38 minute read
VILLAGE AT THE END OF THE WORLD
JAMES BRITTAIN PHOTOGRAPHY JAMES STEEVES
LOCATION Upper Kingsburg, Nova Scotia ARCHITECT Brian MacKay-Lyons, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Ltd.
Architecture begins with the land. The site for this project was a seasonal settlement for millennia for the Mi’kmaq First Nation (architect Brian MacKay-Lyon’s ancestors), a safe harbour for early French and Basque fishermen to dry their catch, an Acadian colony in the early 1600s, and a foreign Protestant settlement in the 1750s. The legacy of inhabitation of this place is one of diverse cultures and continuous evolution, with forests giving way to farmlands, then returning back again. With the help of friends, neighbours and colleagues, the architect, over 25 years, has re-cleared the forest and cultivated the soil, revealing its historic ruins and uncovering its 500 years of agrarian history.
Many of the structures that occupy the Atlantic Nova Scotia coastline site are products of an international design/build program called Ghost, which started on the land in 1994. The spirit of collaboration and community engagement born from Ghost has given way to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Today, the village is the centre of a community and way of working that holds at its core the values gleaned from Ghost: working together, economy as ethic, spirit of place, and the critical study of vernacular building practice. Amongst the ruins of the site, a proto-urban village has emerged that serves as a school, farm, and community.
The first Ghost Lab started when, frustrated with the state of architectural education, MacKay-Lyons pulled his students out of school to participate in a two-week event, culminating in the erection a temporary installation on the property he had recently purchased. The glowing structure evoked an archetypal farmhouse, with a sparse wood frame draped in white fabric. At the end of the two weeks, the construction was lit from inside, and served as a venue for a community concert. This tradition continued for twelve years, culminating in an international conference that brought together builders, architects, students, historians and the local community in the tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, or Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio.
Since that time, MacKay-Lyons has operated as the ‘village architect,’ building a collection of more than 40 structures on the site. The village has continued to evolve as the venue for community events, a living school, and an office research laboratory. Structures added over time include a relocated and restored 1830 schoolhouse, a minimalist dwelling for an architectural apprentice-in-residence, and a new community of dwellings. The resulting village is an expression of utopian architectural ambitions, an optimistic act of will, and a form of resistance in the face of the numbing cultural influence of globalization. It is an argument for landscape stewardship through agricultural and architectural cultivation. The village is a place that expresses the unity of life, integrating practice and teaching, family and community.
:: Jury :: The jury applauded this lifetime architectural achievement, showing the transformational power of architecture on a site. The quality of the individual buildings adds up to more than the sum of its parts and emphasizes the village quality of the 25-years-plus project. It was also the educational dimension of the project that drew the attention of the jury.
CLIENT MARILYN MACKAY-LYONS | ARCHITECT TEAM BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS, TALBOT SWEETAPPLE, SHANE ANDREWS, TYLER REYNOLDS, MIRANDA BAILEY, MATTHEW BISHOP, MATT MACKAY-LYONS, JONNY LEGER, PETER BROUGHTON, WILLIAM GREEN, MATT MALONE, TREVOR DAVIES, PETER BLACKIE, CHAD JAMIESON, JESSE HINDLE, SAVA ROSTKOWSKA, TONY PATTERSON, ROB MEYER, MARK CORMIER, BRUNO WEBER, WILL PERKINS, IZAK BRIDGMAN | GHOST ARCHITECTS BOB BENZ, FRANCIS KÉRÉ, RICK JOY, MARLON BLACKWELL, TED FLATO, PETER STUTCHBURY, DEBORAH BURKE, JUHANI PALLASMAA, WENDELL BURNETTE, DAVID MILLER | GHOST GUEST CRITICS KENNETH FRAMPTON, TOM FISHER, ROBERT MCCARTER, PETER BUCHANAN, TOM PETERS | GHOST PARTICIPANTS OVER 300 INDIVIDUALS | ENGINEERS MICHEL COMEAU, RENEE MACKAY-LYONS, BLACKWELL ENGINEERS, ANDREA DONCASTER | BUILDERS GORDON MACLEAN, PHIL CREASER, GARY KILGOUR, ROBERT SCHMEISSER, ART BAXTER | BUDGET WITHHELD | OCCUPANCY AUGUST 2021 OPPOSITE, LEFT TO RIGHT The 700-square-foot Enough House is a prototype for minimalist living; at Ghost 7, students developed and worked on the construction of a structure with four guest cabins. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Simple buildings are aggregated to recall a former fishing village on the site; the masterplan for the site groups buildings around courtyards; the Ghost 6 team built a pair of towers; the first Ghost exercise yielded a temporary structure atop remnants of a foundation; two historic buildings were moved to the site and faithfully restored.
