CANADIAN ARCHITECT jul/18 health and well-being The
jul/18 v.63 n.07
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health and well-being
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canadian architect
July 2018
Doublespace Photography
04 viewpoint
Quadrangle’s Susan Ruptash calls for a more truly universal design.
06 News
New developments, new projects, awards, and letters to the editor.
10 insites
Trevor Boddy lauds Alison Brooks and Adam Caruso, the “AngloCanoids” at the Venice Biennale.
00 14
Meeting fra Mao e Nixon a Graz, 1971, Archivio 9999, from Utopie Radicali, now at the CCA. ABOVE
14 COMING HOME
The transformation of Casey House, a hospital for people living with HIV/AIDS. TEXT Stefan Novakovic
20 TAMING THE LEVIATHAN
Addressing the logistical challenges of Montreal’s massive CHUM healthcare complex. TEXT Adele Weder
26 review
Olivier Vallerand on the CCA’s Utopie Radicali: Florence 1966-1976.
30 report
Opening-week glimpses from the Venice Biennale of Architecture.
32 Calendar Adrien Williams
Design-related events across Canada and elsewhere.
34 backpage
A cinematic retrospective showcases filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni’s poetics of space.
The interior of Casey House, Toronto, designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects. Photo by Doublespace.
COVER
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The National Review of Design and Practice / The Official Magazine of the RAIC
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Lobby of 100 Broadview Avenue in Toronto, a residential conversion designed by Quadrangle with universal access.
Brandon Barre
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Shouldn’t all design be human-centred? TEXT
Susan Ruptash
Currently, the various cousins and alter-egos of universal design (accessible design, inclusive design, human-centred design) remain in the realm of selected advocates. For many architects and designers, this is considered a “speciality” area of design, pursued by few and mastered by fewer. A growing body of accessibility specialists has seen the opportunity left by the void in the profession and is helping to fill it, providing design services that often could be provided by architects. Part of our obligation as architects is to help drive social change. In my own capacity as an architect and the Accessibility Champion at Human Space, Quadrangle’s recently launched social-impact consultancy division, I recognized that it’s time for all architects and designers to incorporate the broad spectrum of universal design principles into their everyday practices. Our building codes and regulations are by nature slow to evolve, and consistently represent a bare minimum rather than good practice. Architects and designers should not rely on these baseline regulations for guidance, but should instead strive to move from basic compliance to best practice. Much has been written about why we need to pay more attention to universal design, largely focused on our aging population and the associated increase in physical limitations. But it comes down to social justice and untapped opportunity. It’s unacceptable that some people can make full use of our public spaces and buildings while others must make do with a more arduous or predetermined experience. When we embrace rather than just accommodate diversity, we devise better solutions for our workplaces, social spaces and urban realm. Embracing truly inclusive design principles results in spaces that are richly beautiful and full of surprising elements of delight for all users. To work their magic, inclusive design principles need to be fully integrated from the very beginning of the design process, and considered in all phases thereafter. If treated as an overlay—as merely another requirement
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or obligation—the full potential will never be seen. When designers shift their perspective from seeing an obligation to seeing opportunity, that’s when the magic starts to happen. There are other things that need to happen as well. The bylaws and building codes need to go further. Our attitudes must change. Additional funding sources for retrofitting must be developed. The elephant in this room is the vast stock of existing buildings that are ignored in our current specialized standards and funding will be required. But the onus is on us to stop building new barriers. Here’s what all architects and designers can do now: make this an integral part of your practice.
Talk to your clients, educate your employees, encourage your designers. Make it an integral part of your work, not an afterthought.
Editor (2017-2018) adele Weder, hon. mRAIC Editor (on leave) elsa lam, mRAIC Art Director Roy Gaiot assistant Editor Stefan novakovic Editorial Advisor Ian Chodikoff, OAA, FRAIC Contributing Editors Annmarie Adams, FRAIC Odile Hénault Douglas MacLeod, ncarb, MRAIC Regional Correspondents Halifax Christine Macy, OAA Regina Bernard Flaman, SAA Montreal David Theodore Calgary Graham Livesey, MRAIC Winnipeg Lisa Landrum, MAA, AIA, MRAIC Vice president & Senior Publisher Steve Wilson 416-441-2085 x105 sales MANAGER 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 monthly 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. Subscription Rates Canada: $54.95 plus applicable taxes for one year; $87.95 plus applicable taxes for two years (HST – #80456 2965 RT0001). Price per single copy: $6.95. Students (prepaid with student ID, includes taxes): $27.00 for one year. USA: $105.95 US for one year. All other foreign: $125.95 US per year. Single copy US and foreign: $10.00 US.
Do more. Aim to go far beyond the codes and regulations. Baseline compliance is not good enough. Incorporate flexibility and adaptability onto your designs. Needs change, people change, technologies change. Ensure that your work will stand the test of time.
Postmaster: please forward forms 29B and 67B to 101 Duncan Mill Road, Suite 302 Toronto, ON M3B 1Z3. Printed in Canada. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced either in part or in full without the consent of the copyright owner.
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Telephone 416-441-2085 x104 E-mail circulation@canadianarchitect.com Mail Circulation, 101 Duncan Mill Road, Suite 302, Toronto, ON M3B 1Z3
yourself and your team about universal and human-centred design. Study best practices, and see what the leaders around the world are doing. Understand the laws and regulations so you know the baseline.
Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Circulation Dept., Canadian Architect, 101 Duncan Mill Road, Suite 302 Toronto, ON M3B 1Z3.
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Seek input from end-users; consult with persons with disabilities. Work with accessibility specialists if your team needs additional support.
Collaborate.
There is no excuse for designing places, spaces or things that exclude people, whether it be through intention or neglect. All design should be human-centred. It’s time. Susan Ruptash, OAA, FRAIC is Principal Emeritus at Toronto-based Quadrangle.
2018-06-20 5:06 PM
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news what’s new
Monica Adair MRAIC, co-founder of Saint John-based ACRE A rchitects, initiated the Atlantic chapter; other founding members of BEAAtlantic are Alex Weaver Crawford, Kirby Tobin, Melissa Wakefield and the Architects Association of New Brunswick. Camille Mitchell serves as its managing director; Brigitte Shim of Shim Sutcliffe and Shirley Blumberg of KPMB Architects are advisors. The first Building Equality in Architecture chapter, known as BEAT, was launched in Toronto in 2015. Vancouver architects Jennifer Marshall and Shelley Craig of Urban Arts Architecture have vowed to launch a chapter on the west coast. www.beaatlantic.com www.beatoronto.com
Ema Peter
Patrick Condon running for Vancouver mayorship
ABOVE The T3 Office Building in Minneapolis, designed by Michael Green Architecture.
Katerra acquires Michael Green Architecture
Katerra, a Silicon Valley technology company striving to revolutionize the construction industry, and Vancouver-based Michael Green Architecture Inc. (MGA), a globally recognized Canadian leader in mass timber architecture, announced a partnership today that underscores a profound evolution in the design and construction industries. The two companies share the same vision for the future in which quality and efficiency align with reducing costs and affordability, from initial design, through the life of the building. This new partnership aims to bring together technology, manufacturing, and design excellence to offer more sustainable, cost effective, and elegant architecture options to North American and global markets.
