place here for the consumers of Chanel, Gucci and Prada, nor for customers who shop at Wal-Mart or Costco. Rather, the plaza caters to financially secure shoppers who have most things they need (furniture, art, tableware) and go shopping mainly for what they want—consumers within the broad upper-middle echelon of fashion consciousness, and

08/10­canadian architect

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Owning the POdium the latest examPle Of James cheng’s aPPrOach tO the tOwer-POdium building tyPe demOnstrates the architect’s ability tO reshaPe dOwntOwn VancOuVer. Fairmont PaciFic rim, VancouVer, British columBia James K.m. cheng architects inc. treVor Boddy

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architect text

With every success, the career of Vancouver’s James K.M. Cheng becomes an ever-greater challenge to the conservatism of Canada’s contemporary architectural culture. A protégé of Richard Meier during his studies at Harvard, for a quarter century Cheng has been a key intellectual engine for Vancouver’s highly regarded accomplishments in city-building. Rather than the city planners and politicians who usually take credit for these innovations, it is Cheng who has surest claim on the status as principal author of the tower-podium typology, the best-known symbol of “Vancouverism.” Cheng was subsequently amongst the first to push for alternatives to tower-podium, once it had been reduced (by others) into a dull developer’s formula. One of the first of these—the waterfront Shaw Tower—places elegant condos on top of one of few substantive creations of new office space built on Vancouver’s downtown peninsula in the past decade.

With the just-opened Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel-condo hybrid next door to the Shaw Tower, James Cheng has produced his most sophisticated and nuanced work to date. This is also the largest building in the city’s history—at 813,000 square feet, it is larger in floor area than the new Vancouver Convention Centre addition located just across the street. Cheng was an early supporter of Vancouver’s design review panel system that has subsequently been adopted in various forms by Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto. Not incidentally, he has major projects underway in all of these cities, in large part because of an excellent reputation with developers and approving authorities for crafting superior designs with significant public benefits.

Contrast the nature and scale of these successes with our best recent indicator of the state of Canada’s architectural culture, the winners of the 2010 Governor General’s Medals. With three exceptions, all of the dozen prizes this year went to extraordinarily small-scale projects—cottages, additions, spa or gallery renovations, and park pavilions. Unprecedented in the history of Canada’s top design award, Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe’s firm won three medals: the conversion of a heritage building into an art gallery; a workspace addition to a 1997 medal-winner; and a guest house in a ra26 canadian architect 08/10

vine. It is worth noting that James Cheng’s first and only GG winner was Willow Court in 1983, a cleverly planned and accented Fairview Slopes housing complex. Clearly, Cheng occupies an alternate architectural universe from the one currently validated by the GG awards jury and its sister gatekeepers of professional and academic recognition.

In my view, the two finest 2010 GG medal designs premiated—the Grande Bibliothèque du Québec in Montreal by Patkau Architects and the Telus Centre for Performance and Learning in Toronto, designed by Marianne McKenna of KPMB Architects—are two significant acts of city-building by any standard, but depressingly, both were actually designed in the 1990s. The odd project out is the St. Germain Aqueducts and Sewers building outside Montreal, a modest project that would be hard to imagine getting a major design award anytime or anywhere else than Canada right now, where tasty and self-consciously detailed but otherwise ambitionless miniatures of Neo-Modernism rule the land. The nine remaining modest but beautifully crafted 2010 GG prizewinners tend to the art historical in their revival of the small moments of Modernism—either deft, as in Shim-Sutcliffe Architects’ extensions from Aalto and Scarpa, or else clumsy, as in gh3’s take on the glass house. Is nothing but Modernist villas being taught in our architecture schools?

This tendency has increased over the years. Of the 45 projects given GGs over the past decade, virtually all have been either private residences or institutional and government works, and the scale gets smaller with every round of prizes. As an entire category of work—multi-family housing—is all but missing from this list, with only one socialhousing project by Gregory Henriquez, and two private apartment buildings by LWPAC and Atelier Big City. The only entirely private-sector project amongst the 45 is the offices for Winnipeg’s Smith Carter, an architecture firm whose main design work is in the public sector. Modernist in their stylistic quotations but not in their commitment to tectonic innovation or engagement with social issues, have leading-edge Canadian architects given up on the creation of new forms and details, abandoned the transformation of cities, and moved out to the cottage? I worry that we have come to accept

a paradigm of architecture that ignores city-building, diminishes social engagement, and rejects a priori anything built by a developer. Moreover, this is no Vancouver versus Toronto debate, which has been a common but shallow reading of this year’s prize list. When leading lights of Vancouver’s design scene were recently asked by an urban weekly what contemporary building they admired most, the most praised turned out to be Bill Pechet’s 1993 Woods Columbaria at Capilano View Cemetery.

