Canadian Architect June 2021

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C U S T O M

F E N E S T R A T I O N

Charles R. Stinson Architecture | Paul Crosby Photography

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ART AND CULTURE 4 VIEWPOINT

JAMES BRITTAIN

LINDSAY REID

CANADIAN ARCHITECT

JUNE 2021 03

Spatializing our digital interactions makes them feel closer to normal.

6 NEWS

SHIFT 2021 Challenge selections announced; addressing unfair contracts; remembering Geoffrey Massey, 1924-2020.

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12 QAUMAJUQ

Two reports on the new Inuit art-focused addition to the Winnipeg Art Gallery, designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture with Cibinel Architecture.

TEXTS Nicole Luke and Lawrence Bird

20 BIODOME MIGRATION

KANVA and NEUF Architect(e)s reimagine Montreal’s Biodome with a dreamscape of curving texile walls. TEXT Odile Hénault

28 OCICIWAN CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE & CO*LAB

42 TECHNICAL

Researchers from KPMB Lab analyze the embodied carbon performance of different insulation types.

46 BOOKS

A volume on the architecture of bathing, a new edition of Banister Fletcher’s iconic history of architecture, and other recent publications.

50 BACKPAGE

A look at Indigenous artist Caroline Monnet’s architecturally inspired sculptures, on display at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

34 4TH STREET UNDERPASS ENHANCEMENT

Calgary’s Marc Boutin Architectural Collaborative transforms concrete infrastructure into public art. TEXT Ximena Gonzalez

38 BAMBOO BAMBOO

YELLOW CAMERA

llLab—a small firm with partners in Toronto, Shanghai, Tokyo and Porto—designs an elegant entrance pavilion for a dance-theatre show in Guilin, China. TEXT Susan Nerberg

ADAM BORMAN

Charles R. Stinson Architecture | Paul Crosby Photography

Rockliff Pierzchajlo Kroman Architects renovates two commercial structures in downton Edmonton into new centres for contemporary art. TEXT Graham Livesey

Biodome Migration, Montreal, Quebec, by KANVA in collaboration with NEUF Architect(e)s. Photo by Marc Cramer.

COVER

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THE NATIONAL REVIEW OF DESIGN AND PRACTICE / THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE RAIC

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VIEWPOINT

Editor Elsa Lam and her former architecture school classmates met for a virtual class reunion on Gather Town this spring.

LEFT

VIRTUAL SPACE Over the past year, many of us have been working almost exclusively from home, collaborating remotely with colleagues. After work, much of our socializing has been through screens, too. The novelty of this wore off long ago: even my three-year-old is sick of video calls.

Organizational behaviour researcher Andre Spicer, of the University of London, notes that Zoom fatigue has a neuroscientific basis.

“When we interact with another person through the screen, our brains have to work much harder,” he writes. “We miss many of the other cues we’d have during a real-life conversation, like the smell of the room or some detail in our peripheral vision.”

The compression of online space also contributes to the exhaustion. Ricocheting between a dozen meetings a day can produce a sense of whiplash. At an online conference I attended, one feature was a virtual networking space, which promised to pair attendees for two-minute conversations. I’m an extrovert who loves networking in real-life, but I recoiled from the prospect of being instantly paired with a stranger.

In real life, physical space helps us negotiate these interactions. At our offices, we walk between meeting rooms, stopping for a coffee en route. We suss out a conference crowd before deciding who we want to introduce ourselves to.

In a bid to recreate this feeling, an increasing number of virtual tools are engaging with physical space—or more accurately, a simulacrum of physical space. Virtual event platforms include landing pages that look like high-end conference centre atriums, or the lobby of a resort hotel. Workshops can be held in virtual training rooms, complete with a choice of seats around tables. On a more subtle level, digital whiteboard and pin-up tools can be a satisfying change from slide presentations, because they allow for interaction and situate information spatially.

My architecture class staged a reunion through Gather Town last month—a platform whose interface looks like an 80s video

EDITOR ELSA LAM, FRAIC ART DIRECTOR ROY GAIOT CONTRIBUTING EDITORS ANNMARIE ADAMS, FRAIC ODILE HÉNAULT DOUGLAS MACLEOD, NCARB, FRAIC ONLINE EDITOR CHRISTIANE BEYA

game crossed with Zoom. One of my classmates recreated the f loorplan of the University of Waterloo architecture school for the event. We walked our 8-bit avatars around, chatting with friends in our studio pods and in the lobby. The former school director made a surprise guest appearance. At the end, everyone spontaneously assembled in the auditorium, parking our pixelated figures over chairs, and took turns ad-hoc-ing speeches from the podium.

It felt, strangely, like going to a real party.

It even went too late: the reunion was scheduled to end at 9 pm. Most of us logged off at midnight. It was the most fun I’d had in a while.

But how much of that fun was because of the people, rather than the interface? Do many of these online spaces amount to digital gimmickry?

“The number of virtual event platforms is mindnumbing,” says virtual and hybrid event consultant Arti Kaushal of Big Bang Beige. “In the end, to plan a successful virtual event, you need to focus on creating great content and an engaging experience—the platform doesn’t matter.”

She notes that her team has delivered successful meetings using nothing more than Zoom— a tool that offers the distinct advantage of familiarity. (“Everyone has a year of experience using it, so there’s no learning curve.”)

We also think back to in-person encounters with a certain nostalgia, which elides the fact that physical presence doesn’t guarantee engagement. How many conferences were full of people looking at their phones, rather than at the speakers? How about classrooms, where students commonly surf the web, half-listening to a lecture?

To re-energize both our in-person and virtual interactions, we need to bring a designlens to the way we run meetings, classes and events. Human encounters need a clear common purpose, relevant content—and above all, authentic engagement. Snazzy digital and phys­ ical surroundings can support this. But ultimately, the magic isn’t in the platform: it’s in the people, and in the quality of their presence.

Elsa Lam

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NEWS “This is home base now,” says architect Megan Torza of DTAH. “[Pedestrians] come through what we call a ‘tabletop’: an elevated roadbed just beyond the pavilion. That tabletop can also be transformed into an event space for the bird migration festival, the butterfly festival, and the other programs run by the city and the TRCA.” Tommy Thompson Park’s new pavilion was created to be vandalproof, low maintenance, and equally useful for a large group of schoolchildren or a small group of birdwatchers.

COURTESY DTAH

www.dtah.com

ABOVE The new entrance pavilion for Tommy Thompson Park in Toronto, designed by DTAH, opened this spring.

PROJECTS Tommy Thompson entrance pavilion opens DTAH has designed a new entranceway and pavilion for Tommy Thompson Park, at the Leslie Street Spit in Toronto. The design includes an improved parking lot, shuttle bus turnaround, and a new public pavilion and outdoor interpretive area.

The new entrance facilities demonstrate best practices in low-impact development by knitting into their natural setting. The parking lot includes landscaped berms and bioswales to support stormwater management, habitat expansion and visual screening strategies.

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Arts Umbrella opens new arts education facility

Arts Umbrella has opened the doors to its new 4,650-square-metre arts education centre on Granville Island. The new facility expands the centre’s capacity to provide programming and studio space for young people in Metro Vancouver. The initial building for the new facility was completed in 1995 by Patkau Architects, with the current repurposing led by Henriquez Partners Architects.

The new facility is expected to serve 24,000 guests annually.

It features six dance studios, four theatres, specialized music and film studios, 10 art and design studios, a 132-seat theatre, a public exhibition space, a dedicated area for woodworking, and a stagecraft building area. www.henriquezpartners.com

HOK to design new University of Waterloo Eye Institute

The University of Waterloo’s School of Optometry & Vision Science has selected HOK to design the new Waterloo Eye Institute. The 6,225-square-metre institute will enhance and expand two floors of the existing School of Optometry & Vision Science building on the University of Waterloo’s campus.

The project will include primary care and pediatric clinics, ocular health and contact lens clinics, low vision rehabilitation and research clinics, teleoptometry centres, an ambulatory ophthalmology surgical centre, and research facilities dedicated to ocular imaging research and biomedical science.

HOK’s design team includes consultant Chris Downey, an architect who has lived as both sighted and blind. He brings expertise in developing environments for the blind and visually impaired that are multisensory, and that do not privilege or bias one sense over others. www.hok.com

AWARDS Polygon Gallery receives AIA Award

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Patkau Architects has received a 2021 AIA Architecture Award for the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver. The project is the new home for an independent photography and media institution that has served North Vancouver’s creative community for nearly 40 years.

Patkau Architects is one of 10 recipients—and the only Canadian practice—to be recognized in this year’s cycle.

The new gallery’s central mass floats above the ground plane, providing access to a new public space and a sweeping view of Vancouver’s skyline across the inlet. It is marked with a sawtooth profile clad in mirrored stainless steel, sitting beneath expanded aluminum decking.

Under the sawtooth roof, the main space is lit by diffuse northern light. It is equipped with steel purlins that support lighting, temporary partitions, and suspended works of art. The gallery’s upper level includes a flexible event space.

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“The façade’s materials play off one another, lending a sense of mass and depth that shifts with differing sunlight conditions and the evening atmosphere. The façade functions as the gallery’s uniform voice, just bold enough to define its place on the waterfront without contributing to any visual noise,” says the American Institute of Architects. www.aia.org

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WHAT’S NEW CaGBC responds to the 2021 Federal Budget

The Canada Green Building Council has announced its support for the federal government’s plan to invest in a green recovery and to tie those investments to climate targets and social justice issues.

The 2021 budget sets out the government’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 36 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, putting it on a trajectory to net-zero emissions by 2050.

For Canada to meet its carbon emissions targets, the building sector will need a continuous pipeline of projects—especially building retrofits with stringent carbon emissions targets—says the CaGBC. The fastest way to meet the building sector’s carbon reduction targets is to focus on retrofitting mid-size and large commercial and institutional buildings. In keeping with CaGBC recommendations, the federal government has rolled out programs designed to trigger the growth of shovel-ready low-carbon projects.

“Even before the budget, $3.66 billion in funding was announced for building retrofits between the Canada Infrastructure Bank, and programs with Infrastructure Canada and the Green Municipal Fund,” said Thomas Mueller, President and CEO of CaGBC. “With a range of 10 percent to 30 percent carbon emissions reduction, the projects funded and financed by these initiatives will help kick start the green recovery.”

The retrofit program outlined in the 2021 budget goes beyond commercial buildings to also focus on homes. The Deep Home Retrofits program will see $779 million deployed over five years ($414 million in subsequent years with a maximum of $4.4 billion) to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to help homeowners complete deep home retrofits through interest-free loans worth up to $40,000.

It includes a dedicated stream of funding to support low-income homeowners and rental properties serving low-income renters, including cooperatives and not-for-profit-owned housing.

Prior to the budget, the government announced that the Treasury Board Secretariat would prioritize zero carbon for all federally funded buildings and building projects as part of the updated Greening Government Strategy. This shift aligns with CaGBC recommendations that asked the federal government to take a leadership position to achieve zero-carbon performance.

“The new budget solidifies this focus by continuing to use and expand federal procurement to support the Greening Government Strategy, so that public dollars prioritize the use of lower carbon materials, fuels and processes,” says the CaGBC. The budget also drives low-carbon building construction in the private sector by advancing climate-based investment decisions and by strengthening Canada’s supply chain of low-carbon materials, products, and services. “We are pleased to see the federal government continue its green building leadership by supporting the construction and retrofit of federal buildings to zero carbon standards, and by de-risking investment for other levels of government and the commercial sector,” said Mueller. “This commitment will spur innovation, resulting in the development of a robust supply chain of low-carbon products, technologies and services, which will, in turn, create more jobs for Canadians.”

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NEWS

OAA announces selections for SHIFT2021 Challenge

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

The Ontario Association of Architects (OAA)’s biennial SHIFT Challenge is celebrating five ideas that “exemplify how architectural thinking is uniquely positioned to respond to the critical concept of resiliency.”

Members were asked to explore the intersection of architecture and resiliency, be it physical, economic, environmental, cultural, social, virtual, or spiritual. “Whether in a literal sense or in a figurative one, the concept of resiliency involves f lexibility, inherent strength, and elasticity. It is a quality in objects to hold or recover their shape; it is an ability in people to stay intact in the face of challenges or to rebound quickly from difficulty. The goal was to propose innovative, yet practical and feasible ideas that advance design thinking at scales from small spaces to entire ecosystems,” says the OAA. The honorees for this year’s SHIFT Challenge are: Temporary Foreign Worker Communities (architect Gordon Stratford with Lyn Stratford and Jordan Lambie); Mining Scars of Single Industry Communities: The Lakeshore Basin (intern architect Holly Sutton, with contributions by Patrick Harrop); Ontario Place: On-to-our Next Adventure (M.Arch candidates Victoria Cardoso, Erman Akyol and Eugenia Wong); K-Town: A Future (architect Steven Fong with Suhaib Arnaoot, Yukun Bai, Keltie McLaren, Dakota Wares-Tani, Huiting Yang, Safoura Zahedi and Nanci Giovinazzo); and The Mini-Midrise (architects Naama Blonder and Misha Bereznyak with Igo Samardzic and Sibylla Cong).

Online events that showcase the individual SHIFT ideas and a special digital publication are planned for the fall.

Contract fairness

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The basis of a contract is that there is a fair exchange. Usually this is money for a service or product. When you order a coffee at your local coffee shop, there is an implied contract (that the coffee will be hot and fresh) that fairly represents the money you paid.

This is also true when hiring professional services. Fundamentally, the contract is expected to be fair to both parties. Yet that is not the case with many public entities contracting architectural services in Canada, including the City of Ottawa.

In 2012, the City released a series of supplementary conditions to standard contracts between architects and engineers and the City.

Across 19 pages of dense legalese, the City redefines standard terms that have a long precedent and history in contract law.

Some of these changes do little other than redefine a standard term in a longer, more complex way with little or no benefit. Other conditions raise serious questions of legality and fairness. For example, the City expects to violate federal copyright law and denies architects the right to fair decisions by the courts, setting the City up as both judge and jury of disputes.

Architects, like lawyers and doctors, carry professional liability insurance because, despite the best of intentions, sometimes mistakes happen. Insurance is there to protect the public (the client) from these rare cases where there is an error or omission.

Where the City’s contract conditions set unrealistic levels of perfection, or place unreasonable demands on a professional, the insurance coverage may not be available because it is so extra-ordinary to normal professional services. Contracts with the construction industry may set unrealistic schedule expectations and impose unfair costs on contractors through punitive conditions.

Imagine you were going to have an operation and you asked the doctor to guarantee that there would be no side effects and that their insurance would cover any and all possible risks, including that you might suffer a seizure or die on the operating table. No doctor will guarantee this because there are no certainties. You, the patient, take some risk, based on the assumption that your doctor is competent and takes prudent actions to look after your interests.

