GRAND MARCHÉ DE QUÉBEC

SETTING UP SHOP

A 1920S EXHIBITION HALL FINDS NEW LIFE AS A SPACIOUS URBAN MARKET.

PROJECT Grand Marché de Québec, Quebec City, Quebec ARCHITECTS Bisson associés + Atelier Pierre Thibault TEXT Olivier Vallerand PHOTOS Maxime Brouillet

Public markets conjure up ideas of community and exchange, of a dynamic urban life. Local governments have increasingly invested in creating new markets and supporting existing ones. Doing so builds on renewed interests in the benefits of eating local products, and strengthens the relationship between urban and rural communities.

In recent years, the Quebec City municipal council has transformed its foodscape through two significant steps. The first was building a permanent structure, designed by Fugère architecture with an original concept by CCM2 architectes, to replace the tents of the Sainte-Foy Public Market in the city’s southwest. The second was moving the Old Port Market from the tourist-oriented Vieux Québec to a new location close to the central city, at the junction of the Limoilou and Vanier neighbourhoods.

Bisson associés and Atelier Pierre Thibault, in joint venture, were tasked with the design for the Grand Marché, situated on the former agricultural fairground now known as ExpoCité. They were asked to transform the Pavillon du commerce (originally known as the Pavillon de l’industrie), a vast exhibition hall designed in 1923 by architect Adalbert Trudel and engineer Édouard Hamel. Following the decline of the fairs, the vast space—120 by 60 metres with 12-metre-high ceilings in the centre—had most recently been used as a go-kart course. Adaptively reusing the pavilion was a natural fit, providing an occasion to restore the heritage building, whose form echoed the traditional market halls found in European cities. The redevelopment of the ExpoCité grounds had already begun with the 2015 addition of the Centre Vidéotron stadium, and the renovation of other historic halls. The Grand Marché was envisaged as another anchor to boost activity on the site.

Design lead Pierre Thibault, project lead Jonathan Bisson, and their team developed a conceptual approach that builds on the elegance and lightness they perceived to be still present in the heritage structure, despite years of neglect. The building’s large scale and clerestory windows gave the impression of being outside, leading Thibault to imagine the market as a “roof floating above an open space,” with a main street and public square. Echoing the layout of a small town, the composition would make a direct reference to the rural areas from which many of the market’s products come.

The concept allows for much flexibility—an asset in a long process of developing the program with the producers’ cooperative, and an attribute which will likely contribute to the market’s longevity. The current layout groups the farmers’ simple stalls on the south side, next to large sliding doors. The side façade had once accommodated fair stands and doors that were shut at some point in the building’s history, and is now reactivated by the reopened entrance and farmers’ market. The central “main street” is lined with a series of one- and two-storey shops, and topped with new large skylights. Flanking the “public square,” oversized wooden steps lead up to the second level, which includes a restaurant and other food-related services. On the north side, a service alley subtly (and wisely) positions the loading docks, service spaces, and shared warehouses outside of the main circulation path. Like at a traditional market, smaller deliveries to the stalls can also occur from the south doors.

A concept built around distinct structures in an open space allowed the team to circumvent some of the structural and budgetary constraints linked to adapting the historic structure. For code and structural reasons, anything new needed to be an independent structure. A new foundation slab supports the autonomous new elements, with the existing building acting as an umbrella hovering overhead. The original mezzanine floor has been removed, and a series of large concrete buttresses now supports the eastern and western end walls—one of a very few major additions to the original structure.

Material choices further underscore the approach of creating pavilions in an open space. The wood used on many of the new surfaces contrasts with the heritage brick walls and steel structure. The existing steel is painted dark grey, and new steel painted white to express the

TOP LEFT Glass entrance vestibules mark the transformation of the former exhibition hall into a contemporary market. TOP RIGHT The second floor includes family and event spaces. OPPOSITE TOP The hall’s original mezzanine was removed, and concrete buttresses added to support the eastern and western end walls. OPPOSITE BOTTOM Farmer’s market stalls are designed as minimalist cubes along the market’s south side.

 1 MICROBREWERY 2 CHARCUTERIE-MAKER 3 POULTRY PRODUCER 4 FISH SHOP 5 DUCK PRODUCER 6 DONUT BAKERY 7 BUTCHERY 8 WAREHOUSE 9 WASHROOMS 10 PUBLIC SQUARE 11 CIDER 12 PASTA 13 LIQUOR STORE 14 GENERAL STORE 15 MAIN STREET 16 COFFEE SHOP 17 CHOCOLATE FACTORY 18 HONEY SHOP 19 BEER SHOP 20 SAUSAGE-MAKER 21 MAPLE SHOP 22 TOMATO SHOP 23 BUSINESS INCUBATOR 24 BAKERY 25 DELICATESSEN 26 CHEESE STORE 27 THE GARDENERS’ ALLEY

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structural transformations—a decision that is especially welcome in places where the structure is doubled. The second-level walkways are painted white; although in some areas, this gives them a visual presence that distracts from the wood retail volumes.

Early in his career, Thibault had worked on the predecessor market in the Old Port, which was designed to prioritize logistics, access and delivery. By contrast, the new Grand Marché is primarily envisioned as a destination—an attractive, stimulating space for people to rediscover local food. To this end, the market includes performance spaces and educational installations, such as an aquaponics system maintained by Laval University for both training and research. The building also includes an on-site composting system, helping to showcase the impact of human production and consumption.

New skylights bring in a good amount of overhead light, essential for the trees and vegetation that border the interior streets. Designed to reflect the diversity of the boreal region, these gardens also required particular attention to the colour temperature of the building’s artificial lighting.

Connections between indoors and outdoors continue on the west side, where a glass-enclosed lobby and restaurant terrace expand the market onto Place Jean-Béliveau, an esplanade completed in 2017. The open space fronts the Centre Vidéotron, and is animated by public art, performance spaces, and a children’s play area. Unfortunately, on the east side facing Limoilou and the old Colisée Pepsi, a large, bland parking lot is still present. Hopefully the eventual redevelopment of this side—following the recent addition of a bus terminal and planned demolition of the Colisée—will lead to a rethought parking area, with more plants, trees, and other structures that make the space friendlier to pedestrians.

Opening less than a year before the Covid pandemic hit, the Grand Marché has yet to take root as a fully alive market that rivals long-standing public markets elsewhere. The move from the Old Port was controversial, and the architects deliberately chose not to recreate the cramped aisles that had defined that space for three decades. However, the high quality of the architecture and the attention brought to reinstating the lost qualities of a heritage building are impressive. All this was achieved in spite of relatively low budgets and multiple programmatic changes.