Cottages in the east, architecture for the dead in the west—are we not all missing what matters? American and European architecture organizations manage more balanced national design prizes—surely Canadian ones can too.

Of course, there are very good reasons why our best designers and ambitious young academics aim so low—these tiny projects are the only ones where outcomes can be controlled, and perhaps more importantly, where the artful detailing and photofriendly compositions can be devised for an era when a disempowered profession turns to aestheticism for its identity. Recent awards and exhibitions tend to reify architecture towards status as isolated works of fine art, and away from its social, technical and programmatic complexity.

Since I am deeply admiring of nearly all the designers on this year’s GG list, I am forced to opine that most have more substantive recent work than got premiated here. My problem is less with them than this jury’s choices and the overall evolution of the awards, where designers as talented as Cheng no longer submit entries. Most 2010 winners maintain deep commitments to bettering housing and urban spaces, but most are not given—or do not take—opportunities to build at a larger scale.

Heightening the dichotomy, Canadian architecture is increasingly dominated by bloated corporate practices where the source of architectural ideas is overpaid marketers. What is worse, building commissioning has become ever more conservative in Canada, where even mid-career designers bristling with awards face a dismal choice between arty little essays like these, or slots as drones in design-byrote juggernauts. Except in Quebec, Canadians seldom mount the design competitions that are the standard means for small practices to break into larger commissions in Europe.

Paul warchol

The work of James Cheng poses a challenge to this situation. His buildings are almost entirely for private real-estate developers when such projects are thought to be sub-architectural. As city-builder and innovator in high-density housing, he is without rival in this country, fighting for public amenities and public open space in his city-transforming projects at a time when autonomous architectural sculptures get the praise. The supreme irony is that Cheng is radical in his ideas for the contemporary city, while the designs that increasingly dominate awards are deeply conservative in their aesthetic choices and self-alienation. Cheng’s firm is as much a single-sensibility atelier as any of these GG winners, but one committed to the cause of citybuilding. Moreover, James K.M. Cheng, architect to some of Canada’s largest developers, is as bold, creative and original a designer as anyone on this list. To establish why, I will pass briefly by one early and one mid-career work by Cheng to argue how his ideas have transformed downtown Vancouver, then review the new Fairmont Pacific Rim in more detail.

James K.m. cheng in three steps

A native of Hong Kong, James Cheng’s first architectural studies were at the University of Washington in Seattle. After several summers spent working with firms there, Cheng moved to Vancouver expressly to work for Arthur Erickson from 197274, where he was a junior designer on the Robson Square/Law Courts project team headed by Bing Thom. Further study at Harvard focused his interest in urban design, and deepened his passion for Le Corbusier—via protégé Jerzy Soltan, and secondhand via Richard Meier. Cheng’s early houses and high-rise designs demonstrate an initial understanding, then assimilation of Meier’s take on Le Corbusier. Cheng’s breakthrough pre-Expo ’86 commission was for Li Ka-shing and son Victor Li at Cambridge Commons, a trio of mid-rise towers right James cheng emPloys a Variety oF architectural deVices to BreaK down the scale oF the tower. PuBlic art wraPPing the hotel Balconies and laser-cut screens Further reFine the ProJect’s aPPeal to Both users and PassersBy.

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Paul warchol

around residential courts near Vancouver City Hall.

A few years later, Cheng pushed the concept to much greater heights and densities at 888 Beach, between the Granville and Burrard bridges. An unusual block for downtown Vancouver in not having a mid-block public lane, both here and at the subsequent Marinaside for the Li family’s Concord Pacific development company, Cheng devised a raised garden at mid-block, ringed by a perimeter block of stacked townhouses, one set having direct access to the raised interior garden (parking is below this datum), with the bottom row of townhouses opening out onto the surrounding streets. Streets animated with stoops and doorways, above which rise one tower of 32 storeys, another of 22 storeys, and a six-storey mid-rise tower at the corner of Beach Avenue and Howe Street. I draw attention to the latter, which features a complex layering of compositional grids on varying planes and in differing materials—a clear precursor to the lower floors of the Fairmont. “I was thinking about the ‘New York the sixth-Floor Pool leVel oFFers elegant outdoor seating areas and all the dramatic allure that guests come to exPect From a high-end hotel. belOw the laser-cut steel screen along cordoVa street was insPired By herzog & de meruron’s de young museum in san Francisco.