It is the same for buildings. When the City hires an architect, they are expected to take reasonable care of the City, respect the public interest, and propose design solutions and ideas to achieve the stated goals of the project. It is impossible to remove all risks in a project, just like it is impossible to remove all risks in an operation.

The contract offered by the City of Ottawa is fundamentally unfair, and there is no evidence that these supplementary conditions remove the risks they are intended to. When the conditions seek to punish rather than to be fair, it creates an uneven playing field that drives away collaborative problem solving.

For eight years, a small group of volunteers have been giving their time to come to City meetings and find a solution with (paid) City staff. Years of work finally resulted in a set of comments in March 2018. Since then, further discussions have stalled, while comments have gone back to the legal department for a response that has never materialized.

Similar contract conditions exist in construction contracts from the City, as well as school boards, provincial projects and Ottawa Community Housing RFPs for both design and construction. Thankfully, for Ottawa Community Housing, sometimes they have at least allowed interested bidders the opportunity to register concerns.

And in construction, some of the most egregious can be beaten back by the local construction association, but it takes concerted effort and

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individual advocacy on a case-by-case basis. That advocacy restarts on every contract or RFP because there is no consistent application across the board.

This becomes a barrier to fair bidding practices. Smaller firms lack the in-house or external legal capacity to fight these issues one on one.

Due to the complex nuances of some of this language, it takes significant skill to research and understand how it can affect a company.

Fighting a larger-scale battle across the industry means significant effort to simply get to a fair and balanced contract. And when the City holds all the cards, they set all the rules.

Talented local firms who want to deliver good quality services read these contract conditions and self-select out of the process. They are unwilling to put themselves at risk with unfair contracts. While my firm registers concerns when that is possible, it’s rarely the case. Most times, the contract is provided in a “take it or leave it” approach—and that means I leave it. Effectively, I am prevented from bidding for government work because I can’t compete on a fair and level playing field because the contract conditions are unfair, inequitable, and punitive.

As a whole, if the city can impose unfair conditions on one sector, what’s to stop them from doing so on other sectors? Any contractual unfairness should be stopped. It’s against the public interest to limit the pool of bidders for public sector investment, forcing them to operate in a climate of unfair and punitive business practices.

This affects the design and construction of the social infrastructure we need in our communities. It affects design by driving out the talent needed to seek solutions early on, rewarding firms willing to take unfair risks that disadvantage the rest of the industry. It affects the construction industry, putting small and large businesses at risk. Together, this affects jobs, local communities, and the local economy.

The city plans to invest more in buildings. Last fall, the Auditor General released their report with 95 pages of horror stories—buildings that desperately need investment. Climate change and aging infrastructure; the new building planned for the ByWard Market; new community centres; accessibility upgrades and other repairs to city buildings— these are all social infrastructure issues that must be addressed. They need architects, engineers and contractors. Unfair contract language means we’re shutting the door to talented local firms.

We need a reset. We need to eliminate contract conditions that are unfair and get back to a contract that is fair and balanced.

We need to reset the way the City contracts, and invests, in the built environment to deliver on the promises of the safe, healthy, equitable, resilient city that we all aspire to live in.

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Toon Dreessen, OAA, FRAIC is president of Architects DCA, an Ottawa-based architecture practice. He is a former president of the OAA and served six years on OAA council. He received the OAA’s Order of da Vinci in 2020.

IN MEMORIAM Geoffrey Massey, 1924-2020

We are saddened to mark the passing of Geoffrey Massey, age 96, on December 1, 2020.

Massey worked in partnership with architect Arthur Erickson from 1963 to 1972. The duo created projects including the Simon Fraser University campus, the MacMillan Bloedel Building, and the University of Lethbridge’s University Hall, along with an initial plan for Robson Square.

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NEWS

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ABOVE Geoffrey Massey, right, with Arthur Erickson, left, on the steps of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.

Geoffrey Massey’s father, Raymond, was an academy award-nominated actor. His uncle, Vincent, was Governor General of Canada, and headed a royal commission on the arts that resulted in the influential Massey Report. Geoffrey was a fourth-generation member of the family that founded farm equipment manufacturing company MasseyHarris, later Massey-Ferguson.

Geoffrey Massey was born on October 29, 1924 in London, England, to Raymond Massey and Peggy Freemantle. His parents divorced in 1929, and Geoffrey was raised by his father and second wife, Adrienne Allen. The family moved to the United States in 1939, and Geoffrey joined the Canadian army in 1942, becoming a paratrooper. He subsequently studied architecture at Harvard, while Walter Gropius was director of the school. After graduation in 1952, Massey worked briefly in Montreal before moving to Vancouver.

In Vancouver, he worked with Sharp & Thompson, Berwick and Pratt, and became friends with Arthur Erickson, who had also worked there. They were housemates in a small place on Chilco Street, where they lived rent-free in exchange for designing a six-storey apartment that would eventually replace the house. They were known for throwing parties whose guests included young artists and architects such as Jack Shadbolt, Ron Thom, Barry Downs, and Takao Tanabe. They later rented a house together on Bachelor Bay in West Vancouver.

Eager to work on their own, Massey and Erickson worked on a series of houses for acquaintances, including a house for artists Gordon and Marion Smith. In 1955, it won the first Massey Medal in the category of residential houses under $15,000. (A decade later, Erickson would design another, much larger, house for the Smiths .)

Erickson and Massey also designed a house for artist Ruth Killam, a childhood friend of Erickson’s. Massey and Killam fell in love during the project, and later married, living together at the house, which overlooked Howe Sound. Over the years, Massey created a number of additions to the Whytecliffe property, including a studio that, tragically, was lost in a fire, along with many of Massey’s original drawings.

In 1963, Massey and Erickson’s business partnership formally started

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when they teamed up to bid on the design for the new Simon Fraser University, atop Burnaby Mountain on the outskirts of Vancouver. Their bold masterplan won the design competition, and they worked with associate architects Zoltan Kiss, Rhone & Iredale, Robert Harrison and McNab Lee & Logan towards completing and opening the university two years later. Erickson and Massey held complementary roles: Erickson led the design, while Geoffrey provided the administrative oversight essential to realizing a project of this breadth and complexity.

Massey received an honorary Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, from Simon Fraser University in 2016. SFU President Joy Johnson says: “Among the giants of West Coast modernism, Massey and Arthur Erickson’s visionary design for Burnaby campus shaped SFU’s educational philosophy by tearing down walls between faculties, removing silos and creating common areas where disciplines merge and ideas flourish.”

Lethbridge University, designed in 1968 and opened in 1972, displayed a continuation of architectural thinking inspired by ideas of “megastructure,” or buildings constructed at the scale of their natural landscape settings. The plan conceived of a university complex that interwove instructional spaces and informal living areas.

“Geoff was the anchor,” says Bo Helliwell, who worked with Erickson and Massey from 1968 to 1972, a period when Erickson was frequently travelling. Helliwell says that Massey also had a role as a “rainmaker for the firm”—due to his family connections, as well as his physical presence. “He was tall, ridiculously good looking, had a radio announcer’s voice—he had a big presence and hearty laugh.”

The partnership ended amicably in 1972. Massey told a reporter that their interests over the years had changed, and that he and Erickson thought that “it might be more satisfactory to go separate ways.”

Massey was elected a Vancouver City Councillor later in 1972, a position he held for two years. During that period, he played a part in the selection of the winning design for the rehabilitation of Granville Island,

by Norm Hotson and Joost Bakker, who entered with the support of their employer, partner Richard Rabnett of Thompson, Berwick and Pratt.

Massey also was a supporter of Art Phillips, who was mayor of Vancouver from 1973 to 1977. Mayor Phillips championed livability and inclusivity, and under his leadership, Vancouver’s city planning came to address environmental and quality-of-life concerns.

Massey continued his own architectural practice over the following decades, working mostly on private homes. His work included a number of projects in Whistler, an area in which he was an early owner and developer.

Throughout his career, Massey was a behind-the-scenes advocate for architectural culture in Canada. He convinced his uncle, Vincent Massey, to hold an invited competition for the design of Massey College at the University of Toronto. He advised on the selection of Arthur Erickson, Carmen Corneil, John B. Parkin and Ron Thom as the invited competitors. Thom’s design won, resulting in one of the country’s finest works of architecture.

Arthur Erickson’s nephew, Geoffrey Erickson, who grew up in the same circle of family and friends as Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey, says that while Massey was “not a self-promoter,” both he and his wife Ruth were impressive in their abilities. “Ruth was part of the Yellow Door Studio painting group with my grandmother Myrtle Erickson, and became an accomplished painter. Fortunately, the Massey children all inherited their parents’ artistic sensibilities, which they now express in film, photography, and ceramics.”

Massey retired from architecture in 1991. His wife, Ruth Killam, died in 2011. He is survived by children Eliza, Raymond, Vincent and Nathaniel.

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IT IS BRIGHT, IT IS LIT INUK EXHIBITION DESIGNER AND ARCHITECTURE STUDENT NICOLE LUKE DISCUSSES THE SIGNIFICANCE OF QAUMAJUQ AND ITS INAUGURAL EXHIBITION, INUA .

Qaumajuq Michael Maltzan Architecture (Design Architect) with Cibinel Architecture (Associate Architect) TEXT Nicole Luke PHOTOS Lindsey Reid PROJECT

ARCHITECTS

It has been a year full of anticipation as Qaumajuq has come to completion in downtown Winnipeg. From the surrounding streets, passersby could see into the lobby and watch Inuit carvings being placed in the gallery’s visible vault, adding to local curiosity about this new place and what was happening inside.

Qaumajuq (pronounced KOW-ma-yourq or HOW-ma-yourk) means “it is bright, it is lit” in Inuktitut. It is the world’s first building dedicated to contemporary Inuit art, and will become a hub that connects Canada’s North to its southern regions. Designed by Los Angelesbased Michael Maltzan Architecture in collaboration with Winnipeg firm Cibinel Architecture, the four-storey extension of the Winnipeg Art Gallery highlights the culture, landscape and light of the North.

The project is especially meaningful to me—as an urban Inuk living in Winnipeg, who will be graduating from the University of Manitoba’s Master of Architecture program this fall. Growing up in Winnipeg is a very southern context, compared to the community where my family lives, in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut. I have always felt the lack of Inuit representation in southern Canadian cities, especially in institutional settings.

The transformation of the Winnipeg Art Gallery through the creation of Qaumajuq not only represents the potential of reconciliation in Canada, but also signifies a shift in the qualities of arts institutions like the WAG. Furthermore, it speaks to how architecture can contribute to these processes.

This is reflected in the naming of the many spaces in the building

by Indigenous language-keepers. For example, the main gallery is Qilak (qui-lack) and means “sky” in Inuktitut. We can also see the transformation in the presence of the visible vault, Ilavut (which means “our relatives’’ in Inuktitut). Hundreds of soapstone, bone and ivory carvings—

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once stored away in the basement—are now on permanent display for the public and relatives of the artists to see, connect to, and enjoy.

The inaugural exhibition—which I am humbly proud to be a part of, thanks to the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership’s Pilimaksarniq/Pijariuq­ sarniq Project—is particularly significant. One anticipates that its content and process of creation will set precedents for many Inuit art exhibitions to come, both within Qaumajuq and beyond.

The name of the exhibition, INUA, is an acronym for “Inuit Nunangat Ungammuaktut Atautikkut,” meaning “moving forward together.” It was curated by an all-Inuit team representing the four regions of Inuit Nunangat (Inuit homelands). Inuit Nunangat includes Inuvialuit Nunangit Sannaiqtuaq (northern Northwest Territories and Yukon), Nunavut, Nunavik (Northern Quebec) and Nunatsiavut (Northern Labrador). These curators representing these areas are, respectively, Kablusiak, Krista Ulujuk Zawadski, assinajaq and Heather Igloliorte with the support of Jocelyn Piirainen.

“One of the key aspects of INUA that I am particularly proud of is the representation of Inuit artists from diverse backgrounds, “ says Ulujuk Zawadski. “We wanted to highlight the range of art, media and subject matter that Inuit artists work with, and it excites me to know that we were able to take that approach in our curatorial team.”

My role as a leading member of the exhibition design team was to assist the curators and the Winnipeg Art Gallery through digital modelling, drafting and suggesting designs that could support the culturally rich experience of the show. The team was also supported by an Inuk project manager and Inuk catalogue designer.

Our Inuk identities created a strong sense of mutual understanding between the curatorial and production teams. “As a curatorial team, we were thrilled to not have to translate our ideas through a cultural lens, but to be able to work directly with someone who both knows what the North is like and understands our perspectives on Inuit community, land, and art, past and present,” says Igloliorte.

Our collaborative process started with discussions between me and the curators. We noticed how exhibitions are typically designed with

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straight walls, plinths and platforms, and explored how we could challenge these norms by juxtaposing shapes, forms and concepts of cultural relevance to us. My early sketches included designs inspired by the curvature in the tail of an amauti, a traditional women’s parka with an oversized hood for carrying a child. As the selection of works was finalized and we had a better understanding of the display needs of the exhibition, this idea changed to focus on the design of traditional tattoos with V- and Y-shaped patterns. I imagined free-standing walls or plinths that would house art pieces while creating their own intimate spaces within the expansive 750-square-metre gallery.

The idea of the exhibition came to embody the sense of familiarity within northern communities and their landscapes. Taking cues from the architecture of the gallery itself, which features few right angles or straight lines, I created low platforms referencing ice breaks for a life-sized, mixed media motorcycle sidecar, and for several works of wearable art.

In the main space, we were inspired by the small cabins scattered beyond the communities, with faded paint from exposure to the sun and to harsh winds; by interiors from the small “matchbox”-style houses provided by the federal government in the 1950s; and by the ubiquitous shipping containers (which due to the costs of freight shipments travel north full, and then remain there). These structures are special and familiar to Inuit Nunangat, and our intentions were to bring that familiarity to the gallery to create moments of recognition for Inuit and northerners—while giving others a taste of the true North.

INUA’s multi-media art, carvings, paintings, wall hangings, ceramics, prints, photography, film, and textiles represent a multitude of generations within Inuit art. The exhibition is designed around them to complete an experience of Inuit Nunangat, while housed respectfully on Treaty 1 territory and on the Métis homeland.

Nicole Luke is one of Canada’s first Inuk architecture students, and is completing her Master’s at the University of Manitoba. She was the exhibition designer for INUA, Qaumajuq’s inaugural exhibition.

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PREVIOUS SPREAD Qaumajuq adjoins the Winnipeg Art Gallery, extending to fill the triangular urban block. OPPOSITE A visible vault of Inuit soapstone, bone, and ivory carvings is on permanent display, and can be viewed from the lobby without paying for admission. TOP The two-storey main gallery is topped by deeply set skylights to mimic the qualities of Arctic light. BOTTOM The inaugural exhibition includes a shipping container, among other elements familiar to Northern communities. Pedestal designs were inspired by icebergs and free-standing walls reference traditional tattoos with Y-shaped patterns.