Most importantly, many local producers have expressed their satisfaction with the building and with their renewed relation with local communities. In the Grand Marché’s new location, the clientele extends beyond the tourists who frequented the Old Port Market. The Grand Marché promises to continue adding new vitality to a long-neglected part of Quebec City, reaching back to the original mission of the Pavillon de l’industrie—to celebrate local entrepreneurial spirit and agricultural know-how.

ABOVE LEFT A grand stair to the second level doubles as seating for events and performances in the central gathering area. ABOVE RIGHT Shops are housed in one- and two-storey wood-clad boxes that step in and out from the circulation paths.

Olivier Vallerand is Assistant Professor at The Design School, Arizona State University.

CLIENT VILLE DE QUÉBEC (CAROLINE LAMONDE) | ARCHITECT TEAM BISSON ASSOCIÉS—JONATHAN BISSON, CAROLINE LAJOIE, JULIE DUBÉ, EVANS ZUNIGA, JACQUES DION, FRÉDÉRIQUE MURPHY, MARIE-MICHELLE GAUTHIER, MATTHIAS COQUEREAU, GENEVIÈVE GAGNON, LOÏC LEFEBVRE, KATELL MEURIC. ATELIER PIERRE THIBAULT—PIERRE THIBAULT, JÉRÔME LAPIERRE, JULIE POISSON, GUILLAUME B. RIEL, LUIS ALEJANDRO ROJAS-PEREZ, CHARLÈNE BOURGEOIS, MATHIEU LECLERC, ÉRIC BOUCHER | STRUCTURAL EMS INGÉNIERIE (ÉRIC BOUCHER, SIMON CLÉMENT) | MECHANICAL/ ELECTRICAL WSP CANADA (ALAIN D’ANJOU) | CONTRACTORS CONSTRUCTION CITADELLE (MARTIN GIRARD) AND CONSTRUCTION RICHARD ARSENAULT (SIMON PROTEAU) | AREA 9,000 M2 | BUDGET $26.1 M | COMPLETION JUNE 2019

VOICES OF THE UNHEARD

TEXT Jaliya Fonseka

A REFLECTION ON THE IMPORTANCE OF MAKING INJUSTICES INHERENT IN ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION AND PRACTICE VISIBLE.

Ten years ago, on my first day of architecture school, I walked into a lecture hall filled with Apple laptops—something I could not afford—and felt an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. I asked myself: do I belong here?

This was perhaps my first encounter with how privileged the underpinnings of both the education and profession of architecture really are. I had stepped into a profession that took pride in its students flying to Europe to intern for renowned architects for no pay—and then celebrated this fact upon seeing it on their resumes. This idea of “success” contributed to a culture of competitiveness in the school, which, along with a primarily Western, Eurocentric bias to theory and practice, would have a lasting impact on my architectural education.

On completing my undergraduate degree in architecture at the University of Waterloo, I had not yet reconciled the education I had received with my path forward to become an architect. I realized that I lacked a meaningful relationship to architecture. Yearning for this connection, I began my master’s degree feeling a pull to reconnect with my heritage. With my notebook and camera in hand, I flew 12,000 miles to my native Sri Lanka to pursue my thesis, studying the meaning of Home, Place and Belonging.

Arriving in Colombo, I had not accounted for the monsoon rains which halted my travels, and this led me to discover that my grandpar-

ABOVE Created by Carleton University architecture student Lara Sedele, this digital collage was one of over 400 pieces submitted to the school’s annual Director’s Project drawing competition. The competition invited students to respond to the theme “The Fierce Urgency of Now.”

ents’ old home had been converted to a Montessori school for children whose families were seeking asylum. The small building was falling apart: paint and concrete chipping, roof joists broken, and the lacquered floor worn out by decades of bare feet. There was a clear task in front of me. I decided to spend the remainder of my time in Sri Lanka renovating and repairing the Montessori school.

Every time I approached this work through the lens of my architectural training, I reached a dead end. I began to realize that the process of revitalizing this school was a form of education in itself. By embracing the challenges and complexities of the project, along with the multiple voices of its stakeholders, I was able to see the question at hand: How would I create a sense of belonging for the children that attended the school?

On completing my master’s thesis, these experiences remained dear to me.

Several years later, after moving to Washington, D.C., my reflections on Home, Place and Belonging became sharply heightened by the political unrest of my immediate context.

On June 1st, 2020, I found myself at the front lines of the Black Lives Matter protest at Lafayette Square outside the White House. My arms were raised, fists clenched tight, and with all the other enraged voices, I chanted at the top of my lungs the names of those murdered in the recent weeks. The people around me erupted with anger, outrage and heartbreak, compounded by the struggle, loss and danger of the ongoing pandemic.

The month leading up to this day had been a complete blur filled with powerful protest, tear gas, and continued discriminatory acts that echoed centuries of systemic racism—but this day was different. On the evening of the peaceful protest, National Guard officers rushed in unexpectedly, throwing tear gas canisters at us, knocking down those around me, and in a storm of flinging shields and batons, unloading a barrage of rubber bullets on us. This was an attack against democracy; an assault against freedom. I walked home that day grateful to be alive, thinking how privileged so many of us are to be able to walk down the street without fear of being attacked for the colour of our skin, our identity, or our beliefs.

As the world shook with the devastation of these events, people looked towards their communities for answers. Slowly, a more resilient hope began to inspire a new sense of community. Heartbroken by the brutal murders and the violence against protesters, I too longed for a meaningful sense of community. I spent my mornings and afternoons volunteering with the World Central Kitchen initiative in Washington, D.C., where I worked with a team dedicated to preparing and distributing thousands of meals to those disadvantaged by the pandemic. After leaving the kitchen each day, I joined a large group of protesters in the city and marched for hours, propelled by the powerful voices around me. During the same period of time, my close connection to the University of Waterloo architecture community led me to organize several initiatives and virtual spaces for much-needed conversations with students, faculty and alumni around these issues.

A sense of empathy was foundational to all these initiatives. It quickly became clear to me that when we gathered together in these physical or virtual places, what we were confronting and wrestling with was the question: What does it mean to be a human being?