Paul warchol

left

28 canadian architect 08/10

Paul warchol

Whites’,” says Cheng, referring to the provisional critical category of the early 1980s that lumped Meier with Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey and even Michael Graves. The Vancouver towerpodium typology is effectively invented with this hybrid of tall thin towers with continuous street and raised garden-flanking townhouses, and then the even larger Marinaside that followed. Cheng’s urban amalgam was foundational to urban design rules subsequently developed by Larry Beasley and colleagues. Beasley, who now lives at 888 Beach, is the former city planner most associated with codifying, then promoting the tower-podium as downtown urban design policy.

Canada’s most architecturally creative partnership between designer and developer is Cheng’s ongoing relationship with Ian Gillespie of the Westbank-Peterson Development Group, producing over two billion dollars worth of housing and hotels together in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario over the past 20 years. If 888 Beach was the experiment, Westbank’s Residences on Georgia (1998) has become the paradigmatic standard for tower and podium. Here, Cheng abstracts the principles of the brownstone housing he knew from Brooklyn and Boston’s Back Bay neighbourhood, exemplifying Jane Jacobs’s “eyes on the street” dictum without the more typical bricky romanticism.

Elegantly thin towers anchor each end, made higher by the inclusion of public art, gardens, and heritage conservation acknowledged under the now codified Vancouver bonus density program. The façade along Alberni Street is modelled and the townhouse proportions are deft—the proposition of urban houses melded with towers is rendered complete for the 234 apartments at The Residences on Georgia.

Tower with podium townhouses was never an option for the block occupied by the new Fairmont Pacific Rim. Here, the synergy between Cheng’s work as urban designer and as composer of buildings comes to the fore. He played a key role in setting massing guidelines, new street elevations, and land uses for this entire precinct, former railway lands controlled by Canadian Pacific-owned Marathon Realty. Included in this framework plan is the newly improved Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), the recently completed Fairmont Pacific Rim, the Shaw Tower for Westbank, and two more towers to the west, also designed by Cheng for Aspac Development’s Harbour Green. A landward view of the new Convention Centre is not possible

Paul warchol

tOP right inside the chairman’s suite, lucKy guests can enJoy dramatic Views oF the harBour and the newly comPleted VancouVer conVention centre addition. right the low-lying Podium and the elegant chairman’s suite PreserVe the View oF those who worK inside the iconic and much-loVed 1929 art deco marine Building.

08/10 canadian architect

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without inclusion of several of these four Cheng towers. This is appropriate, given that Cheng’s guidelines were devised to pull the Fairmont tower back to permit views to the VCC’s prow from all along Burrard Street, notably with a bench-lined mini-park paid for by the developer.

This is no thinly elegant Vancouver tower—at 18,000 square feet per high-rise floor, it is triple the average size of the typical Vancouver floor plate, and more akin to a New York or Miami condo tower. A key form-giver is accommodating distant views towards the Art Deco Marine Building across the street, and the Pacific Rim’s plan geometries are aligned to give 70 percent of the condo floors (which surmount the hotel) a view of the harbour.

Deferring to their differing prospects, each of the tower elevations is unique, and Cheng employs a range of devices to break their scale and integrate them with their urban settings. The Burrard Street elevation is a tour de force, with a mid-building section in white, contrasting with hotel rooms below and the larger condos above. Cheng creates elevational interest with two-storey units, a device he pioneered at the Shangri-La Hotel in Vancouver, and which were subsequently used at Woodward’s W-43 Tower designed by Gregory Henriquez seven blocks east on the same street. Cheng’s hotel floor elevations have one configuration where the cut letters of British artist Liam Gillick’s textbased artwork wrap at windowsill level, followed by a lighter-coloured curtain wall to wrap the building’s corner. Vertically and horizontally, these devices reduce the perceived bulk of the massive tower and generate possibilities inside—the hotel has 44 different room types.