Patrick Condon, a professor of urban design at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, has announced he is running to become Mayor of Vancouver. “I want to run for mayor because this city faces an existential crisis and too few are proposing real solutions,” he said in a public statement. Condon has been an ardent critic of the current city council’s development and transportation policies, particularly its pursuit of a hyper-expensive subway line that would go only partway to the university. (See his Viewpoint editorial, “Subway Follies, in the March 2018 edition of Canadian Architect.) His platform is dominated by housing issues, including the price pressures created by “waves of global cash” flooding the city’s real estate markets.
PROJECTS Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes to design National Bank HQ
National Bank has tapped Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes for its new Montreal headquarters. “We are honoured to be designing National Bank’s new head office, a landmark and unique legacy for the City of Montreal,” said senior partners Anik Shooner and Jean-Pierre LeTourneux. www.msdl.ca www.nbc.ca
Atelier TAG and Architecture49 win Saint Joseph’s Oratory
Atelier TAG and Architecture49 have won the competition to revitalize the Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal. The winning concept incorporates physical, historical and spiritual elements into the reconfiguration design for the inside of the Basilica’s dome and the museum spaces, which will give access to the top of Mount Royal. www.ateliertag.com architecture49.com
MacKimmie Complex design unveiled
The University of Calgary has released renderings of the MacKimmie Complex and Professional Faculties Building Project, now under construction. Designed by DIALOG, the facility aims to be a high-performance net-zero carbon building. The complex comprises a renovated tower and block with an atrium link between the two buildings. www.dialogdesign.ca www.ucalgary.ca
www.katerra.com www.mg-architecture.ca
Building Equality in Architecture in Atlantic Canada
During the 2018 RAIC Festival of Architecture in St. John, New Brunswick, a team of architects launched a Maritime branch of BEA (Building Equality in Architecture.) The advocacy group, first launched in Toronto, seeks to engage and empower female architects, who are often challenged to reach their highest potential in the profession because of systemic and overt discrimination, competing demands in personal lives, and historic lack of mentorship and pre-established professional networks.
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Rendering of the MacKimmie Complex and Professional Faculties by DIALOG.
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Château Laurier revised expansion unveiled
Maritime Architectural Design Excellence Awards announce inaugural winners
Refined for a third time, the contentious design for the expansion of Ottawa’s Château Laurier was presented to the city’s Built Heritage Sub-Committee in June. Designed by Toronto’s architectsAlliance, the addition’s schematic design has been revised to feature prominent limestone, breaking up the apparent bulk of the new building while creating a stronger aesthetic dialogue with 1912 hotel. While some lauded the new design, Heritage Ottawa called the proposal “the most disgraceful act of heritage vandalism of our generation.” architectsAlliance principal Peter Clewes countered that the modernist expansion appropriately contrasts with and honours the older building, and will properly reflect the period in which it is built.
The inaugural Maritime Architectural Design Excellence Awards were presented in June by the Architects Association of Prince Edward Island, Architects’ Association of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Association of Architects. Fowler Bauld & Mitchell won two Awards of Excellence: for the Cabot Links Lodge in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and for Halifax Central Library, for which it served as the local architect with renowned Danish firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen. A number of projects won Awards of Merit, including Amphithéâtre Communautaire d’Edmundston by ABCP architecture et urban-
isme; Galerie d’Art Beaverbrook Art Gallery Expansion in Fredericton by Mackay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects; Southport multifamily project in Halifax by Michael Napier Architecture; Unbridled Path in Rothesay, New Brunswick, by ACRE Architects; Charles P. Allen High School in Bedford, Nova Scotia by Architecture49; and Kentville Library in Kentville, Nova Scotia, by Houdini Design Architects. As well as its Award of Excellence, Fowler Bauld & Mitchell won merit awards for the elegant House in Scotch Cove, designed by FBM partner Susan Fitzgerald in East Chester, Nova Scotia, and the Bible Hill Consolidated Elementary School in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia.
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www.aanb.org www.nsaa.ns.ca www.aapei.com
www.architectsalliance.com www.heritageottawa.org
Core Architects design kicks off Mississauga’s 15-acre M City
Developer Edward Rogers and Mayor Bonnie Crombie kicked off construction for Phase One and Two of Mississauga’s new $1.5 billion master planned community, M City. Designed by Core Architects, the project’s first two towers will anchor the project by Rogers Real Estate Development Limited. In development since 2007, the firm enlisted Urban Capital Property Group to manage the process of transforming the sprawling 15-acre site into a catalyst of Mississauga’s urban transformation. www.corearchitects.com
AWARDS AND HONOURS
Ten architecture, interior design and landscape architecture projects in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan were recognized at the 2018 Prairie Design Awards (PDA) ceremony in May in Banff, Alberta. Awards of Excellence went to Fountain Springs Housing in Winnipeg, by David Penner Architect with h5 Architecture; Shane Homes YMCA at Rocky Ridge in Calgary, by GEC Architecture; Remai Modern Art Gallery in Saskatoon by KPMB Architects with Architecture49 and PFS Studio; and Castle Downs Park Pavilion in Edmonton by gh3. Six other projects received Awards of Merit. A complete list of winning projects is available at the website below. www.prairiedesignawards.com/2018
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Lindsay Reid
Prairie Design Awards
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Fountain Springs Housing, WInnipeg, by David Penner Architect with h5 Architecture.
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news MEMORANDA
Corrections
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Submissions open for National Urban Design Awards
In the article “Two Rivers Run Through It” (June 2018), featuring the Two Rivers Meats outlet designed by Campos Studio, the magazine erroneously referred to the lead designer Javier Campos as an architect. Additionally, the lighting credited to Tom Chung should have specified that he designed the Spun Light over the customer counter, rather than the f luorescent fixtures. Canadian Architect regrets the errors.
Being “old school,” I would appreciate seeing more floor and site plans. Written descriptions only partially describe the designs. It seems to be a common trend from industry periodicals to leave out these key elements. One plan is worth a thousand (or at least 10) photos. Otherwise, keep up the good work.
The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP), and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) announce that entries are now being accepted for the 2018 National Urban Design Awards. The biennial awards program recognizes excellence in urban design and raises public awareness of the important role of urban design in sustainability and quality of life in Canadian cities. There are six different categories of urban design projects: urban design plans, urban architecture, civic design projects, urban fragments, community initiatives, and student projects. One award will be bestowed for each category. The submission deadline is August 15, 2018 at 4:00pm; winners will be announced in October. Additional information on eligibility, and submission requirements are available at the RAIC website below. www.raic.org
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Spun Light, designed by Tom Chung, at Campos Studio’s Two Rivers Meats.
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FEATURE WALLS
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FURNITURE
Dale Archibald, Archibald & Fraser Architects, Antigonish, Nova Scotia
Canadian Architect has really improved over the last five years. When I moved back to Alberta five years ago after practising in San Francisco, I found the magazine wasn’t giving me information on local architectural events, conferences and other things specific to our field. That information is always available now online and I appreciate it greatly. As for photography and critical reviews: well done all around. We have a small but exciting field in Canada and the magazine does a good job presenting it. I would ask for a few more heritage-related projects each year: adaptive re-use and sensitive interventions in existing buildings. James Reid, taigh Architecture, Calgary, Alberta
LIGHTING
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insites
Luke Hayes
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THE ANGLO-CANOIDS Text
Trevor Boddy
At the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture, Canadian expatriates Alison Brooks and Adam Caruso ASSUme a starring role
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Two of the most astonishing installations at the 2018 Venice Biennale are by Canadian architects whom most Canadian architects have never heard of. Born and educated in Canada, and with only the rare evidence of a round British vowel to give away spending almost their entire professional careers abroad, Alison Brooks and Adam Caruso are amongst the highest-regarded architects of their generation in the United Kingdom. They are both in their fifties, and now arriving at a scale and range of commissions that correspond with their talents. And these two are but the tip of the iceberg of Canadians of all ages working in British offices, and, increasingly, opening their own practices.