REVISITING ROARK
TEXT By Jake Nicholson
THE FICTIONAL PROTAGONIST OF AYN RAND’S NOVEL THE FOUNTAINHEAD IS A HERO FOR GENERATIONS OF ARCHITECTS. IS IT TIME FOR THAT TO CHANGE?
Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is the only novel that I ever tossed into the recycling after reading the last page. I still remember the THUNK of paperback against the side of the bin. I had read it out of a sense of professional obligation, having worked with and around architects for a long time. For several generations of architects, The Fountainhead’s architect-protagonist Howard Roark is an inspiration. If you Google “famous fictional architect,” you’ll get a list with his name at the top. Roark was the top fictional architect chosen by Building. co.uk in 2009. He was the first mentioned on a similar list published by The Guardian in 2012. He was number two on Architectural Record’s list from 2008, but only because they cheated, arguing the non-fictional life of Frank Lloyd Wright was dramatic enough to knock Roark out of the top spot.
The existence of a single “most famous fictional architect” is more than a little strange. It’s rare for one character to become the dominant representation of a profession: there are dozens of fictional doctors, cops, politicians, lawyers, scientists, journalists, and businesspeople. But Roark is to architects something like what Sherlock Holmes is to private detectives. He is the central depiction of a profession within fiction. But Roark is more than that. He is also the leading man in one of the literary touchstones of the political Right wing.
Decades after The Fountainhead’s 1943 publication, Rand still has many prominent libertarian and Republican fans. They include former American President Donald Trump (reported in 2016 by USA Today to identify with Roark), former Chair of the Federal Reserve of the United States Alan Greenspan (who knew Rand personally), former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Paul Ryan (who has given Rand’s books as Christmas gifts), and former United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (who has named Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as his favourite book).
Referencing Rand’s name alone has become a shorthand for a certain brand of Right-wing politics. It would be inaccurate to call her a conservative. She developed her own capitalist libertarian-adjacent philosophy (Objectivism) and critiqued more collectivist ideas ferociously
within her novels and other works. The Fountainhead is an intentional work of propaganda. As Rand writes in her 1968 introduction for the novel’s 25th anniversary, her goal was to show Howard Roark as an idealized man, who she saw as only able to exist under a laissez-faire capitalist system.
“She had a specific audience in mind, which was young people,” says Jennifer Burns, Associate Professor of History at Stanford University, and author of the biography Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. “She wanted people to get drunk on the novel; [for them to have] that experience of imagining your life without limits. She felt it’s much easier for an 18-year-old to have that feeling than a 48-year-old.”
Burns says each section of The Fountainhead had originally started with a headnote from Friedrich Nietzsche. This was taken out by Rand before publication. “It really was this kind of Nietzschean Übermensch against the world, and she wrote it to seduce the reader into identifying with the superman, as opposed to the mob.”
“The Fountainhead has a duality in that it’s celebrating individual creativity in a way that you can take without the politics. Or you can take the politics. There’s a little more flexibility to take it your way. With her later work, it’s very interwoven.”
The Fountainhead’s plot follows the dramatic highs and lows of Roark’s professional career, contrasting him against an array of characters who fall short of the individualist-creator ideal. Some of these characters are decried within the text as “parasites” or “second-handers,” people who are unable to create for themselves, often contemptuous or jealous of Roark’s talent. The book climaxes with Roark blowing up Cortlandt Homes, an under-construction housing project that he secretly designed for the much less-talented architect Peter Keating (one of his central foils throughout the novel). Roark’s motive is that his original design was betrayed by Keating, who fails on a promise to preserve the integrity of Roark’s design. Roark is put on trial. He represents himself, admitting he dynamited the building. He delivers a fiery courtroom speech on the importance of ego-driven individualist-creators. The speech is also a severe condemnation of altruism and the aforementioned second-handers: “The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence on men is evil.”
Because this is a novel with a point to get across, Roark’s jury renders a verdict of not guilty. He goes on to design a skyscraper in Hell’s Kitchen, and he marries the novel’s heroine, Dominique Francon, who he violently rapes earlier in the story. The complicated sadomasochistic dynamic between Roark and Dominique in The Fountainhead is important to mention. My focus in this article is the novel’s connection to architecture, but I would still ask: given that we are talking about a character meant to represent an ideal man, what type of behaviour is Rand ultimately condoning? What happens if people act like Howard Roark?
Throughout the entirety of the book, it’s clear that Rand wants readers on Roark’s side. Rand’s point is to celebrate and exonerate Roark as an idealized creator who lives for himself and doesn’t compromise principles. And like Roark, Rand wasn’t big on compromises. She closes her introduction in the anniversary edition with a paragraph that dismisses those who don’t agree with her as betraying their own souls. I am paraphrasing slightly from a copy that I re-purchased in service of writing this article. (Beyond betraying my soul, I am out twentyseven Canadian dollars plus tax.) The new copy included an insert, much like a magazine subscription tearaway, directing readers to free information on Rand and her Objectivist philosophy, something I haven’t seen in a novel before or since.