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LETTING THE LIGHT OUT ARCHITECT AND EDUCATOR LAWRENCE BIRD CONSIDERS QAUMAJUQ’S RIPPLING IMPACT ON ITS URBAN SURROUNDINGS. TEXT

Lawrence Bird

A billowing white building, like an icy cloud, has descended on the Prairie landscape. Mooring itself to an urban site, it ref lects the long, glancing sunlight of the Prairie while also catching another kind of light: the midnight sun of Canada’s North.

In architect Michael Maltzan’s words, the North’s cultural and physical geography is one of “ineffable qualities […] where the water shimmers away and melds with the sky.” For Maltzan, that geography enjoys a specific “quality of light […] that animates all the forms there.”

This focus on light is also captured by the name of the new building: Qaumajuq, Inuktitut for “it is bright, it is lit.” This name was chosen by a circle of Elders and advisors, as part of a broader selection of Indigenous names for the institution and its component elements—including an Ojibway name for the Winnipeg Art Gallery itself, which sits adjacent. It’s just one of the ways that Qaumajuq’s impact ripples beyond its architecture.

The architecture itself makes a memorable impact. At night, light shines through the glass wall of the double-height entry area. A stone wall hangs like a curtain above, as though lifted up to let the museum glow, not unlike the light of a qulliq: a seal oil lamp. The undulating façade also suggests the curtains of aurora borealis which sweep across the northern sky. The wall has become a frequent screen for light and video projections, amplifying the effect at night.

Lifting up the façade lets light out, but also lets the city in. In this, the new design mitigates one of the shortcomings of Gustavo da Roza’s 1971 Winnipeg Art Gallery ( WAG) building. While the crenellated

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profile of Da Roza’s towering walls starkly and beautifully underlines the wide Prairie sky, those same walls shut out the city at the ground level. The addition of Qaumajuq—perhaps better termed an “augmentation”—opens up da Roza’s hermetically sealed building to the street.

Events and the art held inside Qaumajuq become visible, parts of street life. Rather than a rebuke, the new design reads as a complement to the original. Maltzan speaks with utmost respect of da Roza’s building; he has described his own work as “trying to make an extraordinary object that completes an extraordinary object.”

The geometries, too, are complementary, and seem to splice distinct geographical conditions.

In 2013 Maltzan and associate architect George Cibinel visited Nunavut’s Pangnirtung, Cape Dorset, and Iqaluit, along with WAG Director and CEO Stephen Borys, Curator of Inuit Art Darlene Coward White, and photographer Iwan Baan. This experience of the northern landscape had a tremendous impact on the design. Its scalloped and curved forms speak of waves, ice floes, eskers, and the curve of drifting or melting snow. But rather than formal mimicry, Maltzan was interested in the North’s inimitable qualities of space, light, and immense scale relative to settlements there. He describes striving for an architecture which was similarly endless, whose “edges and endpoints are more ambiguous.”

This creates a striking juxtaposition to the angular architecture of the WAG. Da Roza’s building exemplifies a Prairie architecture of long horizontals, colliding colonial infrastructures, and materials hewn from the earth. Maltzan and Cibinel’s is set off from those angular walls by a crevasse, as well as by its curved forms.

Material choices help in the marriage of the two. The old WAG is clad in local Tyndall stone. Mottled by fossils, the colour of that limestone varies with the cast of the sky and angle of the sun—from cloudy grey, to cream, to honeyed gold. The Bethel White granite of Qaumajuq’s façade is similarly responsive, appearing crisp or warm depending on time of day and, one anticipates, the time of year.

The small size of the stone modules accentuates the feeling of great scale conveyed by the repeated, subtly varied curves of the wall.

If the original WAG takes a somewhat confrontational approach to its context—its cliff-like, stony façades exacerbate the gap-toothed urbanism that is an oft-criticized characteristic of Winnipeg—Maltzan, for his part, expresses a fascination with Winnipeg as an urban

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OPPOSITE 37 tons of sculptures are stored in a visible vault with glass shelves that can be adjusted to accommodate future expansion. The vault is topped by reflective chrome panels, building the illusion that the display extends further upwards. TOP Glass walls connect a multi-purpose room to the main lobby and to the surrounding city. Its name, Ilipvik, is Inuktituk for “place where you can go to learn.” BOTTOM The visible vault extends three storeys from the basement up through the public lobby. The cloud-shaped display is enclosed by curved glass, and constructed with steel and aluminum verticals in a play of orientations to help maintain a feeling of lightness.

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environment. He is recognized for projects such as MoMA QNS and Inner City Arts in LA, built in what he describes as “transitional middle landscapes”: places that are somewhere between urban and suburban, with damaged or absent centres. This is an apt descriptor for Winnipeg. For Maltzan, these environments present an opportunity to create places of exchange between cultures and individuals.

Early in the design process, Maltzan posed provocative questions to WAG Director Stephen Borys. What is a museum’s role in the urban environment? How quickly can we bring visitors to the art? What are the thresholds and barriers that keep people out of the gallery? How does the WAG see Inuit pieces in its collection—as ethnographic artifacts, or as works of art? Borys and Julia Lafreniere, WAG’s Manager of Indigenous Initiatives, were already posing similar questions, particularly in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC)’s report. The WAG’s evolving mandate and program were being conceived in direct response to the TRC ’s Calls for Action for Museums and Archives. Qaumajuq, in particular, had to respond to the legacy of a collection which, at its inception, had colonial roots.

This critical examination of program clearly drives the resulting form, yielding an architecture that strongly connects with the city. The 3,345-square-metre building is packed with spaces dedicated to Inuit art, a lecture theatre, research areas, as well as a café, gallery shop and rooftop teaching workshops (the latter shuffled over from the original building). With Qaumajuq’s arrival, the WAG now fills its city block, and its impact extends beyond. Maltzan and Cibinel Architecture are working together on a new multi-family residence—itself an innovative array of block-like elements—across Colony Street to the west. Cibinel is involved in developing a second building, along with urban design ideas, for the same street. In a clear rebuke, this stretch of Colony has been renamed Paashchipew Way: meaning “natural flowing waters” in Michif, a Métis language with roots in Cree and French. Qaumajuq’s ground level is effectively public space, and Borys’s long-term vision is to make the original WAG’s west façade permeable to Paashchipew, extending the openness of Qaumajuq through much more of the existing building.

Qaumajuq is an excellent model for that kind of integrative urbanism. Space truly flows, from street to lobby, to lecture and performance space (which can be made visible to the street), and from there to the double-height main exhibition hall, named Qilak (Inuktitut for “sky”).

The fluidity of these spaces led to a set of design and detailing challenges for Maltzan and Cibinel, who needed to resolve their vision of crisp, curvaceous forms and glowing surfaces into built form.

The design of the transparent display vault is one example of how this has been convincingly achieved. Unusual among art galleries, the permanent collection at Qaumajuq consists largely of stone artifacts which are resistant to light, allowing for open, long-term display. Maltzan used this to advantage by proposing a cloud-like “visible vault” of curved glass and steel in the building’s entry area. This particular cloud is massive: it carries 37 tons of artifacts, which the curators intend to redistribute periodically.

To maintain a feeling of lightness, the artifacts sit within an array of steel and aluminum verticals in a play of orientations, with elegant caps and muntin details. From a distance it shimmers; as one approaches, the visitor feels as though entering an ocean of floating stone forms.

The sculptures are experienced directly, unlabelled and without curatorial comment. The three-storey vault rises from the basement through a two-storey entry area that is effectively public space. There is no charge to enter the lobby, and from it, visitors can see a significant part of the collection, as well as glimpse the work of curators below.

The wide, double-height lobby posed significant challenges for structural engineers Guy Nordensen & Associates and Crosier Kilgour & Partners: it’s visually open to the street on one side, with an undulating stone façade above, offset at the end of a five- to six-metre cantilever.

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SECTIONAL RENDERING

CIBINEL (MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH)

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ABOVE Qaumajuq’s undulating form is clad in Bethel White granite, with small modules accentuating the scale of the iceberg-like building.

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Lawrence Bird (MRAIC) is an architect, urban designer and visual artist. He works

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In addition, the galleries above are curved and irregular, which meant that columns could not be simply set on a grid. The solution was a fullmoment connection system that works in multiple axes: immense circular section steel columns allow for structural connections at any angle needed. All this cleverness is hidden behind the gallery walls, whose depth (averaging 80 cm) serves another purpose: they help this organic space breathe. Many of them act as conduits drawing air from the ceiling of Qilak, which itself serves as the plenum of the ventilation system.

The HVAC system is finely calibrated, as required in any art gallery, and offered its own challenges. Qilak is lit by deep circular skylights, providing a suffused light evoking that of arctic landscapes. To avoid condensation in the deep wells created by the oversized ceiling plenum, careful detailing ensures that the triple-glazed skylights are washed with dry air. Another example of clever design is the use of wall bases as air returns—yielding dark gaps that provide mysterious, if at first unnoticed, glimpses into the depth of the wall.

All of this ingeniousness serves a building that operates on multiple layers, from the experiential to the social. While WAG has long supported community programming, the new architecture more fully supports that mandate. It enables an expansion of the gallery’s mission to engage the community—and particularly, the Indigenous communities of Winnipeg and the province. In Winnipeg, more that 90,000 people, including 1,300 Inuit, identify as Indigenous. Many of them trace personal and family ties to reserves and rural communities; the building’s condition of being in two places at the same time might be seen as speaking to that experience, too. The building’s opening ceremony, which involved Inuit Elders, representatives of the First Nations of Manitoba, and the Métis nation, made clear that Qaumajuq’s stewards see it as Inuit space on land other Indigenous nations have made available to them.

Settler culture is secondary to that relationship.

The building is a tribute to the support role architecture can play: its formal magic is grounded in an authentic engagement with the principles of reconciliation, with a social mandate, and with the landscapes of Winnipeg and the North. Perhaps it is even more appropriate, then, that three of the installations in the opening exhibition, INUA, recreate vernacular architectures: a shipping container, a domestic interior and a hunting cabin. The exhibition reads not unlike a northern settlement, with clusters and constellations of small objects beneath a vast sky.

Daringly, Quilak is designed as a relatively large-scale gallery space, for a permanent collection of relatively small artifacts—another example of inspiration from the experience of being up North. Time will surely show that this is an architecture strong, soft, and supple enough to accept radical interventions of all scales. For now, seeing architecture sensitively curated at the heart of this remarkable work of architecture is something from which we can all take hope.

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CLIENT WINNIPEG ART GALLERY | ARCHITECT TEAM MICHAEL MALTZAN ARCHITECTURE—MICHAEL MALTZAN (DESIGN PRINCIPAL), TIM WILLIAMS (PRINCIPAL IN CHARGE), GEE-GHID TSE (PROJECT DESIGNER), SARA JACINTO (PROJECT MANAGER), CASEY BENITO, JOSEPH DI MATTEO, ABBY DORRELL, MICHAEL FACIEJEW, KRISTIN FAUSKE, VANO HARITUNIANS, DAVID KIM, JEN LATHROP, BEN MAERTENS, RAFFY MARDIROSSIAN, PAUL MOREL, HUI ZHEN NG, GENEVIEVE PEPIN, NIEL PRUNIER, AEREE RHO, ANNE RIGGS, BEN RUSWICK, KIRSTEN SCHROEDER, ANDREW SMITH-RASMUSSEN, PAUL STOELTING, LAP KWOK TSANG, SHARON XU, YUN YUN. CIBINEL— MICHAEL ROBERTSON (PRINCIPAL IN CHARGE), STEFF BEERNAERTS (PROJECT ARCHITECT), GEORGE CIBINEL, KYLE JANZEN, LAUREN HAUSER, MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH, RON BASARAB, DESMOND BURKE, JULIEN COMBOT, NEIL HULME. | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER PCL CONSTRUCTION CANADA INC. | STRUCTURAL GUY NORDENSON AND ASSOCIATES / CROSIER KILGOUR & PARTNERS LTD. | MECHANICAL STANTEC / EPP SIEPMAN ENGINEERING INC. | PLUMBING DERKSEN PLUMBING | LIGHTING DESIGNER LAM PARTNERS | ELECTRICAL MCW/AGE CONSULTING PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS | BUILDING ENVELOPE CROSIER KILGOUR & PARTNERS LTD. | CIVIL WSP | LANDSCAPE HTFC PLANNING AND DESIGN | CODE RJ BARTLETT ENGINEERING | AREA 3,345 M2 (ADDITION); 1,486 M2 (RENOVATION) | BUDGET $70 M | COMPLETION DECEMBER 2020

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PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN, CANADIAN ARCHITECT MAGAZINE FONDS, RYERSON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES

SCENE

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CHANGE

The velodrome for the 1976 Olympic Games was designed by French architect Roger Taillibert. RIGHT The recent renovation to the building sets its concrete structure and massive skylights against sensuous white textile walls.

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A RENOVATION OF MONTREAL’S BIODOME RECASTS THE ICONIC DESTINATION WITH STREAM­LINED CIRCULATION, ETHEREAL TEXTILE WALLS, AND BIRD’S-EYE VANTAGE POINTS.

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OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT A central area provides visitors with access to all of the ecosystems; intuitive wayfinding is facilitated by the textile walls, which frame the primary circulation routes through the building; at the main entrance, a floor that previously held the Biodome’s administrative offices was removed, freeing views of the structure’s muscular concrete supports and crowning skylights.

LEFT The Biodome sits adjacent the Olympic Stadium, on the campus created for the 1976 Games. Long-standing controversy surrounded the stadium, whose tower and retractable roof were only completed a decade after the Olympics.

Biodome Migration, Space for Life natural science complex, Montreal, Quebec ARCHITECTS KANVA in collaboration with NEUF Architect(e)s TEXT Odile Hénault PHOTOS Marc Cramer, unless otherwise noted PROJECT

Montreal’s grandest—and possibly, its most beautiful—architectural gesture of the past century was the work of French architect Roger Taillibert, responsible for the design of the 1976 Olympic Games’ main sporting structures. Unfortunately, partly because of its novelty, the complex was shrouded in controversy. The unfinished stadium, in particular, attracted a lot of attention before, during, and after the Games.

The real star of the complex, however, is arguably the stadium’s immediate neighbour, the velodrome. City engineers involved in its construction described its structure as being 10 times more complex than the stadium’s. Apart from its technical performance, the 172-metre-long velodrome had—and retains—an exquisite quality about it. The building’s roof is particularly expressive, with splayed arrays of cat-eye skylights. To quote reviewer John Hix, who wrote about the building in these pages 45 years ago, these gave it the appearance of a “giant Paleozoic trilobite coming to rest at the bottom of the sea.”