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paul riddle
opposite The view looking up from inside one of the totems from the ReCasting installation in the Arsenale. left The cloister that Brooks designed at Exeter College Cohen Quadrangle at Oxford University in England. Above The four “totems” of the ReCasting installation are configured of poplar plywood and mirrors to evoke a spatial, emotional and sensory experience. below The optical experience of a lone visitor inside one of the ReCasting totems at the Venice Biennale.
Alison Brooks Halfway between test construction mock-ups and sculptural installations, the walkable in-gallery building montage with stairs has become a staple in Biennale and art gallery architectural exhibitions. Nearby Alison Brooks’ ensemble of building elements in digitally-cut wood is Indonesia’s pavilion, hand-crafted from woven reed walls around wooden steps to make settings for maquettes of diverse regional building traditions there. It has seldom been done as well anywhere, however, as Brook’s installation in the former rope-making hall of the Venice’s Arsenale. Unlike most installations there, a tower of radial fins rises to the scale
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luke hayes
Meet the Anglo-Canoids There’s a grand tradition of this, notably Vancouver-trained London modernist Welles Coates, one of the first architects to build in the full-blown International Style in Britain. Today’s cohort of expat Canadians in London are sometimes gathered together under the veterinarian-sounding rubric of “The Anglo-Canoids,” a term I first heard from architect Trevor Horne. The University of Toronto-trained Horne, who founded his London firm in the mid-1970s, has designed significant housing and a dozen galleries. Another expat, Toronto-born-and-educated Jamie Fobert, is now completing the Tate St. Ives Gallery and many other significant projects. The Anglo-Canoids have dominated buildings for the arts and education in Britain in recent years. The overseas architectural community is eagerly anticipating the September opening of Alison Brooks’ Exeter College at Oxford University, a project whose vaulted interiors closely correspond to her Biennale installation. Together, the four firms of Brooks, Caruso, Horne and Fobert have designed 50 galleries, museums and studios—more buildings for the arts than all of their classmates combined from McGill, Waterloo and Toronto who stayed in Canada. Something is going on here.
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of the vast Corderie, shaping what she calls a collection of four contemporary “totems” linked by stairs, all of which lead the eye to the 400-year-old hand-cut oak beams above. Space here is more implied than constructed; passages appear through double sets of mirrors, multiplying her spaces to infinity. A native of Toronto and a graduate of the University of Waterloo’s school of architecture (with its horizon-widening co-op program), Brooks came to live permanently in London in 1988, founding her own firm in 1997, which has since become one of the most lauded in the United Kingdom. Alison Brooks Architects has particular strengths in buildings for the arts and academe, as for the other Anglo-Canoids, but also significant experience shaping highly livable medium to high density housing estates, evident in her second Biennale installation, called “City (e) State.” This aspect of her portfolio has led directly to her first major Canadian project, a Vancouver condominium complex now underway for Rize A lliance developments. With an honorary degree from her alma mater and public lectures in Vancouver and elsewhere in Canada, Brooks is reconnecting, strengthening the can in Anglo-Canoid. Adam Caruso With Brexit in the offing, Britain is in economic and cultural turmoil unlike anything since World War II. Adam Caruso and his partner Peter St. John, working with visual artist Marcus Taylor (the first such collaboration for the British Pavilion) faced a challenge in attempting to represent Britain in times of turbulence. Naturally enough, they turned to Shakespeare, in particular “The Tempest” for its narrative of being washed up on a Mediterranean isle. Their audacious Biennale concept is called “Island” and consists of literally doing nothing to the blank white gallery walls inside the British Pavilion, first built in 1897 as a tea-house in a pre-pavilion Giardini. Pushing past the pretentious and dysfunctional emptiness of Minimalist architects, the design team intend these empty spaces to be intensely used throughout the Biennale, with an ambitious string of musical and poetical performances, symposia, talks, and performance art planned for them. Adam Caruso, who grew up in Montreal and studied architecture at McGill University, says fostering non-distracting spaces for public use was his way of rising to the “Freespace” curatorial challenge by Biennale curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects, Dublin (see their brilliant ITEC engineering faculty build-
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Deck plan 1:200
ing in Lima). The catalogue for “Islands” is one of the most seductive and literary I have ever seen from architects, with pointed essays by Caruso and Penelope Curtis, illustrated with documentary photographs of early Trinidadian immigrants to Britain, a facsimile in full colour of every page from a Victorian edition of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and some street-wise poetry by the perfectly-named Kate Tempest. There is actually some building here by Caruso St. John, but it is subtle, many mistaking it for a building conservation scaffold, that universal form found in both rotting Venice and leaky Vancouver. Extending out from the middle of the cottage roof of the British Pavilion, half-way up the architects have built out a temporary new cantilevered deck, more space for performance, and a wonderful perch to overlook the other pavilions (including strange little-brother pavilion Canada next door, newly reconstructed), and best of all, a clever means of returning this building to its original use by serving tea to one and all up there every day at 4:00. Could anything be more British?
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Philip Heckhausen
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Uncomfortable Conclusions Why have London’s intellectual and often art-related practices led by Canadians succeeded in a way that most of their own compatriots’ firms have not? Some answers are evident, such as the opportunities offered by design competitions, which are increasingly mandated by the European Community but still far too rare in this country outside of Quebec. Even more noteworthy is how British versus Canadian architectural cultures have given the Anglo-Canoids a leg up. (Don’t take my word for it; look at the websites of Caruso St. John and Alison Brooks Architects to see the breadth of their cultural accomplishment.) Canadian architects hardly know each other, with communication and community links running north-south into the United States and online everywhere else. Canadian art galleries rarely show architecture and design, and the federal government’s financial and logistical support for our Venice Biennale architectural representatives, although recently augmented, is still paltry relative to other countries.
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opposite Part of the “Island” presentation: conceptual illustration of Great Britain’s Holy Rosary Church at Shettihalli; designed by John Morgan Studio. Opposite and aBOVE Site plan and photo of elevated outdoor “found space” constructed around the British Pavilion.
Canadian architectural culture has become chary over the past few decades since its peaks of innovation in the days of Arthur Erickson and EXPO 67. Gallery boards and institutional clients are now more disposed to granting commissions to the usual suspects, and nothing out of the ordinary, please. In this vacuum, the Anglo-Canoids could do very well indeed back here. I wish them the best—but I do urge them to move back quickly. Trevor Boddy, FRAIC is a Vancouver-based architectural critic and curator. Look for his expanded text on Anglo-Canoids at canadianarchitect.com/features.
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COMING HOME The transformation of Casey House, a groundbreaking hospital for people living
In keeping with the original Casey House mandate, the facility’s renovation and extension has been designed to avoid a conventional hospital appearance, and instead evokes the ambience of a home.