Cheng’s real breakthrough is found at the lower levels of the 21-storey hotel portion, where ballrooms and kitchens provide him the rare opportunity to fashion walls which are not floor-to-ceiling glass. (Vancouver’s grey and temperate climate means that entirely glazed condo elevations are possible, usually without air conditioning.) Cheng views Fairmont Pacific Rim as one of his first complete works of architecture in the round: “More walls, more mass, more refined details.” Along Cordova Street, then wrapping around the corner to face the arrival plaza adjacent to the Shaw Tower is a perforated stainless-steel plate exo-elevation on outriggers. Steel plates here are broken with slit gaps to accommodate views from kitchen prep areas, and their surfaces are set with laser-cut holes of varying diameters—pixels that come together to form a composite image of a West Coast rainforest. “I was inspired by Herzog & de Meuron’s similar detail at the de Young Museum in San Francisco,” says Cheng, where it was also employed the dynamic geometry oF the new tower allows 70 Percent oF the condominums to haVe sPectacular Views toward the harBour.

30 canadian architect 08/10

Paul warchol

left

James K.m. cheng

Paul warchol

James K.m. cheng

James K.m. cheng

Paul warchol

to create visual interest in a zone not needing fenestration.

Dramatically punctuating the poolside raised deck facing the VCC is the cantilevered black box of the Chairman’s Suite, the flashiest lodging available in Canada’s highest-end new hotel. This bold touch does much to complete the design: it contrasts with the trapezoidal Convention Centre with its green roof; it turns the corner and creates inter-

clOcKwise frOm tOP left the residences on georgia (1998) is a successFul adaPtation oF ground-oriented townhouses deFining the street edge with high-rise residences adroitly BooKending the site; cheng’s 888 Beach aVenue set a ’90s VancouVer Precedent oF glassy residential towers caPturing exPansiVe Views while integrating the architecture to adJacent PuBlic amenities; the stacKed townhouses For 888 Beach aVenue add Both density and human-scaled architecture to the city; the aesthetic oF 888 Beach aVenue is somewhat dated By today’s standards, But its urBan design intentions are nonetheless successFul; comPleted in 1998, townhouses at the Base oF the residences on georgia attest to cheng’s aBility to uPdate the eFFectiVeness oF neighBourhood-Friendly Podiums.

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Architecture critic Trevor Boddy is the curator of the exhibition Vancouverism: Architecture Builds the City, which features the work of James Cheng along with many others.

canada Place

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est along what might have been a dead street; it transforms a motel village-like raised pool deck into a variegated pleasure zone. Top to bottom, all around each side, Fairmont Pacific Rim is a bold creation from an architect in full command of his art. Now, if Cheng could only shrink his tower one hundred fold, cast it in concrete, then call it a “garden marker,” would he again earn a GG? Or, if he barged away the Chairman’s Suite to new life as a seashore cabin, would this inventive architect get the attention he deserves?

In the early decades of the 20th century, conflict and economic uncertainty boiled away the aestheticized fat of Art Nouveau and Art Deco architecture. A century later, the same thing is happening again in most places, with the added imperative of energy conservation. I believe that Canadian architects should remain committed to shaping beautiful things, but they need to mature into the knowledge that there are many forms and scales of beauty, with no more important a place for it than our downtown streets. ca

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client westBanK ProJect corP./Peterson inVestment grouP inc. architect team James cheng, terry mott, adeline lai, dennis selBy, don chan, Julian carnrite, ly tang, richard lee, scott macneil, eVa low structural Jones Kwong Kishi consulting mechanical sterling cooPer & associates electrical nemetz (s/a) & associates landscaPe PhilliPs FareVaag smallenBerg interiOrs residential—James K.m. cheng architects inc.; hotel—James K.m. cheng architects inc., chil design grouP, Kay lang & associates. cOntractOr 299 Burrard landing area 818,044 Ft2 budget $260 m cOmPletiOn aPril 2010

flOOrs 26-32—tyPical residential leVel

sixth flOOr—POOl leVel

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canada Place

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32 canadian architect 08/10

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United coloUrs of richmond

a toronto commUnity hoUsing initiative introdUces an Uplifting and environmentally sUstainable bUilding into the downtown core.