Post-Olympic pause As is too often the case with Olympic facilities around the world, the velodrome ended up being used only sporadically in the years that followed the Games. In 1977, it somewhat awkwardly hosted the Salon de la femme. A couple of years later, Botanical Garden director (and future Montreal mayor) Pierre Bourque saw the velodrome as “an immense greenhouse with a fabulous potential.”

He proceeded to organize the 1980 Floralies, an international horticultural exhibition, within its walls. Needless to say, Taillibert was horrified.

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But in retrospect, this event was prescient of the building’s future rebirth as the Biodome, a decade later. In the 1980s, scientists working at Montreal’s two zoo locations and at the aquarium became increasingly concerned with the poor conditions of their facilities.

The Botanical Garden—across the street from the velodrome—started hosting a series of brainstorming sessions to come up a solution.

According to biologist Rachel Léger, the Biodome’s first director, “it is within this context that the Biodome was born.” The new concept—an immersive reproduction of natural ecosystems, set in the spacious velodrome—was intended to become, as Pierre Bourque described it, “a rallying call of hope and faith in the future.”

The transformation Architectural firm Tétreault Parent Languedoc et associés (now merged with Aedifica)—was called in to do a feasibility study and, eventually, to design the new facility. Architect Pierre Corriveau, who was responsible for the concept, recalls: “We had no way of telling whether the Biodome would be a success. We were therefore careful to come up with a project that would be respectful of the existing structure and make it possible to revert the building back to its original function.” The overnight destruction of the rosewood cycling track somehow put an end to that dream. But otherwise, the architectural team consciously avoided altering the building’s main elements. They also meant to keep the skylit ceiling exposed everywhere they could, including in the building’s central node. The idea was not retained at the time due to the use of this space for displaying information related to the exhibits—a decision that led to the introduction of a low ceiling, blocking the view to the skylights above.

The unusual program involved creating replicas of five ecosystems from the Americas. The hope was to raise public awareness and respect for nature through direct contact with animals and plants living in different regions. The challenge was tremendous. Flora and fauna usually found in tropical rainforests had to thrive under the same roof as Quebec

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beavers, used to a temperate climate, as well as penguins from the much colder Antarctic. Roughly 500 plant species and 4,500 animals from 250 different species were brought in, thanks to a remarkable international network developed over the years by Montreal’s institutions.

Filmmaker Bernard Gosselin documented the final stages of construction in a feature-length NFB film, The Glass Ark. The Biodome opened on June 24, 1992 to a long lineup of eager visitors. The new amenity attracted 750,000 visitors during its first three months. Attendance f luctuated over the years, eventually settling around 850,000 visitors annually—making it the city’s top permanent paid attraction.

Renewal In 2014, Espace pour la vie (Space for Life)—a new entity created to oversee all of Montreal’s nature museums—launched an international design competition. It aimed to gather ideas for revamping the Biodome, rehousing the Insectarium, and creating a new glass pavilion for the Botanical Garden. Eight architectural teams were selected to take part in the competition’s second stage: four worked on the future Insectarium, and four others on the Biodome. (The Botanical Garden pavilion was put on hold.)

Montreal-based KANVA and Neuf architect(e)s, working with Spanish studio AZPML , won the competition for revamping the Biodome.

The project moved forward with the team of KANVA and Neuf.

The client’s message had been quite clear. They asked the designers to “redynamize” the Biodome: “to enhance the immersive experience between visitors and the museum’s distinct ecosystems, as well as to transform the building’s public spaces.” The two subpolar areas needed refreshing, along with the Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystem. Otherwise,

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the Tropical Rainforest and the Laurentian Maple Forest ecosystems were thriving. The largest concern was the building’s public spaces, which had become outdated and needed a major overhaul.

KANVA’s impactful first move was to remove the bleachers ringing the concrete structure above the main entrance, thus freeing the view to the skylit vault above. The effect is dramatic, exposing not only the elegant skylights but also the building’s impressive Y-shaped concrete legs.

The second strategy centered on a new system of partitions that weave throughout the f loorplate, made with a translucent textile membrane.

The membrane was developed in coordination with Montreal firm Sollertia, founded by one of the Cirque du Soleil’s earliest collaborators.

For visitors arriving at the reinvented Biodome, the renewed spaces have an almost magical effect. The lobby, adorned with a minimalist reception desk and sparse bespoke furniture, sets the stage. Tall, sinuous architectural membranes frame a passageway leading visitors to the central atrium. Everything is set in dreamscape white. KANVA’s project, more about sensorial experience than scientific information, opens up the public areas to the skylit vault and creates an almost meditative space.

Wayfinding is mostly intuitive, with formal graphics reduced to an absolute minimum. The signage indicating the way into the various ecosystems is barely noticeable. Information on the exhibits was moved out of the space, to be accessed through a cell phone application. The digital portal is extremely well designed and informative, albeit somewhat distracting from the animals on view, and not suited to all visitors.

From the central agora, people can choose which ecosystem they want to visit—a change from the earlier layout, where visitors were encouraged to go through the four zones in sequence. The Tropical Rainforest and the Laurentian Maple Forest are the two most spectacular

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ecosystems in terms of vegetation. However, the subantarctic penguin community remains one of the Biodome’s strongest attractions.

A novelty introduced by KANVA was the transformation of the Subpolar Regions access into an ice-lined tunnel, preparing visitors for the colder temperatures ahead. The exhibit itself, where the subantarctic and subarctic basins sit barely a metre from each other, is less convincing. Fortunately, the charming antics of southern penguins and northern puffins make up for the slight feeling of unease at seeing the two poles brought so close together.

A new mezzanine One of the new elements introduced by the architectural team is an upper mezzanine, which serves as a rest area for periodic breaks and as the culminating point of a visit. It can be reached directly through stairs from two ecosystems, or by way of a glass-enclosed elevator from the central node. This pristinely designed area is capped by the humbling presence of Taillibert’s skylights. From up above, one gets a bird’s-eye view of the Laurentian Maple Forest, the Gulf of St. Lawrence area, and the enclosed Tropical Rainforest, which resonates with the sounds of chattering parrots.

Also on the mezzanine is a bright yellow interactive exhibit for children, which sits alongside the complex electrical and mechanical systems essential to the workings of the Biodome. As stressed by KANVA princi-

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pal Rami Bebawi: “We wanted to reveal the mechanics of the Biodome, so that people would understand how complex the balance of life is.”

In an institution dedicated to raising awareness on environmental issues, the building’s energy sourcing has been an ongoing concern, and a geothermal system was installed in 2010. KANVA was also able to tap into a pre-existing heat pump system, which transfers waste energy from cooling the polar regions to keep the rainforest at tropical temperatures.

Back on the entry level, a corridor circling the building leads to the museum shop and cafeteria, adjacent to a second entry point—which is even more stunning than the main entrance, since it is visible from a distance. The membrane walls lining the peripheral corridor display an amazing formal versatility, made possible through the material’s unusual qualities. The only rooms that are perhaps less than optimal in the new configuration are the relocated administrative offices, which may not be sufficiently sound-proofed by the membrane walls.

A new era The renewed Biodome opened in January 2021, in the midst of a global pandemic and an accelerating climate crisis. As visitors return to Montreal and to the Biodome, one wonders whether Pierre Bourque’s “rallying call of hope” will take a more urgent meaning, and be successful in truly raising awareness of the planet’s increasingly vulnerable ecosystems. For this visitor and Montreal resident, the new Biodome

OPPOSITE The renovated Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystem is topped by mesh reminiscent of fishing nets, to keep its birds contained. It is one of several ecosystems that can be viewed from the upper mezzanine. The mezzanine includes a children’s exhibition, alongside mechanical infrastructure needed to maintain the habitats at the requisite temperature and humidity levels. ABOVE The newly added upper mezzanine is topped by the fish-eye skylights of the original velodrome.

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is truly inspiring and speaks of architectural beauty in a way few architects dare to—or are able to—achieve.

That success, however, goes beyond the considerable accomplishments of KANVA and Neuf ’s present work. It owes much to the poetic audacity of an ill-understood Roger Taillibert, architect of the 1976 Velodrome. Equally audacious was the idea of transforming an underutilized Olympic building into a pioneering “living museum” with a mission in 1992. The creation of the Biodome was made possible by teams of young, enthusiastic, scientists working side by side with equally enthusiastic architects and engineers.

Building on this groundwork, KANVA was able to go one step further, infusing the Biodome with a dream-like quality. Beyond the need to address the degradation of the natural world, the architects’ intervention speaks to another urgent need: that of surrounding oneself with calm and beauty.

Odile Hénault, former publisher of the architectural magazine section a, has been documenting architecture in Quebec and Canada for decades. She is particularly interested in projects resulting from architectural competitions, a system now widely accepted in Quebec.

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CLIENT SPACE FOR LIFE | ARCHITECT TEAM KANVA—RAMI BEBAWI (MRAIC), TUDOR RADULESCU (MRAIC), LAURENCE BOUTIN-LAPERRIÈRE, LAURIANNE BRODEUR, DALE BYRNS, GABRIEL CAYA, ELOISE CIESLA, HALEY COMMAND, JULIEN DALY, LÉON DUSSAULT-GAGNÉ, ANDREA HURTARTE, OLGA KARPOVA, BRIGITTE MESSIER-LEGENDRE, FRANCE MOREAU, ANDREI NEMES, KILLIAN O’CONNOR, CLAUDIA PAVILANIS, KATRINE RIVARD, DINA SAFONOVA, MINH-GIAO TRUONG, JOYCE YAM. NEUF—AZAD CHICHMANIAN, MARINA SOCOLOVA, DAVID GILBERT, SIMON BASTIEN | STRUCTURAL NCK | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL BOUTHILLETTE PARIZEAU | INTERIORS KANVA | CONTRACTOR GROUPE UNIGESCO | CODE/COST GROUPE GLT+ | SPECS ATELIER 6 | LIGHTING LIGHTFACTOR | COLLABORATING EXHIBITION DESIGNER LA BANDE À PAUL | COLLABORATING SET DESIGNER ANICK LA BISSONNIÈRE | WAYFINDING BÉLANGER DESIGN | LAND SURVEYOR TOPO 3D | ACOUSTICS SOFT DB | AREA 15,000 M2 | BUDGET $37.2 M | COMPLETION JUNE 2020

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OLD BUILDINGS, NEW ART

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AN EDMONTON FIRM REVITALIZES A PAIR OF DOWNTOWN BUILDINGS FOR TWO CONTEMPORARY ARTS INSTITUTIONS. PROJECTS

Alberta

Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre and CO*LAB, Edmonton,

Rockliff Pierzchajlo Kroman Architects Graham Livesey PHOTOS Adam Borman Photography, unless otherwise noted ARCHITECT TEXT

In 2006, the City of Edmonton began the revitalization of a 40-hectare area just east of Churchill Square that is now known as The Quarters Downtown. Historically, this part of the city was called the Boyle Street neighbourhood, after John Robert Boyle (1870-1936), a prominent local lawyer and politician. The district is one of the city’s oldest and has been home to Indigenous and immigrant groups, including Edmonton’s early Chinese community. Today, the area suffers significantly from urban blight, and is occupied by many surface parking lots waiting for reinvestment. The area began its long, steady decline in the 1950s, and urban renewal in the 1970s added to its sliding fortunes.

In order to spark new development, the City of Edmonton has invest­ ed substantially in infrastructure for The Quarters. A pedestrian-focused street upgrade called the Armature (96th Street NW, formerly Kinistino Avenue) and the recently completed Kinistinâw Park, with its

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striking red canopy, are intended to become vibrant public focal points for the district. The new extension of Edmonton’s LRT also runs through the area. Unfortunately, redevelopment has been slow to come, as The Quarters has had to combat its reputation as a down-and-out part of the city. It’s also had to compete for development dollars with other districts in Edmonton, including the Blatchford neighbourhood on the former municipal airport site, and even suburban communities such as Sherwood Park.

Despite the challenges of reinvigorating a failing urban district, there are indications of new energy in The Quarters with various projects completed in recent years. A fresh vitality is especially evident in two recently completed centres for young arts organizations. Both are renovations of existing structures, completed through partnerships with the City of Edmonton and various granting agencies. The Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre is one of the few art spaces in the country dedicated to Indigenous art, and Co*Lab is an organization devoted to supporting the community of artists who live and work in The Quarters.

Both projects were designed by Rockliff Pierzchajlo Kroman Architects (RPK) under the direction of its youngest partner, Jan Kroman.

RPK was established in 1969 and has undergone many changes during

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OPPOSITE RPK Architects transformed a 1960s brick commercial building in The Quarters Downtown district into one of Canada’s few spaces dedicated to Indigenous art. ABOVE A faceted exterior made of aluminum composite panels gives the building a dynamic quality reminiscent of moving water. The design was inspired by the centre’s name, Ociciwan—Cree for “the current comes from there.”

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the past half century. While the firm has long-established expertise in health care, affordable housing, and seniors’ residential design, Kroman’s appointment as principal five years ago has coincided with new forays into arts and cultural projects.

The Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre is located in a simple brick commercial building that appears to be from the 1960s. The building sits on a highly visible site off Jasper Avenue, fronting the Armature, and near the valley edge overlooking the North Saskatchewan River.

The name Ociciwan comes from a Plains Cree word relating to riverways, that means “the current comes from there.” This fluvial inspiration is seen in the most striking aspect of the design—a dynamic façade made of locally fabricated aluminum composite material. The architects designed four different standard panels, skewed at varying angles, and specified two types of applied film to give the façade various reflective qualities. The resulting surface reflects the sky and surroundings and has subtly changing qualities reminiscent of flowing water.

It is also very affective at night, when LEDs incorporated into the vertical channels create beacon-like strips of light. A planned mural by Winnipeg artist Kenneth Lavallee will give further vibrancy to the building’s south façade at street level.

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Inside, most of the main floor is a multi-purpose gallery space that one enters directly from the street. It’s a simple space with some deft detailing and will help the organization realize its mandate to showcase the work of Indigenous artists—an important initiative for Edmonton as well as for surrounding communities. The Ociciwan collective also intends to use the adjacent public spaces for its programming initiatives. An elevator was inserted into the building as part of the upgrade, and is effectively the primary form of vertical movement, with existing stairs serving a secondary role. The lower level contains a workshop, along with a flexible space intended for performances and multi-media installations; upstairs are offices and a community space. All of the major interior spaces allow for smudging ceremonies—an important design consideration.

Nearby, the Co*Lab project on 102A Avenue NW is a somewhat more eclectic facility. This perhaps aptly reflects both the structure of the two existing commercial buildings it occupies and the community-led nature of the organization that administers it, the Quarters Arts Soci-

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ety. The renovation of the facility has resulted in three major spaces: a tall gallery space painted white; a large multimedia community space painted black; and an outdoor space dubbed the “backyard.” The two major interior spaces are connected through a compressed corridor, which is given its own vibrant identity with traffic-light-yellow walls, floor and ceiling. This same bright colour is used on stairs, handrails, and other feature elements throughout the building. The neatly arrayed floorplate includes support spaces, a workshop, a media room, and small studios for artists-in-residence on a second level.