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with HIV and AIDS, brings dignity and intimacy
Casey House Hariri Pontarini Architects with ERA TEXT Stefan Novakovic PHOTOS Doublespace Photography PROJECT
ARCHITECTS
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From the street, it’s a quietly assertive presence. A glass box rests demurely above a stately Victorian home, while the rest of the building unfolds horizontally in a quilted interplay of brick, stone and glass. You enter from a small door nestled behind the Jarvis Street mansion and behold the reception desk tucked to the side and, before you, a lobby overlooking the verdant courtyard at the building’s heart. Here, a stone fireplace sits at the foot of a limestone wall that anchors the space, which reaches
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Most of the interior spaces of Casey House are strategically flooded with natural daylight. lEft Materials and furnishings are selected with the goal of creating a warm and intimate atmosphere. The hearth completes the home-like setting. lEft
up to the second floor to take in light from the windows above. It feels more like a living room than a lobby, which is fitting for a place meant to feel more like a home than a hospital. This is Casey House. Founded in 1988, the Toronto institution is the only hospital of its kind in the world. Dedicated solely to people with HIV/AIDS, the facility is devoted to what remains a stigmatized illness, one which disproportionately afflicts some of the most marginalized and vulnerable members of the population. Thirty years ago, it was a place to die. The first patient was brought in by a medical team whose members wore gowns, gloves and masks; he hadn’t felt the direct physical touch of another person in months. At Casey House, he was met with an embrace. In the ensuing decades, the treatment and prognosis of HIV/AIDS has improved drastically, becoming a condition to live with rather than a disease to die from. All the while, the notion of “embrace” has remained the Casey House ethos. Although the new home on Jarvis Street sits just across the street from the house that founder June Callwood first transformed into a hospital in 1988, the patient experience is a very different one. The warmth and openness that has always been present in the staff and community is now expressed by the building itself. Designed by Siamak Hariri of Toronto’s Hariri Pontarini Architects, the project has introduced a nearly 59,000-sq.-ft. addition to a handsome Victorian house, generating not just active healthcare space but also areas for offices, consultations, meetings and public events. The 1875 house, which had been designed by the Toronto firm Langley, Langley & Burke, was stately but decrepit, colloquially known as the “Grey Lady” when it was purchased by the Casey House foundation in 2001. Now restored to its original red brick and sandstone, by local heritage specialists ERA Architects, the building projects a meaningful streetfront presence. Past the lobby, a pair of hallways flank either side of the courtyard, whose glass walls illuminate the length of the interior. This simple gesture sets the building apart from most contemporary healthcare facilities, which
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continue to favour the stark fluorescent efficiency of double-loaded corridors, creating interstitial spaces that serve only to shuttle clients (the preferred term for outpatients at Casey House) and staff through the hospital. Not here. On the ground floor, the corridor deftly merges into the main dining room, which looks out onto both the playfully articulated courtyard and the street. Upstairs, the sunlit corridors resolve at another social space, programmed as a flexible hybrid of kitchen and breakfast/television room. Uninterrupted sightlines down the corridors generate a horizontal sense of openness, but at a human scale that provides a sense of comfort. All of it feels welcoming: spaces of quiet and airy beauty. Touring the joint, I find myself tempted to linger, sit down, find a cup of coffee. For Casey House CEO Joanne Simons, that feeling of caring and welcome inform much of the building’s character. In 2018, successfully treating HIV/AIDS is as much about what Simons calls “the social determinants of health” as it is about prescribing the right cocktail of drugs, she tells me. Although recent medical advances enable very effective management of HIV/AIDS, the socio-economic circumstances of many clients make successful treatment difficult. “About a fifth of our clients are homeless,” notes Simons, “and many more struggle with unstable of insufficient housing.” Even in 2018, people with HIV/AIDS continue to be stigmatized. Many come from marginalized communities, while dealing with other chronic illnesses and struggling with addiction, while about half of the clients are also over 50 years of age. “People are often in crisis when they come to us,” says Simons. For clients, maintaining a consistent medical regimen requires a baseline of stability, which the hospital strives to nurture. It also requires bonds of trust and comfort between clients and staff, which are not always easy to seal with individuals who have been pushed to the margins of society. Casey House needs to be more than just a hospital—and it is. By hosting movie nights, art therapy, cooking classes, book club, coffee hour, bingo and yoga, Casey House aims to knit together a social fabric that fosters health and wellness. “Oftentimes, it’s those casual events that bring people
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The 1875 mansion on Jarvis Street was restored in consultation with ERA Architects and is contiguous with the new construction. The open space at the heart of the facility is visible from every corridor and each of the inpatient rooms. Through operable windows that allow for fresh air and cross-ventilation, every inpatient enjoys an unobstructed garden view from their bed.
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in for the first time,” says Simons, “and they help to close that boundary.” Here, the architecture plays a key role. In creating spaces that are welcoming and familiar, the design transcends the uncomfortable boundary between the ordinary and the institutional. The profusion of greenery — including a rooftop garden — light, and open space makes for an inviting healthcare environment. The warm material palette of wood and rough-cut stone does much to inspire a sense of comfort, but because of the strict sanitary requirements of healthcare facilities, these relatively porous (and therefore germ-harbouring) materials are rarely used in conventional healthcare facilities, whose designs consequently lack a sense of texture. Extensively coated, however, the walnut and limestone meet all of the Ministry of Health’s requirements. “It was a hell of a challenge to get it right,” says Hariri. The results are worth it. For Hariri, this is familiar territory, which he consistently refines in his projects. A similar material interplay, complete with the fireplace in the lobby, is found in his design for the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario; in the McKinsey & Company Toronto headquarters, and in the recently completed Jackman Law School at the University of Toronto. All of these projects imbue diverse typolo-
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gies with the intimacy of the home. A willingness to sweat the details also elevates the design and the corresponding function. On the upper floor, the bedrooms, examination rooms, offices, and recreational spaces all have windows. Patient rooms are designed so that laundry and waste can be compartmentalized and removed without disturbing clients. Similarly, medical consoles can be hidden away behind a wood panel above each bed, putting away the hospital in favour of everyday life. On the ground floor, the dining room’s exposure to the street is carefully mediated by landscaping and topography, balancing openness with privacy. “We’re coming out of the shadows of shame,” Simons explains as we pass from the contemporary addition into the 1875 heritage home. Although a more declarative identity was sought with the new building, the continued stigma faced by HIV/AIDS patients means that restraint and privacy are still very much part of the vocabulary. As such, the design often deals in poignant subtleties. Outside, the pattern of Hariri’s new façade references the quilt, a popular memorial symbol of the disease. Inside, Simons takes me to the front of the old house, past a stunning restored barrel-vaulted ceiling, to a simple foyer with a desk and a candle by the window. “This is June Callwood’s desk,” she says, “and whenever a member of our community dies, we light
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Office Therapy Room Entrance Vestibule Reception Vestibule Reception Assessment Room Crisis Room
8. Dining 9. Kitchen 10. Loading Area 11. Lockers 12. Exterior Courtyard 13. Meeting Room
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the candle.” In the evening, you can see it from outside, she explains, and I feel my heart catch in my throat as she does. There is no grand design gesture in this small space, and there needn’t be. Instead, the language of restraint allows the desk its rightful and devastating symbolic power. All of this speaks to just how very different this place is from a traditional hospital. In the 21st century, the claim of designing a healthcare facility that “doesn’t look like a hospital” is ubiquitous, and often shallow. We build them bigger than ever, favouring suburban sites and bulky footprints that too often give little regard to the human scale and the pedestrian experience. Lazy bureaucratic paeans to the patient experience result in little more than big atrium lobbies and occasional splashes of solid colours across taupe walls. Casey House shows another way of doing things. But if HIV/AIDS treatment continues to progress, perhaps we’ll reach a point where we don’t need even need such a hospital. “Hopefully, we go out of business,” says Simons, stressing that the eradication of new HIV/AIDS infections could take place within the next decade. But if the hospital is lucky enough to soon become obsolete, we ought to hope the building remains much longer. If only as a reminder that architecture itself can help heal the body and, however briefly, lift the heart.
