Canadian Architect August 2020

CANADIAN ARCHITECT AUG/20

PANDEMIC AND PROTESTS

The Official Magazine of the RAIC

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PANDEMIC AND PROTESTS

CANADIAN ARCHITECT

AUGUST 2020 03

JAMES BRITTAIN

4 VIEWPOINT

How could a reform of policing be supported by an architectural rethink of police stations, courts and jails?

5 NEWS

Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence jury announced, winners of the OAQ awards unveiled.

32 BOOKS

Magdalena Milosz considers a timely new volume, Race and Architecture.

34 BACKPAGE

JAMES BRITTAIN

Catherine Osborne visits Gusto 501 as it adapts for pandemic dining.

A photo from James Brittain’s Night Walks series, taken in Montreal during the first wave of the pandemic.

COVER

16 PANDEMIC EFFECT

Eleven leading Canadian firms share insights on how architectural design and practice are being affected by COVID-19.

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V.65 N.05 THE NATIONAL REVIEW OF DESIGN AND PRACTICE / THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE RAIC

2020-07-29 11:37 AM

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/20

04

VIEWPOINT

REFORMING JUSTICE ARCHITECTURE Amid global anti-racism demonstrations, groups in several Canadian cities have called for a rethink of policing and police funding.

What would this mean for the architecture of the justice system—from police stations, to courts and prisons? Some answers may already be visible.

A recent police station in the Cree community of Waskaganish, in northern Quebec, is conceived to be friendly, rather than foreboding. Designed by figurr, the building includes a daylit interior and exterior accented by wood-finished panels. “The client wanted a warm, community-oriented exterior,” says principal architect Stephen Rotman. “They asked for a clean, welcoming building.”

Future court buildings may be informed by a new type of program. Vancouver’s Downtown Community Court, opened in 2008, colocates justice, health, and social services. The model aims to address the offender’s needs and circumstances that led to criminal behaviour.

A similar approach is set to be piloted in Ontario, where four small-scale communitybased justice centres will begin launching this summer. According to Dayna Arron, the project’s executive director, “the ministry is continuing—through a participatory design process […]—to ensure each Justice Centre reflects local voices and addresses local needs.” Planning for full-scale justice centres has also started.

What about jails—the darkest symbol of our justice systems? The Vancouver Community Court is located on the ground f loor of a former remand centre, designed

by Richard Henriquez in 1981 and renovated into a 96-unit social housing facility by his son, Gregory, in 2015. Designed with respect for its users, the remand centre included outdoor decks and a gymnasium in addition to all of the requisite security measures.

The retrofitted housing project is similarly concerned with providing dignity to its inhabitants. “The poetic metaphor of transforming a jail into housing is the healthiest message any society can send to its next generation,” notes architect Gregory Henriquez.

The closure of detention facilities is one measure of success in justice reform. In this regard, Canada has already shown significant leadership in its 2003 Youth Justice Act. Through measures like enabling police to issue warnings rather than making arrests, the rate of youth in Canadian incarceration facilities has decreased by 86 percent. On any given day in 1997, there were 3,825 youth in custody,

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compared to only 527 in 2015. As a result, provinces such as Ontario have closed many of their youth incarceration facilities.

“My understanding is that defunding is really meant to redirect some of the money being used for adversarial intervention, in favour of supporting activities (and requisite buildings) that treat the cause of deviant or difficult behaviour,” says Robert Boraks, director at Parkin Architects. “Nonetheless, there will still be occasions, perhaps, where there is a need to separate individuals from their communities.

What is that form and operation to look like?”

Parkin Architects’ Rankin Inlet Healing Facility, which houses low- and medium-security inmates, offers a progressive model. It aims to create an environment that gives dignity to inmates as well as to staff. The facility— which locals refer to proudly as a Healing Centre, not a jail—has high-ceilinged common areas, a daylit gymnasium that resembles a community centre space, and spaces for traditional healing ceremonies. Inmates are only locked in individual rooms at night.

The twin pressures of the protests and the pandemic may have a swift impact on new justice buildings. In early May, Ontario cancelled plans for a new consolidated courthouse in Halton Region, citing the pressure to shift towards digital services underscored by the pandemic. Early in the shutdowns, Nova Scotia halved its prison population to mitigate the spread of infection.

It is an opportune time to rethink how such facilities can be constructed to honour community, offenders, and victims alike. It’s perhaps no coincidence that several of the most progressive facilities are in Indigenous communities. Traditionally, Indigenous peoples have a “radically different set of cultural imperatives,” writes former Crown Attorney Rupert Ross in Dancing with a Ghost. In relation to justice, “when damaging events do occur, [Indigenous communities] do whatever is possible to put those events behind them, to let bygones be bygones and to restore essential harmony.”

Such ideas of support and rehabilitation— rather than retribution—resonate with the present, when policing abuses are being brought to the foreground, and when a pandemic has underscored the interdependence of all members of society. A reform of policing will also entail a reform of the architecture of justice.

Both will be welcome changes.

Elsa Lam

EDITOR ELSA LAM, FRAIC ART DIRECTOR ROY GAIOT CONTRIBUTING EDITORS ANNMARIE ADAMS, FRAIC ODILE HÉNAULT DOUGLAS MACLEOD, NCARB, MRAIC ONLINE EDITOR CHRISTIANE BEYA REGIONAL CORRESPONDENTS MONTREAL DAVID THEODORE CALGARY GRAHAM LIVESEY, FRAIC WINNIPEG LISA LANDRUM, MAA, AIA, MRAIC VANCOUVER ADELE WEDER, HON. MRAIC SUSTAINABILITY ADVISOR ANNE LISSETT, ARCHITECT AIBC, LEED BD+C VICE PRESIDENT & SENIOR PUBLISHER STEVE WILSON 416-441-2085 x105 ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER FARIA AHMED 416-441-2085 x106 CUSTOMER SERVICE / PRODUCTION LAURA MOFFATT 416-441-2085 x104 CIRCULATION CIRCULATION@CANADIANARCHITECT.COM PRESIDENT OF IQ BUSINESS MEDIA INC. ALEX PAPANOU HEAD OFFICE 101 DUNCAN MILL ROAD, SUITE 302 TORONTO, ON M3B 1Z3 TELEPHONE 416-441-2085 E-MAIL info@canadianarchitect.com WEBSITE www.canadianarchitect.com Canadian Architect is published 9 times per year by iQ Business Media Inc. 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.

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2020-07-29 11:37 AM

AWARDS

WHAT’S NEW

OAQ awards

Canadian Architect Awards jury announced

The Ordre des architectes du Québec (OAQ ) has unveiled the winners of its awards of excellence and distinctions for 2020. The winning projects were honoured in a live, online interactive gathering.

This year’s Grand Prix d’excellence went to the Espace Paddock, designed by Les architectes FABG. The project, on the site of the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve racetrack in Montreal’s Parc Jean-Drapeau, also received the Ordre’s Mention for Innovation.

Prizes were also awarded to River City Phase 3 (Saucier + Perrotte Architectes and ZAS Architects), Résidence Marconi (Pelletier de Fontenay), Pavilion de l’accueil de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec (Provencher_Roy and GLCRM Architectes in consortium), Off Plaza (L. McComber - architecture vivante), La Maison de l’Île (Blouin Orzes architectes), Le Grande Marché de Québec (Bisson associés + Atelier Pierre Thibault), La Duette (Natalie Dionne Architecture), Le Diamant (Coarchitecture / in situ atelier d’architecture / Jacques Plante architectes), Complexe sportif de Saint-Laurent (Saucier + Perrotte Architectes in consortium with HCMA), McGill University Emergency Power Plant (Les architectes FABG), Au Gré des Chaps (la SHED architecture), Eidos Montréal (la SHED architecture), Le Parloir – L’Empreinte (Alain Carle Architecte) and Chalet du Sommet Bromont (Lemay).

The jury was chaired by French architect Dominique Jakob (Agence Jakob+MacFarlane) and included actress Anne-Marie Cadieux as well as architects Dominique St-Gelais (St-Gelais Montminy & Associés architectes) and Jean-Maxime Labrecque.

The jury for the 2020 Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence has been finalized. We are proud to introduce our esteemed jurors: Stephan Chevalier of Chevalier Morales (Montreal), Susan Fitzgerald of FBM (Halifax), and Michael Moxam of Stantec (Toronto). For the 2020 Canadian Architect Photo Awards of Excellence, the jury will be joined by Amanda Large and Younes Bounhar of doublespace photography.

Stephan Chevalier co-founded Montreal firm Chevalier Morales in 2005 with Sergio Morales. The firm has been shortlisted for over fifteen national and international architectural competitions, and has been recognized by awards including two consecutive Grand Prix d’Excellence awards from the Ordre des architects du Québec, the RAIC ’s 2018 Emerging Practice Award, and two Governor General’s Medals in Architecture.

Susan Fitzgerald is Design Principal at FBM and an assistant professor of Architectural Design and Practice at Dalhousie University Faculty of Architecture and Planning in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Originally from the UK , she is both an architect and an interior designer involved in teaching, research, and practice. Her work, with FBM and with Susan Fitzgerald Architecture, has been the recipient of many accolades—including the Canada Council for the Arts Professional Prix de Rome, Governor General’s Medal in Architecture, Wood Design Award, EnRoute Air Canada Award in partnership with the RAIC, Maritime Design Awards, and multiple Lieutenant Governors’ Awards, including the Medal of Excellence.

BisonIP-CANArchitect-3.8x4.85-April2020.pdf

www.oaq.com

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/20

NEWS 05

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NEWS

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As vice president and design culture lead for Stantec, Michael Moxam is committed to achieving excellence in all aspects of the design process.

Informed by over 30 years of experience in the design and development of complex project types, Moxam’s approach is characterized by a commitment to design quality, pursuit of a collaborative process, and desire to redefine the “type.” Moxam is a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Toronto and the University of Manitoba, and regularly participates in a number of North American and global design conferences.

The deadline for submitting design-phase projects and architectural photographs to the 2020 Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence is Thursday, September 10, 2020. www.canadianarchitect.com/awards

Launch of Atlas of Excellence in Architecture

The Atlas of Excellence in Architecture—a database of award-winning projects by Canadian architects, urban planners, and landscape architects—has launched an initial site listing over 2,800 projects.

The database currently compiles the winners from over 50 regional and national design awards dating back to 1992, including the Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence, Governor General’s Medals in Architecture, RAIC Awards of Excellence, provincial design awards, and other programs.

The project is initiated by Jean-Pierre Chupin of the Université de Montréal. Chupin holds the Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competitions and Mediations of Excellence. The database is taking shape in conjunction with the establishment of a research network, intended to better understand the quality of built environments.

The initial inventory, which has no current equivalent elsewhere in the world, took more than two years to compile. Another year will be needed to expand the database to include earlier awards, dating back to the 1950s.

Chupin is calling on the collaboration of organizations, design firms, researchers and students from all schools of design to continue expanding the project, and to use the open-source database for research and policy development purposes. architecture-excellence.org

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Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence

The 2020 Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence competition for design-phase projects is now open for entries. This year’s competition also includes the Canadian Architect Photo Awards of Excellence.

The deadline for submissions is Thursday, September 10, 2020. www.canadianarchitect.com/awards

Main Street Design Challenge

Developed by the Canadian Urban Institute and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, the Main Street Design Challenge invites all Canadians interested in place-making and design to develop solutions that can help build the resiliency of Canada’s main streets. All submissions that meet the project guidelines will be published online on a rolling basis in a free, open-access Main Street Design Playbook to inspire action by any organization, municipality, or individual. The Playbook will be released in full on World Architecture Day, October 5, 2020. bringbackmainstreet.ca

For the latest news, visit www.canadianarchitect.com/news and sign up for our weekly e-newsletter at www.canadianarchitect.com/subscribe

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2020-07-29 11:37 AM

Briefs En bref

RAIC Journal Journal de l’IRAC

On June 2, the RAIC released a statement on systemic racism and protests regarding unjust actions or lack of action. The RAIC acknowledges that Canada has a long history of colonialism, white supremacy, and continued systemic racism—which disproportionately affects Black communities and Indigenous peoples across the country. As a profession, we must be committed to values which include equality and diversity.