The way the original facility had been adapted over time is reflected in the bric-a-brac assemblage of the principal façade, which has been carefully articulated by RPK through the strategic use of colour, new materials, and entry points. In a unifying gesture, the exterior is painted white, and several existing openings filled with glass block have been preserved.

Three large garage doors—two on the front façade, and one facing the backyard—will facilitate the performances which are part of many

ABOVE A nearby renovation for the community-led Quarters Art Society has resulted in the Co*Lab facility, which includes an art gallery, community space, and artists-in-residence studios. OPPOSITE Polycarbonate cladding conceals an older stucco façade, and reinforces the design’s playfulness— especially when backlit at night.

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of Co*Lab’s projects. Audiences will be able to f low in and out of the building, from street to event space. At the gallery end of the building, polycarbonate cladding conceals an older stucco façade, and reinforces the playful aspect of the design, especially at night, when this part of the building is set aglow with vertical stripes. Co*Lab has installed a jaunty, 1950s-style sign over the main entrance, adding to the feeling of welcome.

While these two arts centres were developed at the same time, and under the same city-backed initiative, the resulting buildings are quite different in both design and spirit. Each was developed to suit the character and aspirations of the organization it accommodates—and that’s already palpable, even though with pandemic restrictions, neither has yet been able to fully realize their cultural ambitions, nor the opportunities afforded to them by their newly renovated buildings. By rehabilitating and transforming two existing buildings into dramatically different places, Kroman and the RPK team demonstrate that architecture can be distinctive and successful on modest budgets.

As The Quarters develops, concerns about gentrification inevitably arise: however, a neighbourhood cannot thrive without investment.

It is vital that the right kinds of buildings are developed to ensure that the existing inhabitants aren’t pushed out as newcomers move in.

Supporting arts organizations and the city’s artists is a natural fit for ABOVE Bright yellow paint is used on all surfaces in a central corridor, and as an accent colour throughout the building, delivering a sense of energy and whimsy.

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this area, with its proximity to Edmonton’s major cultural organizations. It’s also key to preserving Edmonton’s reputation as a cultural centre, and to maintaining the vitality of its core. A thriving inner-city district can only benefit the entire city, and these two new art centres must be understood as a hopeful sign of things to come.

Graham Livesey, FRAIC, is a professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary.

PROJECT OCICIWAN CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE | CLIENT CITY OF EDMONTON (CLAIRE ST. AUBIN) AND OCICIWAN (TIFFANY SHAW-COLLINGE, HALIE FINNEY, ERIN SUTHERLAND, ALBERTA ROSE W./ INGNIQ, BECCA TAYLOR) | ARCHITECT TEAM JAN KROMAN (MRAIC) (PRINCIPAL-INCHARGE, DESIGN ARCHITECT), DAN LETOURNEAU (JOB CAPTAIN AND CONTRACT ADMINISTRATOR), DANIA ATASSI, ROBERT MAGGAY, TEAGAN MACNEIL | STRUCTURAL ENTUITIVE (MOHAMMAD MOAYYED, MONIQUE MILLER) | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL MCW HEMISPHERE (RUSSELL TRUESDELL, MANAN KAPOOR) | CIVIL ISL ENGINEERING (DARIN HICKS) | 3D SURVEYING URBAN SYSTEMS (JING JING DOU) | LANDSCAPE ROCKLIFF PIERZCHAJLO KROMAN ARCHITECTS | INTERIORS ROCKLIFF PIERZCHAJLO KROMAN ARCHITECTS | CONTRACTOR DELNOR CONSTRUCTION (JAMES SOUSA) | OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVES STANTEC (PETER GEGOLICK, JIM SLAVIN) | AREA 600 M2 | BUDGET $2.1 M | COMPLETION MARCH 2020 PROJECT CO*LAB | CLIENT CITY OF EDMONTON (CLAIRE ST. AUBIN) AND QUARTERS ARTS (LORIN

KLASK) | ARCHITECT TEAM JAN KROMAN (MRAIC) (PRINCIPAL-IN-CHARGE, DESIGN ARCHITECT), DAN LETOURNEAU (JOB CAPTAIN AND CONTRACT ADMINISTRATOR), DANIA ATASSI, ROBERT MAGGAY, TEAGAN MACNEIL | STRUCTURAL ENTUITIVE (MOHAMMAD MOAYYED, MONIQUE MILLER) | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL MCW HEMISPHERE (RUSSELL TRUESDELL, MANAN KAPOOR) | CIVIL ISL ENGINEERING (DARIN HICKS) | 3D SURVEYING URBAN SYSTEMS (JING JING DOU) | LANDSCAPE ROCKLIFF PIERZCHAJLO KROMAN ARCHITECTS | INTERIORS ROCKLIFF PIERZCHAJLO KROMAN ARCHITECTS | CONTRACTOR DELNOR CONSTRUCTION (JAMES SOUSA) | OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVES STANTEC (PETER GEGOLICK, JIM SLAVIN) | AREA 550 M2 | BUDGET $1.8 M | COMPLETION SEPTEMBER 2020

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ALL THE SIDEWALK’S A STAGE

MBAC TRANSFORMS A DREARY CALGARY UNDERPASS INTO A COLOURFUL, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION THAT MIRRORS THE MOVEMENT OF PEDESTRIANS ON ITS SCREENS. 4th Street SW Underpass Enhancement, Calgary, Alberta the marc boutin architectural collaborative inc.

TEXT Ximena Gonzalez PHOTOS Yellow Camera PROJECT

ARCHITECT

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When the economic downturn hit Calgary in 2014, offices and businesses vacated the city’s downtown core. Today, with the added impact of the pandemic, nearly 30 percent of office space remains vacant.

But a program started when the city was booming is helping hold up spirits and support future investment in Calgary’s business district.

Launched in 2010, the Centre City Underpass Enhancement program set out to improve the pedestrian experience at each of the eight railway underpasses joining downtown Calgary to the Beltline neighbourhood to the south. These underpasses were originally designed to overcome the ground-level barrier created by the CP rail line at the southern edge of the core, and move cars in and out of downtown.

Little thought was given to people moving on foot, who were funnelled along narrow sidewalks at the edges of the underpasses.

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A decade ago—with a thriving economy and thousands of pedestrians using the underpasses on a daily basis—the possibilities for improving these infrastructural links seemed endless. “The Centre City is the economic engine of Calgary,” reads the Downtown Underpass Urban Design Guidelines. Now, projects like the underpass enhancement program remain equally important, providing a solid foundation for recovery.

Designed by MTa and completed in 2016, the 8th Street SW underpass was the first of these enhancements. That was followed by 1st Street SW, designed by the marc boutin architecture collaborative (MBAC) and completed in 2019. MBAC is also responsible for the latest of the series, the underpass at 4th Street SW, completed at the end of 2019.

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ABOVE A responsive LED wall system is programmed to mirror the movement of pedestrians travelling through the renovated 4th Street Underpass, at the southern edge of downtown Calgary.

“The [4th Street SW] project started when the city had decent budgets,” says architect Marc Boutin, whose firm was awarded the 1st Street commission in 2012 and the 4th Street commission in 2015. “[Then] all of a sudden, the economy crashed.”

But despite budget changes, the design team delivered a space that is more than a safe connector. The 4th Street underpass functions as a poetic catalyst for an embodied experience, facilitating a conversation between people and place.

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ABOVE In the central area of the underpass, the walls are topped by sculpted polycarbonate veils that capture and reflect light. OPPOSITE Designed for durability and ease of maintenance, the wall panels include an aluminum exoskeleton, a layer of laminated safety glass with a translucent interlayer for light diffusion, a translucent polycarbonate panel that holds the LEDs, and a supporting galvanized steel subframe.

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As pedestrians reach the start of a gentle downward slope at either end of the underpass, a sense of anticipation is created by the glowing lights of the installation ahead, as if one were to enter a stage. Then, as each user moves through the space, a digital avatar appears across the street at the opposite end of the underpass, travelling in sync to meet the participant at the middle of the space. In the central stretch, which is open to the sky, the walls are crowned by polycarbonate veils that capture and reflect colour and light. Mirroring the movements of pedestrians, the digital display nudges pedestrians to realize that they are more than mere observers in the urban realm: they are active participants.

“In some ways, this space is a public manifestation of the self into the idea of spectacle, and into the idea of a conversation at the scale of the city,” Boutin says. “And it is a physical one, as opposed to an immaterial one.”

This experience is facilitated by a design that seamlessly integrates public art, pedestrian needs, and City maintenance requirements.

MBAC ’s design for the underpass, completed in collaboration with visual artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, began by observing pedestrians using the existing sidewalks. The designers identified the opportunity to create an interactive installation that would allow for active engagement with the space of the underpass. “It was a building of the narrative around body, space, and conversation,” Boutin says.

Supported by INVIVIA, a design consultancy and technology research company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wodiczko developed

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a responsive public art installation to capture the movements of pedestrians.

Four 360-degree cameras are carefully concealed on the columns that support the road and rail line: two towards each end, and two near the middle.

The video captured by these cameras is processed through custom software developed by INVIVIA, which controls the lighting system and generates the pedestrian silhouettes that move along the responsive media wall.

Constructed with translucent polycarbonate panels, the responsive wall extends along the east and west sides of the underpass—stretching along the 800- and 900-block on 4th Street SW, this underpass is longer than the others. The panels act as a light-diffusing surface for the LED lights behind. This system shares similarities to the design for the 1st Street underpass, which includes a two-layered skin with supergraphics of rolling prairie grassland and soaring mountains overlaid by a perforated aluminum screen. For 4th Street SW, the designers introduced light as the key graphic element.

With 1st Street, the MBAC team experienced the challenges inherent to redesigning a public space of this kind, including accounting for vandalism and maintenance. To protect the media wall, they decided to locate the assembly’s structural aluminum ribs on the outer surface.

The exposed aluminum ribs were sculpted to catch and ref lect the light of the LED fixtures. “We needed to make sure it didn’t look like a jail,” Boutin notes. Furthermore, for ease of maintenance, the wall is designed so that a single person can detach the aluminum ribs to clean

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the glass, and remove individual panels to change the LED lights.

Despite Calgary’s changing economic climate, the design team succeeded at transforming a dingy underpass into an interactive display— part public space and part public art—that improves the experience of all pedestrians. “We knew that part of the success of the project would hinge on how integrated it was,” Boutin says. “The project is a piece of urban infrastructure, it’s a piece of streetscape, and it’s a piece of public art.”

In a struggling downtown, MBAC ’s public realm work helps keep Calgarians hopeful for the future. A new downtown strategy, aiming to attract talent and investment, is currently in the works. A draft of the plan, titled A Roadmap to Reinvention, describes downtown Calgary as “a resilient and vibrant place for everyone, with welcoming neighbourhoods, active streets, and well-used public spaces.” Multi-functional projects like the 4th Street SW underpass lay a solid foundation for this vision to materialize.

Ximena Gonzalez is a Calgary-based writer and editor with an educational background in architecture and environmental design.

CLIENT THE CITY OF CALGARY | ARCHITECT TEAM MARC BOUTIN (FRAIC), NATHANIEL WAGENAAR,

TREVOR STECKLY, JODI JAMES, SEAN KNIGHT, RYAN AGREY, MICHELLE SMITH COWMAN | STRUC-

TURAL ENTUITIVE ENGINEERING | MECHANICAL REINBOLD ENGINEERING | LIGHTING/ELECTRICAL

NEMETZ (S/A) & ASSOCIATES LTD / SMP ENGINEERING | CONTRACTOR POMERLEAU | PUBLIC ARTIST KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO AND ALLEN SAYEGH / INVIVIA | BUDGET $6.7 M | COMPLETION WINTER 2019

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MAKING AN ENTRANCE

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A BAMBOO PAVILION IN SCENIC GUILIN, CHINA IS THE STUNNING LEAD-IN TO A POPULAR DANCE-THEATRE SHOW.

Bamboo Bamboo, Yangshuo, Guilin, China llLab TEXT Susan Nerberg PHOTOS arch-exist photography PROJECT

DESIGNER

As frequent concertgoers know, you’ve scored a double bang for your buck when your show’s opening act turns out to be stellar. If you’re lucky, you could be rocking out even before the headliner enters the stage.

But what happens if the supporting act is a sequence of architectural moves, rather than a band? Can a display of design agility heighten an audience’s pre-show mood and anticipation? If a recent bamboo pavilion designed by part-Canadian design group llLab (pronounced “el el lab”) is any indication, the answer is a standing ovation.

Located on an island bifurcating the Li River in Guilin, China, the project is impossible to ignore. It’s the new grand entry to Impression Sanjie Liu, a huge open-air theatre set in a singular karst landscape with cliffhanging bamboo and river-etched valleys. Composed of a sequence of woven-bamboo canopies and walk-through lanterns, llLab’s pavilion is the first thing you see when you arrive on the island to take in Impression Sanjie Liu’s signature nighttime dance-theatre show. (The group and its show are inspired by the ballads of Sanjie Liu, a songstress from Chinese legends.) llLab’s arrangement draws you in, literally and figuratively, and whether you focus on its details or zoom out to its placement in nature, it doesn’t take long to realize why the pavilion won the ArchDaily award for Small Project of the Year in 2021. llLab is a truly global practice: partners David Correa, Hanxiao Liu, Luís Ricardo and Taichi Kuma are based respectively in Toronto, Shanghai, Porto and Tokyo. The client brief, Correa says, called for an intervention that would open the imagination of theatregoers as soon as they

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got to the island. When audiences arrived before, they disembarked at a bus stop that did nothing to enhance the theatrical experience.

So llLab proposed a transition zone with a performative dimension— a pathway that surprises and delights even before the show gets underway.

The outcome is an installation that invites engagement. It’s made up of four undulating canopies, each seemingly propped up by clusters of bamboo, and four lanterns large enough to stand inside and walk through. These elements—as well as smaller lanterns placed along the pathway for illumination—are made by encasing (and concealing) slender metal structural supports in an ethereal layer of woven bamboo strips, like draping canvas over and around tent poles. The bamboo for the project was harvested in the immediate surroundings, while the engineering behind the design stems from the team’s interdisciplinary background. Correa teaches bio-inspired design, digital manufacturing, and robotic wood fabrication at the University of Waterloo; he and Kuma studied computational design and construction at the University of Stuttgart. (Ricardo, Liu and Correa met while working at haascookzemmrich Studio 2050, a local architecture practice.) Ultimately, the design relies as much on a meeting of nature and artifice as it does on old ideas meshing with new concepts.