In the weeks that followed, architects and architectural organizations struggled to respond to the events that had occurred. Many institutions issued letters that failed to meaningfully capture the magnitude of the issues at hand—perhaps because it is difficult to even begin thinking about addressing issues endemic to the profession at large. Not only is the profession driven by economic and social privilege, but architecture is still taught from a Eurocentric perspective, and BIPOC populations are under-represented among professionals, client groups and students. But changes are starting to happen. Several architectural institutions have begun seeking out more diverse critics and guest speakers, conversations are ensuing regarding curriculum shifts to include global and anti-colonial perspectives, and working groups have been formed to work towards equity among student bodies and teachers.

These are all important steps in the right direction, but in the frenzy of activity, there is a question that continues to stay with me: how can a profession which has for so long failed to address these issues so quickly shift its perspective to embody and enact meaningful change? This question brings to mind the words of American political activist Angela Davis: “I have a hard time accepting diversity as a synonym for justice. Diversity is a corporate strategy. It’s a strategy designed to ensure that the institution functions in the same way that it functioned before, except now that you have some black faces and brown faces. It’s a difference that doesn’t make a difference.”

Angela Davis’s poignant words point to a truth that we must confront which goes beyond institutional policy. We are tasked with a greater undertaking rooted in our shared humanity, and ultimately, how we choose to respond to human suffering. And if for a moment we lose our sense of how human a problem this is, we need only look back to last summer, to what ignited these movements.

Although this question extends far beyond the education and profession of architects, we are deeply implicated because architecture is fundamentally an expression of the human response to environment. If we—as architects, educators and students—are not invested in fostering an education that puts diversity, equity and inclusion at its core, how can we possibly design spaces that do the same? How can we possibly design for the increasingly complex social and environmental issues that we face? To confront these questions, we—as architects, educators and students—by virtue of each of these roles, are also activists.

While the protests in the streets of so many cities continued through the summer and fall of 2020, similar acts of protest filled the virtual spaces of architectural institutions across Canada. I attended a virtual all-school gathering at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture at the beginning of the summer term, where long-silent voices were heard for the first time. As a school, we shared a space where, despite the virtual setting, we were forced to embrace the difficulty, the discomfort, and the failure of the institution to address the concerns of individual students and longstanding issues around equity, diversity and inclusion. Brave individuals shared their encounters with racism and how these experiences affected them during their time in the field of architecture. Each person’s account was moving, eye-opening, and powerfully demonstrated the painful and long-lasting scars of injustice. Although others in attendance may have endured similar experiences, each person’s story was clearly important, and demonstrated that the healthy and resilient rebirth of our communities depends on every voice being witnessed and acknowledged.

Although architectural training is known to be broad, embracing so many emotionally difficult conversations, with their intense memories and powerful silences, was outside of my formal education. The work of addressing these issues felt radical because so much

of institutional discourse on education focuses on externalities: the creation of policies, mandates, governances. Rarely do we look inward to the heart of the challenges at hand. Rarely do we look back at ourselves. The conversations we were beginning to have as a school revealed something absent in architectural discourse: humility, empathy, vulnerability and love.

Towards the end of 2020, I was asked to be an advisory board member for the University of Waterloo School of Architecture Racial Equity and Environmental Justice Task Force. In this position, I felt my primary contribution was to emphasize an overwhelming feeling of how much we have failed as a profession to see and tackle the issues of equity, diversity and inclusion. In board discussions, it was important for me to also recognize the longstanding efforts made by students at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture around these issues. Student-initiated groups such as On Empathy (est. 2014), Treaty Lands, Global Stories (est. 2016), and the Sustainability Collective (est. 2018) were perhaps small and largely unseen when they began, but these initiatives continue to demonstrate the profound and revitalizing role students play in the education and renewal of our institutions.

When asked to contribute to an article on dismantling racism in Canadian architecture schools, I was not sure I was the right person to take on the task. The genuine struggles and heartfelt efforts I have seen being made by students and faculty are not quantifiable. They are often embodied as complex and nuanced stories that contribute to the song we are collectively singing. I am humbled and inspired by the voices I have heard, and it is with great respect and reverence for each of these brave individuals with whom I’ve crossed paths that I found purpose to contribute to this work.

With each conversation at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, and each initiative organized within architecture schools across Canada, it became more and more apparent to me that we need to take time to sit with questions before proposing solutions. The sense of urgency that emanates from every conversation may demand quick action. But to enact lasting measures, we must carefully balance the tension between moving forward to implement change with the slow work of nurturing each question—and one another.

The complexity of this undertaking is enormous, but every act of working together to build equity, diversity and inclusion is also an act of building trust, and in turn, building community—communities where it is necessary to continue asking the questions:

Who do each of us need to become to embody the change we want to see? How do we traverse this difficult path together? And most importantly: How do we make sure that no one is left behind?

At every protest I attended last summer, there were moments where vibrant chanting gave way to a calm sense of strength and solidarity in one another. Musical instruments spontaneously appeared, and the passionate voices of protestors magically transformed into song. I was struck by the ability of a melody to hold both the ferocity of the protest and the vulnerability and tenderness of each individual. We were working in unison, and every voice was necessary. These are the moments that stay with me and inspire a way forward.

FROM THE GROUND UP

TEXT Anne Bordeleau

WHAT EFFORTS ARE BEING MADE TO ADDRESS SYSTEMIC RACISM IN CANADA’S ARCHITECTURE SCHOOLS? SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE DIRECTOR ANNE BORDELEAU REPORTS ON THE PROGRESS SO FAR, THE WORK TO BE DONE, AND WHY IT MATTERS TO THE PROFESSION AT LARGE.

Since last spring, Canadian schools of architecture have been both destabilized and galvanized by sustained student activism. Professors and program administrators have been responding in a variety of ways to the call to more urgently and drastically rethink both our relation to traditional architectural education and our paths forward.

As chair of the Canadian Council of University Schools of Architecture (CCUSA), Canadian At-Large Director on the board of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and a member of the Racial Equity and Environmental Justice Task Force within the School of Architecture of the University of Waterloo—and I should also say from the privileged position of a white tenured faculty member—I have found myself participating in many conversations motivated by this rethinking.

CCUSA is a council of the directors of accredited professional architecture programs in Canada. Prompted by the pandemic and the calls to actions that occurred in most schools over the past year, the group has been meeting frequently to consider ways to share resources and collectively take action. What needs to be done to implement meaningful changes in our education, discipline and profession? The fight centres on the need to stand against anti-Black racism specifically, and systemic racism more broadly, although it also extends to the connected issues of sustainability and environmental justice.