Our full statement is available at raic.org/news/ taking-action-against-systemic-racism.

Architect and planner Blanche Lemco van Ginkel is the winner of the RAIC’s 2020 Gold Medal, the institute’s highest honour.

Le 2 juin, l’IRAC a publié une déclaration sur le racisme systémique et les protestations concernant les actions injustes ou l’inaction. L’IRAC reconnaît que le Canada a une longue histoire de colonialisme, de suprématie blanche et de racisme systémique continu, qui affecte de façon disproportionnée les communautés noires et les peuples autochtones partout au pays. En tant que profession, nous devons avoir des valeurs qui incluent l’égalité et la diversité. Notre déclaration complète est disponible à l’adresse raic.org/ news/taking-action-against-systemic-racism.

As of June 30, the RAIC is no longer at our office at 55 Murray Street in Ottawa. Due to the digital connectivity of our operations, working remotely is a viable option for RAIC staff. After consultation with staff and with the RAIC Board of the Directors, it was decided that RAIC staff will continue to operate remotely until further notice.

Access the RAIC Staff Directory to contact one of our staff members directly. Please note that email is the preferred way to contact RAIC staff during this time.

Depuis le 30 juin, l’IRAC n’est plus à notre bureau au 55, rue Murray à Ottawa. En raison de la connectivité numérique de nos opérations, le travail à distance est une option viable pour le personnel de l’IRAC. Après avoir consulté le personnel et le conseil d’administration de l’IRAC, il a été décidé que le personnel de l’IRAC continuera de travailler à distance jusqu’à nouvel ordre.

Accédez au répertoire du personnel de l’IRAC pour communiquer directement avec l’un de nos employés. Veuillez noter que le courriel est le moyen privilégié de communiquer avec le personnel de l’IRAC pendant cette période.

The RAIC is the leading voice for excellence in the built environment in Canada, demonstrating how design enhances the quality of life, while addressing important issues of society through responsible architecture. www.raic.org L’IRAC est le principal porte-parole en faveur de l’excellence du cadre bâti au Canada. Il démontre comment la conception améliore la qualité de vie tout en tenant compte d’importants enjeux sociétaux par la voie d’une architecture responsable. www.raic.org/fr

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L’architecte et urbaniste Blanche Lemco van Ginkel est lauréate de la Médaille d’or de l’IRAC en 2020.

Il s’agit de la plus haute distinction de l’Institut.

COVID-19: Building a better tomorrow COVID-19 : Construire un avenir meilleur Tanner Morton Editor, RAIC Journal Rédacteur en chef, Journal de l’IRAC

The impact of COVID-19 on architecture—not to mention greater Canadian society—is still difficult to articulate. As of early June, provinces are slowly opening up, but the thought of returning to business-as-usual remains a long way off—and may be a goal worth questioning. In the aftermath, there is an opportunity for architects to lead the conversation on designing a better built environment in Canada.

Before the pandemic forced firms to temporarily close their physical offices across Canada and ground many projects to a halt, there were plenty of other issues for the profession to contend with. Procurement, the climate crisis, and the rising costs of running a practice were among the areas of concern to many of our members.

The pandemic has only accelerated the need to address these issues. Designing for our new reality—whatever form it might take— will be a challenge, but architects must work with policymakers and the public to make improvements. As Canada comes out of COVID-19, an opportunity is there to build a better tomorrow.

L’impact de COVID-19 sur l’architecture sans parler de la société canadienne dans son ensemble - est encore difficile à articuler. Au début de juin, les provinces s’ouvrent lentement, mais l’idée de reprendre le statu quo est encore loin - si c’est là que nous voulons revenir. Par la suite, les architectes ont l’occasion de mener la conversation sur la conception d’un meilleur environnement bâti au Canada.

Avant que la pandémie n’oblige les entreprises à fermer temporairement leurs bureaux physiques partout au Canada et à interrompre de nombreux projets, la profession faisait face à de nombreux autres problèmes. L’approvisionnement, la crise climatique et la hausse des coûts de gestion d’un cabinet faisaient partie des sujets de préoccupation de bon nombre de nos membres.

La pandémie n’a fait qu’accélérer la nécessité d’aborder ces problèmes. Concevoir pour notre nouvelle réalité, quelle que soit sa forme, sera un défi, mais les architectes doivent travailler avec les décideurs et le public pour apporter des améliorations.

Nous avons une occasion de bâtir un avenir meilleur tandis que le Canada émerge de COVID-19.

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RAIC Journal

Journal de l’IRAC

RAIC Gold Medal Médaille d’or de l’IRAC

Ginkel Associates fonds, CCA, Montreal

1. Blanche Lemco van Ginkel receiving a 1962 Massey Medal for her firm’s design of the pedestrian bridge at Bowring Park. Van Ginkel Associates also designed the surrounding park in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

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1. Blanche Lemco van Ginkel reçoit la Médaille Massey en 1962 pour la conception de la passerelle pour piétons du parc Bowring.

Le cabinet van Ginkel Associates a également conçu le parc environnant à St. John’s, TerreNeuve.

Tanner Morton Editor, RAIC Journal Rédacteur en chef, Journal de l’IRAC

Lemco started her professional career in municipal planning offices in Windsor, Quebec, and Regina, Saskatchewan before moving back to Europe. While overseas, Blanche The RAIC Gold Medal is the highest distinction worked for William Crabtree in London, UK the Institute can bestow. It recognizes the sig- and for Le Corbusier in Paris, France. Her nificant and lasting contributions of an individu- work in Le Corbusier’s atelier included the design for the rooftop terrace of the Unité al to Canadian architecture. In 2020, the honour is awarded to architect Blanche Lemco van d’Habitation in Marseilles, France. Its iconic features include sculpted concrete ventilaGinkel, FRAIC, a champion of modernism and tor stacks, a nursery, children’s play area, urban design in Canada. Lemco van Ginkel is and running track. also a pioneer for women in architectural and educational institutions in Canada. Through ambitious work such as the preliminary design “I was lucky to have had a job with Le Corfor Expo 67, the socially minded preservation of busier’s studio, where I certainly learned a lot,” said Lemco van Ginkel about her time Old Montreal, and her foundational research on women architects, her career has left a pro- in Paris, in a recent interview. “It was great working for him, and I was surprised that I found impact on Canada as we know it today. was never told what to do.”

Blanche Lemco was born in 1923 in London, “It felt like being a student again. He would England. As a teenager, she moved with her set a challenge and if I came up with an idea family to Montreal. She was one of the first women to enroll in McGill University’s school he liked, he would ask me to develop it, and if he didn’t like it, he would throw it out! of architecture, entering on scholarship, and received a professional Bachelor of Architec- It was extraordinary how much freedom we had,” she said. ture in 1945. Upon graduation, she was awarded the Lieutenant-Governor’s Medal in recognition for attaining the highest academic Returning from Europe, Lemco attended Harvard University and was awarded Gradstanding among her cohort.

RAIC Aug.indd 8

uate Fellowships in 1948 and 1949, receiving her Master of City Planning degree in 1950.

“I feel lucky to have been a student at Harvard at such an important time, studying under Walter Gropius and Josep Lluís Sert,” said Lemco van Ginkel. “They were excellent teachers who were so important to architecture and planning.”

Following graduation, Lemco moved to Philadelphia in 1951—though she maintained her connection to Canada and registered as an architect in Quebec the following year. G. Holmes Perkins, in his first year as Dean at the University of Pennsylvania in 1951, invited Lemco to lead the third-year studio course under a newly redesigned curriculum. She taught in this role until 1957, while also teaching a separate design course for graduate city planning students. In 1958, she taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, in a collaborative studio of architects and city planners with Dean Josep Lluís Sert.

While in Philadelphia, Lemco worked with colleagues Siasia Nowicki and Robert Geddes to initiate the Philadelphia CIAM Group continued on page 10

2020-07-22 12:03 PM

RAIC Journal

2. Lemco, centre, with Le Corbusier, right, at the Unité d’habitation in Marseilles, France.

2. Blanche Lemco, au centre, avec Le Corbusier, à droite, à l’Unité d’habitation de Marseille, en France.

3. The Unité’s iconic roofscape was designed by Lemco to include sculpted vents, a daycare, and a running track.

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3. Le toit emblématique de l’Unité a été conçu par Blanche Lemco et comporte des cheminées de ventilation sculptées, une garderie et une piste de course.

4. Lemco’s studies at McGill included site surveying.

La Médaille d’or de l’IRAC est la plus haute distinction que l’Institut puisse décerner.

Elle est remise en reconnaissance des contributions importantes et durables d’une personne à l’architecture canadienne. En 2020, cet honneur est décerné à l’architecte Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, FRAIC, ardente défenseure du modernisme et du design urbain au Canada. Blanche Lemco van Ginkel est également une pionnière pour les femmes dans les écoles d’architecture et les établissements d’enseignement au Canada. Grâce à des travaux ambitieux tels que la conception préliminaire de l’Expo 67 et la préservation du Vieux-Montréal dans une optique sociale, et ses recherches fondamentales sur les femmes architectes, sa carrière a eu un impact profond sur le Canada d’aujourd’hui.

Blanche Lemco est née à Londres, en Angleterre, en 1923. Adolescente, elle a déménagé avec sa famille à Montréal. Grâce

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à une bourse d’études, elle a été l’une des premières femmes à s’inscrire à l’école d’architecture de l’Université McGill, et a obtenu un baccalauréat spécialisé en architecture en 1945. À la fin de ses études, elle a reçu la Médaille du lieutenant-gouverneur en reconnaissance des meilleurs résultats scolaires obtenus dans sa cohorte.

Mme Lemco a commencé sa carrière professionnelle dans des bureaux d’urbanisme municipaux à Windsor (Québec) et à Regina (Saskatchewan) avant de retourner en Europe. Pendant son séjour à l’étranger, Blanche a travaillé pour William Crabtree à Londres (Royaume-Uni) et pour Le Corbusier à Paris (France). Dans l’atelier de Le Corbusier, elle a notamment conçu la terrasse sur le toit de l’Unité d’Habitation à Marseille, en France. Ses éléments emblématiques comprennent des cheminées de ventilation en béton sculpté, une crèche, une aire de jeux pour enfants et une piste de course.

4. Les études de Lemco à McGill comprenaient la surveillance de chantier.

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« J’ai eu la chance d’avoir un emploi dans le studio de Le Corbusier, où j’ai certainement beaucoup appris, raconte Lemco van Ginkel à propos de son séjour à Paris, lors d’une récente entrevue. C’était génial de travailler pour lui, et j’ai été surprise qu’il ne me dise jamais ce que je devais faire ». « J’ai eu l’impression d’être redevenue étudiante. Il me lançait un défi et si je trouvais une idée qui lui plaisait, il me demandait de la développer, et si elle ne lui plaisait pas, il la jetait! C’était extraordinaire la liberté que nous avions », ajoute-t-elle.

De retour d’Europe, Mme Lemco a étudié à l’Université de Harvard et a reçu des bourses d’études supérieures en 1948 et 1949, puis a obtenu une maîtrise en urbanisme en 1950. « Je suis chanceuse d’avoir pu étudier à Harvard à un moment aussi important, sous la direction de Walter Gropius et Josep Lluís Sert, explique Lemco van Ginkel. C’étaient d’excellents professeurs qui ont joué un rôle si déterminant pour l’architecture et la planification ».