60 Richmond housing co-op, ToRonTo, onTaRio Teeple aRchiTecTs inc. teXt elsa lam photos shai gil proJect

architect

Chalk up one more for Toronto’s architectural renaissance tally. The latest addition to the downtown core, a social housing co-operative, defies Hogtown’s conservative reputation. Designed by Teeple Architects, 60 Richmond East is a boldly contemporary highrise with sculpted lines and splashes of colour, as well as a compelling blend of social, environmental, and urban aspirations.

One block east of the historic Hudson’s Bay Company building, the city-donated lot once housed a land registry building—the place where newcomers in another era would have laid stake to a homestead. The 11-storey structure that now 34 canadian architect 08/10

stands on the site, commissioned by Toronto Community Housing, offers the modern equivalent: a mix of subsidized and affordable units for low- to moderate-income residents, including new immigrants.

At the outset, over half of the apartments— which range all the way up to family-sized three-, four-, and five-bedroom units—were reserved for relocated tenants from the Regent Park revitalization project. The City of Toronto team, including project manager Leslie Gash, realized that many prospective tenants were members of the hospitality workers’ union Unite Here. As a result, they refined 60 Richmond’s mandate:

drawing from the union model, the building would be self-administered as a co-op, and would cater to residents employed in the hospitality and restaurant industries.

The downtown location was a perfect fit. “It’s a fabulous site for Unite Here [members], because it’s close to all the hotels where they work,” says Gash. Other program elements reflect the collaboration of Unite Here from the early planning stages. The sidewalk is bordered by a doubleheight glass-walled storefront planned to open as a restaurant and training facility this fall. The street-level space will put future bartenders, baristas, cooks and servers in the limelight. By training residents along with other union members, the public face of 60 Richmond is poised to become a community hub.

Inspired by the theme of food, Teeple Architects incorporated a series of kitchen gardens into the core of the structure. A generous outdoor terrace on the sixth floor includes two elevated garden plots that will be irrigated by storm water from the roofs and nourished with composted

kitchen waste. The architects describe the gardens as part of what they call an “urban permaculture” cycle—a full ecosystem in miniature.

As with any new landscape, it takes some imagination to envisage the garden areas flourishing with lettuce and tomatoes, and grape vines snaking up the multi-storey grow-wall trellis.

However, what’s already obvious is the generosity of the courtyard spaces themselves. The garden terrace occupies nearly a quarter of the floorplate; floors above and below project into the space without detracting from its voluminous, open feel. On the third floor, a more intimate courtyard adorned by a delicate Japanese maple adjoins a community room.

On each floor, window-equipped hallways ring the openings, bringing natural light and air into corridors that are more typically landlocked.

“Every time you move through the hallways, you get a reference to this common social space,” says architect Stephen Teeple. “You’re always reminded that it’s there.” The reverse is also true—from the courtyard, residents can glimpse

their neighbours moving through the building.

When I toured, we spied a young boy serenely rollerblading through the seventh-floor hallway.

Wisely, there’s no street access to the lightfilled courtyards and hallways—they remain a secret hideaway for residents to enjoy. However, glimpses into these spaces appear on the façades, an interlocking play of volumes. Conceived as a sculpted mass, the corner block is a departure from the ordinary—a studied weave of perimeter, terraces, and courtyard punctuated by an irregular pattern of windows. The whimsical composition and injections of bright colour might not appeal to everyone, but they succeed in escaping the blandness endemic to downtown infill. “There’s a tendency for street-wall buildings to be seen as complete background—especially in Toronto,” comments Teeple. “We were trying to prove that you can be a good citizen urbanistically, without being boring.”

By using glazing selectively rather than opting for the familiar trope of an all-glass condo, the architects foresee significant energy savings in

cemenT-boaRd cladding offeRs a complexiTy To The suRface geomeTRy of The building. above The public TeRRace and gaRdens of The fifTh flooR allow foR consideRable passive venTilaTion ThRough To The building’s cenTRal aTRium. opposite top

the future. Also directed towards that end, the entire building is wrapped in an insulated rainscreen cladding that eliminates thermal bridging, with high-end fibreglass window frames to complete the envelope. Other sustainable measures include a sophisticated mechanical system that transfers heat from the warm side of the structure to its cold side, and in-suite heat recovery systems. Together, these put 60 Richmond on track to achieve a LEED Gold rating.