What does racial equity look like in architecture? For decades, questions of equity, diversity and inclusivity have been considered of importance, but it is a slow road for institutions and government to go beyond simply issuing EDI statements. Even when there is a will, decolonizing practices or changing policies is not something that can happen overnight. As attention expands from a focus on gender balance to addressing other under-represented groups in our programs, it is clear that there are still many ingrained barriers to the work that must be done.

For example, there are often hurdles to the seemingly straightforward establishment of scholarships dedicated to Black students. In Ontario, even with funding in place, one has to work through the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s guidelines to develop a rationale for a proposed

scholarship. This process ultimately requires providing benchmark data that has yet to be collected—since such data collection is another area in which universities are lagging. Better support is needed for advocates and administrators to move through these steps.

Even more problematically, many Canadians still refuse to acknowledge that there are faults in our practices that continue to negatively impact Black and Indigenous persons, along with People of Colour. There is a need to make it clear that racism—as well as systemic racism—indeed exists in Canada. We are complacent as we compare ourselves to our neighbours to the South. But we tend to congratulate ourselves on a form of pluralism that, as theorized by Charles Taylor, is premised on a fraught ideal that there are no second-class citizens and that we are essentially an inclusive society.

Race and equity scholar Kathy Hogarth points to some of the issues around this idea of integration. She writes: “The importance of integration as a stated goal of multiculturalism in Canadian society has been well established in the rhetoric of dominant discourse. How integration unfolds within the White space for racialized immigrants still needs to be understood, particularly given the nuances of culture, ethnicity, gender, and immigration. In dominant discourse, integration is positioned as an individual action that one must take in order to fit in with Canadian society. […] This becomes particularly problematic for the reason that members of the dominant group get to determine whether a person had truly integrated and is deserving of belonging without addressing the structural issues, such as racism, that create barriers to integration.” 1

This conception of integration as the ability to “fit in” within an existing structure applies on many levels to our architecture schools, along with the discipline and profession. 2 A tension between entrenched structures and new practices affects the ability of architecture to pivot towards more inclusive, equitable viewpoints.

ABOVE Robert Oleksiak’s drawing marks the police killings of last summer and commemorates civil rights protests of the past and present, speculatively projecting the action onto Ottawa’s Sparks Street.

We see, for instance, an ever-present push and pull between the professional world and academia. Representatives of professional bodies often want to ensure that what students learn in school lines up with what the profession needs, while educators strive to open up doors to new potential modes of fulfillment in the discipline.

Perhaps more accurately, we could speak of a dual pressure on the next generation of architecture graduates: on the one hand, from practicing architects and legislative bodies that wish to impress upon them the skills and methods that will fulfill their current vision of the profession, and on the other, from educators who may struggle to relinquish the European foundations upon which they themselves were likely introduced to the discipline. (Of course, building practices and traditions have existed everywhere and at all times, but the particular architectural education and its associated definition of a discipline that we have inherited goes back to the European academies and a corpus of work originally assembled by nineteenth-century European historians, even though some attempted to include precedents from around the world.)

Looking with a historical lens, one also sees inequities at the foundation of the discipline. Architecture—when formulated by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian theorists as Architettura or Re Aedificatoria—is a discipline that was “re-invented” as distinct from mere construction in an effort to valorize a practice to potential patrons. To be fully equity-minded, we should all be abandoning this story, which is fundamentally based on privilege, as well as on actions that frequently served as tools for subjugating both people and territories. But of course, such a wholesale abandonment would also do away with all of the positive aspects of architecture, as one of the few fields that embodies creative inquiry, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and holistic considerations of a more-than-human living environment shaped by intersecting ecological, social and technological forces.

ABOVE Odessa Boehm’s drawing, which won a $1,000 Murray & Murray Prize in the competition, describes the story of 2020 through a “billowing smoke cloud.” She writes that “it also expresses the ending of the old world with the hope for a new beginning.”

To tackle the more immediate challenges at hand, the questions that must be urgently addressed range across a breadth of critical issues. How can the architecture curriculum be more inclusive across all courses—history, studio, technology, etc? Who does this profession attract, and who does it leave behind? What role does architecture play in furthering questions of social and spatial justice? (I write this as the AIA announces “new rules on the design of justice facilities.”) What do we value in the education and works of architects? Which projects receive awards, and who do we name and recognize as leaders in the field? Some of these questions are not new, and there has been progress, but there is more work to be done.

Students who come to study architecture discover a path through what they are taught, or in opposition to it—either fitting the mold or learning to create pockets to breathe within it. As instructors, many of us are so infatuated by the professional discipline we sustain that we do not really want to hear students asking for something different. This alone constitutes a barrier that we have yet to address, if indeed we want our profession to be truly inclusive.

So we have work to do, and not only in schools of architecture and their respective universities. As a profession, architecture still remains largely male, and largely white. While the gender balance and racial makeup of the student body has been changing rapidly over the past decades, the faculty complement lags behind—and professional leadership even more so. Gender balance has been on our minds for a while, but we speak very little of other traditionally under-represented groups, whether at the level of schools, practices, or professional organizations. It is hard to address a problem if we do not actively track the gap (or our progress in bridging that gap) across the continuum. A starting point is to look at representation within student populations and faculty complements at the schools of architecture, through the internship process, and in practice, including at senior levels of leadership.

Students are loudly and clearly calling for certain changes. Last year, a series called the Canadian Architecture Forums on Education (CAFÉ) ran workshops for schools across the country, coordinated by University of Manitoba professor Lisa Landrum in collaboration with CCUSA. The biggest concern raised by all participants was a desire to refocus architectural education on sustainable and equitable built environments. Students called for urgent attention to (1) climate change and environmental stewardship, (2) equity and inclusion, (3) mental health and well-being, (4) meaningful community engagement, and (5) culturally relevant, regionally meaningful design amid the dominant forces of capitalism. Directly or indirectly, all top five concerns point to how architectural education and the profession could become more inclusive and could better advance racial equity and environmental justice.

Within each school, work to address racial equity is moving forward in different ways: through town hall meetings, written commitments, hiring external auditors and consultants, setting up task forces and working groups, and allocating more resources to empower existing committees on equity and diversity. At the larger level, universities are moving with more or less speed to advance in their fights against racism and to promote the decolonization of the institution. A few universities have been able to quickly move forward in opening up positions for Black and Indigenous scholars, or in calling for candidates with expertise in social, spatial, and racial justice. All of this is happening as educational institutions respond to the pandemic, and amid widespread speculation as to what the world will look like in the next five or ten years. In other words, our aspirational idealism is bounded in broader realities, as well as being part and parcel of these larger movements.