“In China, there’s an appetite for finding new expressions that draw on Chinese culture rather than on Western sensibilities,” says Correa.

“Cities, towns and corporations want structures, spaces and visual iden-

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PREVIOUS SPREAD In llLab’s pavilion for an open-air dance theatre, clusters of living bamboo conceal slender metal supports that prop up lightweight canopies. OPPOSITE TOP The design creates an undulating path alongside the river’s edge—a memorable approach to the performance space. OPPOSITE BOTTOM The largest in a sequence of bamboo-clad lanterns invites visitors to step inside for rest, or a conversation with other theatre-goers. ABOVE The architects’ computational design expertise was key to generating the geometry of the sunscreens, which were brought to life by local master weavers.

tities that tell a story of who they are. They want something that feels new, but that is not foreign.” Impression Sanjie Liu was no exception.

The bamboo pavilion draws heavily from regional bamboo weaving techniques that have been perfected over centuries, giving it a decidedly local feel. And while the shapes of the canopies and lanterns may be a novel addition to the landscape, they sit comfortably in their geographical context. As such, the pavilion offers a direct link to the region’s history and dramatic topography. More to the point, it creates a tangible path to its rich cultural tradition in narrative theatre.

When it comes to ways of doing things in China, Correa says design and fabrication are not far apart. It’s not unusual for a firm getting a commission for a chair to also manufacture it. “It’s a very dynamic design process,” he adds. “The timeline between acceptance of a design to completion is very short, and once a project starts, [clients] want it ready tomorrow.”

At one point, llLab sent a rendering of the bamboo pavilion to the client for review, and a week later, it was already in construction— even though the design was not yet final. But this fits in with Correa’s penchant for “happy accidents”: a lack of complete control that mimics nature. “This was the first time we worked with bamboo,” he says. “There are many species of bamboo, and unlike working with dimensional lumber, every piece is different. It is critical to find ways to manage some of its unpredictable behaviour on a project.”

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After much modelling and prototyping, llLab came up with the idea of using a minimal steel structure as a skeleton for the canopies and lanterns. This also allowed each component to be slightly different, lending the project an organic feel.

The result is a succession of lightweight structures that neither competes with nor outshines the stunning landscape. Rather, it forms a sheltered geography that serves as a place to look out and wonder at the surroundings—and to build excitement for the main act at the end of the pathway. Still, the bamboo pavilion in Guilin has also become an attraction in its own right, and to the delight of people coming to see a show of spectacular proportions, they’ve scored a surprise opening act. Talk about making an entrance.

Susan Nerberg is a writer and editor based in Montreal.

CLIENT IMPRESSION SANJIE LIU | DESIGN TEAM HANXIAO LIU, HENRY D’ATH, LEXIAN HU, ALYSSA TANG, CHAORAN FAN, LUIS RICARDO, DAVID CORREA | CONTRACTOR GCPS INTERIOR DECORATION FINISHING LTD. | PROJECT MANAGEMENT LIHUA MI, DALIN CHAI, HAO ZHANG, GUOYANG WAN | STRUCTURAL LALU PARTNERS STRUCTURE CONSULTING | BAMBOO LANTERN, BAMBOO WEAVING TECHNIQUE, STRUCTURAL RESEARCH MANAGEMENT SHANGHAI TAN TAN PROPS LTD. | RESEARCH TEAM QIMIN CUI, GENG MENG | BAMBOO LANTERN, BAMBOO WEAVING AND STRUCTURAL INSTALLATION SHANGHAI JD BAMBOO ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN & ENGINEERING LTD. | GROUND PAVING EXECUTION HAIMING LIU, JING LIU, CHANGFA CAI, HEQUAN YU, HUOFENG LIANG, DAIZHONG YU, XIUPING TAO, BAOXING LI, RUOQUE AN | AREA 1,900 M2 | BUDGET ¥8 M | COMPLETION JULY 2020

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TECHNICAL

ERIK-MCLEAN

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EMBODIED CARBON VALUES IN COMMON INSULATION MATERIALS Geoffrey Turnbull, Jonathan Graham, David Constable and Sahana Dharmaraj

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ence of the insulation. Said another way, we identify how long it takes for the operational savings (reduced operational emissions) to exceed the investment (embodied carbon) in the insulation.

We assumed the house was heated with natural gas for our baseline scenario. We also contemplated an alternative scenario where the house was upgraded to a heat pump. The relative performance of each insulation does not change in the heat pump scenario. However, the operational emissions resulting from the heat pump are much lower than with gas heating. As such, the notional payback periods are significantly longer in the heat pump scenario (though the total carbon emissions in any period of time would be lower).

CHART 1

– Carbon Payback Analysis, Natural Gas Heating Scenario

Chart 1 – Carbon Payback Analysis Natural Gas Heating Scenario (0-16 Years)

AvoidedGHG GHG EMISSIONS Emissions (kgCO₂e) AVOIDED K GCO2E)

Like many architects, we have begun to pay much closer attention to the embodied carbon associated with the materials we are specifying. All other things being equal, selecting a material with a lower global warming potential (GWP) is preferable. However, at this early stage, not many of us have a strong intuitive sense of how meaningful various GWP values might be. For instance, is 223 kgCO2e/m2 of insulation good or bad?

To present GWP values in a relatable way, we performed a study to compare the embodied carbon values for 11 commonly used types of insulation. The insulation products considered include two brands of standard XPS, two brands of next-generation XPS, polyiso, spray foam, EPS, stone wool, GPS, fibreglass batts, and blown cellulose.

Insulation is somewhat unique among building materials in that one of the primary reasons it is incorporated in buildings—to reduce energy flow through the building envelope—directly impacts the building’s operational emissions.

In our study, we contrive a familiar scenario: a homeowner with an uninsulated bearing masonry house wishes to add insulation to reduce their energy costs and increase comfort in the home. Specifically, they would like to increase the effective R-value of their home from its current performance of R4IMP to a value more in line with the current building code, R 24IMP. We calculate the embodied carbon associated with the amount of each type of insulation required to achieve that level of thermal resistance. We then calculate the quantity of emissions that is avoided each year the house is operated with the higher level of insulation (due to the reduction in heating energy needed to maintain the internal temperature of the house).

The conclusion of our study is a payback analysis that expresses the relationship between the emissions associated with the production of each insulation and the emissions avoided each year due to the pres-

Years

KPMB LAB

TEXT

BLOWN CELLULOSE ROCKWOOL BLOWN CELLULOSE OWENS CORNING XPS

FIBREGLASS BATTS GPS STONE WOOL

YEARS

FIBREGLASS BATTS POLYISO EPS DUPONT'S NEW XPS

SPRAY FOAM POLYISO NEXT GEN XPS #1

NEOPOR GPS OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS

STANDARD DUPONT XPSXPS #1 NEXT GEN XPS #2 STANDARD XPS #2

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AVOIDED GHG EMISSIONS K GCO2E)

e) Avoided GHG Emissions kgCO Avoided Emissions Avoided GHG2GHG Emissions kgCOkgCO e) 2 e) 2

4

43 tained in a wall cavity or similar container, and therefore might not be applicable in as many situations as the other board and batt products considered.

5 Polyiso, EPS, stone wool, and GPS are all board or semi-rigid batt

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 06/21

Said another way, we identify how long it 1. The operational emissions associated takes for the operational savings (reduced with natural gas heating are approximately CHART 1 DETAIL – Carbon Payback Analysis Detail, Natural Gas Heating Scenario Chart 1 Detail – Carbon Payback Analysis Natural Gas Heating Scenario Years) CARBON VALUES IN COMMON MATERIALS operational emissions) to EMBODIED exceed the 12INSULATION times greater than for(0-2 electric heat investment (embodied carbon) in the pump heating. This translates into much insulation. shorter payback(0-16 periods for the insulation Chart 1 – Carbon Payback Analysis Natural Gas Heating Scenario Years) KPMB ARCHITECTS materials considered.

We assumed the house was heated with 2. XPS is an outlier in this selection of 2 natural1gas for our baseline scenario.

We Natural Gas Heating Scenario (0-2 Years) Chart Detail – Carbon Payback Analysis also contemplated an alternative scenario greater than the other materials. In the where the house was upgraded to a heat electric heat pump scenario, it is not 3 pump. The relative performance of each reasonable to expect the operational insulation does not change in the heat pump carbon savings to ever outweigh the scenario. However, the operational emissions embodied carbon of the material itself. resulting from the heat pump are much lower 3. Owens Corning’s next-gen XPS has a than with gas heating. As such, the notional much lower GWP than either brand of payback periods are significantly longer in traditional XPS considered. However, it is the heat pump scenario (though the total still twice as high as the other non-XPS carbon emissions in any period of time would products considered in the study. be lower.) The findings of this analysis are illustrated in the three graphs above. Several conclusions bear mentioning:

products, and all have GWPs that are significantly lower than XPS. In situations where blown cellulose insulation is not a suitable choice, these products—stone wool and GPS in particular—offer considerable flexibility in terms of suitable installations, along with quite good embodied carbon values.

It is our hope that this analysis provides a somewhat more intuitive sense of scale for the embodied carbon quantities of these materials.

The study also underscores the significant differences in operational emissions resulting from gas versus electric heat pump systems.

Years

YEARS KPMB LAB

BLOWN CELLULOSE

ROCKWOOL

POLYISO

Chart 2 FIBREGLASS – Carbon Payback Analysis (0-16 Years) EPSPump Scenario BLOWN OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS EPS Heat BATTSCELLULOSE FIBREGLASS BATTS GPS STONE WOOL

NEOPOR GPS

SPRAY FOAM POLYISO NEXT GEN XPS #1

SPRAY FOAM

DUPONT'S NEW XPS DUPONT XPS

AVOIDED GHG EMISSIONS K 2 GCO2E)

Avoided GHG Emissions kgCOGHG e) Emissions kgCO2 e) Avoided

from the heat pump are much lower than with reasonable to expect the operational CHART –As Carbon Payback Analysis, Electric Heat Pump Scenario gas heating. such, the notional payback carbon savings toHeating ever outweigh the Chart 2 –2 Carbon Payback Analysis Heat Pump Scenario (0-16 Years) periods are significantly longer in the heat embodied carbon of the material itself. pump scenario (though the total carbon 3. Owens Corning’s next-gen XPS has a emissions in any period of time would be much lower GWP than either brand of lower.) traditional XPS considered. However, it is still twice as high as the other non-XPS

The finding of our study are illustrated in the three graphs above. Several conclusions bear mentioning:

study.

4. Blown cellulose insulation has the lowest GWP value of group, as might be 1. The operational emissions associated with expected given the relatively low amount natural gas heating are approximately 12 of processing involved in producing times greater than for electric heat pump the material. That said, it needs to be heating. This translates into much shorter contained in a wall cavity or similar ‘payback’ periods for the insulation Years container and therefore might not be materials considered.

BLOWN CELLULOSE FIBREGLASS BATTS NEOPOR GPS applicable in as many situations as the POLYISO OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS 2. XPS is an ROCKWOOL outlier in this selection of OWENS CORNING XPS

DUPONT'S NEW XPS

greater than the other materials. In the electric heat pump scenario, with its BLOWN CELLULOSE ROCKWOOL BLOWN CELLULOSE OWENS CORNING XPS FIBREGLASS BATTS GPS STONE WOOL

5 Years

considered.

DUPONT XPS

5. Polyiso, Rockwool, and GPS are all board

YEARS FIBREGLASS4BATTS

POLYISO EPS DUPONT'S NEW XPS SPRAY FOAM POLYISO 5 XPS #1 NEXT GEN

The Effect of Varying Levels of Insulation on Total Carbon

OWENS CORNING XPS

NEOPOR GPS OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS STANDARD XPS #1 DUPONT XPS NEXT GEN XPS #2 STANDARD XPS #2

After examining the relationship between embodied carbon and operational carbon savings over time for a given quantity of insulation (R20 IMP), we thought it would be interesting to also look at the effect of varying levels of insulation.

In this second analysis, we work with the same 11 insulation materials we looked at in the first analysis. We set a 30-year service life for the materials, and we make a few assumptions about the building the insulation is being applied to. Specifically, the building is in Toronto, Ontario; its interior will be maintained at 20°C (giving 93 kKh per year); and it is being heated with natural gas (0.183 kgCO2e/kWh).

We then look at the two component aspects of total carbon: the operational value and the embodied value.

For this analysis, we define “operational carbon” as the amount of emissions produced by the heating plant to maintain the interior temperature of 20°C for 30 years, at each specified level of insulation.

We start the analysis at R1IMP and look at each integer value up to R40 IMP. (Note that the type of insulation is irrelevant to this part of the analysis, as the heat f low through the hypothetical envelope is a function of the R-value, regardless of the insulation used to achieve the given level of resistance.)

The findings of this analysis are illustrated in the three graphs above.

THE EFFECT OF VARYING LEVELS OF INSULATION ON TOTAL CARBON CHART – T otal Operational Carbon per R-value, Natural Gas Several conclusions bear mentioning: 3 3– Scenario Total Operational Carbon Over 30Over Years 30 per Years R-value, Chart 1 Detail – Carbon Payback Analysis Natural GasChart Heating (0-2 Years) approximately 12 times greater than for electric heat pump heating.

This translates into much shorter payback periods for the insulation materials considered.

2 X PS is an outlier in this selection of materials, with a GWP 15 to 20

times greater than the other materials. In the electric heat pump scenario, it is not reasonable to expect the operational carbon savings to ever outweigh the embodied carbon of the material itself.

Natural Heating Scenario Chart 3Gas – Total Operational Carbon Over 30 Years per R-value, Heating Scenario Natural Gas Heating Scenario

e) E) Emissions 2 e) GHG Emissions kgCOK GHGGHG EMISSIONS kgCO GCO 2 2

1 T he operational emissions associated with natural gas heating are

3 One of the next-gen XPS products in our analysis has a much lower

GWP than either brand of traditional XPS considered. However, it is still twice as high as the other non-XPS products considered

in the study.

4 Blown cellulose insulation has the lowest GWP value of the group,

as might be expected given the relatively low amount of processing involved in producing the material. That said, it needs to be con-

CA Jun21.indd 43

Insulation Added (R

)

IMP INSULATION ADDED (R IMP)

Insulation Added (R

)

Chart 3, above, shows the operational carbon values for R1 IMP to R40 IMP. From the shape of the curve, we see that adding insulation provides diminishing returns as the R-values increase. The carbon value drops by 50% from R1IMP to R 2IMP, as doubling the resistance halves the

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TECHNICAL

heat flow through the assembly. By contrast, the energy savings (and carbon reduction) from R 39IMP to R40IMP is only 2.5%.

The second piece of the puzzle is the embodied carbon value. Chart 4, below, shows the 11 materials and the embodied carbon values for 1m² of each, for thicknesses delivering R1IMP up to R40IMP.