Après avoir obtenu son diplôme, Mme Lemco s’est installée à Philadelphie en 1951, tout en maintenant ses liens avec le Canada et en s’inscrivant comme architecte au Québec l’année suivante. Durant sa première année comme doyen à la University of Pennsylvania en 1951, G. Holmes Perkins l’a invitée à donner le cours d’atelier de troisième année dans le cadre d’un programme d’études nouvellement remanié.

Elle a enseigné à ce poste jusqu’en 1957, tout en présentant un cours de design suite à la page 11

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Images 2-4: Blanche Lemco van Ginkel fonds, CCA, Montreal

Images 2-4: Blanche Lemco van Ginkel fonds, CCA, Montreal

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Journal de l’IRAC

2020-07-22 12:03 PM

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RAIC Journal

Journal de l’IRAC

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Ginkel Associates fonds, CCA, Montreal

1. Participants in the CIAM ‘59 meeting in Otterlo included Lemco van Ginkel, seated in the first row, third from the right.

1. Parmi les participants à la réunion du CIAM en 1959 à Otterlo figurait Lemco van Ginkel, assise au premier rang, troisième à partir de la droite.

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Richard Arless Associates (Montreal)

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Blanche Lemco van Ginkel fonds, CCA, Montreal

2. While teaching in Philadelphia, Lemco founded a local chapter of modernist planning group CIAM. 2. Alors qu’elle enseignait à Philadelphie, Mme Lemco a fondé une section locale du groupe d’urbanisme moderniste CIAM. 3. Lemco van Ginkel, second from right, and partner Sandy, far left, conducted the first aerial photographic survey of Old Montreal.

3. Lemco van Ginkel, deuxième à partir de la droite, et son conjoint Sandy, à gauche, ont effectué le premier relevé photographique aérien du VieuxMontréal.

continued from page 08 for Architectural Investigation (GAI). As the group’s representative, she attended CIAM 9 Aix-en-Provence in 1953 and CIAM 10 Dubrovnik in 1956. At CIAM 9, she met her future partner Harmen Peter Daniel (Sandy) van Ginkel. They married in 1956 and established their Montreal-based practice, van Ginkel Associates, the following year.

“As I look back on my career, I feel indebted to my partner, Sandy van Ginkel, for a lifetime of shared ideas and experiences,” said Lemco van Ginkel. “I appreciated working with Sandy. We complemented each other in knowledge and skills. We were a good partnership, living and breathing our work together. It infused our holidays, social time, and the talk at the dinner table. Together we entertained and hosted extraordinary guests from around the world in our home.”

The van Ginkels are credited with saving Old Montreal from being destroyed by an elevated expressway, through developing plans for an underground urban expressway.

A 2012 Montreal Gazette article describes how Old Montreal would be “just a crumbling elevated expressway and the constant whine of traffic” if not for Blanche and Sandy van Ginkel’s work. The couple was also instrumental in protecting the city’s Mount Royal Park from development.

Van Ginkel Associates produced the initial plan and vision for Expo 67. Other projects included Bowring Park in St. John’s, Newfoundland; a prototype airport passenger terminal for the Canadian Department of Transport; a plan for Midtown Manhattan for the Office of the Mayor, New York; a study and atlas of the communities of the Mackenzie, Northwest Territories; a compendium of buildings in the North; and houses and renovations in Montreal, Winnipeg and Toronto.

Lemco van Ginkel was vice-chair of the Quebec Provincial Planning Commission, where she co-authored provincial planning legislation. Appointed to several government commissions, she was also part of the National Capital Planning Committee, National Capital Design Committee, Canada Museums Construction Advisory Committee, and a consultant to the U.S. State Department and to the Pan-American Union.

The RAIC was honoured to induct Lemco van Ginkel into the RAIC College of Fellows in 1973—the first woman named to the College.

Lemco van Ginkel maintained an intense academic career alongside her professional continued on page 12

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RAIC Journal

« Quand je regarde ma carrière, je me sens redevable à mon conjoint, Sandy van Ginkel, pour avoir vécu une vie entière de partage d’idées et d’expériences, explique Mme Lemco van Ginkel. J’ai été heureuse de travailler avec Sandy. Nous nous complétions au chapitre des connaissances et des compétences. Nous formions un bon partenariat, et nous vivions et respirions notre travail ensemble. Cela imprégnait nos vacances, nos activités sociales et les discussions à table. Ensemble, nous avons reçu des invités extraordinaires du monde entier dans notre maison. »

Images 4-5: van Ginkel Associates fonds, CCA, Montreal

Les van Ginkel ont contribué à sauver le Vieux-Montréal de la destruction au profit d’une voie rapide surélevée, en élaborant des plans pour une voie rapide urbaine

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souterraine. Un article paru dans le Montreal Gazette en 2012 décrit comment le Vieux-Montréal ne serait « qu’une autoroute surélevée délabrée avec le grondement constant de la circulation » si ce n’était du travail de Blanche et Sandy van Ginkel. Le couple a également contribué à protéger le parc du Mont-Royal contre les projets de développement.

Le cabinet van Ginkel Associates a réalisé le plan initial et défini la vision de l’Expo 67.

Parmi les autres projets, on compte le parc Bowring à St. John’s, Terre-Neuve; un prototype d’aérogare pour le ministère canadien des Transports; un plan pour le Midtown de Manhattan pour le bureau du maire de New York; une étude et un répertoire des communautés de la région du Mackenzie,

dans les Territoires du Nord-Ouest; un inventaire des bâtiments du Nord, ainsi que des maisons et des projets de rénovation à Montréal, Winnipeg et Toronto.

Mme Lemco van Ginkel a été vice-présidente de la Commission provinciale d’urbanisme du Québec, et elle a coécrit la loi provinciale sur l’urbanisme. Nommée à plusieurs commissions gouvernementales, elle a également fait partie du Comité d’aménagement de la capitale nationale, du comité de conception de la capitale nationale, du comité consultatif sur la construction des musées du Canada, et a été consultante auprès du Département d’État américain et de l’Union panaméricaine.

L’IRAC a eu l’honneur d’introniser Mme Lemco van Ginkel au Collège des fellows de l’IRAC en 1973 - la première femme nommée au Collège.

Parallèlement à sa pratique professionnelle, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel a mené une carrière universitaire très active. À Montréal, elle a créé le programme d’études en atelier de première année pour le nouveau programme d’urbanisme de l’Université de Montréal et a élaboré les premiers cours de design urbain de l’Université McGill. En 1977, Blanche et Sandy van Ginkel s’installent à Toronto, où Lemco van Ginkel devient la première doyenne d’une école d’architecture en Amérique du Nord. Ainsi, elle a été doyenne de l’école d’architecture de l’Université de Toronto (devenue par la suite la faculté d’architecture et d’architecture du paysage) jusqu’en 1982, et elle a continué à y enseigner jusqu’en 1993.

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4. Van Ginkel Associates developed the preliminary plan for Expo 67. Blanche’s vision statement for the world’s fair, which she titled “Man in His World,” outlined the theme which shaped Expo’s guiding principles.

suite de la page 09 distinct pour les étudiants diplômés en urbanisme. En 1958, elle a enseigné à la Graduate School of Design de Harvard, dans un studio collectif d’architectes et d’urbanistes avec le doyen Josep Lluís Sert.

Lors de son séjour à Philadelphie, Mme Lemco a travaillé avec ses collègues Siasia Nowicki et Robert Geddes pour mettre sur pied le Group for Architectural Investigation (GAI) du CIAM de Philadelphie. À titre de représentante du groupe, elle a participé au CIAM 9 d’Aix-enProvence en 1953 et au CIAM 10 de Dubrovnik en 1956. Au CIAM 9, elle a rencontré son futur conjoint Harmen Peter Daniel (Sandy) van Ginkel. Ils se marient en 1956 et établissent leur cabinet à Montréal, van Ginkel Associates, l’année suivante.

Journal de l’IRAC

4. Van Ginkel Associates a élaboré le plan préliminaire pour l’Expo 67.

L’énoncé de vision élaboré par Blanche van Ginkel pour l’exposition universelle, qu’elle a intitulé « Terre des hommes », a défini le thème qui a permis de définir les principes directeurs de l’Expo.

5. A study of circulation routes in midtown Manhattan spurred the creation of the “Ginkelvan,” a prototype hybrid-electric minibus intended as an alternative to big-city buses to alleviate congestion.

5.Une étude des voies de circulation dans le Midtown de Manhattan a donné lieu à la création du « Ginkelvan », un prototype de minibus hybride électrique destiné à remplacer les autobus des grandes villes afin de réduire la congestion.

« J’ai beaucoup aimé enseigner l’architecture et l’urbanisme et parler avec suite à la page 13

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1. Planning studies and citizen engament by van Ginkel Associates resulted in a doubling of the size of Mount Royal Park in Montreal. The original park sat only to the south of the central roadway.

thing, I learned as much from the students as they did from me.”

In 1981, Blanche was elected to the Board of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ASCA) and, in 1985, was elected Vice-President, serving as President during the association’s 75th-anniversary celebrations. Another set of firsts for Lemco van Ginkel, she was both the first woman and the first Canadian to serve as President of the ACSA.

1. Des études de planification menées par van Ginkel Associates ont permis de doubler la taille du parc du Mont-Royal à Montréal. Le parc d’origine ne se trouvait qu’au sud de la voie centrale.

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continued from page 10 practice. In Montreal, she created the first-year studio curriculum for the Université de Montréal’s new city planning program and developed McGill University’s first urban design courses. In 1977, Blanche and Sandy van Ginkel moved to Toronto, where Lemco van Ginkel became the first woman to be Dean of an architecture school in North America. She served as the Dean of the University of Toronto’s School of Architecture (subsequently Fac-

2. Lemco van Ginkel become the first female fellow of the RAIC in 1973.

2. Lemco van Ginkel est devenue la première femme à être intronisée fellow de l’IRAC en 1973.

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“I enjoyed teaching architecture and city planning and talking with young people about what’s important,” said Lemco van Ginkel. “Teaching kept me on my feet—my students challenged me with their questions and there was great satisfaction in seeing them find their footing with each new enterprise. It was always a two-way

Articles about the work of van Ginkel Associates have appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, New Yorker, Montreal Star, The Gazette, Toronto Star, Architectural Forum, l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Canadian Architect, and Progressive Architecture.

“Blanche Lemco van Ginkel ranks indisputably as a leader amongst her peers in all her chosen areas of expertise—architecture, urban planning, and education,” writes Phyllis Lambert, Founding Director Emeritus of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, which holds Lemco van Ginkel’s professional archives. “Her foresight and unfailing commitment to the advancement of each of these fields, in combination with her firm but gentle ability to organize and lead, have been the driving forces behind an illustrious career characterized by pioneering achievements.”

van Ginkel family archive

3. The firm’s study of the Mackenzie River delta was the first of its kind to assess environmental, social and economic assets and impacts in the North.

3. L’étude réalisée par le cabinet sur le delta du fleuve Mackenzie a été la première du genre à évaluer les atouts et les impacts environnementaux, sociaux et économiques dans le Nord.

ulty of Architecture and Landscape Architecture) until 1982, continuing to teach there until 1993.