To me, all of this: the novel’s plot, the Right-wing politics, even the little tearaway insert, raises the question: why is this the famous novel about architecture? I think part of that answer lies in Rand’s realworld influences.
There is a note from Rand at the outset of The Fountainhead, stating, in part: “No person or event in this story is intended as a reference to any real person or event.” But Rand was clearly writing with real people in mind. In researching Goddess of the Market, Burns
gained access to Rand’s personal papers, providing detailed insights into her work, collaborators, and creative process when she was writing The Fountainhead. To cover only a few of the characters: Peter Keating was based on architect Thomas Hastings; Gail Wynand was based on William Randolph Hearst, Guy Francon was based on architect Ely Jacques Kahn (whose office Rand volunteered at for months while working on The Fountainhead).
Howard Roark—even down to a project he designs in the novel—is based on Frank Lloyd Wright, who Rand originally saw as an inspiring figure.
“She really idolized him,” says Burns. “She hated being told her ideas and books were unrealistic, so Frank Lloyd Wright became an example of Howard Roark come to life.”
According to Burns, Rand shared early portions of The Fountainhead with Wright, seeking out a meeting with him and buying an expensive dress for the occasion. They met several times, though calling them friends is a stretch. Burns says that Rand eventually became disillusioned with Wright, following a visit to Taliesin, where she was left unimpressed by a culture of followers imitating a master without question. But “I honestly think she subconsciously modelled herself on that,” says Burns. “This is the age of the entourage: when you get famous enough, you get a group of five to six people who follow you around and act like you. And I think [Wright] set a template of what success means, that she then followed as a novelist.”
For his part, Wright seems to have initially disliked Rand, then warmed to her enough to design her a house, then reverted to disliking her again. In Ada Louise Huxtable’s Frank Lloyd Wright: A Life, he is described as thinking little of being a model for Roark in The Fountainhead, quipping meanly: “I deny the paternity and refuse to marry the mother.” He apparently changed his tune slightly after the book became a hit. Huxtable describes that Wright “tolerated” Rand, “but she was as opinionated as he was, and her visits to Taliesin were a trial.” Wright is said to have become irritated with her smoking in their last meeting, tossing her cigarette in the fire and ordering her to go. Rand also never built the house that Wright designed for her. Instead, she bought an existing house designed by Richard Neutra: a choice that Huxtable notes as being both cheaper for Rand, and potentially offensive to Wright, given that he saw Neutra as “an archenemy.”
Revisiting the story of Rand’s life, this type of falling-out doesn’t seem out of place. She had severe breaks with many people she knew, even within her close circle.
“I think there’s a big tension in her life between wanting to be a champion of rationality, and being a person very much driven by emotion and passion. Nonetheless, she had rationality set up in the [Objectivist] system, and if anybody didn’t follow it, she would reject them in a state of high emotion,” says Burns. “It was a romantic view of rationalism. . . if that can be said. She wasn’t a robotic, low-affect person, who just wanted to be rational all the time. She was subject to these sweeps of passion. I think that’s why she was drawn to rationality, maybe, because of the bound-ness.”
As for what The Fountainhead means to architecture as a profession, it’s important to think about. Fiction is fiction, but it shapes people’s conception of the world. The Fountainhead is a book with lasting impact, political and otherwise. Almost 80 years after its first publication, I was able to go to my local bookstore and buy a stocked copy right off the shelf.
I do think it’s worth interrogating whether a single “most famous fictional architect” is a worthwhile thing to have, especially if the character in question arrives deeply tied to a political viewpoint. I clearly don’t like Rand’s politics much, but it would be equally bizarre to me if Howard Roark were being written as propaganda from any other point on the political spectrum. Architects are not any sort of political monolith; they are an increasingly diverse group of professionals who often believe disparate things for their own reasons. I’d rather have the books I read reflect this complexity. To me, it makes for a better story.
REFORD GARDENS AT 60
TEXT Elsa Lam PHOTOS Jean-Christophe Lemay, except where indicated
REFORD GARDENS CELEBRATES ITS 60TH ANNIVERSARY WITH PLANS TO CONTINUE GROWING ITS LEGACY.
It’s a summer of anniversaries for Reford Gardens, located on the Lower St. Lawrence River, east of Quebec City. 2022 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Elsie Reford, who designed the gardens adjacent a salmon fishing lodge built by her uncle, CPR railway magnate Sir George Stephen. And it’s the 60th anniversary of the gardens being opened to the public, after they were acquired the Quebec government as a rural counterpart to the Montreal Botanical Gardens.
It’s also the 60th birthday of another pivotal person in the story of Reford Gardens: Alexander Reford, the great grandson of Elsie Reford. In the 1990s, when the Quebec government was revisiting its portfolio of parks, the Reford family became involved in talks with the community about how to preserve the gardens as a public destination. Alexander Reford was ultimately responsible for creating the non-profit organization that purchased the property from the Quebec government in 1995. That year, he left his position as Dean of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto to become the director of Reford Gardens. “It’s a pretty unusual history of private-public-private,” says Alexander of the property’s history.