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1 Entrance Vestibule 2 OFFIce 3 Therapy Room 4 Reception Vestibule 5 Reception 6 Assessment Room 7 Crisis Room 8 Dining 9 Kitchen 10 Loading Area
11 Lockers 12 Exterior Courtyard 13 Meeting Room 14 Living Room 15 Interactive Space 16 Community Kitchen 17 Elevator 18 Service Elevator 19 Parking Ramp
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Client Casey House | Architect Team Siamak Hariri, FRAIC; Michael Boxer, Jeff Strauss, Edward Joseph, Howard Wong, Cara Kedzior, Andria Fong, Rico Law | Structural Entuitive | Mechanical/Electrical WSP Canada | Landscape Mark Hartley Landscape Architect | Interiors Hariri Pontarini Arhcitects & IBI Group | Contractor BIRD | Food Service Kaizen Foodservice Planning | Code Consultant David Hine Engineering | Acoustics Swallow | Security Mulvey & Banani | Area 5,480 m 2 | Budget $40 M | Completion August, 2017
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TAMING THE LEVIATHAN
The massive new CHUM healthcare complex presents a case study in addressing impossible challenges Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal CannonDesign with NEUF Architect(e)s TEXT Adele Weder PHOTOS Adrien Williams, except as indicated PROJECT
ARCHITECTS
Love it or hate it, no-one in Montreal can ignore the new Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal—the CHUM. It is gargantuan, all three million square feet and two full city blocks of it. It is distinctive, with a massive curtainwall façade of variegated hue. And, perhaps most admirable of all, it is built, finally, after decades of political squabbling over its location and cost. Known by its acronym—pronounced shoom —it has come to fruition as a public-private-partnership, a P3—that damnable process spreading across the country, seemingly invented for
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ABOVE Embedded in the CHUM’s facade is “La vie en montagne,” by Mathieu Doyon and Simon Rivest, one of 13 public artworks integrated into the project. opposite Stairway and public space near the Sanguinet Street entrance.
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ABOVE The street-level view from rue Saint-Denis. At left is a partial view of the reconstructed 1865 Holy Trinity steeple; straight ahead is the portion of reconstructed rectory facade inside the lobby. upper right Looking up to the ceiling of reconstructed church spire. Lower right The Maison Garth façade as seen from inside the lobby.
the benefit of politicians and contractors and the detriment of architecture. The P3 design process (or “PPP,” as they call it in Quebec) too often offers little opportunity for critical design intent, let alone design excellence. The CHUM team have grappled with tremendous logistical challenges—starting with the requirement to stuff three million square feet into the heart of downtown Montreal. That in itself was a mandate that many Montrealers had disagreed with from the get-go, but that’s what the architects were handed. The project still receives sotto voce flak for its gargantuan presence, but that was a given: it’s hard to imagine an architectural team that could cram that much square footage on two city blocks without a zero lot line on a good part of its perimeter, as the CHUM has. And, to be sure, its Viger Avenue façade reads as a glass fortress wall. But it could have been much, much more intimidating. “We addressed this proposition head on, understanding that within the PPP process, we have to identify, develop and maintain as many ‘moments’ as possible at as many scales as possible,” says Andrew King, one of the project’s lead architects on the CannonDesign team. “This is with the hope these will converge into a good building.” King, who has since moved on to Montreal-based Lemay, knew that size would be the biggest challenge. “We applied critical design methodol-
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ogies almost immediately to develop strategies for massing and scale and composition,” he says. Part of that methodology was to break down the massing from a conceptual starting point of a huge, imposing, solid block into three discrete towers. Fitting in the necessary programming of a 772-bed hospital compelled the team to devise alternate ways of using conventional hospital space, says Azad Chichmanian, who led the NEUF team. “We were able to convince the ministry, for example, that in a fast-track process it would be okay to put two doctors in one office, because they’re never there at the same time.” CannonDesign architect Elizabeth Rack (now with Perkins+Will) devised a strategy for eliminating the need for laundry and garbage chutes: automated carts gather the sheets and trash throughout the hospital, saving precious space. “Technically we were non-compliant,” says Chichmanian; the chutes had been a requirement. “We had to argue that the robotic carts could fulfill the role instead.” And then there is all that glass, everywhere. “One million square feet of curtainwall, which is crazy in itself,” allows Chichmanian. “We had to find a way to make this building not feel like a typically intimidating, opaque hospital in the way that Quebecers see all the other hospitals.” The glazing on the Saint-Denis side is the most transparent,
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allowing the outside world a long view into the main lobby and reception area. “The interface on Saint Denis is very much the public space,” says Chichmanian. The CHUM is built on the former site of, among other structures, the 1865 Holy Trinity Church. The church is now obliterated, but by official mandate its steeple lives on, dismantled stoneby-stone and rebuilt in the cutaway corner of Saint-Denis and Viger Avenue, which serves as one of the hospital’s entrances. The reconstructed steeple is wonderful: you can step inside and be surrounded by it, breaking the sense of being in an officious healthcare facility for a few restorative minutes. A few metres away is the other “heritage” component: a reconstructed portion of stone wall from the centuries-old Maison Garth rectory. It ostensibly provides material continuity with the steeple, and streetfront engagement with the passers-by on rue Saint-Denis who see it through the glass. But what reads as a heritage building that you behold through a glass vitrine is in reality just the illusion of a building, an element that feels like a deception when you walk inside and see how little there is left of it. Elsewhere, the ubiquitous glass facade is tinted, partly for privacy and energy savings, and partly to break up expansive planes of glass with variegated hues. The extensive glazing brings a generous amount
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oppositE The passerelle, an elevated staff walkway that provides a shortcut between two of the buildings. For staffers, its walls project a constellation of pinpoint light by day, from the outside in. At night, it’s the reverse: interior artificial lighting projects dots of light to passers-by below. oppositE below Conceptual sketch by Andrew King of planned final massing, with lozenge-shaped amphitheatre surrounded by open public space. above Looking down from the 25th floor to the sculpted lawn shapes of the eighth-floor rooftop terrace.
of daylight into the hospital, but at a higher cost than many more opaque options. Jocelyn Stroupe, who led Cannon’s interior design team on the project, argued for the qualitative benefits of daylight, providing the P3 consortium with published research documenting the faster healing times—and, as a bonus for the bean-counters, cost savings—that correlate with patients’ access to daylight. Ah, but what about the maintenance of that transparency? When I visited the CHUM, mere days after its official opening last November, the glass façade already looked dirty and cloudy in parts. A senior designer on the CHUM project attributed the glass façade’s initial dirtiness to squabbling among unions and other players over who would pay for the cleaning—a tiff whose continued lack of resolution will now require a more expensive professional re-buffing. CHUM, a rising Leviathan, is growing even larger now: construction is under way for the final phase, schematically designed by the CannonDesign-NEUF team and scheduled for completion around 2021. For this next phase, the massing will be more open, with groundlevel public space around a lozenge-shaped ampitheatre, generating a structure more truly integrated with the street and the wider public.