As with all projects, 60 Richmond has its share of compromises and tradeoffs. The cementboard cladding looks monolithic from a distance, but up close, the deliberate mosaic pattern of panel joints seems to lack resolution. Had budget 08/10 canadian architect

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an open-aiR walkway cuTs ThRough The cenTRal aTRium; a conTexT shoT of The building as iT appeaRs along Richmond sTReeT, looking wesT. left, top to bottom

36 canadian architect 08/10

0

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service space

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ResidenTial uniT public TeRRaces pRivaTe TeRRaces gaRdens indooR ameniTy space ouTdooR ameniTy space laundRy

8 ResidenTial lobby 9 TRaining faciliTy 10 co-op office 11 bicycle paRking 12 paRking aRea 13 gaRbage/seRvice space

10m

despiTe The hefTy bulk of The building, a view aT The coRneR of Richmond and beRTi sTReeTs illusTRaTes how The pRojecT’s massing RespecTs and Responds To The heighT of a neighbouRing building. below looking souTh TowaRd The downTown coRe, as viewed acRoss The cenTRal aTRium.

above

permitted, the introduction of a different soffit material, such as wood, would have given the composition more nuance. The scarce parking dismayed several potential tenants—only nine spaces, including an auto-share spot, for the 85 units. On the other hand, the building offers a generous bike room with interior and exterior access, which in the early move-in stage seemed well populated with two-wheeled conveyances.

Turning over the building to the co-op board also entails growing pains. One of the board’s first moves was to furnish the community room— with painfully staid-looking office furniture.

(Teeple murmured something to Gash about having a talk with the board.) From my own experience living in a Toronto co-op, I can testify to the pleasures and pitfalls of this particular management model.

However, whatever the fate of the commonroom furniture, the solid foundations for a vibrant social-housing community are already in place. By being thoroughly incorporated into the city, the building resists the ghettoization of physically segregated social housing develop08/10 canadian architect

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EVAPORATIVE COOLING

GREEN ROOFS (RAIN WATER RETENTION)

PA ASSIVE PASSIVE VENTILAT VENTILATION CISTERN

EVAPORATIVE C COOLING

IRRIGATION GROW-WALL

GARDEN N

PRODUCE PRODU UCE

PASSIVE VENTILATION

COMPOST

RESTAURANT

The emphaTic and impRessive aRRangemenT of solids and voids along The Richmond sTReeT façade. left bRighTly colouRed cemenTiTious exTeRioR panels in one of The uniTs fRames a view of sT. james caThedRal in The disTance. bottom left uniTs aRe finished wiTh exposed concReTe and wood laminaTe flooRing ThaT is noT dissimilaR To RegulaR maRkeT condominiums. above

ments like Regent Park. Moreover, as a conscientiously designed, boldly contemporary building, 60 Richmond gives its residents a place to be proud of. Earlier this year, Gash passed by a meeting of unionized residents with a tour group. “[The residents] turned and said, ‘D’you love our building?’

And the ownership was there.” ca Elsa Lam is a PhD candidate in the Architectural History and Theory program at Columbia University.

client ToRonTo communiTy housing coRpoRaTion architect team sTephen Teeple, chRis Radigan, RichaRd lai, william elswoRThy strUctUral cpe sTRucTuRal consulTanTs limiTed mechanical/electrical jain & associaTes lTd. landscape nak design gRoup interiors Teeple aRchiTecTs inc. constrUction manager biRd consTRucTion company leed eneRmodal engineeRing lTd. area 99,565 fT2 bUdget $20.4 m completion maRch 2010

38 canadian architect 08/10

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calendar Bent Out of Shape: Canadian Industrial Design 1945-Present

July 16-October 10, 2010 This exhibition celebrates the Design Exchange’s rich industrial design collection dating from 1945 to the present, and showcases it through the lens of material, method, technology, identity and transformation, illustrating rapid changes following World War II towards modernity. www.dx.org Atelier Hitoshi Abe: len-tic-ular-is

The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today

August 1-November 1, 2010 This exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York presents a critical examination of the intersections between photography and sculpture, exploring how one medium informs the analysis and creative redefinition of the other. The exhibition brings together over 300 photographs, magazines, and journals by more than 100 artists. www.moma.org