ABOVE Created by urban designer Eadeh Attarzadeh and architect Saroli Palumbo, Forteresses is a set of modular systems intended to protect trees from humans. BELOW Estevan Lodge and the formal gardens are nestled in a spruce forest alongside the Lower St. Lawrence River.
ABOVE LEFT Designed by product and space designer Marie-Pier Gauthier-Manes, ceramicist and graphic designer Chloé Isaac, and 3D artist Victor Roussel, Lichen sets blankets of handmade earthenware rings atop planted mounds. The rings help with drainage and water retention, protecting the plants against drought. ABOVE LEFT Les huit collines, designed by Paris-based architecture and design collection ONOMIAU, is conceived as eight landscaped puzzle pieces that can fit together in a variety of ways.
Alexander’s plans for the property were grounded by maintaining the historic gardens and buildings on the site. But they quickly extended much further, and contemporary architecture has been integral to realizing that vision. In 2000, the garden launched the International Garden Festival, one of the first contemporary garden design events in the world. Since then, architecture and landscape design luminaries including Claude Cormier, Michael van Valkenburgh, Hal Ingberg, and Atelier le balto have contributed gardens alongside student and emerging professional winners of the annual garden design competition. The 25 plots designated for the contemporary gardens, which rotate out periodically, follow a masterplan developed for the site by landscape architects VLAN paysages and architects Atelier in situ, chosen through a 1998 ideas competition. The accompanying visitor’s pavilion, designed by Atelier in situ, garnered a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture in 2006.
Like establishing deeply rooted plants, the process of developing the site has demanded a gradual cultivation of relationships and financing. One piece of the VLAN and Atelier in situ entrance sequence designed 24 years ago—a series of panoramic images about the bioregion that will affix to a long entry wall—is just being completed this summer.
Numerous other architectural partnerships have also added to the site over time, as well as to the broader reach of Reford Gardens. A few years ago, a group of McGill architecture students, led by professor Michael Jemtrud, built a demountable stage on the site, to a design developed jointly by the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Music. They intended to transport it to Montreal for use during McGill’s 200th anniversary celebrations in 2021. The university’s plans were waylaid by the pandemic, and the stage has now been gifted to the Gardens. Many other university groups and institutions have also partnered with the site, using it for design-build workshops, experimental performances, or as a testbed for landscape design and horticultural research.
Reford Gardens’ partnerships are also tied to the local community. They are currently involved in a shoreline restoration project in the nearby town of Saint-Flavie, working with landscape architect and scholar Rosetta S. Elkin to identify edible native species with erosion control properties. The larger goal: to develop a landscaping prototype to protect the larger shoreline in the face of extreme weather, such as the unusually high tides in 2010 that ravaged the area’s landscape and devastated over 60 waterfront homes.
CANADIAN ARCHITECT INVITES ARCHITECTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS TO ENTER THE 2022 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
OPEN FOR ENTRIES
Deadline: September 12th, 2022 Architecture project entry fee: $195 * Architectural photo entry fee: $75 *
Since 1967, our annual national awards program recognizes the architectural excellence of projects in the design and construction phases.
Submissions will be accepted in PDF format, up to 12 pages with dimensions no greater than 11” x 17”. Total file size is not to exceed 25MB. There is also the option to submit a video up to two minutes in length. This year, we are also presenting the fourth edition of the Canadian Architect Photo Awards of Excellence, open to professional and amateur architectural photographers.
Winners of the architectural project and architectural photo competitions will be published in a special issue of Canadian Architect in December 2022.
For more details and to submit your entry, visit: www.canadianarchitect.com/awards
ABOVE Gravity Field is floating cloud of upside-down sunflowers, which will change over the summer months as the plants grow upwards towards the sun. The installation was designed by New York City landscape and public art studio Terrain Work. OPPOSITE TOP Just east of Reford Gardens, the Maison des stagières, designed by architect Pierre Thibault, hosts participants in the annual International Garden Festival. OPPOSITE MIDDLE Architectural interns Melaine Niget, Pierre-Olivier Demeule, and Antonin Boulanger Cartier designed forêt finie, espace infini? as a labyrinthine path in the woods. OPPOSITE BOTTOM, LEFT TO RIGHT Architect Kim Pariseau was commissioned to design the Elsie Chair to celebrate Elsie Reford’s 150th anniversary; Atelier Pierre Thibault’s Great Hall, a multi-purpose event space, is nearing completion.
The International Garden Festival has helped bring both global and local talent to the broader work in the Gardens. Montreal architect Kim Pariseau’s firm APPAREIL designed a garden for the Festival in 2019; this summer, the foyer of Estevan Lodge—the building now hosts exhibits and a farm-to-table restaurant—is graced with Pariseau’s solid red oak Elsie chairs, commissioned by the Garden for Elsie Reford’s anniversary.