As a writer and advocate for the profession, Lemco van Ginkel contributed to publications including The Canadian Architect, Urban Design International, Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, Community Planning Review, Journal of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Architectural Design, and the Journal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. She was a guest editor of Architectural Design, Environments, Habitat, and Canadian Art, and contributed to books including Urban Problems: A Canadian Reader, Discovering Montréal, The Canadian Encyclopedia and several publications of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

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Recently, there is renewed recognition of Lemco van Ginkel’s lifelong contributions to the fields of architecture and urban planning. She received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 and an honorary Doctorate of Science from McGill in 2014. The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation included her in an exclusive project, “50 Pioneering Women in American Architecture,” continued on page 14

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RAIC Journal

En 1981, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel a été élue au conseil d’administration de l’Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ASCA) et, en 1985, elle a été élue vice-présidente, puis a occupé le poste de présidente lors des célébrations du 75e anniversaire de l’association. C’étaient d’autres premières pour Lemco van Ginkel, elle a été à la fois la première femme et la première Canadienne à devenir présidente de l’ASCA. À titre d’auteure et de porte-parole de la profession, Lemco van Ginkel a contribué à des publications comme The Canadian Architect, Urban Design International, Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, Community Planning Review, Journal of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Architectural Design et Journal de l’IRAC. Elle a été rédactrice invitée des revues Architectural Design, Environments, Habitat et Canadian Art, et a contribué à des ouvrages tels que Urban Problems: A Canadian Reader, Découvrir Montréal, l’Encyclopédie canadienne et plusieurs publications de l’Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

Des articles sur le travail de van Ginkel Associates ont été publiés dans le New York Times, le New York Magazine, le New Yorker, le Montreal Star, The Gazette, le Toronto Star, Architectural Forum, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Canadian Architect et Progressive Architecture. « Blanche Lemco van Ginkel se classe incontestablement au premier rang parmi ses pairs dans tous ses domaines de compétence - architecture, urbanisme et éducation, écrit Phyllis Lambert, directrice fondatrice émérite du Centre canadien d’architecture, qui conserve les archives professionnelles de Lemco van Ginkel. Sa clairvoyance et son engagement sans faille pour l’avancement de chacun de ces domaines, conjugués à sa ferme mais douce capacité d’organisation et de direction, ont été les forces motrices d’une brillante carrière caractérisée par des réalisations avant-gardistes ».

Dernièrement, la contribution de Lemco van Ginkel dans les domaines de suite à la page 14

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4. Lemco van Ginkel co-authored legislation that created Canada’s first provincial planning act.

4. Lemco van Ginkel a co-rédigé la première loi provinciale sur l’urbanisme au Canada.

5. The van Ginkels created the master plan for Meadowvale, a proposed 6,000-acre development in Mississauga, Ontario.

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5. Les van Ginkel ont réalisé le plan directeur de Meadowvale, un projet immobilier de 6 000 acres à Mississauga, en Ontario.

6. This awardwinning pedestrian bridge was part of the firm’s design for Bowring Park in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

6. Cette passerelle pour piétons, qui a été primée, faisait partie de la conception du parc Bowring à St. John’s, Terre-Neuve.

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Images 1,3-6: van Ginkel Associates fonds, CCA, Montreal

suite de la page 11 les jeunes des enjeux importants, explique Lemco van Ginkel. L’enseignement m’a permis de garder le cap - mes étudiants m’ont mise au défi avec leurs questions et j’ai éprouvé une grande satisfaction à les voir trouver leur place dans les nouvelles entreprises. C’était toujours mutuel, j’apprenais autant des étudiants qu’eux de moi ».

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Still from City Dreamers, directed by Joseph Hillel

Lemco van Ginkel was profiled in the recent film City Dreamers. Directed by Joseph Hillel, the film was recognized with an award from the Society of Architectural Historians.

continued from page 12 in 2013. In 2018, she was one of the four women architects and planners featured in director Joseph Hillel’s City Dreamers—fitting because filmmaking, as a means for communicating research and design ideas, was an important part of Lemco van Ginkel’s professional practice.

“As a Canadian leader and advocate, Blanche has had a profound influence on architectural thinking, education and practice,” writes the 2020 Gold Medal Jury in a collective statement. “She has been an inspiration to generations of architects and has consistently furthered the architectural and planning discourse through publication and practice. Her seminal planning studies have touched all parts of our country—from the Bowring Park plan in St. John’s, Newfoundland, which earned a Massey Medal for Architecture; to understanding the community and regional implications of the industry in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan; to exploring social implications implicit in northern development.”

“Blanche is a living connection to Canadian modernist roots, bringing her experience from working with Le Corbusier to Canada,” the jury continues. “Throughout her career, she has woven modernist social ideals through the fabric of our society as a great educator, communicator and architect.

Blanche epitomizes a deep commitment to intellectual rigour and cross-disciplinary dialogue, and continues to be a role model for the Canadian architectural community.”

She has been an especially inspiring role

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model to women architects and educators, a point underscored in her nomination.

It is an honour for the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada to present its 2020 Gold Medal to Blanche Lemco van Ginkel.

For more information and bibliographies of Lemco van Ginkel’s work and writing, visit pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org, www.cca. qc.ca and cwahi.concordia.ca.

suite de la page 13 l’architecture et de l’urbanisme a été de nouveau reconnue. Elle a reçu la Médaille du jubilé de diamant de la Reine en 2012 et un doctorat honorifique en sciences de l’Université McGill en 2014. En 2013, la Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation l’a incluse dans un projet exclusif intitulé 50 Pioneering Women in American Architecture. En 2018, elle a été l’une des quatre femmes architectes et urbanistes présentées dans le film City Dreamers - fitting du réalisateur Joseph Hillel, car le cinéma, comme moyen de communication des idées de recherche et de conception, occupait une place importante dans la pratique professionnelle de Lemco van Ginkel. « Comme leader et porte-parole canadienne, Blanche a eu une profonde influence sur la pensée, l’éducation et la pratique en architecture, explique le jury de la Médaille d’or 2020 dans une déclaration commune. Elle a été une inspiration pour des générations d’architectes et a constamment fait évoluer le

Le portrait de Blanche Lemco van Ginkel a été présenté dans le récent film City Dreamers. Réalisé par Joseph Hillel, le film a été récompensé par un prix de la Society of Architectural Historians.

discours sur l’architecture et la planification par le biais des publications et de la pratique.

Ses travaux de planification ont touché toutes les régions de notre pays, du plan du parc Bowring à St. John’s (Terre-Neuve), qui lui a valu la Médaille Massey de l’architecture, à la compréhension des incidences communautaires et régionales de l’industrie à Ezehazy (Saskatchewan), en passant par l’exploration des répercussions sociales implicites dans le développement du Nord ». « Blanche est un lien vivant avec les racines du modernisme canadien, car elle a apporté au Canada l’expérience qu’elle a acquise en travaillant avec Le Corbusier, poursuit le jury. Tout au long de sa carrière, elle a tissé des idéaux modernistes à travers le tissu social à titre de pédagogue, de communicatrice et d’architecte.

Blanche incarne un profond engagement en faveur de la rigueur intellectuelle et du dialogue interdisciplinaire; et elle continue d’être un modèle pour la communauté des architectes canadiens ». Elle a été un modèle particulièrement inspirant pour les femmes architectes et enseignantes, ce qui a été souligné dans sa nomination.

C’est un grand honneur pour l’Institut royal d’architecture du Canada de remettre sa Médaille d’or 2020 à Blanche Lemco van Ginkel.

Pour plus d’informations et pour consulter la bibliographie des travaux et des écrits de Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, visitez les sites suivants : pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org, www. cca.qc.ca/fr/ et cwahi.concordia.ca.

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PANDEMIC EFFECT HOW ARE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN AND PRACTICE CHANGING IN THE FACE OF THE PANDEMIC? WE SPOKE TO CANADIAN ARCHITECTS ABOUT THE SOMETIMES WORRISOME BUT OFTEN HOPEFUL IMPACTS OF COVID-19 SO FAR—IN SECTORS FROM LONG-TERM CARE HOMES TO HOSPITALITY. RUNNING ALONGSIDE THEIR OBSERVATIONS, ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES BRITTAIN’S NIGHT WALKS SERIES DOCUMENTS THE CITYSCAPES AND ATMOSPHERE OF MONTREAL AT THE HEIGHT OF THE PANDEMIC’S FIRST WAVE.

TEAM STRUCTURE Jason-Emery Groen, Design Director, HDR

What can COVID-19 teach architecture firms about the optimal structure of design teams? The pandemic swiftly affected healthcare systems and providers around the world, creating an emergency situation in which a surge of patients required testing and care. HDR became involved in several parallel COVID-19 response projects. Three of these are notable for drawing on deep collaboration and established teams: one in London, Ontario; another intended for a worldwide audience; and a third in Illinois and Wisconsin.

Rapid response in London On March 31, the London Health Sciences Centre in Ontario contacted HDR , requesting assistance with the development of a regional field hospital on an extremely tight timeline. The success in moving quickly and qualitatively was the result of a long-standing relationship with the client team, coupled with a depth of expertise within HDR .

Our firm’s on-staff microbiology and containment specialists allowed us to rapidly develop peer-reviewed solutions. HDR had also struck an internal COVID-19 Rapid Response Task Force. Our internal communication on the evolving nature of the pandemic spanned multiple disciplines and regions, minimizing our risk by ensuring that, to the greatest extent possible, our advice to clients would be based on precedent and scientific knowledge.

Within days, a design for the reconfiguration of the 11,700-squaremetre Agriplex at the Western Fair District was completed—and just days after, trades were constructing the physical facility. The internal reconfiguration was geared to accept up to 144 convalescing COVID -19 patients, minimizing the anticipated surge on regional healthcare facilities. Based on years of previous work together, the team moved swiftly through approvals and required reviews through a process built on transparency and clear communication.

A global approach for areas of need Soon after the effort in London, HDR and its pro-bono arm Design4Others were approached by Construction for Change, a global nonprofit focusing on building health and educational facilities in areas TEXT

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of need. We were asked to help in the development of a COVID-19 Response Unit Resource Guide. Working with Construction for Change’s staff, with whom HDR has had a long-standing relationship, we distilled the key criteria needed to create safe and effective temporary, medium and long-term pandemic facilities. The inclusion of a third entity, Boston-based Adaptiv Architecture, broadened the variety of skill, talent and resources to round out the team. The 16-page illustrated guide has now been translated into French and Spanish, allowing it to reach further in terms of global impact.

An Integrated Project team pivots to pandemic response In March, HDR also received a call from Advocate Aurora Health in Illinois to help them develop a response to the expected patient surge throughout their healthcare system. Two weeks later, 26 fully outfitted overflow surge facilities for forward triage were designed, constructed and commissioned across Illinois and Wisconsin, including in Chicago.

HDR , along with several stakeholders, was part of a pre-established Integrated Lean Project Delivery team working together for over six years as the Advocate Outpatient Collaborative. HDR had worked with the team in the planning, design and delivery of over 30 outpatient centers for Advocate Aurora Health throughout Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, working together on every project and sharing in both the risks and rewards. Integrated Project Delivery is not new, but it is being improved with every new project. In an emergency situation such as a pandemic, these teams are uniquely positioned to act quickly and deliver design solutions that can help save lives.

The collaborative tenure of this close-knit team had several critical advantages. Their process for delivering a scalable, repeatable building type—the 30 outpatient centres—set a precedent for the standardized approach used on the surge facilities. While many design firms and contractors were negotiating to establish teams as well as pandemic responses, this team was ready to implement immediate solutions. The mature culture—bound by trust, transparency and teamwork—allowed the Advocate Outpatient Collaborative to pivot instantly and focus on action.

In all of these cases, the pandemic showed the importance of having a resilient internal infrastructure. As a design firm, our in-house expertise, pro-bono arm, IPD teams, and established relationship with clients allowed us to move quickly to deliver innovative and timely solutions. These components of our practice had been established long before the pandemic, and will last long after.

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Early in the pandemic, James Brittain ventured into his Montreal neighbourhood on a series of walks at night with his camera. “Making pictures seemed essential—both to experience how the public space felt and to make sense of my own thoughts,” he recalls. “I chose to work after dark because this was the time that the pervading mood of uncertainty and anxiety felt most intense.”