July 30-September 12, 2010 This exhibition at the SCI-Arc Gallery at the Southern California Institute of ArFABRICation: Studio Production chitecture features the work of Los Textiles for Interiors Angeles- and Sendai-based archiAugust 24-October 17, 2010 This extecture firm Atelier Hitoshi Abe hibition at Cambridge Galleries (AHA). One of AHA’s projects in Design at Riverside features prodLos Angeles is the design of a new ucts and collections by 10 establarge-scale roof over the Japanese lished Canadian textile designerAmerican Cultural & Community whose work bridges anArcAug2010_Canadia Architect 6/25/10 9:31 PMentrepreneurs Page 1 Center (JACCC) Plaza, designed by the worlds of art and commercial Isamu Noguchi. fabrication. www.sciarc.edu www.cambridgegalleries.ca

architecture for humanity toronto lecture

August 30, 2010 Join Architecture for Humanity from 6:30pm to 8:30pm on the Trading Floor of the Design Exchange in Toronto, and hear Andrew Levitt speak about where architecture begins, from concept to design to design process. This is a pay-what-you-can event; the suggested donation is $10.

Taller: Objet-Vêtement: When Architecture Meets Clothing

September 9-October 2, 2010 Located at the crossroads of two disciplines— fashion design and architecture— this exhibition at the Maison de la Culture Maisonneuve in Montreal features the work of Professor Maryla Sobek of the Université du Québec à Montréal’s École de design and the École supérieure de mode de Montréal. It consists of five “objets-vêtements” designed in the manner of an architectural drawing. Inspired by Dogon architecture, these “objets-vêtements”

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BackPage

SOuth LOndOn ecStaSy

the conStant evolution of the popular centurieS-old Borough market in SoutheaSt london repreSentS an orderly chaoS that iS perhapS the true heritage of the Site.

teXt + PhOtO

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Near the south end of London Bridge, across from where the 310-metre-tall Shard designed

by Renzo Piano is being erected, Borough Market, one of London’s most distinctive places, is undergoing yet another transformation. The wholesale and retail food market, which falls within a heritage conservation area, is now subject to a controversial project for a new rail viaduct running through its heart. The controversy raises the issue of whether such an entity should be exempt from the very alterations that have turned it over the years into one of the most inherently successful heterogeneous places in London.

Built over the last 250 years, the area of the market has become a hodgepodge of architectural elements and styles with a chaotic yet oddly coherent juxtaposition of contemporary architecture, Victorian brick buildings, skeletal wrought iron and glass canopies, and rail viaducts. From any point within the area, the eye follows multiple vanishing points between criss-crossing 42 canadian architect 08/10

aBOVe Bedale Street underneath the exiSting rail viaductS running through Borough market. the victorian ironwork in the Background waS reStored at the turn of the millennium.

lines and openings amongst the structures that reveal yet further fleeting structures. Reminiscent of what Eisenstein identified as the ecstatic space of Piranesi’s carcere etchings, the space of Borough Market seems to reach beyond itself.

This is a place that is neither subterranean nor overground, a place that can never be experienced as a whole from a distant vantage point.

Borough Market is, simply put, one of the single most thrilling spatial experiences of London.

The most recent modifications occurred here between 1995 and 2005 with a widely acclaimed revitalization project by architects Greig & Stephenson. The gentle and clever architectural transformations, at once both contemporary and in keeping with the Victorian fabric, maintain and embrace the overall controlled disorder of the place that so perfectly defines its uniqueness in the city of London.

The train viaduct currently being constructed through the market is the result of growing pressure on the commuter train network at London Bridge. Since it was first evoked in the late 1980s, the project has met with persistent opposition from local residents and local authorities who

have focused on the loss of character to the place, the planned demolition of about 20 heritagelisted buildings, and the potential threat to market activities themselves. The project, designed by architects Jestico + Whiles and scheduled to be completed in 2012, will see new glass-and-steel structures erected where buildings and canopies had to be demolished.

Even in the face of seemingly inevitable infrastructure, the demolition of heritage is a tragedy that deserves vehement opposition. Yet, one may wonder when—if at all—such evolved, heterogeneous places should be fixed. Borough Market is a strong reminder that these spaces are less the product of a single, homogeneous regeneration project than the result of a juxtaposition of distinctive elements over time. The success of individual projects depends, therefore, on the respect they owe to the orderly chaos that is in many ways the heritage of the site. ca An architectural graduate of the University of Waterloo, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff is currently a PhD candidate at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

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