Chart 4 – Embodied Carbon per R-value CHART 4 Years) – Embodied Carbon per R-value alysis Heat Pump Scenario (0-16 Chart 4 – Embodied Carbon per R-value

Observations: 1 The total value of emissions indicated on the y-axis is the truly import-

ant piece of information in this analysis. Choosing an insulation material that will result in the lowest total carbon output while meeting the requirements of the application is the appropriate objective.

2 The 30-year service life considered is an arbitrary value. If a shorter ser-

vice life were considered, the total carbon values would be lower, and the inflection points would happen at lower R-values (as the total operational emissions considered would be lower, giving more weight to the embodied emissions). The converse is true for considerations of service life periods longer than 30 years.

GHG Emissions kgCO GHG GHG EMISSIONS K kgCO GCO Emissions e) 2E)2e) 2

KPMB ARCHITECTS

ck Analysis Natural Gas Heating Scenario (0-2 Years)

3 Three of the four XPS materials considered produce inflection points

Insulation Added (R

IMP

Insulation Added (R

INSULATION ADDED (RIMP) POLYISO

BLOWN CELLULOSE

STANDARD XPS #2 NEXT GEN XPS #2 STANDARD XPS #1 NEOPOR GPS NEXT GEN XPS #1

OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS FIBREGLASS BATTS BLOWN CELLULOSE OWENS CORNING XPSGPS NEOPOR FIBREGLASS BATTS

(or total carbon minimums) at insulation levels below current OBC (SB12) code requirements for walls above grade in new home construction.

It would be desirable to select a material with a lower total carbon value at the code-required level of insulation.

)

IMP

)

DUPONT'SROCKWOOL NEW XPS

POLYISO

DUPONT EPS XPS ROCKWOOL SPRAY FOAM EPS

OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS POLYISO OWENS CORNING XPS OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS

POLYISO SPRAY FOAM EPS SPRAY FOAM STONE8WOOL

DUPONT'S NEW XPS

GPS DUPONT XPS FIBREGLASS BATTS DUPONT'S NEW XPS BLOWN CELLULOSE DUPONT XPS

4 A ll of the non-XPS materials show values for total carbon that are

still declining at R40 IMP levels of insulation. These materials do have inflection points; however, they occur at higher R-values that are not typical in construction. (For instance, the inflection point for polyiso is ~R65IMP. The inflection point for blown cellulose would be closer to ~R160 IMP.)

OWENS CORNING XPS

8

The relationship between thickness of insulation and R-value is linear— e.g. R 20 IMP of EPS is 20 times thicker than R1IMP of EPS —and the chart reflects this. The steepness of each line is a reflection of the GWP of each material, where a higher GWP gives a steeper line.

What we’re calling “total carbon” is simply the addition of these two charts. By adding the embodied values to the operational carbon values, we get Chart 5.

5 This analysis considered natural gas as the fuel source for heating. If we

consider an electric heat pump connected to the Ontario grid as the fuel source (see Chart 6) the effect of operational carbon on the shape of the graph reduces dramatically, and the curves more closely resemble those describing the embodied carbon values for each material (i.e. Chart 4.)

At KPMB LAB, we strongly endorse the electrification of buildings as a critical strategy for mitigating climate change. The heat pump heating scenario is the desired condition for all buildings and should inform material selection. In all heating system scenarios, our analysis emphasizes the importance of selecting the material with the lowest GWP that meets the requirements of the specific application.

KPMB ARCHITECTS

2

GHG EMISSIONS K GCO 2E)e) Total GHG Emissions kgCO

TotalCarbon Carbon Over 30R-value, Years per R-value, Natural Gas Heating Chart ––Total 30 Years per R-value, Natural Gas Heating Scenario Scenario Chart 5CHART – Total55Carbon Over 30Over Years per Natural Gas Heating Scenario

Geoffrey Turnbull, Jonathan Graham, David Constable and Sahana Dharmaraj are part of KPMB LAB, a research group within Toronto-based architecture firm KPMB. For source material related to this research, visit KPMB.com/lab.

CHART 6

–T otal Carbon Over 30 Years per R-value, Electric Heat Pump

6Carbon – TotalScenario Carbon Years per R-value, HeatHeating Pump Heating Chart 6 Chart – Total Over 30Over Years30 per R-value, Electric Electric Heat Pump ScenarioScenario Heating

Insulation (R Insulation Added (R IMP Added )

IMP

)

INSULATION ADDED (R IMP)

FIBREGLASS BATTS FIBREGLASS BATTS

EPS

OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS

NEOPOR GPS NEOPOR GPS

SPRAY FOAM

KPMB LAB

EPS STANDARD XPS #2 NEXT GEN XPS #2SPRAY FOAM STANDARD XPS #1 NEXT GEN XPS #1

POLYISO

NEW XPS DUPONT'S NEWDUPONT'S XPS DUPONT XPS DUPONT XPS

POLYISO GPS OWENS OWENS CORNING XPS CORNING XPS SPRAY FOAM FIBREGLASS BATTS EPS BLOWN CELLULOSE STONE WOOL

This produces an interesting effect—an optimization function. At lower levels of insulation, the operational savings of small amounts of additional insulation tend to drive the curve. As the levels of insulation get higher, the marginal savings accrued by each additional R-value diminish, but the embodied carbon value increases linearly. The result is that at some point for each material, the amount of embodied carbon being added outweighs the operational savings that results, producing an inflection point on the chart, where the curve flattens and begins to bend upwards. As the operational savings are consistent for all of the materials, the specific inflection point for each material is determined by that material’s GWP value.

Higher GWP values result in inflection points at a lower R-values.

CA Jun21.indd 44

Total GHG Emissions kgCO2 e)

POLYISO

ROCKWOOL

GHG K GCO E) Total EMISSIONS GHG Emissions kgCO22 e)

ROCKWOOL

BLOWN CELLULOSE BLOWN CELLULOSE

Insulation Insulation Added (RIMP)Added (RIMP)

INSULATION ADDED (R IMP)

BLOWN CELLULOSE BLOWN CELLULOSE

ROCKWOOL

ROCKWOOL

POLYISO

FIBREGLASS BATTS FIBREGLASS BATTS

EPS

EPS

OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS OWENS CORNING'S NEW XPS

STANDARD GPS #2 NEOPOR GPS NEOPORXPS NEXT GEN XPS #2 STANDARD XPS #1 NEXT GEN XPS #1

POLYISO SPRAY FOAM SPRAY FOAM SPRAY FOAM EPS STONE WOOL

POLYISO

GPS OWENS OWENS CORNING XPS CORNING XPS FIBREGLASS BATTS BLOWN CELLULOSE

NEW XPS DUPONT'S NEWDUPONT'S XPS DUPONT XPS DUPONT XPS

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CA Aw

OPEN FOR ENTRIES JULY 1 Deadline: September 16th, 2021

CANADIAN ARCHITECT INVITES ARCHITECTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS TO ENTER THE 2021 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE Architecture project entry fee: $175 *

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 2021.

For more details and to submit your entry, visit: www.canadianarchitect.com/awards

IMAGE: TAZA WATER RESERVOIR AT TAZA PARK, PHASE 1, TSUUT’INA NATION. DESIGN BY ZEIDLER ARCHITECTURE. WINNER OF A 2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

CACA Jun21.indd 45 54 ad.indd 5 Award of EX

2021-05-21 AMAM 2021-04-13 8:38 11:54

BOOKS

CHRISTIE PEARSON

TOMÁŠ TESAŘ

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF BATHING: BODY, LANDSCAPE, ART BY

Christie Pearson (MIT Press, 2020) Max Yuristy

REVIEW

For as long as I can remember, I have had a deep attachment to the ritual of private baths. As a transgender man, my relationship to public bathing, however, is fraught. While all bodies are vulnerable in communal bathing spaces, non-conforming bodies like mine are frequently subject to heightened scrutiny. The ease and pleasure of communal bathing that architect, writer, teacher, and urban interventionist Christie Pearson beautifully celebrates in her book The Architecture of Bathing: Body, Landscape, Art almost always elude me.

My own complicated experience with public bathing is what drew me to Pearson’s compelling and important book, which positions communal pools, bathhouses, and spas as sites that continually transform themselves in relation to cultural values and priorities. Ultimately, bathing spaces emerge as testing grounds for how we interact with each other and our environment.

Pearson weaves vivid personal accounts of a wide range of bathing architectures with discussions of how bathing has been considered in architectural design, cultural history, art practice, philosophy and literature. Her engaging text is supported by over 200 illustrations, including many of her own photographs from years of travelling to public bathing sites around the world. Pearson’s self-reflexivity—grounded in queer, feminist, ecological, and decolonializing practices—is a refreshing tone for an architectural text, and strikes the right note for a discussion

CA Jun21.indd 46

of the very intimate, culturally specific ritual of bathing. Pearson’s assemblage of vivid imagery, rich personal anecdotes, philosophical discussions, and historical references carries the reader away in a pleasurable stream of consciousness.

In the first section, Bodies, Pearson explores how bathing spaces support human bodies, and argues for the importance of pleasure and enjoyment in our experience of the built environment. The designers of public bathing spaces often struggle to find a balance between utilitarianism and pleasure. The notion of deriving pleasure from communal bathing architectures is more complex than a simple critique of bathtub ergonomics, as it is complicated by the ways that individuals fit (or do not fit) within the dominant social framework. (Pearson’s own final project in architecture school—one of the starting points for her research on bathing architecture—was a design for a bathhouse that “problematized gender divisions.”)

Today, architects are creating more inclusive communal bathing spaces for all genders, such as in MJMA’s Pam McConnell Aquatic Centre in Regent Park, Toronto. Here, all-gender change rooms, designed for complete individual privacy, cleverly encourage collectivity.

By disrupting the common sex-segregated changeroom design, this project enables more people the opportunity to access pleasure in the built environment.

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LAURA MCPHEE AND VIRGINIA BEAHAN, THE BLUE LAGOON SVARTSENGI GEOTHERMAL HOT WATER PUMPING STATION, ICELAND, 1988

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Mjölk Architects installed this public sauna in secret at the city dam in Liberec, Czech Republic. The sauna was built on an abandoned concrete platform, and is accessed by rowboat from a local restaurant, which also provides keys and firewood. OPPOSITE, LOWER Children play in the Shonek Brunnen public fountain in Basel, Switzerland. ABOVE In this image from 1988, locals claim the overflow from a geothermal power plant for leisure at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. The site now includes a spa complex with formal bathing pools, designed by Sigridur Sigporsdottir of Basalt Architects.

OPPOSITE, UPPER

In the book’s second section, which focuses on Landscapes, Pearson argues that communal baths have the capacity to hold space for social transformation and to push for environmental change. Natural landscapes often inspire form-making for architects of bathing spaces: what is a shower, after all, but a mini waterfall? Cultural mythologies of purity and impurity are also poignant as they relate to water sources, religious and cultural ceremonies, and contemporary bathing spaces.

Certain new bathing architectures elevate natural purification processes, such as gh3’s Borden Park Pool in Edmonton, challenging the longstanding Modernist vision of purity as a pool of crystal clear (chlorinated) blue water. The idea of water’s purity or impurity is also at the forefront for urbanists and city builders attempting to reclaim the post-industrial waterfront as a site of leisure. Pearson cites tactical urbanist interventions—such as Mjölk Sauna, which was built overnight by Mjölk Architects as a “gift to the city” of Liberec in the Czech Republic—to suggest ways that we can reclaim our cities’ waterfronts as sites of pleasure, while increasing pressure on governments to improve water quality.

In the third and final section, Practices, Pearson reflects on cultural practices surrounding bathing sites. Here, she considers how bathing architectures support rituals that guide our movement through spaces with different water temperatures, humidity levels, and other sensorial qualities.

Communal spas like the hammam are constructed around the ideas of rit-

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ual and circuit: each space has its own purpose and follows the next, as Pearson writes, “in support of a transformation within a collective context.”

Pearson also speaks to the way that bathing can transform our relationship to the environment. Since bathing architectures are intrinsically more attuned to elemental properties, they can serve as important examples of designing to connect to the environment in meaningful and transformative ways. For example, at the Blue Lagoon Spa in Reykjavik, wastewater runoff pools around a geothermal facility provide a swimming opportunity. Rather than concealing the impact of industry on landscape, this project works with it, in Pearson’s assessment “bridging and incorporating processes of destruction and creation.”

Just like the communal bathing sites it explores, The Architecture of Bathing makes space for complex narratives about our bodies, our relationship to the environment, and our cultural practices. More than just immersive environments for our bodies, the community pool, the sauna, the hammam, the sento, the bathhouse, and the spa are potential sites of transformation at both personal and collective levels. Communal bathing sites can also serve as a stage for new ideas, where, as Pearson puts it, “the script can be continuously rewritten by whoever shows up.” I recommend you dive in.

Max Yuristy is an Intern Architect at Toronto-based LGA Architectural Partners.

He is also a photographer.

2021-05-21 8:38 AM

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BOOKS

Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture Murray Fraser (Bloomsbury Press, 2019) Alex Josephson

EDITED BY REVIEW

Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method is something of a legend in our field. Widely owned by many previous generations of architects, the tome of immaculate black-and-white lithographs and texts chronicles some of the most celebrated classical examples of architecture across Europe and beyond. That being said, when it was originally published in 1896, it wasn’t exactly an exhaustive history—but more like an exalted catalogue of key sites for the aristocrat (or would-be classical architect) embarking on their Grand Tour.

After 20 subsequent editions, the book remained relatively parochial in scope. Enter RIBA, Bloomsbury Press, and art historian Murray Fraser, who proposed to bring the book decisively into the 21st century.

Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture recasts the classic as a truly global, two-volume mega-tome. Weighing in at 14 lbs, 2 oz, it is an impressive redux and is the survey effort our field has needed for decades.

How to review such a monumental oeuvre? It should be noted that I am not an architectural historian, but rather, a practicing architect curious to learn more about a book I own. I inherited an 18th edition, 1970s volume of Banister Fletcher from a family friend’s grandmother, who was brief ly involved with a lauded Canadian architect.

Ever since it was given to me, I have kept it as part of a group of books front-and-centre near couches, tables, and even stacked on the toilet as light bathroom reading.

A Global History of Architecture is more like a showstopper: a two-volume set with roughly 4,000 pages and 2,200 illustrations, spanning 5,500 years. The first volume deals with global architecture before the 15th century, and the second runs up until the 21st century. Each region is presented by a subject matter expert. The book is organized first by time, and secondly by region. The introduction, by editor Murray Fraser, is a wonderful contextualization for the herculean project. The fact that so many specialists were able to come together, bringing such authority to so many cultures and their architectural history, is an important feat in general academic terms. If ever offered digitally—for instance, as an accessible online portal—Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History could have the power to help demystify archi-

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tecture. The act of making architecture more accessible will bring more people into our fold and enhance the profession.