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THEATRE DESIGN Matthew Lella, Principal, Diamond Schmitt Architects

Performance venues have a long history of coping with a pandemic playbook. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was shut more than once to wait out a plague. The so-called Spanish Flu brought the curtain down on vaudeville. The impact of COVID-19 on theatres is presently devastating, and the full toll will not be fully understood until it’s over, but as with pandemics past, the footlights will shine again.

The design considerations for the next era of live events are informed by the mantra we’re all familiar with—keep two metres apart, wear a mask, and wash your hands frequently. So what does this mean for a night on the town?

One clue comes from the gilded opera houses of Europe, where private boxes were once family-owned. Indeed, these privileged perches defined the architecture of the hall. The custom of segregating small groups had more to do with status than public health, but it provides a pathway for social distancing today. As we gather in social bubbles of family and friends now, a pattern is already taking hold in theatres as they prepare to re-open. How these “circles” or “bubbles” are manifest architecturally is a wonderful opportunity for design.

This spring, the Berliner Ensemble removed 500 of its 700 seats.

The 200 remaining places were paired to create what artistic director Oliver Reese called “an experience that is special, that will anchor itself in people’s memory.”

So will those who experience the Berliner Ensemble sitting “apart together” hear new things? I think so. They will experience moments they never noticed in a full house. But no theatre can survive by selling just 28 percent of capacity. And, in the end, intimate artistic connection is the appeal of live performance, and that is fundamentally challenged

by COVID-19’s imposition of distance.

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Artistically, we are adapting to the virtual performances occurring on our screens. Orchestras, operas and spoken word have adapted to the medium and to a large extent, audiences have followed, perfecting a new art form in the process. Ironically, the isolation imposed by the pandemic is creating new bridges to performance.

Will the design of new and re-imagined halls ref lect this awakening? For the renewal of David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, Diamond Schmitt’s design eliminates the formality of the proscenium to create a more engaging experience. And there could well be a role for the technologies that are bringing us closer together in the new era of live events.

Let’s consider how we could apply “household bubbling” to block sections out in a theatre—and sell a show that way. Above are diagrams of a typical orchestra-level floor with a centre section and two aisles.

They show what happens if you try to lay out bubbled groups of different sizes, keeping people who are not in the same bubble a minimum of two metres apart. First, as a baseline, we have tickets sold as singles with only 14 percent of the room occupied. Next, we look at tickets sold in pairs—as is most often the case—which still yields a fairly sparse house that’s only 26 percent full.

What’s interesting to me is the idea of expanded social bubbles.

If a theatre could sell tickets in clusters of 10 (one double household), then the room starts to feel a little more legitimately full.

At groups of 15, with 59 percent of the room’s capacity, it’s actually decent, all the while maintaining the distances of acceptable interaction.

Of course, these groups will need to be able to get to their seats safely from the lobbies. This suggests an outside queue—now a fact of life—which architecture can also start to improve. A timed entrance sequence might also work, especially if you could breeze into your seats without a line.

Once you are in your seat, the movement of air plays a crucial role in experiencing the performance safely. The state-of-the-art method in theatres is displacement ventilation. Cool air is supplied at very low

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velocity below each seat and rises slowly as our bodies heat the air, to be extracted via the ceiling. It is quiet and energy efficient. This will no doubt become the standard in theatre design going forward.

The backstage and onstage areas need to evolve as well. In a current production of The Phantom of the Opera in South Korea, the first few rows of seats were removed so that the actors’ “enthusiastic saliva” doesn’t spray on the audience.

Those Korean audiences believe that the systems in place can and will protect them. For that idea to spread, our own architectural systems and social health systems need to work to inspire the same confidence.

Theatres will make a comeback and fully consider the safety and enjoyment of patrons and performers. The show will go on.

HOSPITAL DESIGN Michel Broz, Partner, Jodoin Lamarre Pratte architectes

Planning new hospital facilities is a long-term process, sometimes spanning more than a decade. This process has to take into account a plethora of parameters: demographic and socio-medical projections, evolution of technology, and risks such as a global pandemic.

Investing in preventative measures to mitigate such risks is costly, and can be difficult to justify politically, since their likelihood is not easily assessed. However, when we now consider the costs of the COVID -19 crisis—whether in the loss of lives, construction of improvised infrastructure, or mental stress endured by society at large—investing in the necessary resources to be well prepared seems like an obvious choice.

In Quebec, certain hospitals have been visionary in integrating infection-disaster preparedness systems, policies, and programming elements within their new facilities.

The 350,000-square-metre CHUM project in Montreal was programmed more than ten years ago. (The first phase, by CannonDesign and NEUF, opened in 2018; phase two, by Jodoin Lamarre Pratte and MSDL , is set to open in spring 2021.) Even so, the possibility of having to accommodate a sudden influx of highly infectious patients was considered, such as in the planning of an isolation unit for respiratory illnesses, and another 36-bed unit that allows for contact isolation. Generally, the horizontal and vertical circulation movement of staff, materials, and ambulatory patients is separated from public and medical zones. Furniture and equipment alcoves were strategically located to optimize movement while maintaining necessary corridor widths. Recently, some extra isolation measures were added—including Ebola isolation rooms—even before COVID-19 emerged.

Another success story is the recent major expansion of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, programmed and designed by Jodoin Lamarre Pratte. The hospital and design teams decided to improve infection control beyond the basic requirements of the time. In the new critical care pavilion, all rooms for intensive care patients are 100 percent isolated. For the medical and surgical units, each floor includes three isolation beds and four acute care beds. The 32-bed nursing units in these areas can be divided into three sub-units, each with their own common services and nursing stations, such that staff can be maintained within each cohort when needed. The coronary and cardiovascular care unit, neonatal unit, O.R. suite and birthing suite are all TEXT

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equipped with their own isolation rooms. Some treatment pods can also be isolated by designating one-way corridors.

Additionally, the Emergency Department was the first in Quebec to be planned so that all 53 observation beds are isolated from one another, with some rooms in negative pressure, and others in positive pressure. Each observation bed has double access through separate corridors—one for the patient and visitors, and one for the medical staff—further limiting the risk of infection spread.

Finally, a 24-bed, 100 percent isolation unit was planned on the top f loor of the 11-storey building, ensuring that infected patients may be properly isolated from staff and other patients.

Today, the hospital has become one of the primary care sites for COVID-19-related cases in Quebec, with patients and staff benefitting from a safe environment of care.

New hospitals—and there will be many in Quebec in the next 10 to 15 years—are presently integrating lessons learned from the COVID -19 crisis. They are considering the possible cohorting of patients in isolated pods within nursing units, an increased number of isolation rooms for various specialties, a better segregation of clean and soiled material trajectories, and an increased separation between public and medical staff circulation. The province’s university teaching hospitals, which integrate tertiary and quaternary care, are especially sensitive to these issues, since their patients are in a much more acute state of illness. Community and regional hospitals are applying these new approaches to a lesser degree. The Ministry of Health is expected to make new recommendations for projects that are currently in the programming and planning phases.

One must note that architects may plan for certain spaces and specific physical barriers, but the staff ’s strict adherence to daily operational protocols is equally important for successful infection control in an acute care hospital environment.

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ACADEMIC FACILITIES TEXT Bruce Kuwabara, Partner; Geoff Turnbull; Director of Innovation; Kael Opie, Senior Associate; Mitchell Hall, Principal, KPMB Architects

Post-secondary education has been shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic, with teaching moving online midway through the spring semester— and, for many colleges and universities, remaining at least partly online through the fall. Some have speculated that the shift to online learning will become permanent, and that some post-secondary facilities will close entirely. But our academic clients remain focused on the longterm development of their campuses, albeit with a greater emphasis on designing facilities that ensure the safety of students and staff.

Designing for health and wellness is good design for COVID Beyond the physical distancing measures that will, at least temporarily, need to be implemented within classrooms and campuses, we strongly believe that air quality is critical to the health and well-being of people who inhabit academic buildings. We know from work by immunologists like Erin Bromage at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth that the formula for spread of infection is:

Successful Infection = Exposure to Virus x Time1

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20 To create the Night Walks series, Brittain made an initial rule that all images would be made within a one-kilometre radius from his family’s front door. He wanted to make pictures that expressed the atmosphere of confinement that pervaded the city, and reflected his own feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and isolation.

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22 This indicates we need to be especially concerned about spaces that are occupied for extended periods of time, including offices, lecture halls, and labs. Long durations of occupancy in these confined spaces can alter the distancing calculus if ventilation systems move viral particles through the space, effectively connecting the occupants.

We believe that the best approach is using 100 percent fresh air in a true displacement ventilation strategy. This allows for the minimum amount of cross-contamination in occupied spaces and eliminates concerns around recycling virus-laden air.

Manitoba Hydro Place in Winnipeg—while a workplace, rather than an academic facility—is an example of this kind of system. The impetus behind the design, over a decade ago now, was to create the highest quality interior environment. Post-occupancy studies showed an increase in worker productivity and satisfaction, with a corresponding decrease in annual sick leave. Having a fresh-air displacement ventilation system, along with operable windows for additional natural ventilation, has dramatically simplified our client’s postCOVID back-to-work planning.

Vertical campus concepts As universities and colleges in major cities have limited room for expansion, the concept of creating vertical campuses has gained currency in recent years. Vertical campuses organize teaching, research, and residential facilities in a connected stack. The idea of interconnected academic neighbourhoods fosters identity and community; creates a hierarchy of spaces for engagement; and allows for larger communal spaces for events—all functions that retain relevance, even in the midst of a pandemic.

Pinch points and confined spaces, such as elevators and corridors, are areas of particular concern for controlling transmission of a virus.

To reduce dependency on elevators, it is important to emphasize walkability, especially within large, multi-floor buildings. The key is to create choices of movement so that directional flow can be organized to minimize intersections of people.

One possible approach is to design required exit stairs as primary vertical circulation. At George Brown College on the Toronto Waterfront as well as at the School of Design at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, the exit stairs are wide and gently sloped, and are located on the exterior of the floor plate to allow natural daylighting and views. This makes them a desirable choice for moving between floors. Designating some stairs up-only and others down-only could minimize contact in stairwells.

Virtual engagement and review Only days before COVID forced all to shelter in place, our office was awarded a large, complex university project that brings together diverse disciplines in one building. Building on past successes with the Integrated Design Process, we were able to pivot quickly and organize a series of virtual Town Hall sessions involving the entire design and client teams. Moving forward, twice-weekly sessions are allowing us to maintain momentum and build a quick rapport—albeit entirely virtual.

For academic projects currently in construction, minimizing the delay caused by work site shut-downs is a primary concern.

While wrapping up renovations to Robertson Hall at Princeton University, we worked closely with the construction manager to develop a virtual project review and closeout process. Using a checklist prepared by each consultant, the construction manager was able to broadcast a walk-through video review of each space in the building. Drawings and specifications were shared on the screen for reference and discussion as required, and participants asked questions, made comments and directed the camera to see specific items.

This process allowed the project closeout review to be completed on schedule, despite the pandemic.

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From virtual to reality Overall, the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of people in interior environments. As institutions increase their dependence on virtual learning and working environments, we expect to see an increase in the perceived—and real—value of physical gathering spaces that can provide safe and healthy environments for living, working and learning.

1 https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

LONG-TERM CARE HOMES TEXT Robert Davies, Director and Principal, Montgomery Sisam Architects

During the COVID-19 pandemic, long-term care homes have seen a significant share of superspreading events around the globe. According to Canada’s National Institute on Aging, as of early May, 82 percent of deaths from COVID-19 have occurred in the country’s longterm care homes. This is the highest proportion of deaths in long-term care settings among 14 countries.