One of Reford Gardens’ longstanding collaborators is Quebec architect Pierre Thibault, who first contributed a garden to the International Garden Festival in 2001. He’s since designed two more gardens for the festival, along with an open-air stage for performances nestled in the spruce forest and a guesthouse for festival participants.
Thibault’s most significant contribution to the site is now nearing completion: the conversion of a 1970s workshop into an event space called the Great Hall. The building will be flanked by a new carpentry workshop, an improved gardener’s workshop, and a new greenhouse. It’s part of a strategy to open the garden’s back-of-house spaces to visitors, and to enable year-round activities on the site. “We’re transforming the entire workshop area so that it will be available and amenable to the public,” says Alexander Reford. “People have increasing interest in the back end as well as the front end.”
The inaugural event for the space will be an exhibition of Geoffrey James’ photography of Frederick Olmsted’s parks. That marks another duo of anniversaries: James’ 80th birthday, and the 200th anniversary of Olmsted’s birth.
It’s also yet one more instance of how contemporary and historic mix in every aspect of Reford Gardens—a hard-won pairing in this rural location. Alexander recalls how some of the first visitors to Claude Cormier’s Blue Stick Garden, a playful take on the historic garden’s signature Himalayan Blue Poppies, were outraged, demanding their admission fee back. Now, contemporary sculptures dot the historic gardens, and visitors are on the whole delighted by the Festival’s offerings. Says Alexander: “We’ve taken the attitude that historic and contemporary can fit together.”
Reford Gardens, including the 23rd edition of the International Garden Festival, is open until October 2, 2022. It is closed for the winter season and reopens in early June 2023.
FÉLIX MICHAUD COURTESY ATELIER PIERRE THIBAULT
GROWING UP MODERN
By Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster (Birkhäuser, 2021) REVIEW Javier Zeller PHOTOS Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster
Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster’s Growing up Modern is among the more original and unexpected accounts of architectural modernism written in recent years. Architectural histories are typically stubbornly resistant to personal narratives from inhabitants and clients—let alone from children, whose experience of architecture is rarely recounted. This elegant book challenges academic convention, re-examining four iconic projects through the memories of the people who spent their childhoods living in them.
The four homes of Growing up Modern are so self-consciously avantgarde, so much associated with the rhetoric of modernism, that one expects the book to stridently argue for architecture’s ability to effect moral or aesthetic transformation. Instead, Jamrozik and Kempster’s deliberate focus on the childhood experiences of their four narrators delivers unexpected and delightful insights into these familiar projects. It ultimately offers lessons about the experience of architecture, and the enduring capacity of spaces and materials to act as vessels for memory.
The four dwellings that the book chronicles span 25 years of early European modernism, bracketing either side of the Second World War. They include Mies van der Rohe’s Tugendhat House, J.J.P. Oud’s rowhouse for the for the Weissenhof Seidlung exhibition, Hans Sharoun’s Schminke House, and Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille. Together, they present a cross-section of typologies, while the narrators who recall the projects reflect a range of social circumstances.
Each home is introduced through a short historical overview, accompanied by reproductions from the original architectural drawings—a welcome touch. This is followed up with the interviews at the core of the book.
Interspersed throughout the interviews are photographs of each of the narrators, both as children and from the present day. Key fragments from the interviews are underlined within the body of the text; some become the captions to the photographs. Graphic circles of varying diameters are also applied over plan diagrams of each home, highlighting the locations referred to in the interviews—an unusual, but ultimately very effective, means of guiding our spatial understanding of childhood memory. The account of each home is rounded out with contemporary photographs of the spaces by Jamrozik and Kemster, captioned with the children’s recollections.
The plan diagrams and photo captions combine to create a geography of memory, where certain places in each house assume greater importance in concert with the intensity of memories they evoke. So, the projecting balcony on the second floor of Oud’s townhouse, where Rolf Fassbaender pulled his mattress on warm summer nights to “sleep under the sky, under the stars” becomes the largest of the dots on that second-floor plan. Some surprising elements that often go unremarked in architectural histories are revealed through the interviews. For example, the boys’ and girls’ nurseries and servant spaces at the Tugendhat house, along with the passage connecting them to the mother’s room, are largely absent in descriptions of Mies’s early masterwork. In contrast, they take on a central role in the memories of the young Ernst Tugendhat. Similarly, a small shower for children‚ complete with a submarine door, is remembered by Gisèle Moreau as an exceptional amenity of the Marseille Block.