Still, at almost every Canadian architecture school, whether in parallel or in collaboration with University efforts, an active student group and school committee have been focused on equity and antiracism work. Many groups include both faculty and student representation, and seek external perspectives as needed. Across these groups, there is work being done on reforming the curriculum and studio culture, on hiring and admissions, as well as on the mode of delivery and evaluation of material. Much of this work benefits from the wealth of events that have been organized both in Canada and beyond, through organizations such as the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Emergent Ground for Design Education, the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), the National Organization for Minority Architecture (NOMA) and Dark Matter University, but also from pre-existing and ongoing student-led initiatives around equity and sustainability. Many provincial associations, as well as the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, are also picking up speed on equity, inclusion and diversity agendas.

In the midst of all these actions, there is movement forward, but it is messy, and there will probably be no “getting it right.” Change will always come too slowly, and there will always be more to do. Significantly though, issues have come to the fore in ways that are clearer than ever before. For example, we’re discussing how equity can impact how we do research, the type of research we value, and how peer-reviewing processes are managed and the people they favour. Just as importantly, everybody, bar none, is looking at those issues and having these conversations. Still, we are strained and separated by a pandemic that is forcing most discussions online. It’s both an incredible opportunity to pool resources, and a devastating situation. Some exchanges turn into polarizing rather than productive conversations, lacking a table as a common ground around which to gather.

But let’s state this clearly: everyone is willing to change—young and old, conservatives and revolutionaries, educators and practitioners, students and faculty. Yes, we are all destabilized, but also stimulated to move forward in this work. It is also clear that the work will involve both changing ourselves and the collective. A transformed architecture community will only arise from our willingness to tackle this as individuals, as well as together as educators, students and practitioners.

The desire to do this work ultimately stems from the way we value architecture as an incredibly powerful vehicle—if flawed and marked by a problematic history. We believe that architecture itself is of interest, a word that at its root represents a social act—inter-esse, between being. As monuments are being toppled and their plinths remain, perhaps we need to do the opposite as a discipline: let’s topple the pedestal, and reinvent the ground under the feet of a profession that must continue to change.

1 Hogarth, Kathy. “Home Without Security and Security Without Home,” Journal of International Migration and Integration, Vol. 16, Iss. 3 (Aug 2015): 783-798.

2 On the distinction between discipline and profession, see Sharon E. Sutton, “Power, Knowledge and the Art of Leadership,” Progressive Architecture, May 1992, pp. 65-68.

RETROFITTING HERITAGE MASONRY BUILDINGS

ADDING THERMAL INSULATION TO THE INTERIOR OF MASONRY WALLS MUST BE APPROACHED WITH CARE. HERE ARE SOME BEST PRACTICE DOS AND DON’TS.

TEXT Eric A. Charron and Randy Van Straaten

Heritage masonry buildings make up a large portion of Canada’s urban structures—from the historic warehouses in the downtowns of thriving cities to the shops that line small-town main streets and squares. Late 19th- and early 20th-century construction provides warm, inviting, comfortably human-scaled settings that plunge us back into history and tell our collective stories. Not only are these structures significant assets to our physical environment and culture, but their robust assembly and appealing character make them adaptable to new uses.

While heritage masonry structures are typically energy inefficient, it is unrealistic and undesirable to replace these time-tested buildings with new net-zero ones. Hence, the deep energy retrofitting of heritage masonry buildings is a key part of achieving a zero-carbon, energy-neutral future while maintaining our cultural and architectural heritage.

The addition of interior thermal insulation to solid masonry walls is a common consideration for heritage retrofits. Best-practice solutions presented in this article are informed by research and feedback from the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) Sustainable Built Environments Committee (SBEC), along with lessons learned from building science specialists and heritage consultants.

THE BASICS AND RISKS OF RETROFITTING OLD MASONRY BUILDINGS Reducing heat loss in older buildings is a key component of meeting energy efficiency targets such as Passive House and TEDI requirements. The most effective way to reduce heat loss is through upgrading the glazing systems by replacing or refurbishing windows with thermally broken framing, highly insulated glazing units, and weatherstripping repair. The second biggest item is to air-seal the building enclosure. Assuming glazing systems and air infiltration have been addressed, the next priority is to insulate the walls to reduce heating demand.

From a moisture management perspective, the best way to insulate a building is from the exterior, enclosing the structural walls within the thermal envelope. The structure will be heated as part of the interior conditioned space, where it will be kept warm and dry. But while wrapping the exterior is preferable from a building science perspective, it is not often viable from an aesthetic perspective or possibly due to access challenges. Additionally, conservation groups and associations tasked with advocating for heritage sites simply will not let masonry, which gives many buildings their heritage character, be covered up.

If we cannot wrap the exterior, the other logical place to insulate is from the inside. In doing so, one must consider how a significant reduction in heat loss can be achieved without creating decay or mould issues.

ABOVE Toronto’s Waterworks development, designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects, is transforming a 1930s masonry utility building into condos, a food hall, and a YMCA.

MOISTURE CONTROL IN MASS MASONRY WALLS Excessive moisture is the main cause of decay and mould in wall systems. In older masonry buildings, wall thickness was commonly used to limit the risk of rainwater entry. Heavy masonry walls use hygric mass to control wetting by absorbing, storing, and drying rainwater. Thinner walls control rainwater entry through the use of less porous, denser masonry materials. The porosity of masonry, the mortar properties, and the presence of voids in the wall system all play a role in the control of rainwater. The balance of wetting and drying, as well as material vulnerability, dictates the susceptibility to decay in a particular exposure or environment.

Freeze-thaw is a major decay mechanism for masonry walls in cold climates. For decay to occur during freezing, masonry materials must reach a minimal critical degree of water saturation. Decay accelerates at higher moisture levels. Generally, masonry walls must be quite damp and exposed to multiple freeze-thaw cycles before damage occurs. So as long as the brick does not get damp, there is no problem. There are plenty of buildings with highly vulnerable masonry that have endured well, with limited moisture exposure.

Heavy masonry walls get colder when insulated on the interior. These walls also typically get damper, as there is less heat flowing outward through the wall for drying. This is why walls may be more vulnerable to freeze-thaw decay as a result of interior wall insulation retrofits.

THE THREE DS Many good measures for limiting risk of freeze-thaw decay and other moisture problems are derived from knowing the Dos and Don’ts of the 3 Ds: deflection, drainage, and drying.