Alas, this hulking monument to book-making is not yet accessible in that sense. At a list price of $750 CAD, the new edition is simply going to be out of reach to most. That is, except academic libraries, offices, and individuals with enough resources to justify the purchase.

That being said, nothing of its kind exists—this is not the photo-centric Phaidon Atlas of Architecture, this is serious, rigorous historical writing.

The primary physical difference from the original edition is that consistent black-and-white, hand-etched lithographs have gone the way of the dodo. Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History is illustrated with a potpourri of photos, renderings and drawings, from as many different archival and contemporary sources. For architects, the importance of graphic consistency is a touchstone of our professional craft. One must wonder if the publishers were torn between spending their budget on content, versus privileging a team of draftspeople to bring everything into a unified graphic language.

There are also content-driven differences from the original. While Sir Banister Fletcher’s History of Architecture offered a primarily formal analysis, Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History frames works in their broader social, economic and political contexts. The authors bring a dimension of cultural criticism, offering insights into how some of the most celebrated achievements in architecture were possible. In some cases—such as an examination of Fascist Italian Architecture from the 1930s—the political context is clearly described in all of its horrors. This is a good thing. As architects, we have to get serious about acknowledging our record of celebrating the authors of impressive buildings without examining their ethics. In effect, the writers bring to light what we as architects know about the rough underbelly of our field, but find so hard to convey to our clients and the general public: architecture plays a powerful role in creating cultural symbols, our cities, and our civilization.

For Canadian architects, it’s notable that Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History includes Canada as an independent entity. The authors of chapter 102, “Canada and the United States since 1912,” are architectural historians Rhodri Windsor Liscombe, based in Vancouver, and Michelangelo Sabatino, a Canadian ex-pat now based at IIT in Chicago. The Canadian material draws heavily from a recent book that Liscombe and Sabatino co-authored for the University of Chicago’s Modern Architectures in History series. This chapter brings dignity to Canada as a unique creative centre unto itself, although perhaps at some cost to the breadth of work included on the United States during the same period.

If this book was presented to me in a design crit, I would suggest that future editions might be broken into smaller regional volumes, opening up the possibility for periodically updating sections, rather than the entire book. The binding could be a larger book sleeve, with individual volumes being bound in higher quality materials. The graphic design could be scrutinized, and consistent line drawings introduced, in the spirit of the original Sir Banister Fletcher’s History.

While on a certain level, Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History lacks the kind of physical preciousness that the previous editions had, the foundations are laid for this to be an important project within the discipline of architecture. Perhaps like any significant design project, this one will never be finished. It is important that this effort stays alive as a growing archive. Architecture firms, enthusiasts, and institutions would need to get on the bandwagon to support it financially. A digital version accessible online should be pursued. More people and resources should be mobilized to keep drawing, keep writing, and keep building on the realities—good and bad—of the history this profession is creating.

Alex Josephson is a principal of Toronto-based firm PARTISANS, and adjunct professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

2021-05-21 8:38 AM

Accessible Architecture: Beyond the Ramp BY

Ron Wickman (Gemma B Publishing, 2020) Loraine Fowlow

REVIEW

Ron Wickman is a passionate advocate for accessible architecture that goes beyond the minimum requirements of the Building Code. Having grown up with a parent with a mobility impairment, Wickman learned the limitations of the built environment for those with disabilities at an early age. His 1991 Master’s thesis at the Technical University of Nova Scotia focused on barriers to accessibility, and he has since forged an Edmonton-based practice specializing in barrier-free design.

Neither an academic nor a comprehensive work, Accessible Architecture is a plea to the architecture profession for mindful design that is inclusive for all. Written in a personal and anecdotal style, the book’s six chapters include nine concepts for creating accessible architecture, and eighteen case studies from the author’s practice that illustrate his approach. Of note is chapter four, which defines the clients for accessible architecture as those with visual, hearing and cognitive limitations— in addition to those with mobility limitations.

While the book articulates a message that needs to be heard by the architecture profession and those engaged in architectural education, what is missing for this reviewer is a grounding in the increasingly large canon of research and resources created by those engaged in accessible design, disability studies, and related organizations. For example, the book could have included references to the Canadian Institute for the Blind’s comprehensive manual, Clearing Our Path, which details the design needs for those with visual impairments. For the case for inclusivity in architectural design to be truly heard and understood, the case itself should be inclusive of the work of others in the field. The book would greatly benefit from the inclusion of a list of references for further exploration of accessible architecture.

As a book that primarily catalogues the author’s work in the field, Accessible Design is a practical set of case studies set within a framework of working principles for achieving inclusive design.

Loraine Fowlow is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Calgary, currently on Long-Term Disability leave, and a member of both the City of Calgary’s Advisory Committee on Accessibility and the Access Design Sub-Committee.

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Voices of the Land Reanna Merasty, Naomi Ratte, Danielle Desjarlais and Desiree Theriault (Indigenous Design and Planning Students’ Association, 2021) REVIEW Elsa Lam EDITED BY

In 2019, Ininew (Woodlands Cree) architecture student Reanna Merasty and Peguis First Nation landscape architecture student Naomi Ratte met at the University of Manitoba. To bring their cultures more strongly into the school’s design teaching, they founded the Indigenous Design and Planning Students’ Association (IDPSA). The group now includes 16 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis students of architecture, landscape architecture, interior design and city planning.

The book Voices of the Land documents the group’s work in the school, and the design visions of its members. It features interviews with Indigenous alumni, including Ryan Gorrie and Rachelle Lemieux, who co-edited a similar publication, Aboriginal Architecture, in 2009.

Voices of the Land provides inspirational glimpses of some of Canada’s future Indigenous design leaders, as well as a snapshot of what the integration of Indigenous knowledge can bring to architectural education.

Within the faculty of architecture, first-year undergraduates take part in a traditional tipi-building workshop. The school has hosted several panel discussions focused on enacting reconciliation within the design professions. Its educators are incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing into their teaching, and several studios work with Indigenous communities.

The featured student work addresses issues from justice for Indigenous women, to intergenerational trauma, to the cultivation of sacred spaces. But it also reflects a common principle of honouring the land through design and architecture. Indigenous Scholar and Assistant Professor Sean Bailey defines Indigenous architecture as a “mindset”: “It comes from a way of seeing and connecting to the land. It comes from exploring our reciprocal relationship with nature, the realization that we are not separate from the natural world, we are in it. It’s about honouring place and acknowledging what we can give back.”

The publication brings home the impact of design education for empowering Indigenous communities. “Design school has given me a path, a purpose, and a voice, “ writes Ininew (Cree) architecture student Danielle Desjarlais. “It has given me the skills and the ambition to help voice what Indigenous communities want to see in their architecture.”

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BACKPAGE

MMFA, JEAN-FRANÇOIS BRIÈRE

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RESILIENT TO THE BONES TEXT

Elsa Lam

ARTIST CAROLINE MONNET’S CURRENT EXHIBITION AT THE MONTREAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS TRANSFORMS RAW CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS TO DRAW ATTENTION TO THE HOUSING CRISIS IN CANADA’S INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES. As a child, Anishinaabe/French artist Caroline Monnet watched her parents renovate old cottages into homes. The powerful act of transforming raw construction materials into life-affirming shelters has been behind much of her artwork, including early films about people mobilizing to build houses.

In her current work, these ideas are expressed through large-scale ornamented construction materials: Monnet carves Indigenous-inspired patterns into Styrofoam insulation boards and plywood panels, and folds Tyvek into elaborate wall hangings, or embroiders it with Anishnabek motifs.

The work draws attention to the housing crisis in Indigenous communities, and the lack of a federal vision to address the problem. “First and foremost, it’s about having a dialogue around the terrible conditions in Canada’s backyard,” says Monnet, noting how many reserves fail to meet basic provisions for clean water and shelter.

The work also aims to counter misinformed perceptions that the dilapidated housing of re-

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serves, as shown in many media images, represents the character of its inhabitants. “We imagine people reflecting the houses they live in,” she says. “How can we make these places with more pride?” One of her pieces embeds a Winston Churchill quote onto pink Styrofoam: “We shape our homes, and then our homes shape us.”

Monnet points out how the housing provided to Indigenous communities is both scarce and expensive, but also sterile and generic.

In counterpoint, her elaborately decorated artwork signals how homes have the potential to be crafted with care, and for their every surface to carry cultural significance.

The patterning of her current pieces is inspired by traditional Anishnabek beadwork and birchbark basket designs. “Those baskets are created using an origami process of folding and biting the bark with your teeth,” explains Monnet, whose mother is Algonquin from the Maniwaki region of Quebec.

The symmetrical designs in her art also resemble city maps, or QR codes. “They talk

Resilient to the Bones (2021) is carved from polystyrene foam, and is part of Caroline Monnet’s current exhibition.

ABOVE

about the marks left on ancestral land in the face of progress,” says Monnet. “They also act almost as microchips to transfer knowledge across generations.”

Resilient to the Bones is part of Monnet’s current solo exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, titled Ninga Minèh— Anishinaabemowin for “promise, I give it to you.” At the centre of the exhibition is a two-part installation, Pikogan (meaning “shelter”). In one half of the installation, a wigwam-inspired dome is made of PVC tubing, evoking utopian models of architecture and pointing to the lack of clean water in many Indigenous communities. A second, compartmentalized structure called “It Cracks with Light” is hung with Monnet’s artwork.

“Every surface is a place for ornament,” says Monnet. “It’s about bringing hope into homes.”

Ninga Minèh is on display at the Montreal Museum

of Fine Arts until August 1, 2021.

2021-06-07 10:42 AM

‘Changing society is harder than building a society. Nobody can change society on their own, and the ability to include knowledge and expertise from others will therefore be crucial in the future.’

ORDER AT NORD Architects

www.10gdf.dk BUY BOTH BOOKS IN THE SERIES AND

Co-creating Architecture no. 1 featuring NORD Architects ISBN 978-87-93341-03-6

GET A DISCOUNT

This is the first book in a series about Danish architects and co-creation.

Through interviews, building examples and analysis, it highlights the open design process, its valuable experiences and remarkable architecture.

Introduction

The book series Co-creating Architecture takes a look at the Danish design studios that emerged during the 2000s and early 2010s. This generation of designers has blazed a trail in Danish architecture with their ability to offer sustainable answers to global, societal and social challenges in the shape of innovative and lasting design solutions.

The key to this is co-creation: a collaborative approach that opens up the creative process, inviting users, decision-makers and experts from a wide range of fields to participate in the development of projects.

The same openness characterizes their deliberate use of communication and new media as a powerful process tool that displaces any esoteric design jargon. The result is an architecture that can be used as an important strategic instrument in the development of society.

Each book in the series Co-creating Architecture consists of three parts: an interview, in which the featured architects describe their view and use of co-creation as a tool; a catalogue of completed and upcoming projects; and, finally, an outside perspective on the design practice with an analysis of its processes and solutions.

‘We profit from the dialogue with employees, relatives, scholars, citizens, neighbours, decision-makers ...’

Mia Baarup Tofte, NORD Architects

This book introduces NORD: creative facilitators with a strong social commitment and a knack for developing and optimizing the core institutions of the Danish welfare state.

They do this, in part, by breaking down silos and hierarchies in the public sector and by mixing functions to form new hybrid institutions inspired by the spillover effect of neofunctionalism.

NORD works strategically with co-creation – or dialogue-based development and involvement – because this is the perfect way to stimulate interest, ownership and networking as well as to gain political leverage. Co-creation not only gets results, according to NORD, it simply has far greater potential than any autonomous design process.

NORD’s involvement springs from a profound interest in social matters, so they soon discarded any ambition of becoming ‘starchitects’, focusing instead on facilitating the transformation that takes place every time a project changes a given object, whether this is a building, a neighbourhood or an entire city.

With this approach they open up the architectural authorship, but without relinquishing the responsibility or the right to influence the physical end product.

Opposite page: Co-creation in the making with partner Morten Gregersen of NORD Architects.

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Order at www.10gdf.dk DETAILS:

Social sustainable housing in Zedelgem, Belgium. The project mixes and integrates different uses, age groups and social classes to encourage diversity.

Hardcover, 112 pages, richly illustrated

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Copenhagen Centre for Cancer and Health weaves into the urban fabric of the city.

• Location: Copenhagen, Denmark • Client: City of Copenhagen • Collaborator: Wessberg • Status: completed 2009

we will also see projects about co-maintenance, co-use, co-work and co-profit. In short, it’s not just about the few years when you develop and realize projects but also about creating something together in the future.

I see obvious parallels between co-creation and the idea of a sustainable, cooperative society that began in Denmark a hundred years ago.

Copenhagen Centre for Cancer and Health Healthcare

What do you take with you from the first 16 years of business, and how would you like to develop in the future?

MORTEN GREGERSEN: We’e been incredibly privileged and have been allowed to work with many aspects of the profession. We’ve been part of a development, which we find profoundly interesting. For every phase of our work and profession, there’s a field of interest and added value where we can provide input, create a special quality and influence projects intellectually on many levels. We would like to continue working with projects that are interesting, generate new insights and break new ground in terms of the development of architecture and the architectural profession.

We would also like to work abroad even more than we do today, because – for better or worse – Denmark is a small and well-functioning country, but there’s a world outside where the problems and challenges are so much greater that it makes sense to work with architecture and urban development through co-creation processes. We believe that we have experiences, ideas and skills that are worth exporting.

PUBLISHER:

10 · GDF www.10gdf.dk mail: info@10gdf.dk Instagram: @10gdf

NORD ARCHITECTS / INTRODUCTION

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CO-CREATING ARCHITECTURE

JOHANNES PEDERSEN: We take with us the realization that it’s just as interesting to act as client consultants, putting our stamp on the project right from the beginning, as it is to develop ideas and designs.

Whether it’s about a programme for a new architectural school or a new court building, it’s equally interesting to do the research and analysis and to help set the right conditions for the architecture that will be created later. We’ve gained so much experience in all the phases of a project that we can operate within a single field – or handle the entire package.

So, what do we take with us? We’ve grown comfortable with the realization that we can’t predict everything but instead guide the development towards a new form of sustainability.

A homelike atmosphere is key to the Centre for Cancer and Health in Copenhagen, where patients come to recover, receive professional counselling and share experiences.

Seen from the outside, the building appears as a series of smaller units shaped like traditional houses and connected by a raised, folded roof: an iconic form that reflects its character as a small, self-contained haven with no room for taboos.

The brief did not include a courtyard, but through the dialogue with

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users and the client, this silent, warm and secluded space became the heart of the building. The interior is designed without a reception area. Instead, patients and guests are welcomed by volunteers in a lounge area. The Centre for Cancer and Health is designed as a community based on a new collaborative structure involving both the public and private sectors as well as civil society.

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2021-05-21 8:38 AM

Dekton CHICAGO Facade AD_Canadian Architect April.pdf

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