The quality of the recollections in each section varies with each interviewee’s time spent in the homes. While Gisèle Moreau lived in the Marseille block almost uninterrupted from birth to the present day (albeit in different apartments), Ernst Tugendhat lived in the
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE Gisèle Moreau grew up in Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille; Ernest Tugendhat recounts his memories of his family’s Mies van der Rohe-designed villa; for Helga Zumpfe, coloured glass portholes were a memorable feature of Hans Sharoun’s Schminke House; a view of J.J.P. Oud’s rowhouse for the Weissenhof Siedlung exhibition, which the authors studied through the eyes of Rolf Fassbaender.
Tugendhat house only until the age of eight, when his parents fled from the impending Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Not surprisingly, the book’s three pre-war examples, in particular, are freighted with their contexts of enormous social and political upheaval. The difficult thing that comes clear—even in the almost entirely apolitical context of this book—is the muddy mess of aesthetics and politics from this time.
Focusing as the book does on childhood recollections, the spectre of war mostly recedes in favour of a child’s-eye view of the world. The dissonance between the formal progressivism of Scharoun’s organic modernism and his client’s role as a pilot for the Luftwaffe—or even the import of the swastika that Fritz Schminke hung in his children’s playroom—lay outside of a child’s understanding of their home. But the coloured glass portholes of the house, positioned just at the height of Helga Zumpfe’s childhood gaze, along with the lovingly assembled photo book gifted by the architect to the Schminke children, give as much insight into Scharoun’s playful humanism as the iconic house’s sinuous nautical balconies.
This is where the value of the approach taken by Growing up Modern becomes most apparent. By allowing the narrators’ recollections to guide the documentation, we see these projects anew, as they were remembered and understood through lived experience. Jamrozik and Kempster’s manage a remarkable feat with their gentle but radical book, opening new territories for integrating personal narrative into architectural history, and gently teasing out connections between memory and the experience of place that are nothing less than foundational to architecture.
HOW DOES YOUR FIRM MEASURE UP?
IN A COMPACT NEW BOOK, FORMER SMITH CARTER PRINCIPAL AND C.O.O. RICK LINLEY DESCRIBES A SIMPLE METHOD FOR UNDERSTANDING THE FINANCIALS OF ANY ARCHITECTURE FIRM—AND WHAT THOSE FINANCIALS MEAN FOR MANAGING A PRACTICE. HERE’S AN EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK, EXPLAINING HOW TO BENCHMARK A FIRM’S PERFORMANCE USING SEVEN KEY FIGURES.
It’s critical to understand how the Scoreboard numbers relate both internally to each other and externally to the broader industry. All the numbers used in the Strong Practice Scoreboard relate internally back to net fee. For external benchmarking to the industry, this book uses the 2021 Deltek Clarity A&E Industry Survey data set. The Deltek data is segmented in three basic ways: all firms, upper quartile firms only, and all firms excluding upper quartile firms. For a more detailed look by firm size and geography, you’ll need to delve more deeply into the Deltek data and also look at other surveys.
1. FULL TIME EQUIVALENT The number of FTEs is a measure of firm size, but isn’t a good indicator of firm strength. FTEs include all personnel—principals, leadership, project people, marketing, financial, and administrative folks—all employees of the firm. There is no benchmark for FTEs because there is no optimal number. The size of your firm as measured by FTEs should be a function of your goals, aspirations, and how effectively you’re deploying your people.
2. NET FEES Net fees are also a measure of firm size, but practitioners are usually tight-lipped about this number. Like FTEs, there is no benchmark for net fees, but this single number is pivotal in making sense of your firm’s other metrics.
The Ratio—Net Fee per Full Time Equivalent Dividing net fee by FTEs produces a very useful benchmark. In addition to the 7 numbers in the Scoreboard, this one ratio provides the best shorthand gauge of your firm’s strength. Upper-quartile firms in the 2021 Deltek survey achieved an average of about $174,000 NF/FTE. All other firms (excluding upper-quartile firms) averaged about $140,000 NF/FTE. This ratio is influenced by a range of factors, from how you price your work to how efficient your team is.
To help gauge where your firm is positioned relative to the broader industry, the 2021 Deltek data is used to create three performance bands based on the NF/FTE ratio. The performance bands also provide a reference point to track your firm’s performance over time.
• Struggling firms: less than $120,000 NF/FTE • Strong firms: $120,000 to $170,000 NF/FTE • Super firms: more than $170,000 NF/FTE
marking data to adjust the performance bands so they suit your discipline, firm size, type of firm, the geography you operate in, and other considerations. Adjustments will also be required over time as market conditions fluctuate and for inflation impacts. With a little benchmarking at budget time, you can establish performance bands to help determine targets appropriate for your firm.
3. ADJUSTED PAYROLL AS PERCENTAGE OF NET FEE In a strong firm, adjusted payroll should be approximately 45% to 55% of net fee. This means that a strong firm should be spending about half its net fee on payroll for staff and principals—excluding fringe benefits. Payroll includes principal salary, but an adjustment may be required if principal salary is not aligned with the market. If principals are paid in salary supplemented by other forms of compensation such as bonuses and/or profit distributions, then a market-based salary needs to be assigned to principals as part of the payroll adjustment.