Why is this happening, and what can we do about it? Is it possible to mitigate the biological science of an outbreak with building science?

Long-term care is licensed and regulated by the provinces, and is largely funded through public money. It has always stood apart from other types of health care—for example critical care, acute care, rehabilitation care—through a set of regulations and guidelines which insist that the design emphasizes a home-like experience over a clinical one.

People in long-term care are referred to as residents, not patients.

The architectural language of these settings includes town squares, neighbourhoods and spas. It considers rooms to be small houses lining a street. These notions reinforce the concept that long-term care facilities are intended to be scaled-down versions of regular community life.

It may come as no surprise that there is disparity in the existing building stock for long-term care homes across the country. While many homes meet current standards, there were also many built prior to the current standards which still have three to four residents sharing a room and bathroom, and where congregating spaces are smaller and more crowded.

When a home declares an outbreak, the infected residents become patients. Just like the rest of us, they need to be isolated. This is not always possible in the older homes as they are presently configured. In addition to physical isolation, mechanical systems should be designed to a higher standard, to allow for negative pressure to isolation rooms. In extreme cases, the provision of oxygen is necessary to avoid a trip to the hospital.

The challenge will be to find the right balance between designing long-term care homes as a residential setting, and providing the clinical conditions necessary to battle a pandemic.

An increase in funding will also be needed to overcome several characteristics of superspreading events—which include enclosed spaces with poor ventilation, close proximity between people, and poor infection control behaviours. Older homes will need to be replaced. Operating dollars will need to increase to improve staffing levels—allowing for proper protocols for hygiene, and to overcome the pattern of some oper-

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“Photographing at night is different from doing so during the day,” writes Brittain. Contrasts become more intense at night, and some of his early pictures wound up with intense bright spots from street lamps and other brightly lit objects. “I discarded these, and started concentrating on pools of falling light.”

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26 ators who hire part-time workers to reduce costs. These workers may hold positions at two or three long-term care homes to make ends meet, thereby increasing the chances of spreading disease.

Currently, operational funding is provided by the provinces based on the number of licensed residents at each home. Capital funding is based on an established daily rate for each resident over a 25-year period, and begins to flow to the operator once construction has been completed.

In our experience, neither of these amounts have kept pace with actual costs of operating homes and rebuilding the older stock of buildings.

Funding is deployed differently by the three types of long-term care operators. Each municipality is required to run long-term care homes by statute, and these agencies have the ability to draw on tax revenue to bolster operating funds, and assist in the cost of rebuilding. Charitable and not-for-profit homes often use fundraising to add to their operating and capital projects budgets. Private or for-profit homes, however, are generally in business to provide profits to their shareholders, and tend to work with the amounts provided by the provinces for both operating and capital costs.

We know that all Ministries of Health are looking at the vulnerability of long-term care homes to pandemic outbreaks very carefully. We expect to see a measured and thoughtful response, by way of updated design standards, in good time. Hopefully this will be paired with a revisiting of funding models for long-term care.

OFFICE DESIGN Caroline Robbie, Quadrangle

In early June, The New York Times surveyed 511 epidemiologists on when we could return to a variety of everyday activities. Their common refrain was: “well, it depends.”

Of the epidemiologists, 54 percent said that society at large would return to working in shared office environments within three to twelve months. The survey results resonated. We’ve heard from clients—and our own staff—that there is an even split between those who want to return to the office on a limited basis, and those who are happy to continue working from home.

Global Big-4 consultancy PwC, one of our workplace clients in the UK, reopened their offices on June 8. Kevin Ellis, PwC’s Chair and Senior Partner, said: “We’re a people business and the virtual world isn’t a substitute for human contact in a business like ours.” They see their role as a wider community benefit, as their workforce helps to support local businesses. The problem is that, with the physical distancing required pre-vaccine, they will only be able to accommodate 15 percent of their workforce.

Overall in the office sector, there is no clear consensus about what the ideal size of the new workplace will be. If less than 30 percent of a workforce uses a space daily, will companies only lease a certain size of office, regardless of their actual staff complement? Will the central headquarters finally become, as professor Jack Nilles proposed during the 1973 oil crisis, a “Telecommunications Transportation Tradeoff ” of linked satellite locations?

Certainly, the ratio of permanent spaces versus shared desks will change dramatically. Why assign a permanent workspace, when someone now works on a permanently part-time basis? Accommodating shift TEXT

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work over longer hours, to reduce the risk of infection, will necessitate more—not less—sharing of space.

As work-from-home becomes normalized as the safest practice, the current model of shared workplace may become a discipline-sharing model. Aligned architecture, design, construction, and engineering firms might enter into a joint lease agreement, based on time-sharing rather than defined physical footprints. How we use these smaller, time-based spaces will shift from being present on a regular basis, to being present with specific social and collaboration goals in mind.

This would entail a change from thinking about time as the measure of work—to time as the measure of space instead.

Spending more time working from home is also going to change how homes are designed. In multi-unit residential buildings, we envisage that underused lobbies can be transformed into soft infrastructural hubs that enhance resilience and serve a variety of functions, including for informal meetings with work colleagues. Party rooms can become fully outfitted video conferencing facilities. We imagine that connectivity could become an enshrined rental right in the 2022 building codes—and the entire telecommunications industry could transform into a public utility and a basic human right. In our practice’s mid-rise and high-rise work, we believe that we’ll see elements of the WELL building design system making their way into the residential sector. Dedicated areas for working from home are likely to become a necessity, rather than an added marketing incentive.

Our colleagues in the Canadian real estate industry are seeing movement among tenants with lease commitments for space that is yet to be built out. They’re rethinking their plans and opening projects back up for design competitions. Work that was designed pre-virus is being put on hold, and some of it may never come back.

Howard Mark, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, said it best about the times in which we find ourselves: “These days, everyone has the same data regarding the present and the same ignorance regarding the future.” We find ourselves collectively in a world of unknowns. As for the future of office design? Like the epidemiologists say: “well, it depends.”

HOUSING RETROFITS TEXT Ya’el Santopinto and Graeme Stewart, ERA Architects / The Tower Renewal Partnership

As Canada sets out on the path toward COVID-19 recovery, retrofits of affordable tower apartments should be at the top of the stimulus priority list. Maintaining and enhancing towers improves health outcomes, housing security and climate resilience—all while accelerating retrofit market growth and providing green jobs.

Canada’s affordable apartment towers are the backbone of its purposebuilt rental housing system, representing more than half of all high-rise units in the nation. Legacies of the post-war apartment housing boom of the 1960s and 70s, many of these buildings are now a half-century old and in need of critical repair. Months of sheltering in place due to COVID-19 have underscored the inequities of the housing system, and the acute challenges in upgrading this stock are more visible than ever.

ERA Architects is one of the founders of a research collaborative—the Tower Renewal Partnership—that seeks to transform aging apartment housing into healthy homes for the 21st century. When it was conceived

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28 over a decade ago, the initiative was motivated by the social impact of community investments and the environmental impact of GHG emissions reduction. That focus gradually shifted toward a healthy-housingfirst approach, as we began to see more homes with inadequate fresh air supply, mould growth and severe overheating risk. Now, in the era of COVID-19, public interest has moved squarely to a health-first focus.

The conditions for health-first housing retrofit are quickly coming into place: we are now watching a first set of deep retrofit projects emerge across the country, thanks to federal leadership through the landmark National Housing Strategy and complementary provincial and territorial programs which support emissions reduction targets.

Last year, Toronto Community Housing secured $1.3 billion in these funds for deep energy retrofits. The Tower Renewal Partnership supports broader renewal through research and policy, from green finance models to technical best-practice guidelines.

ERA Architects is heading up several retrofits of postwar apartment towers. Our Passive House-standard retrofit of a 1967 affordable seniors’ building is resulting in resilient, net-zero-ready housing.

When completed next year, the Ken Soble Tower will include modernized ventilation with direct in-unit fresh air supply, cooling designed to serve the building in the hotter climate predicted for 2050, an ultra-high performance envelope with triple-glazed windows and 10 inches of mineral wool insulation, interior surface temperatures warm enough to protect against condensation, heat recovery for air and domestic hot water, and f loorplans reconceived for aging-in-place and community cohesion.

When we collaborated with CityHousing Hamilton to develop a funding pitch for the Ken Soble Tower, the project’s primary innovation was a 94 percent carbon emissions reduction target. Now, seen through the lens of a global pandemic, the building is innovative for its fresh air delivery, thermal comfort, and resilient back-up systems. Energy efficiency has become a secondary—though significant—co-benefit of health-centred performance.

While the Ken Soble Tower is currently empty, much of the housing stock that needs upgrading is fully occupied. We have been working with local and international partners—including resident groups, construction associations, housing providers, and architects—to develop a best-practice guide to retrofits with residents in place. Scaling up such resident-first approaches will involve creativity from architects and contractors, including supply chain improvements and methodological innovations.

The pandemic has added yet more reasons why housing renewal at scale, nation-wide, is urgently needed. It’s time to get started.

COMMUNITY CENTRES TEXT Darryl Condon, Managing Principal, and Melissa Higgs, Principal, HCMA

For many neighbourhoods, community centres are the single most important space for residents to gather, learn, play and celebrate together.

Community centres also provide a key venue to support inclusion and

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diversity, providing an opportunity for us to break down systemic racism.

One of the primary roles of our community centres—to bring us together—is directly at odds with the current need to maintain physical distance. While some things about our community spaces will change in reaction to the pandemic, our goal, as architects, should be to keep up their key mandate of fostering social unity.

Some of the changes in community spaces will be temporary, while we anticipate that other changes may become permanent.

In the short term, while public safety guidelines are in seemingly constant f lux, community centre operators are challenged to find different ways to engage with their communities. This has meant shifting more activities outdoors, limiting class sizes and implementing tight operational protocols.

The longer term is harder to predict, but we do anticipate some lasting, positive impacts on how we design community facilities.

One of these changes is the design of the in-between spaces. Currently, spaces such as corridors and lobbies are not valued at the planning stage in the same way as revenue-generating areas. However, communities are built precisely in these unprogrammed spaces, through informal interaction and socializing. The in-between spaces that connect the core spaces in the building also connect us.

Circulation spaces that are too often small and narrow will need to be reconsidered to address physical distancing requirements for COVID -19 and possible future pandemics. We believe that wider corridors and larger gathering spaces that do not require a fee to enter, will, over time, also result in greater opportunities for informal social connections, creating more vibrant and diverse community facilities.

Pre-COVID, many existing public facilities had consolidated their operations, reducing public access to a single point of entry to create the perception of added security, even when additional entries were part of the original design. This had an unintended consequence of disconnecting facilities from the surrounding community fabric.

Operators—and architects—will need to find other ways to manage the comings and goings within facilities, so as to re-open entry points and allow for the separation of entry and exiting during COVID. Ultimately, creative approaches to this issue will have the added longterm benefit of creating stronger linkages to communities, as multiple entries are able to address pedestrian and cycling connections from various directions.

We believe that the public’s expectations for cleanliness will remain high in the future. This has significant design implications on spaces such as changerooms and public washrooms. It will support the current trend towards the use of universal changerooms and washrooms, which better facilitate regular monitoring and cleaning that can be performed by staff of any gender. These service spaces will need to become larger to accommodate current expectations of usage and an increased level of staffing.

From a diversity and inclusion perspective, gender-neutral facilities offer a range of community benefits. They provide greater privacy and accessibility for many users—including children and the elderly who may require assistance from someone of a different gender, those who have personal health requirements or mobility challenges, and those who are transgender or transitioning. Universal facilities reduce barriers to access and provide greater inclusion, providing an opportunity to break down societal biases based on ability, gender-f luidity, and other perceived differences.