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“The next phase is where the project gives back to the city,” says King, “through a public plaza and human scale amphitheatre, as well as the ultimate reconfiguring of the public realm within and outside the building. The CHUM ’s identity will emerge here, we hope.” The P3 juggernaut has handed this final phase over to a different consortium, led by Jodoin Lamarre Pratte Architectes/Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux and Pomerleau Contracting to carry it out. The plan is to follow the CannonDesign-NEUF concept to create an open, integrated, street-friendly face for what could otherwise end up as an architectural behemoth. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Client Construction Santé Montréal | Architect Team CannonDesign: Jose Silva Andrew King, FRAIC; Elizabeth Rack, Christine Cavataio, Jocelyn Stroupe, Gustavo Lima. NEUF architect(e)s: Azad Chichmanian, Jean François Trahan, Chris Ilg, Lilia Koleva, Jean-Louis Léger, Allen King, Simon Bastien, Nicolay Boyadjiev | Heritage DFS Architecture & Design | Structural Pasquin St Jean | Mechanical HH angus, Roche | Electrical HH angus | civil Groupe SM | Landscape NIP Paysage | Interiors annonDesign + NEUF architect(e)s | Contractor Construction Santé Montréal | Area 278,709 M 2 | Budget $2 billion | Completion Fall 2017
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ITALY’S ROGUE UTOPIANS TEXT
Olivier Vallerand
THE RADICAL ERA OF MODERN FLORENCE TAKES OVER THE CANADIAN CENTRE FOR ARCHITECTURE
The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) welcomes visitors to its current exhibition, Utopie Radicali: Florence 1966-1976, with Remo Buti’s Piatti di Architettura (1962-1975), a long table set up with plates adorned with architects’ drawings. This domestic setting hints at the Museum of Modern Art ’s seminal 1972 exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, curated by Emilio Ambasz, which introduced 1960s Italian design to a North American audience. The CCA exhibition focuses on the more radical representatives specifically from Florence, adding lesser-known protagonists to the more famous Superstudio, Archizoom, and 9999 that were part of the MoMA exhibition. But whereas MoMA presented these investigations through “environments” that were directly criticizing the political and social contexts of their era, the CCA presents an archivist’s point of view
OPPOSITE “Nuova Università di Firenze,” 1971. San Casciano Val di Pesa. Archivio 9999 ABOVE “La città come ambiente significante,” Alberto Breschi, Roberto Pecchioli (Zziggurat) 1973.
that takes away some of the political power of the original projects. Curated by Pino Brugellis, Alberto Salvadori and Gianni Pettena (who acts as an engaged historian of the era, since his work is also on show) the exhibition started life at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in late 2017. The Montreal iteration adds more work from Superstudio’s Alessandro Poli, whose archives are held at the CCA. Archizoom and Superstudio are often exhibited in group exhibitions, where their contributions to international countercultural movements are celebrated, but the Florence focus helps situate them within their local context, in addition to shining a light on less-celebrated protagonists. To be sure, the exhibition focuses so intensely on Florence that it almost completely ignores any links to other movements around the world and the influence that they had on later generations.
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review Installation view of the “Wearable Chairs” project. below View of one of Archizoom’s various clothing projects. Both images are from the CCA iteration of Utopie Radicali: Florence 1966-1976, 2018.
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The exhibition presents drawings, models, films, clothes and furniture across eight sections: Pop, Disco, Azione, Territorio, Corpo, Città, Natura, and Luna. The fairly traditional exhibition design is shaken up only by a platform under the furniture pieces that stretches across from the Pop section in the central gallery to the Corpo section behind it. This physical connection appears particularly appropriate, as if the Pop influence is undeniably visible and recognized. It is the focus on the body that emerges as one of the most important legacies of the Florentine Radical movement, present in many of the other sections. For example, under the theme of the discotheque as a space of multidisciplinary experimentation, UFO’s works explore how design can be organized around embodied characters and stories, while Gianni Pettena’s 1971 “Wearable Chairs,” created while he was teaching in the United States and presented at the CCA under the theme of urban action, become meaningful as extensions of the body, celebrating collectiveness and the involvement of people in shaping and changing the city. Similarly, the clothing experimentations of Archizoom’s “Dressing Design: Nearest Habitat System” (to be worn in their famous No-Stop City) and “Dressing is Easy” reject consumerist culture and work by stripping away excesses linked to traditional notions of design, but also radically rethink what can be understood as the domain of the architect. Even when staying closer to the traditional focus of architecture, such as in the furniture many of them designed, the Florentine Radicals sought to challenge notions that had emerged with modernism, making explicit references to modernist heroes such as Mies or Le Corbusier. On a guided tour of the exhibition, however, it became jarring to hear Poli describe the Superonda and Safari sofas, designed by Archizoom for the 1966 Superarchitettura show, as active pieces where people were invited to move elements and to imagine together how to sit—as an anthropological investigation
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about the body and commercial production—but to not be able to touch and interact with the pieces themselves. The embodied experience that was at the core of the Radicals’ work and that is on view everywhere stays only that, “on view,” as archived artifacts. But it would have been more true to the Radicals’ ideals and intentions if the exhibition included either reproductions of some of the original installations and furniture to be interacted with by visitors, or commissioned new pieces that would present Radical takes on contemporary issues. That kind of interactive approach is limited to the public programs, which include events such as a “Curatorial Loaf ” where visitors are invited to share a communal meal or a “Futurniture” workshop for families to create furniture for a “global disco” collaboratively. The last section of the exhibition focuses on the potential of lunar colonization — and by extension of space, seen as an expanded territory of exploration in response to what was seen as our incomplete future. This final section makes clear that most of these architects were not interested in building, but more in challenging norms and translating into architecture their resistance to consumerism. Only later would some architects like Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas manage to transform similar investigations into built form. This section also links closely this exhibition to previous CCA investigations into prospective aspects of architecture, with the most explicit links being to Other Space Odysseys (2010), for which the initial Poli donation was made. Like the CCA’s recent exhibition about the Open University’s experiment with architectural education, Utopie Radicali explores the 1960s and 1970s reassessment of the modern movement and rethinking of mass culture as something that can improve people’s lives. However, if the CCA’s goal is, as Phyllis Lambert’s words on its website suggest, not to be “a museum that puts things out and says, ‘This is architecture’” but instead to “try to make people think,” this exhibition would benefit by bringing these critiques more directly in dialogue with our contemporary context. The CCA could then be as radical in its presentation of its rich and challenging archives as these objects were to begin with. Utopie Radicali: Florence 1966–1976 exhibits at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal until October 7. Olivier Vallerand is an architect with 1x1x1 Creative Lab and a visiting post-doctoral scholar at UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design.
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REPORT
andrew latreille
canada council for the arts
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MONDO MERAVIGLIOSO text
Adele Weder
The 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture offers a world of wonders and a showcase for Canadian talent The 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture opened in late May with plenty of Canadian content. An early highlight was the unveiling of the beautifully restored 1958 Canada Pavilion in the Giardini section. The restoration, led by the National Gallery of Canada, with assistance by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and others, was faciliated by the support of La Biennale di Venezia, the Venice Superintendent for Architectural Heritage, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and Global Affairs Canada, especially through the Canadian Embassy in Rome. The ambitious project was carried out by the Milanese architect Alberico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, in collaboration with Venice-based architect Troels Bruun of M+B Studio and Canadian designer Gordon Filewych of onebadant. Canadian landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander and Bryce Gauthier of Enns Gauthier Landscape Architects collaborated with La Biennale di Venezia and the Venice Superintendent for Architectural Heritage on the redesign and replanting of the grounds around the pavilion. Funding for the $3-million restoration and the current exhibition about the Pavilion’s history, curated by Réjean Legault and called Canada Builds/Rebuilds a Pavilion, was provided by the National Gallery’s Distinguished Patron, Reesa Greenberg. Canada’s official representative project at this year’s Biennale is UNCEDED: Voices of the Land, led by Douglas Cardinal, FRAIC and a team of prominent Indigenous architects and artists. Cardinal—along with David Fortin, MRAIC; Patrick Stewart, Wanda Della Costa, Brian Porter and others—were part of the team whose work opened the
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1 The newly reconstructed Canada Pavilion in the Giardini. 2 New landscape design around the Pavilion enchants visitors. 3- 4 Douglas Cardinal, FRAIC at the UNCEDED opening. 5 Left to right: Sascha Hastings, Serge Belet and Troels Bruun. 6 Patrick Stewart and Linda Lavallee bask in UNCEDED film projections in the Arsenale. 7 The Campos Studio installation. 8 Andrew Latreille’s photography exhibition.