As an example, if the going market salary for the principal of a firm like yours is $140,000, but you are only paying yourself $100,000, then you need to increase the payroll number used in the Scoreboard by $40,000. It doesn’t mean you need to give yourself a raise, although you may want to consider that. It just means you need to make the adjustment when using the Scoreboard, otherwise your operating profits will be overstated.
4. OPERATING EXPENSES AS PERCENTAGE OF NET FEE In a strong firm, operating expenses should be approximately 25% of net fee. Some firms run lean, employing strategies to keep costs low such as offshoring, minimal fringe benefits, and other strategies. For firms that commonly invest heavily in administration, marketing, professional development, benefits, etc., operating expenses may exceed 25%. Either approach is valid, depending on how your practice is positioned in the marketplace. The secret is to consider each expense as an investment in the future of your practice and to keep the overall operating expenses within your target.
5. OPERATING PROFIT AS PERCENTAGE OF NET FEE For a strong firm, a reasonable target for operating profit should be between 20% and 25% of net fee. In the 2021 Deltek survey, the median profitability for upper quartile firms was about 27%. For all firms (excluding upper-quartile firms) the median profitability was about 11%. Think about that. If the median profitability for non-upper quartile firms was 11%, that means a large number of those firms had operating profits in the single digits. For small and midsized practices, single-digit profitability over the long term usually spells trouble.
6. PIPELINE AS PERCENTAGE OF NET FEE A strong and reliable pipeline is critical. No one can predict the future with certainty, but a well-built pipeline will allow you to predict your future workload with a pretty high degree of certainty.
The median backlog reported for all firms in the 2021 Deltek survey is six months. That means the total of all contracted but unbilled future work, if added together, represents six months of annual net fees. This doesn’t include prospect projects, just work that is already under contract. The problem with using backlog only is that it represents work that’s spread over many months or years in the future. The Scoreboard pipeline number is a rolling, twelve-month metric, and includes your estimation of both backlog and prospects. The twelve-month horizon makes for a more transparent crystal ball.
The pipeline of a strong firm should be slightly more than annual net fees in order to facilitate choice. Aiming for 125% of annual net fee for your twelve-month pipeline is a stretch for many firms, but well worth the investment of time and effort. That’s equivalent to approximately fifteen months of net fees. If your firm is growing, the pipeline may need to be larger to support your growth strategy.
7. CASH ON HAND AS PERCENTAGE OF NET FEE In a strong firm, the amount of cash you should have immediately available will depend on a number of factors. They include, but are not limited to, your tolerance for risk, the health of your pipeline, how predictable your profitability is, your work in progress (WIP) and accounts receivable (A/R) status, as well as the presence of any gorilla clients.
If growth is part of your strategy moving forward, you’ll have to decide to what degree growth will be financed by your own cash flow or financed by taking on debt. Again, it’s about your tolerance for risk.
Industry surveys of WIP and A/Rs over the years have consistently shown the median time from start of task to payment is about eighty-one days. Total WIP should be something less than one-twelfth (less than 30 days) of your annual gross fee. Total A/R amounts owing should be no more than approximately two-twelfths (60 days) of your annual gross fee. If you’re able to hit or beat those benchmarks, and if you’re generating healthy profits, you’ll have your cash flow under control.
Be cautious! Having more cash than you should inside the firm can also be a red flag. Cash provides a safety net. If the net is too large, it can encourage you to become complacent, deferring business decisions that need to be made in a timely fashion. Relying on a line of credit can promote the same ill-advised behaviour.
Ten to fifteen percent of annual net fee is a good guideline for cash on hand for a firm that is not experiencing significant growth. That’s equivalent to about two months of payroll and operating expenses. Cash on hand allows the firm to ride out small bumps in the economy or lulls between projects. That way firms can avoid dipping into a line of credit, taking out a loan, or relying on cash-calls.
To allow for major business disruptions, most principals hold funds outside the firm in their personal bank accounts and investments. With this approach, principals need to realize that if hard times befall the firm, they may be called upon to lend cash back to the business. Since a cash-call using after-tax dollars is painful, it acts as one more reason for leadership to keep the firm on solid ground.
Taking all the Scoreboard metrics into consideration will give you a quick overview of how well your firm is performing. You’ll be able to compare performance against previous reporting periods, as well as in comparison to the overall industry.
REMEMBER THIS: There are too many Key Performance Indicators in typical benchmarking studies and they’re too confusing. Staying focussed on the 7 Scoreboard benchmarks will keep the essential financials of your firm in context with the rest of the industry. For the latest Deltek benchmarks you can do an internet search for “Deltek Clarity A&E Industry Study” or go to www.strongpracticestrategies.com for a historical record of relevant Deltek benchmarks along with a current update.