We expect the needs of personal wellness to drive many decisions moving forward. Throughout community centres, material selection will become even more critical as ease of cleaning and the perception of cleanliness will be greater considerations. Multipur-

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pose spaces will likely increase in size to allow for greater spacing of participants. All spaces—whether formal or informal—will benefit from greater access to outdoor space, daylight, fresh air and operable windows.

As designers of these facilities, we should see the pandemic’s challenges as an opportunity to design more resilient, responsive facilities—with the added benefit of better supporting social closeness, even in the midst of social distancing.

RETAIL AND HOSPITALITY Vincent Van Den Brink, Architect Partner, Breakhouse

In the retail and hospitality sectors, the COVID-19 pandemic is not fundamentally changing things—rather, it is expediting existing trends, albeit at a nerve-wracking speed. Many of the shifts we are now seeing have been in motion for decades. Before the pandemic, retailers were already exploring e-commerce; similarly, many restaurateurs had been seeking higher-profit-margin alternatives to traditional dining rooms.

Since the pandemic shutdowns began in March, Breakhouse has been very active with its hospitality clients. I’ve often been on the phone until late in the evening, offering advice and direction. From our company’s standpoint, a crisis creates dependency on experts—and if you are positioned and experienced to offer leadership to clients, business is good.

We are working with several entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of this time to reposition their restaurants. They’re capitalizing on low overhead and access to affordable loans to change their full-service restaurants into a quick-service model.

Over the past years, these restaurants have struggled to maintain profitability with increases in average plate cost, competition, rent, and the need to maintain a high ratio of staff to guests. With a quickservice model, a lower staff count with higher volume allows for larger profit margins. Two of our clients—a 45-seat fine dining establishment and a pizza parlour—had been contemplating the change for a while, but were hesitant to shut down while times were good. The COVID -19 environment has made the decision much easier. They’re now looking to us to help them through the transition of reintroducing themselves to their customers with a new offering.

It is difficult for these entrepreneurs to know exactly what this looks like and how it works—but this is where designers come in.

Not all restaurants will remove their full seating experience, of course, but at the moment, there are few new million-dollar restaurants being built.

The pandemic presents the greatest difficulties to businesses adverse to change. The option of waiting for the majority to change, then following when things look safe, is no longer a possibility.

All retail and hospitality companies need to adjust their offerings in a manner that is authentic to their own brand, in order to stay relevant in the market. The good thing is that there is a guiding light: just look at what has been already happening over the past decade, and follow that trajectory to realign your brand.

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Our company includes architects, interior designers, graphic designers and creative directors, but we work first and foremost with brand. We believe that brand is everything: it is the inner and outer voice of a company. When done well, a brand expresses the cultural core of a business and becomes the vehicle companies use to connect with customers. We work closely with businesses to understand their purpose, needs and sales strategies. As a result, we design everything from buttons to buildings— because brands need all touchpoints to connect with their customers.

In order to develop all these touchpoints, we have evolved into a multidisciplinary design firm. The pandemic is teaching us that we need to expand even further. For instance, we have largely depended on partnering with other companies to build our clients’ websites and e-commerce platforms. As a result, we’ve lost work because we could not deliver the complex build of an e-commerce website internally. Like so many other companies, we need to grow outside of the comfort zone of our current expertise. It’s a good thing that we are okay with that—because we don’t have a choice.

How do you change what you are known for, and not lose your audience? It is always an uncomfortable transition. But whether it is change we are helping our clients to navigate, or changes we need to make to our own company, we need to move quickly—otherwise we will miss the present opportunities. The solutions ahead will be found through design thinking, and creative insight that strategically puts businesses in a better position with their customers. This was already the case before the pandemic. COVID-19 has only sped up the process.

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EQUITY IN ARCHITECTURE FIRMS Betsy Williamson, Principal, Williamson Williamson

The atomization of architecture offices during the pandemic presented an immediate and profound change that no one could have anticipated.

It’s come with immense challenges, but also opened new opportunities for equity in our workplaces.

Like firms across Canada, Williamson Williamson closed its physical offices in mid-March, and was quickly up-and-running remotely. As offices embraced a new workflow, there was a universal acceptance of flexibility. Everyone would be working from home, albeit with deep concerns about health, family, and economic uncertainty. We were home with partners, children, parents, pets, chores, and every other pleasant— and not-so-pleasant—distraction that exists in our personal spaces.

For women in the workplace—now balancing roles as the default parent, head-of-household, and a productive team member—the pressures became even greater.

Years ago, as millennials entered the workplace, they called for changes to the prevailing office culture. Ironically, this was buoyed by the widely circulated perks at the tech campuses, whose main purpose was to keep their staff at work as many hours of the day as possible. But at the core, recent architecture graduates sought greater flexibility in the way they approached and completed work.

In a service profession where time at the office seems inextricably linked to both design excellence and profit margins, leaving one’s desk TEXT

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30 to care for a child or an aging parent (or simply to “have a life”) often makes an employee feel excluded from the office culture and impacts their perceived dedication to the team.

In 2014, I co-founded Building Equality in Architecture Toronto (BEAT) to help advocate for change. I posited that a shift in workplace culture would especially benefit women as they moved through their careers. Once flexibility was not something offices reluctantly accommodated—but part of our culture—it would allow women to thrive in their careers as they worked towards leadership roles.

Now, months into a new work-from-home paradigm, we can start to assess the challenges and successes we have experienced so far.

Pressures on leadership are enormous as we work to maintain high levels of design integrity, fulfill professional responsibilities, and craft our economic viability during a downturn. Everything about the workings of an office—especially in-depth modelling, drawing, and material reviews—is more onerous and time consuming when remote. Encouraging staff to be optimistic, to maintain excellence, and to learn and grow is harder. Learning by osmosis and organic teamwork is impossible when everyone is at home.

Despite all this, we have avoided the total collapse that so many other sectors have faced. Our firm has managed to rehire past summer students who now live out of town and accommodate staff who work part-time while they share childcare with their partners. We’ve found that office culture is not only social, but is ultimately about the way each person sees their role in the work collectively put out by the office.

While we look forward to returning to our physical office, like many firms, we’re also contemplating how we can retain some of the upsides of allowing staff to work from home. I believe that while women in particular will see this accommodation as a move towards equity, everyone in offices will see it as a benefit. Work-from-home should not be about taking work home in order to put in extra hours late at night, nor should it signal that someone is lacking dedication if it is used for personal or family reasons. Design excellence, diversity and equity must be achieved together, and each of us must contribute to our fullest—and have the tools and resources to do so.

CLIMATE CRISIS TEXT Susan Gushe, Principal and Managing Director, and Kathy Wardle, Associate Principal and Director of Sustainability, Perkins and Will

As we respond to the COVID -19 pandemic, we must not forget about the even deeper global crisis facing our planet—the climate crisis.

There will be no vaccine for global warming; however, the buildings sector has the ability to make a substantial contribution to mitigating its effects. Those of us in the industry will have to fully engage all of our tools, technology, and know-how to rapidly transition into a zero-carbon sector, with greatly reduced carbon emissions from building operations and construction.

The building industry contributes 39 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a key player in a climate emergency that impacts the health and viability of cities and communities around the world.

If there is any benefit arising from COVID -19, it might be seen in the International Energy Agency’s prediction that global CO 2 emis-

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sions for 2020 will be almost 8 percent lower than in 2019—the lowest level since 2010.1 But as we recover from the pandemic, and restarting economies becomes a global imperative, how can we ensure the design and construction industry will contribute to the continued reduction of emissions? While seemingly paradoxical, it is possible. Architecture 2030 reports that while the U.S. GDP and building sector f loor area increased by 26.2 percent and 18 percent respectively since 2005, building sector energy use and CO2 emissions decreased by 1.7 percent and 21 percent respectively in that time. This, despite the addition of 47 billion square feet of building stock. 2 This scale of reduction in CO2 emissions reaffirms that our sector has the capability to execute low-carbon buildings alongside economic growth.

Architects are well-positioned to harness the palpable desire to derive meaningful change from the current pandemic. We can do this through the routine delivery of our services, by leveraging our skills and knowledge in sustainable design. From what we’ve seen, green building practices—established through years of advocacy, implementation, and regulation—are working to drive down emissions.

A major driver for reduced emissions is the stricter performancebased codes being introduced by jurisdictions across the country. Notably, the BC Energy Step code, introduced in 2017, offers British Columbia’s municipalities a progressive roadmap of increasingly stringent energy codes, with the goal of requiring net-zero-energy-ready buildings by 2030. In parallel, the Cities of Toronto and Vancouver have set absolute performance targets, with the goal of achieving near-zero or zero-emissions buildings by 2030.

Our clients in all sectors are, necessarily, following suit. Higher education clients—such as the University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, and University of Western Ontario—are forging ahead with net-zero-carbon performance targets for academic and research buildings. There is also growing recognition amongst our private developer clients that they must build differently and establish carbon policies for their portfolios. Grosvenor’s commitment to achieve net-zero operational carbon emissions from all their directly managed buildings by 2030 is informing how we design a new 7.9-acre master-planned development for Grosvenor Americas in Metro Vancouver.

We are at a critical juncture to make meaningful change, and in response, we have recently committed to offering our clients carbon impact statements that propose proven design measures for reducing their projects’ operational and embodied carbon. To produce these statements, we undertake life cycle assessments starting at concept design, and proceeding through all project milestones. We use a combination of readily available tools—like Athena Impact Estimator, Tally, and EC3—to understand and minimize embodied carbon emissions.

The result of our assessment allows clients to make carbon-informed decisions as they consider material and systems options.

As we emerge from the current health crisis, we cannot lose sight of our professional obligation to mitigate the larger global climate crisis.

Not only must we continue to build upon energy conservation measures in our industry, we must collectively hasten our efforts to design and execute buildings that are low in embodied carbon. Together with our clients, we can design and construct cities and buildings that ensure the future health of our planet.

1 International Energy Agency. Global Energy Review: The Impacts of the Covid-19

Crisis on the Global Energy Demand and CO 2 Emissions. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020 2 Architecture 2030. Unprecedent Way Forward. February 2020. https://architecture2030.org/unprecedented-a-way-forward

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT INVITES ARCHITECTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS TO ENTER THE 2020 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

Since 1967, our annual national awards program recognizes the architectural excellence of projects in the design phase. This year, we are also presenting the third edition of the Canadian Architect Photo Awards of Excellence, open to professional and amateur architectural photographers. Winners will be published in a special issue of Canadian Architect in December 2020.

Jurors

Susan Fitzgerald, Design Principal, FBM

MODERN OFFICE OF DESIGN + ARCHITECTURE

Stephan Chevalier, co-founder, Chevalier Morales

Michaal Moxem, Vice-President and Design Culture Lead, Stantec

Deadline: September 10th, 2020 Architecture project entry fee: $175 ** Architectural photo entry fee: $75 ** For more details and to submit your entry, visit: www.canadianarchitect.com/awards * JURORS FOR PHOTO AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE ONLY

CAAug Award of EX 31 53 ad2.indd 5 CA 20.indd

Amanda Large and Younes Bounhar, co-founders, doublespace photography*

** PLUS APPLICABLE TAXES

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BOOKS

HEDRICH-BLESSING COLLECTION, CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM

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Edited by Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, and Mabel O. Wilson REVIEW

Magdalena Milosz

In recent months, the horrific death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed have prompted widespread reflection on the roles of race and racism in architecture. These events have spurred institutional statements, calls for action, and the sharing of syllabi and reading lists on architecture and race. Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present is a timely addition to these efforts.

The result of a four-year interdisciplinary research project, this edited collection aims to “revise one of the core narratives of modern architecture—its association with universal emancipation and progress—by uncovering modernism’s long entanglement with racial thought.” In doing so, it highlights both the pervasiveness of race in modern architecture and its simultaneous omission from the so-called canon of architectural history and pedagogy.