dramatic video-based installation in the Arsenale with an Indigenous dance performance that complemented the curvilinear installation and projections of Indigenous lands, projects and interviews with architects. The Canada Council for the Arts commissioned the installation. UNCEDED, as well as the restoration of the Canada Pavilion, were among the projects fêted at a cocktail party for national pavilion curators, commissioners and VIPs on a rooftop terrace overlooking the Grand Canal. Canadians in attendance included Douglas Cardinal and his wife Idoia Arana-Beobide de Cardinal, Simon Brault (CEO of the Canada Council), Serge Belet (Senior Exhibitions Manager at the National Gallery of Canada) and Sascha Hastings (Toronto architectural consultant, who has served as RAIC P roject Manager/Deputy Commissioner/Co-Principal on previous Venice exhibitions). Also in attendance was Venicebased architect Troels Bruun of Studio M+B, a long-time collaborator on Canadian Biennale projects. The Biennale’s opening week concluded with awards selected by an international jury that included Vancouver-based Patricia Patkau, co-founder of Patkau Architects. Patkau’s fellow jurors were Australia’s Kate Goodwin, Italy’s Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Chile’s Sofia Von Ellrichshausen and Frank Barkow of the United States. The Golden Lion Award for Best National Participation went to Switzerland’s Svizzera 240: House Tour; Britain’s Island pavilion received a Special Mention. The Golden Lion for Participant went to Portugal’s Eduardo Souto de Moura for his Arsenale installation. The
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Silver Lion Award for a promising young participant went to Jan de Vylder, Inge Vinck and Jo Taillieu of Belgium. Andra Matin of Indonesia and Rahul Mehrotra of India also received Special Mentions. Kenneth Frampton received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, awarded by the Biennale’s board of directors. Other Canadian firms exhibiting in Venice include Vancouver-based Campos Studio. For Venice Design 2018, they have installed in the Palazzo Michiel a personal reflection of the studio’s work along the west coast of North America. Through a structure containing models of their work from different development stages and an ambiguous collection of local chachkas, sand, wood, stones and found objects from various sites, they encourage the viewer to make connections between the work and their context, reflecting a slow process by which to experience architecture. This loose arrangement is contrasted with a table holding rows of small images of their work from social media and publications, to facilitate a fast and more superficial consumption of architecture. Vancouver-based photographer Andrew Latreille’s collection of photographs, titled “Then and Now,” is featured in the exhibition Time Space Existence, organized by the GAA Foundation and hosted by the European Cultural Centre in the Palazzo Mora. The exhibition explores impermanence and memory during the making of architecture. The 16th international Venice Biennale of Architecture continues until November 25, 2018. www.unceded.ca www.campos.studio www.andrewlatreille.com www.labiennale.org
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UNCEDED/Canada Council for the Arts Adele weder
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ACROSS CANADA
Calgary
Vancouver
11/07—11/08
—10/08
BUILDEX Calgary 2018
Offsite: Shigeru Ban Downtown installation relays Shigeru Ban’s concept for postnatural disaster housing. Produced by Vancouver Art Gallery’s Institute of Asian Art.
BUILDEX Calgary is Alberta’s
www.vanartgallery.bc.ca
www.buildingscanada.com
—09/30
Winnipeg
Cabin Fever A the Vancouver Art Gallery, this exhibition traces the cabin tradition in Canada and the United States, from settlement days to the contemporary depictions online, relaying how this humble architectural form has been harnessed for its symbolic value and helped shape a larger cultural identity.
largest tradeshow and conference for the construction, renovation, architecture, interior design and property management industries.
10/11
Manitoba Design Exposition The one-day trade show for Manitoba’s design community, presented by the Professional Interior Designers Institute of Manitoba (PIDIM). www.pidim.ca
www.vanartgallery.bc.ca
more than 88 acres of parkland. The tours also explore rapidly changing neighbourhoods and share invisible histories of well-known locations.
www.heritagetoronto.org
www.carleton.ca/architecture/forward50
—10/08
Montreal
Philip Beesley: Transforming Space An immersive experience that merges chemistry, artificial intelligence and encompassing soundscapes into a visually immersive, interactive environment. www.rom.on.ca
09/16—09/19
IDC Symposium: Value of Design Thinking Over three days, the Interior Designers of Canada (IDC) offers a program of education, expert panel discussions, guided design tours, awards galas and breakfasts, emerging professionals programs and conference keynotes. www.idcanada.org
Jesse Kuroiwa
10/11 2018
Outward Bound Micro Cabins, 2015, by University of Colorado Denver, as seen in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Cabin Fever exhibition. ABOVE
09/20—09/23
IDS Vancouver The Interior Design Show Vancouver is the Pacific platform for all things design and is a leading showcase of new products and furniture, designers and avantgarde concepts from North America and beyond.
www.vancouver.interiordesignshow.com
10/19
PopCanCrit: The Business of Architecture This national panel-based symposium brings together leading voices in architecture practice, academia and related fields, who are changing the way we see and understand architecture. www.spacing.ca/popcancrit
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Toronto —07/31
Revisited: Habitat 76 At the Contact Photography Festival, James Brittain presents large-scale colour photographs documenting the contemporary life of Montreal’s Habitat, the residential complex designed by Moshe Safdie for Expo 1967. www.scotiabankcontactphoto.com
Green Building Festival The Green Building Festival offers top quality programming that pushes the boundaries of how sustainable buildings and cities are designed, constructed and managed. www.sbcanada.org
11/28—11/30
The Buildings Show The Buildings Show is the leader in sourcing, networking and education for the North American design, architecture, construction and real estate communities. The show is home to Construct Canada, HomeBuilder & Renovator Expo, STONEX Canada, PM Expo, and World of Concrete. The Toronto Real Estate Forum also happens concurrently. www.thebuildingsshow.com
—10/06
Know Your City: Heritage Toronto Walking Tours Heritage Toronto has launched its 2018 Tours program sponsored by TD Bank Group. This year, the walks take in Toronto’s waterfront, ravines, and
school alumni, faculty and current students join to discuss architecture and urbanism, engaging the spirit of things past and the shape of things to come.