Deflection 1. DO minimize rainwater exposure. Use large overhanging cornices. Slope window sills with back and end dams. Repair masonry and repoint failing mortar joints. Design effective drip edges, parapets and flashings to drain/shed away from the wall.

2. DON’T allow grades and paving finishes to collect water near the base of a masonry wall. Slope grades away from the building. Where possible, do not extend masonry all the way to grade, as moisture and salts will work their way into the wall assembly.

Drainage 3. DO drain walls and soils adjacent to the foundation. Install weeping tiles and drainage mats on foundation walls. Ensure internal wall drains are working. Include scuppers in roof designs.

Drying 4. DON’T use coatings or sealants that restrict drying. Masonry and mortar are porous materials intended to breathe. Painting a masonry wall will not inherently harm or damage the masonry, but the paint layer must be maintained to limit rainwater entry and to continue to allow for outward drying of the wall. When the paint layer begins to fail, the wall will be exposed to moisture, adding to the risk of deterioration.

5. DON’T allow vacated or mothballed heritage masonry buildings that are intended for future use to be left unheated. A cold, unheated wall will often accelerate the rate of deterioration of a mass masonry assembly and frost-heave often occurs.

AIR LEAKAGE AND WATER VAPOUR DIFFUSION Further design considerations related to vapour and air wetting include the following:

6. DO limit cold-weather mechanical pressurization of the building with humid air. Pressurization of the building during the winter can drive humid indoor air through the exterior wall assembly, resulting in excessive wetting and the risk of freeze-thaw damage, frost accumulation, and mould growth. Mechanical systems should be designed to a neutral or slightly negative indoor pressure under all schedules of operation.

7. DO control interior humidity levels in winter. Although moisture flow through vapour diffusion tends to be minimal, poor vapour control can result in mould growth at high humidity surfaces within the wall assembly. Retrofit designs should include adequate vapour control suited for their exterior and interior climates.

8. DON’T place a poorly installed air or vapour barrier on the inside of a masonry wall assembly. Polyethylene membranes (PE) have very low vapour and air permeance, but are difficult to air seal at the complex interfaces with the wall, including at floor joints and at the intersection with columns. Holes in the PE can carry moisture into the wall via air leakage. Ensure continuity of the air barrier in detail design and installation, and confirm through fog and/or whole building airtightness testing and inspection.

RISK ASSESSMENT APPROACH Considering the general measures for moisture control in masonry walls, the following steps are recommended for assessing the risk of insulation retrofit approaches:

9. DON’T devise a solution without first looking at the condition of the building you are dealing with. Look for evidence of where water may be getting into the wall, such as areas of decay and staining. Check near the ground for spalled material and soft, sandy mortar. Verify the condition of walls not typically exposed to rainwater, such as the backside of exposed parapet walls—if they are in poor shape, water is getting in somewhere.

10. DON’T assume all wall exposures experience the same amount of wetting. Different wall exposures can be subjected to varying degrees of wetting. Examine the surrounding built environment and microclimate for possible effects of sun and wind drying, driving rain, and water shedding from other structures. 11. DON’T assume that all heritage masonry walls need to be exhaustively tested and analyzed. The value of the heritage asset should inform the decay risk assessment effort and expense—for instance, different levels of investment should be put into a monumental public landmark versus a single-family home. If hygrothermal analysis is being considered for the project, it will entail determining project-specific masonry properties along with creating invasive openings to confirm assemblies and conditions. Hygrothermal properties of the sampled materials are measured and used to predict conditions that may result from proposed interior insulation retrofit designs. These conditions are compared to measured critical saturation levels during freezing condition to assess decay risk.

12. DON’T choose a repointing mortar that is incompatible with surrounding materials. Never use a high-strength mortar in a wall with original soft and flexible lime-based mortar or brick. Portland cement is strong and stiff rather than soft and flexible; mortar joints are supposed to accommodate movements and be sacrificial by design. Any replacement masonry or mortar should bond well with the adjacent materials and replicate similar performance under a range of weather conditions. Lab testing of mortars and masonry samples should be conducted to determine the most appropriate replacement materials.

13. DON’T devise an interior insulation strategy for a multi-wythe masonry building without first knowing where (and whether) the wall should be insulated. Every building is unique, and modifications over a structure’s lifecycle may have resulted in changes to the original construction. Retrofitting on the inside may create unforeseen expansion and contraction forces on a seasonal basis. If the masonry wall does not have control joints, it could create cracks and fissures on its own due to these forces. It is important to analyze the potential for expansion and contraction that may result from an interior insulation strategy.

14. DON’T insulate a mass masonry foundation below-grade from the interior without knowing the drainage capacity of the exterior soils. Conduct field inspections and geotechnical analysis to determine the soil drainage capacity. Check the basement walls for moisture; verify if the mortar is soft and sandy, or if the brick near the floor is crumbling. If these conditions are detected, insulate on the outside of the wall below-grade over a consolidated masonry render and waterproofing membrane. Sealing the interior of a damp foundation wall with insulation will make the wall colder and reduce its ability to dry from the inside. Leaving a cold wall exposed to exterior groundwater and freeze-thaw will gradually deteriorate the mortar and risk structural failure over time, or at a minimum may shift and crack the masonry assembly, thus allowing more moisture to enter the wall.

Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to insulate the interior of many heritage masonry buildings without an increased risk of decay. The catch is that it must be done very carefully and only after examining the existing structure and building assembly thoroughly.

With any interior retrofit approach, each building must be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and carefully considered for the correct retrofit. Heritage consultants, structural engineers, and building science specialists should always play a part in this process to ensure that each madeto-order solution will extend the useful life and reduce the energy dependency of our historical building stock.

Eric A. Charron (M.Arch., OAA) is an architect with Diamond Schmitt Architects and has been a member of the OAA’s Sustainable Built Environments Committee (SBEC). Dr. Randy Van Straaten (Ph.D., P.Eng.) is a sustainability and building science educator at Fanshawe College and provides building science consulting on a wide range of projects.

Blueprint for a Hack

By Vikram Bhatt, David Harlander and Susane Havelka (Actar Publishers, 2020).

Blueprint for a Hack describes a five-day project that took place in 2017 in a village in the Nunavik region of northern Quebec. The Kuujjuaq Hackathon saw Inuit community members work alongside designers from southern Quebec, with the aim of examining and improving public spaces within Kuujjuaq, reducing landfill waste and participating in a cultural exchange.