Rick J. Linley, FRAIC, LEED AP leads Strong Practice Strategies, a consultancy helping leaders of emerging and evolving design firms who are focussed on building stronger practices. His work is informed by over thirty years of practice and business experience, culminating in his role as Principal/COO of Smith Carter Architects and Engineers Inc, a 200-person, multidisciplinary design firm (now part of Architecture49). Scoreboard Your Practice: 7 Numbers to Understand Your Design Firm’s Financials is available in eBook, paperback and hardcover versions at online booksellers including Amazon, Chapters Indigo, Apple Books, Google Play, and Kobo Store.
IN THE WAKE OF PROGRESS
TEXT Elsa Lam
PHOTOGRAPHER ED BURTYNSKY’S IMMERSIVE INSTALLATION TAKES OVER THE SCREENS OF TORONTO’S YONGE-DUNDAS SQUARE.
Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square is usually a canyon of advertising. But in a commission for this June’s Luminato festival, photographer Ed Burtynsky transformed the 22 screens in the square into a canvas for an immersive media piece entitled In the Wake of Progress.
Drawing on footage from his 40 years of photography and film projects, the 20-minute wordless piece traces humanity’s fall from Eden: moving from old growth forests to lands swept barren by clear cuts, and thence to suburbs, skyscrapers, and slums. Burtynsky’s iconic images of mountain-deep Carrera marble quarries, post-industrial shipbreakers, and blood-red copper tailing pools make an appearance, the latter set to an especially ominous passage of chanting in the cinematic soundtrack by Phil Strong.
“The whole idea was born out of wanting to create a feedback loop for Yonge-Dundas Square as the epicentre of consumer capitalism in Canada,” says Burtynsky. “We’re familiar with shopping for high-end fashion and with glass, concrete, and steel, but we don’t know where that glass comes from, or where the clothes are made, or where the waste goes. To make the world we know, there’s a whole other world needed—and it’s the scary one that can come from behind and get us.”
That shadow world is most poignant in the human images that opened the film Manufactured Landscapes, which also appear around the square: warehouses packed with Chinese factory workers, one group staring like living ghosts at the cameras. Trash pickers, sorting through mountains of discarded plastics, give a human face to first world wastefulness, pointing to how even environmentalist efforts such as recycling amount to virtue-signalling.
Just as the film starts with images of redwoods, it ends with waterfalls, suggesting a return to nature, or a flood that overtakes civilization—maybe both. “The piece is buttressed by nature on both sides,” says Burtynsky. “We’re part of the natural world, and if we lose sight of that, what’s at risk is ecological collapse.”
At a dusk screening, images of Hong Kong skyscrapers were reflected by the glass of surrounding buildings, multiplying and blending them into the Toronto setting; as darkness descended, an image with dozens of strip mall signs off a highway interchange merged with the neon backdrop of Yonge Dundas Square. The setting also brought about some sly juxtapositions: an image of garment factory workers took the place usually occupied by advertisements for a global fast fashion brand; photos of discarded rotary phones loomed over a cell phone store. The nighttime activity of Yonge Street participated in the drama, too: at one moment, real-world sirens competed with the soundtrack, a fire truck whizzing by beneath images of gas flares from an industrial plant.
A digital takeover of Yonge-Dundas Square involves an intense production effort to sync up footage across screens owned by eight different companies, each with their own systems and servers, and a need to adjust the lighting balance as the evening progresses. Two nights of screenings displaces some $1-million worth of advertising. “It’s the biggest public artwork I’ve ever worked on,” says Burtynsky. “To take over a whole square of the city—it’s not a small task.”
ABOVE For two nights, the installation juxtaposed images of resource exploitation and mass production with the stores and highrises of downtown Toronto.
Upper Arlington High School
The new $115 million high school in central Ohio is best described as flexible, collaborative and green. Efficient systems were essential, but school officials and architects also sought to design spaces that promoted flexibility and cooperation.
The performing arts center is one of the most highly-anticipated areas of the new high school. The center includes seating for 1,550 people, a full-deck orchestra pit, scene shop and two soundproof rooms for music students. The center is among the best high school performance venues in the nation and rivals the best performance centers in the region.
– Gary Henry, Superintendent for Wolfrum Roofing & Exteriors
Project Snapshot
• The new high school extends across 395,000 square feet and three stories. It includes a two-story library, an 11-lane indoor pool, gymnasium with a capacity of 2,000, learning spaces with natural light and sustainable energy systems.
• The previous building opened in 1956. Besides age, the district has seen increased enrollment, and needed more modern facilities for learning and sustainable energy systems
Acoustical Smoke Vents
• 4 BILCO smoke vents atop the performing arts center protect against noise intrusion and provide the security of automatic venting.
• The vents feature an industry-high STC-50 and OITC-46 sound ratings, and are found in many theaters and performing arts venues.
The perfect tool for your architectural needs