Ottawa 10/04—10/05
50 Years of Architecture at Carleton University Timed to its 50th anniversary, Carleton University’s architecture
—09/02
Lab Cult: An unorthodox history of interchanges between science and architecture After questioning science’s capacity to provide answers to architecture’s social mandate, architects and designers are once again exploring the concept of the laboratory. Case studies from the 19th and 20th centuries are presented through materials from the CCA collection and from institutions across North America. www.cca.qc.ca
—09/09
Unstable Presence: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Now exhibiting at the Musée d’art contemporain, this artist is renowned for large-scale “antimonument” installations that incorporate technology, light and the architecture of public spaces. www.macm.org
—10/07
Utopie Radicali: Florence 1966–1976 Italian radicals address the idea of Utopia as a tool for social critique. Organized by Palazzo Strozzi and curated by Pino Brugellis, Gianni Pettena, and Alberto Salvadori. See Olivier Vallerand’s review on pp. 26-28 of this issue of Canadian Architect. www.cca.qc.ca
Grand-Métis —10/07
International Garden Festival North America’s leading contemporary garden festival takes place at Les Jardins de Métis next to the historic gardens, establishing a dialogue between conservation, tradition and innovation. www.refordgardens.com
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INTERNATIONAL
London
Venice
—10/07
—11/25
La Biennale di Venezia
Freespace, the 16th installation of the legendary international architecture exhibition, continues until November 25 at the Arsenale and Giardini in Venice. See Canadian Architect’s reports on pp. 10-13 and pp 30-31 of this issue.
www.labiennale.org/en www.unceded.ca
New York 07/15—01/13/19
Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980 Exhibition showing Yugoslavia’s architects’ development of a distinctive postwar architecture. www.moma.org
Washington, D.C. 07/04—09/03
Fun House The National Building Museum partners with Snarkitecture to design the 2018 Summer Block Party exhibition. www.nbm.org
—09/18
Making Room: Housing for a Changing America This exhibition features case studies and the presentation of The Open House—a flexible, 1,000-square-foot home designed for the exhibition by architect Pierluigi Colombo. www.nbm.org
Boston
Serpentine Pavilion: Frida Escobedo Architect Frida Escobedo’s courtyard-based design draws on the domestic architecture of both Mexico and Great Britain.
Design for Diversity: The Aga Khan Award for Architecture This exhibition highlights 19 works of architecture from the 2014-2016 cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. The Award honours excellence in architecture, landscape architecture, planning and preservation. www.akdn.org/architecture
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PUB: Canadian Architect CONTACT: Steve Wilson swilson@canadianarchitec
www.serpentinegalleries.org
09/04—09/23
London Design Biennale At Somerset House, entries from more than 35 countries explore how design affects every aspect of our lives–the way we live and how we live–and influences our lives, emotions and experiences.
RELEASE: 5/10/18 INSERTION: June
www.londondesignbiennale.com
09/15/18—01/20/2019
Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings At the Royal Academy of Arts, rarely seen drawings, models and full-scale maquettes explore the Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s use of form and materials. www.royalacademy.org.uk
Paris 09/07—09/11
Maison & Objet The lifestyle show presents a vast offering of decoration, design, furniture, accessories, textiles, fragrances, tableware, et cetera. www.maison-objet.com/en/paris
Valencia 09/18—09/21
Feria Hábitat Valencia This trade show integrates the elements of home and related facilities: furniture, lighting, kitchen, decoration and home textiles. www.feriahabitatvalencia.com
—09/23
Tokyo
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10/19—10/28
DesignArt Tokyo DesignArt Tokyo bridges the worlds of design, art and technology, putting a spotlight on highquality traditional industries and contemporary craftsmanship.
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www.designart.jp
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film still Courtesy of tiff bell lightbox
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Michelangelo Antonioni’s Poetics of Space TEXT
Stefan Novakovic
In toronto, a retrospective of the italian filmmaker highlights his exploration of architecture We see the city in reflection. Moving down the body of the tower, the camera’s gaze remains fixed on the tangled loose threads of Milan’s post-war urban fabric, but the context keeps shifting. It’s not really Milan we’re looking at, but rather its fractured reflection in the glass of a skyscraper as we journey into the city below. Then, the camera pulls back from the building, and we see the city twice: reflected and real. These are the opening moments of La Notte, by Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007), one of several films that encapsulate the Italian director’s architectural sensibility. Characters and dialogue may advance the narrative, but buildings and landscape form the vessel that shapes it. Flanked by 1960’s seminal L’Avventura and 1962’s L’Eclisse, La Notte forms the central episode of a trilogy that marks the apex of Antonioni’s formal experimentation. This summer in Toronto, the films anchor the TIFF Cinemateque retrospective “Modernist Master: Michelangelo Antonioni.” With a programme that illuminates Antonioni’s understanding of architecture and urban space, a month of screenings and talks have offered windows into the work of a cinematic modernist. As the New York Times’ Stephen Holden put it, L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse make up Antonioni’s exploration of “modernity and its discontents.” Drifting through the alternately half-fin-
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ished or half-destroyed landscapes of Milan and Rome, Monica Vitti (who appears in all three films) is joined periodically by the likes of Alain Delon and Marcello Mastroianni to navigate rudderless iterations of romance and desire. So much for the discontents, but what of the modernity? According to James MacGillivray, who introduced L’Eclisse at its June screening, the “architecture in the films mirrors the experiences of the characters.” MacGillivray—a founding principal of the Toronto firm LAMAS and assistant professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design— points to the settings as vital narrative elements. Much of L’Eclisse is set in Rome’s EUR district, which was built to host the 1942 World’s Fair and celebrate 20 years of Italian fascism. In 1962, Antonioni finds it alien, placing his isolated characters in the middle of all the empty grandeur. Like many of his contemporaries—and the neo-realist auteurs who preceded him—Antonioni is distrustful of modernism. “Antonioni is also able to find irony in the heroic Mussoliniera architecture,” MacGillivray says, as well as the modernist buildings that followed. Through a play of angle composition, an aggressively futuristic concrete water tower becomes a subtly humorous backdrop to everyday life, its utter lack of context and scale accentuated
ABOVE Still from the 1961 film La Notte, with Monica Vitti and Marcello Mastroianni.
in the frame. In La Notte, Antonioni finds “inventive angles that transform the city into impenetrably alluring abstractions,” as the New Yorker’s Richard Brody writes. Crucially, Antonioni’s lens often abandons his characters at key moments, turning to gaze instead at the city around them. He shows us buildings, sidewalks, trees, people, cars. Showing movement and hinting at entropy, those extended shots and sequences mirror Antonioni’s photographic obsession. In L’Eclisse, his lens lingers over photos on the wall, and in 1966’s Blow-Up, a photograph itself—still and unchanging as any—drives the plot when the photographer sees a murder scene unfolding in the grain. What does it all mean? Antonioni’s films resist easy resolution, dwelling in the ambiguous subtleties of mood and composition rather than didacticism. Yet, just as the cinematic study of photographs interrogates the truth of the photographic medium itself, Antonioni’s fascination with architecture and cities reveals the urban realm as a canvas on which all those lives unfold. In playing with cities, shaping them, distorting them, he merely hints at what they do to us. The TIFF Cinemateque film series “Modernist Master: Michelangelo Antononi” runs until July 21 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
2018-07-04 6:06 PM
CA Awa
CANADIAN ARCHITECT INVITES ARCHITECTS REGISTERED IN CANADA AND ARCHITECTURAL GRADUATES TO ENTER THE MAGAZINE’S 2018 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE. Submission Portal is Now Open! Deadline: September 20th, 2018 ($175 + applicable taxes) Projects must be in the design stage, scheduled for construction or under construction but not substantially complete by September 20, 2018. All projects must be commissioned by a client with the intention to build the submitted proposal. All building types and concisely presented urban design schemes are eligible. Awards are given for architectural design excellence. Jurors will consider the project’s physical organization and form, response to context, innovation, and demonstration of exemplary environmental or social awareness. Winners will be published in a special issue of Canadian Architect in December 2018. 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. For more details and to submit your entry, visit:
www.canadianarchitect.com/awards/ * PluS APPliCAble TAxeS
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