The Hackathon resulted in the construction of a community sports pavilion. Created with materials salvaged from the local landfill— a shipping container, scrap lumber, tractor tires and septic tanks—the pavilion, and the processes that shaped it, represent an unassuming yet critical precedent for challenging formalized practices of architecture and design. In recognition of this importance, it was awarded a National Urban Design Award in 2018.

As the book documenting the project explains, Canada’s arctic and sub-arctic communities are often shaped by forces that are ignorant of the cultural, environmental and logistical contexts particular to the north. This lack of awareness is evident in architectural and planning approaches that are typically informed by southern Canadian sensibilities and foisted upon remote communities with little meaningful consultation. This leads to underused projects that feel foreign and disconnected from their physical and social realities. A more effective approach and planners about how knowledge is gathered and how spaces are designed. A more collaborative approach taps into deeper understandings of place and the history, people and interactions that shape it. The hacking mindset reduces waste and encourages active engagement of team members—both with and without formal design education—acknowledging the wisdom, creativity and resourcefulness of everyday locals.

Drawing inspiration from the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Inuit serves as a valuable springboard for re-examining and re-imagining different ways of up-cycling materials—and for practicing architecture.

would be informed by local engagement, Indigenous culture and lived knowledge of the challenges of remoteness and northern climates.

Historically, Inuit have long required resourcefulness. As nomadic peoples, they needed ingenuity to survive in the challenging environments of what would become Canada’s northern regions. This spirit continues to prevail as Inuit grapple with social and economic conditions arising from colonization and increasingly, the challenges of climate change. The resourcefulness at the core of Inuit culture—and the outward expression of this in informal building practices—has generally been overlooked by design practitioners. At the Kuujjuaq Hackathon, in contrast, this ingenuity was both acknowledged and honoured as a valuable source of information and as strategic inspiration.

To “hack” is to modify and to work in new ways, and also to upend and challenge standard material applications and methods of production. The Hackathon aimed, in part, to learn from practices of “hacking” already present in modern Inuit life, and to apply a hacking mindset to improve public spaces in Kuujjuaq to better serve those who live there. This process included strategizing how to transform discarded waste into a useful construction.

Blueprint for a Hack argues that such informal invention and ingenuity may provide new routes forward for the disciplines of architecture and planning, and that these skills have potentially far-reaching implications.

The participatory design approach used in Kuujjuaq highlights a wider discussion that’s needed between architects, designers

Review by Natalie Badenduck

Pandemic Objects

vam.ac.uk/blog/pandemic-objects

Last May, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum started the Pandemic Objects blog, and later mounted a physical exhibition of the same name. The project reflects on objects that have taken on new meaning during Covid-19 times, from face masks and nitrile gloves to beards and TikTok. The posts tuck in mini history lessons: a recent text on handdrawn rainbow signs traces the phenomenon back to the lockdown in Italy last March, and discusses the symbolism of rainbows in Sumerian, Greek, Navajo, and Judeo-Christian stories. The curators are also engaging in realtime: they collected over a hundred rainbow drawings for the V&A’s permanent collection.

Space and Anti-Space: The Fabric of Place, City and Architecture

By Barbara Littenberg and Steven Peterson (ORO Editions, 2020).

“I regard the revival of the city as far more important than any survival of Modern Architecture [because] the object-building interpreted as a universal proposition represents the demolition of Public Life.” -Colin Rowe

Steven Peterson was a student and later a colleague of Colin Rowe, and Peterson Littenberg’s urban projects are greatly influenced by Rowe’s views on the city. This book is a series of essays on architecture and urban design, culminating in Peterson Littenberg’s proposal for the World Trade Center site in New York City. The theme of Space versus Anti-Space is first directed to the conception of architectural space, comparing the relative plasticity, poché and configurative nature of works of architecture as diverse as Borromini’s San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane and Louis Kahn’s Erdman Hall, to the relatively unconfigured free plans of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. (There is an entire chapter dedicated to Mies.)

The authors then address the Space/AntiSpace theme as it applies to the urban fabric. This section starts with a comparison of two similarly configured peninsulas—New York City’s Lower Manhattan and Shanghai’s Pudong. Manhattan has a rich infrastructure of streets and blocks, some dating from the 17th century (Space) while Pudong is a total urbanistic failure with its towers in a largely residual and undifferentiated ground plane (Anti-Space).

As one who has felt a thrill in experiencing some of Corb’s free plan buildings but has found the urban design aspirations of Ville Radieuse and Plan Voisin to be anathema, I find the Space/Anti-Space arguments more compelling with respect to the urban fabric. Indeed, the authors state that “the forms of the ‘traditional city’ and ‘contemporary architecture’ are not mutually exclusive. It is false to assume that the context of city form inhibits architectural expression […] urban design is a distinct and important discipline that is both connected to and independent of architecture.”

The book contains richly illustrated documentation of proposals the authors have made for Rome, Paris and New York, but unfortunately excludes their 1990 competition-winning Cité Internationale proposal for Montreal. Their work rightly prioritizes the space between, and that is no more apparent than in their proposal for the World Trade Center site in New York. As one of the original firms invited to make proposals for the rebuilding of the site, they saw it as an opportunity to “restore the lost urban quality of Lower Manhattan at street level and thereby remediate the failings of the Yamasaki super block design.”

Alas, there were those including Herbert Muschamp of the New York Times who thought that these early schemes were boring and that the problem was one of architecture, and in need of star architects to solve. The result of this pressure—as well as pressure from the developer and victims’ families—led to an invitation to the architectural elite to participate in a design competition.

Peterson Littenberg was the one holdover from the earlier group to be included in the seven teams selected. Their proposal was all about streets, squares and promenades—the lifeblood of the city—whereas most of the others, including Daniel Libeskind’s winning scheme, were about architectural objects in a continuous, undefined free space without the benefit of base buildings creating street walls. The resulting World Trade Center project, as built with its collection of singular objects, has the characteristics of Pudong or its neighbour to the north— Hudson Yards, which the current New York Times architectural critic Michael Kimmelman in a scathing review described as epitomizing “a skin-deep view of architecture as luxury branding. Each building exists to act as a logo for itself.”

Peterson Littenberg recognizes the spatial and morphological values of the traditional city while accepting the necessity of tall buildings as an urban type. The lodestar for their World Trade Center proposal was Rockefeller Center, perhaps the most accomplished urban space in North America. Like Rockefeller Center, their World Trade Center proposal, unlike most of the others, accommodates tall buildings while also integrating with and extending the urban fabric of the surrounding area.