The editors of Race and Modern Architecture recognize a need to not only append “other” architectures and critical histories to the canon.

Rather, they propose to examine how race is constitutive of modern architecture, suggesting that “race can be read as much within the canon as outside of it.” The opening chapters thus recontextualize early American civic architecture through its disavowal of slavery, as it sought to represent a liberty and democracy from which Black people were excluded. Here, the figure of Thomas Jefferson looms large, and the authors shine a light on his and his contemporaries’ personal connections to slaveholding, as well as pointing to overarching links between slavery and architecture.

While the book’s opening chapters focus on the USA, other contributions traverse the Atlantic in presenting case studies from Europe, Africa, and Asia. This substantial volume also covers a long timeframe, spanning from the 18th century to the present, although the majority of its 18 chapters address the 20th century. To facilitate con-

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nections between seemingly disparate texts, the chapters are deftly arranged into six themes: enlightenment, organicism, nationalism, representation, colonialism, and urbanism. The section on colonialism, for instance, links Jiat-Hwee Chang’s examination of architectural identity-formation in postcolonial Malaysia and Singapore to Mark Crinson’s study of colonial “villagization” policies in mid-20th-century Kenya. Both of these cases contend with the fallout of British colonialism and its attendant racial thinking.

Concepts of race are socially and culturally constructed, operating differently in different geographies and changing over time to serve different purposes. The editors of Race and Modern Architecture note how this presents a distinct challenge in writing race back into architectural history. Examining such changes and their relationship to architecture can constitute a historical project in itself. Addison Godel, for instance, investigates how shifting 18th-century relations between Europe and China were reflected in increasingly racialized and exoticized European perceptions of the Chinese garden. In a different vein, Luis E. Carranza examines how, in post-revolutionary Mexico, notions of race operated in two competing approaches to a national architecture: one hybridized, the other pre-Columbian and “pure.” Other chapters make clear that race—in general and in how it relates to architecture—is not a neutral concept, but must be defined relative to its specific history and geography.

Critical whiteness studies is a field that is making an increasing impact on architectural history. This approach acknowledges whiteness as a racial concept and examines its effects, such as social privilege and systemic racism. The editors of Race and Modern Architecture write that at minimum, addressing race in architecture would require “acknowledging the white cultural nationalism that lies at the heart of the Enlightenment project and its attendant processes of canon formation.”

Contributions by Charles L. Davis II and Dianne Harris engage with this line of thought through studies on the architecture of white settler colonialism in the Midwest and the photographic representation

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of postwar single-family housing, respectively. Harris’s chapter strongly resonates with current discussions on anti-Black violence. Drawing on her excellent earlier book, Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America, she makes connections between staged photographs of white families in houses at the U.S. Gypsum Research Village and a funeral photograph of the mutilated body of Emmett Till, an African-American boy who was lynched. Harris’s analysis underscores that this portrayal of the “lived nightmare” of many Black people and people of colour represents the underside of the American dream displayed in the U.S. Gypsum photographs.

Although it doesn’t directly address the Canadian context, Race and Modern Architecture touches on American and European cases with which many Canadian readers will be familiar, in addition to relevant topics beyond these borders. The book also provides models of critical approaches to race in architectural history. In the face of Canadian exceptionalism regarding racism and colonialism, it becomes imperative to examine how profoundly racial thought has influenced architecture on these lands.

From the inherent exclusions of the search for a national “style,” to the marginalized built environments of racialized communities, to the racist philosophies of prominent architectural figures, there is much to exhume in Canadian architecture when it comes to race.

The latter, for example, is examined by Annmarie Adams in a forthcoming book chapter on Ramsay Traquair, whose racist and sexist views correlated with his romanticization of the architecture of New France. In his work on immigrant detention buildings of the early twentieth century, David Monteyne examines the role of anti-Asian racism in Canada’s formation. Architectural histories might also address slavery in Canada, settler colonialism, the colonization of Indigenous Peoples, and the racial politics of multiculturalism.

Race and Modern Architecture is a decidedly academic work. Considering its genre—and, especially, its subject matter—it is not easy reading.

However, it represents a significant contribution that will aid scholars, educators, practitioners and students in better understanding the role of race in Western architecture and provide a much-needed corrective to the silence surrounding race in architectural education. The chapters can be used to enhance existing teaching and inform scholarship on topics such as the Enlightenment, Gothic architecture, postwar housing, and urban renewal. For practitioners, this carefully edited history

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IMAGE COURTESY OF DETROIT RESISTS

COURTESY OF MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, LC-DIG-CWPB-02891

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may fill in gaps in historical knowledge and illuminate racial injustices playing out in contemporary cities. Anyone interested in beginning these difficult conversations will find this book invaluable.

Magdalena Milosz is a PhD candidate in the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University.

White heteronormative family life is staged in a house by Hugh Stubbins, part of the U.S. Gypsum Research Village; racial histories are embedded in both the construction and style of the 1865 Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, designed by Thomas Jefferson; a watercolour by Benjamin Henry Latrobe entitled An Overseer Doing His Duty near Fredericksburg, Virginia, from 1798, depicts two enslaved women clearing land for either cultivation or new construction; a Detroit Eviction Defense poster protests the eviction of Lela Whitfield in July 2015.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT

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NIC LEHOUX

JONATHAN FRIEDMAN

BACKPAGE

NIC LEHOUX

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PANDEMIC DINING AT GUSTO 501 TEXT

Catherine Osborne

OPENED JUST WEEKS BEFORE TORONTO’S COVID-19 LOCKDOWN, A CORKTOWN RESTAURANT IS ADAPTING TO BECOME A PANDEMIC DINING DESTINATION.

Ever since the arrival of COVID-19, every restaurant reliant on table service has had to close or reinvent itself by finding new ways to encourage people to pick up dinner as they would a bag of groceries.

Survival mode is particularly stark at Gusto 501, which opened in Toronto’s east end just weeks before lockdown hit the city in late March. Its gleaming new open kitchen, clad in black granite, is now stacked with empty pizza boxes ready for orders, and takeout bags are lined up on a random grouping of tables.

The chair-and-table sets that would usually be out on the floor are stacked in the back, and a refrigerator full of sherbet cartons is near the entrance so passersby can buy a pint on the fly.

Owner Janet Zuccarini considers 501 her ultimate showpiece, the culmination of an impressive career running seven restaurants in Toronto and Los Angeles, with over 700 employees on payroll pre-pandemic. A chance meeting with local architect Alex Josephson at an event led her to hire his firm, PARTISANS, for the job. “I think they are geniuses,” she says, often, of Josephson and his partners, Pooya Baktash and Jonathan Friedman.

She gave the studio creative freedom to turn

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a narrow lot in Corktown into a 900-squaremetre culinary destination that would turn eating out into a theatrical event.

Gusto 501 delivers on all of that. Its two upper mezzanine levels and rooftop patio contain five distinct dining and bar areas with an overall capacity to seat 205. Its central core is hollowed out and illuminated by natural light that streams in from a glass rooftop. The ascent to each level, via an extra-long staircase made of steel and walnut, is a big part of the chic ambience. It’s not hard to imagine, at some future point, waitstaff hustling between floors and patrons being led to their tables by the host.

PARTISANS integrated material elements from Zuccarini’s other Italian-fare venues, choosing a warm palette over cool, and consulting with Wendy Haworth Design Studio on the marble countertops, furnishings and fixtures. However, the walls are the most impressive feature, clad from top to bottom in 6,500 terracotta structural blocks. Working with a local manufacturer, the studio had some of the hollow blocks cut at three differing angles during the extrusion stage, turning the standard rightangle edge into more of a wedge. The varying shapes enabled them to stack the blocks in cas-

ABOVE An operable façade, soaring atrium and sculpted terracotta walls contribute to Gusto 501’s dramatic flair. The Toronto restaurant was designed by local architecture firm PARTISANS.

cading lines. Grasshopper determined the limits on protrusion and structural loads, and LED wiring was laid behind the final masonry for dramatic downlighting. The effect is an allencompassing—and truly breathtaking—sculpted vertical landscape, reminiscent of a desert canyon shaped by wind and erosion.

When Toronto finally reopens, Gusto 501 will have some advantages attracting customers back indoors. The interior’s expansive atrium will undoubtedly ease the threat of poor air circulation or lingering germs. So will the street-facing glass façade that opens using a counterbalance system to raise and lower three six-metre-wide panes of glass that weigh a ton each. It is one of the largest operable glazed walls of its kind in the world. And, as if in premonition, the restaurant is equipped with a takeout window. Originally included in the design to service the growing food delivery market (and to prevent couriers from traipsing past diners), its presence is a reminder of what all restaurants will need to consider going into the future—the ability to transform and adapt at a moment’s notice.

Catherine Osborne is a writer and editor based in Toronto.

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CASE STUDY

Florida Pumping Station | Seminole, Florida

BILCO Helps Close the Door On Pumping Station Odors Over time, the corrosive nature of wastewater took its toll on a pumping station in Seminole, Florida. Moisture and contaminants create highly corrosive conditions that attack metal and concrete structures, causing deterioration. Conditions are worse when the building is located in a humid, coastal environment, such as Seminole.

The degradation of system components left the community surrounding the pumping station confronting a revolting smell.

“It’s vile. It’s absolutely disgusting,” said Brad Fayette, who worked at a nearby car wash in an interview with a local television station in 2017. “It’s like rotten eggs, really bad rotten eggs,” Kris Van Kirk told the television reporter. “It’s a stench so bad it will make your stomach turn.”

Pinellas County remedied the situation early in 2020 with the completion of a $2 million dollar, 13-month project in which it renovated the pumping station. The new three-part system includes an ozone polishing unit, biological trickling filter and carbon activation that will help keep odors from penetrating into the community.

Photos: Courtesy of Talmage Brown-Ward

Before revamping the pumping station, Pinellas County Utilities Engineering Section Manager Tom Menke said the county conducted extensive sampling to determine the precise chemical nature of odors that were filtering into the community. “One of the most well-known odors that everyone is aware of is hydrogen sulfide, which is the smell that people associate with rotten eggs,” Menke said. “But once you treat that, there may be some odors underneath that may come to the top.”

The underlying odors, called mercaptans, are a harmless but pungentsmelling gas made of carbon, hydrogen and sulfur. The pumping station in Seminole includes a unit that “polishes” the ozone layer, helping to reduce odors that might escape from the pumping station, especially mercaptans.

The erosion of floor doors at the pumping facility also contributed to the problem. “The existing doors did not close well,” said Jake Warren of TLC Diversified, whose company completed the system overhaul. “I was scared to walk on some of them because they were so corroded.”

The doors were replaced with 16 floor doors manufactured by BILCO. The aluminum doors allow access to wells, pumps and valves. Some of the doors were BILCO’s JD-AL H20 Doors, which are reinforced for AASHTO H-20 wheel loading. That feature allows heavy trucks and other industrial equipment to park on the door.

Jeff Smith of Building Specialties in Bradenton worked on procuring the doors for TLC Diversified.

The new doors carry a 25-year warranty and are equipped with type 316 stainless steel hardware for superior corrosion resistance and BILCO’s patented lift assistance for easy, one-hand operation. BILCO’s doors are frequently specified in projects where there is a concern of water or other liquids entering the access opening.

The new system became operational in March 2020, clearing the air of the repulsive odors emanating from the pumping station. “We were sympathetic to the community’s complaints,” Menke said. “We tried to do the best we can. I think this is a good solution, and I think it’s going to serve us well for the long haul.”

Keep up with the latest news from The BILCO Company by following us on Facebook and LinkedIn. 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.

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