This book mounts a strong defense of the discipline of urban design at a time when the redemptive power of iconic architecture sometimes gets in the way. In 1956, although it applies equally today, Josep Lluis Sert said, “In a period of a cult to the individual and to genius, with all due respect to genius, it is not to them that we owe our best cities.”

KIT AND CABOODLE

TEXT Susan Nerberg

COHLMEYER ARCHITECTURE REUSES A DISMANTLED HOME KIT AS THE BASIS FOR A NEW FIRST NATIONS CULTURAL CENTRE IN NORTHWEST ONTARIO.

Step inside the Seine River First Nation Cultural Centre and you wouldn’t be wrong to feel surrounded by nature. Designed by Cohlmeyer Architecture, the building embraces the shapes and textures of local landscapes. At one end is a ceremonial space where you literally walk on a bed of flowers—medicinal plants, folded into the floor, that have long been used by the Ojibwe. Look out from the main hall toward the Seine River and your eyes meander along a billowing canopy of red pines, common in this part of northwestern Ontario. Even the structure’s cladding echoes the milieu, riffing off the patterns of nearby trees.

Nature as a driving force behind the design seems, well, natural, given the boreal riverside setting. But the cultural centre didn’t start this way. A few years ago, the First Nation had been advised to purchase a Lindal prefab timber house to use as its cultural centre. The kit home was assembled, but the resulting building didn’t provide the mix of open spaces needed—larger areas for band members to gather and share traditional knowledge, including basket weaving, medicinal plant collection and wild rice cultivation, and smaller rooms for band council staff and meetings. Then, Cohlmeyer Architecture was brought onboard to reimagine kit and caboodle.

“The band council decided to tear the existing kit down,” says Stephen Cohlmeyer, principal and project lead. During the research phase, in addition to understanding the client’s needs, his team also had to figure out how to salvage as much as possible from the teardown. “We created a catalogue of the materials,” says David Weber, the project director. The list included glulam columns and beams, studs and windows. Even some of the slab could be reused. The big challenge was how to reuse those parts in a different configuration, so Weber built a model to see how they could fit together. “It was good, old-fashioned architecture,” says Cohlmeyer.

The resulting new building has an interior that flows river-like from the entrance through the main hall, past a number of smaller rooms. At the deepest end, the flow widens into a circular ceremonial space with the floral-studded clay, sand and linseed-oil floor. Along this meander, a striking floor ties the spaces together—made of contrasting woods, the pattern recalls traditional woven baskets. Facing the river, the main hall overlooks a terrace shaded by an arched canopy of tree trunks selected by the community’s Elders. “As for the siding,” says Weber, “we went to the forest and picked birchbark samples. The pattern on the siding is like the one you see on birch trees.”

“The design is our interpretation of Seine River First Nation’s culture and traditions,” says Cohlmeyer. “The floor pattern, the birchbark patterns, they’re collective ideas from the architects. But those ideas came from listening to, having a dialogue with and getting feedback from the band council.” While the architects succeeded in salvaging 85 percent of the old kit, their project of retention and enhancement also extends to the cultural realm: they’ve helped create a home where the First Nation can strengthen its ways of being and knowing.

ABOVE The new Seine River First Nation Cultural Centre is rich with cultural references, including a floor pattern that recalls traditional woven baskets.

CASE STUDY

Infill Housing | Miami, Florida

BILCO’s Hatches Add Rooftop Access in Little Havana Project

Andrew Frey’s primary challenge in his first project as a full-fledged development company had nothing to do with construction. Once he solved it, however, he set about blazing a trail that could bring back the charm to one of Miami’s most distinctive neighborhoods. Frey’s real estate development company, Tecela, completed a new infill build project last year in the Little Havana section of Miami. Working with architect Jason Chandler and general contractor 748 Development, teams constructed four three-story townhouses, each with four apartments. The critical piece to the project, however, was Frey’s four-year effort to get the city of Miami to waive burdensome parking requirements. “After the parking issue was worked out, the project went pretty smoothly,” Frey said. Prior to starting Tecela, Frey worked for an apartment development company. He saw that there was very little construction of small apartment projects in the area. “I thought what’s the biggest obstacle that I can work on removing?” he said. There was not a lack of capital, consulting talent, or contracting capacity. “The only thing left was zoning,” Frey said. “The real big one was parking regulations, which required 1.5 spaces per unit. I knew I had to get that resolved if I was going to build small apartment projects.” Frey drafted a proposal to change the law, drummed up support and eventually got Miami commissioner Francis Suarez to sponsor the bill. With the help of Suarez, now Miami’s mayor, the bill passed. Why did Frey work so diligently to fight parking rules? Cost. According to one estimate, surface parking can drive up the cost of housing by as much as $10,000 per unit. When built in a parking garage, the space can add as much as $50,000 to housing costs. Each townhouse, designed by Chandler, includes multi-layer facades and large balconies. They are divided into apartments, including studios with 595 square feet, 1-bedroom units with 617 square feet and two 2-bedrooms, at 1,130 square feet and 1,211 square feet. With a population of around 76,000 residents, Little Havana is a social and cultural hub for many Hispanics. It is home to many exiles from Cuba, and has the largest concentration of Hispanics in Miami. In 2017, the National Trust for Historic Preservation included Little Havana as one of its “11 Most Endangered Places.” The list spotlights areas where architectural, cultural, and natural sites of national significance are being harmed by neglect or incompatible development. Atop the townhomes are Type S roof hatches manufactured by BILCO. The hatches have a fixed interior ladder and provide access to rooftop equipment. The hatch includes a counter-balanced cover design

Photos: Charlie Fernandes

for easy one-hand operation and fully gasketed and insulated construction for weather resistance. “They were affordable and reliable,” Chandler said. “We have used them in previous projects. They were also code-compliant for accessing mechanical equipment on the roof.” Since Frey’s work to change the zoning requirements for parking, additional infill housing projects have been built in Little Havana, helping to preserve the charm of one of Florida’s most vibrant social communities.

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For over 90 years, The BILCO Company has been a building industry pioneer in the design and development of specialty access products. Over these years, the company has built a reputation among architects, and engineers for products that are unequaled in design and workmanship. BILCO – an ISO 9001 certified company – offers commercial and residential specialty access products. BILCO is a wholly owned subsidiary of AmesburyTruth, a division of Tyman Plc. For more information, visit www.bilco.com.