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10 HÉLÈNE DESMARAIS BUILDING
Provencher_Roy weaves HEC’s Montréal’s flagship business school into a complex urban site. TEXT Olivier Vallerand
19 FOUR LAB-ÉCOLE SCHOOLS
An ambitious provincial initiative to improve Quebec’s elementary schools yields impressive results. TEXT Odile Hénault
28 CANADIAN CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ADAPTATION
Baird Sampson Neuert’s fast-tracked building for UPEI punches above its weight in addressing environmental sustainability. TEXT David Sisam
4 VIEWPOINT
An Ontario court case highlights the Province’s ability to put itself above its own laws.
6 NEWS
Remembering Derek Drummond, 1938-2023.
36 PRACTICE
Anvil Tree, Omer Arbel, and Patkau Architects share a passion for crafting objects as a complementary practice to architecture.
42 INSITES
The reopening of the Museum of Anthropology, a film festival, and other exhibitions and events mark the centenary of Arthur Erickson’s birth.
47 BOOKS
New volumes on residential architecture in BC, the fight to construct a suicide barrier on Toronto’s Bloor Viaduct, and America’s first professional woman architect.
50
BACKPAGE
Architect Nick Milkovich on reconstructing the Great Hall of Arthur Erickson’s Museum of Anthropology.
COVER HEC Montréal Hélène Desmarais Building, Montreal, Quebec, by Provencher_Roy. Photo by Ema Peter
ABOVE THE LAW
In late July, a court decision in Ontario upheld the province’s claim to sweeping powers to redevelop Ontario Place, a provincial site on Toronto’s waterfront originally designed by architect Eberhard Zeidler with landscape architect Michael Hough. The court’s decision underscores how the current provincial government has put itself above the law, particularly with regard to heritage matters.
Ontario Place Protectors’ case contended that the Rebuilding Ontario Place Act (ROPA), part of Bill 154, is unconstitutional in immunizing the Province from civil liability related to their work at Ontario Place. It also contends that, in declaring Ontario Place to be exempt from the Environmental Assessment Act, the Ontario Heritage Act, and the City of Toronto’s noise bylaws, the Province has violated the doctrine of public trust the principle that the site ultimately belongs to the people of Ontario, and is held in trust by the Government of Ontario.
While immunity clauses are not uncommon, Ontario Place Protectors argued that the one in ROPA is particularly extreme. The clause states, in part, that “no costs, compensation or damages, including for loss of revenues or loss of profit, are owing or payable to any person and no remedy, including but not limited to a remedy in contract, restitution, tort, misfeasance, bad faith, trust or fiduciary obligation, any equitable remedy or any remedy under any statute, is available to any person in connection with anything [resulting from work under the authority of ROPA].”
Ultimately, the judge upheld the Rebuilding Ontario Place Act, agreeing with the government’s lawyer that the buildings and land at Ontario Place are under the Minister of Infrastructure’s control, and that the government has a right to make, amend, and repeal laws, including exempting itself from its own laws.
The judge did allow that judicial review a process by which courts make sure the decisions of administrative bodies are fair, reasonable, and lawful would be permitted under the Rebuilding Ontario Place Act. But the broad scope of exemptions may limit other civil and suits that can be brought against the Province. For instance, if in the course of the redevelopment, a contract is broken, a building code violation is found, or construction proceeds without stamped drawings from architects or engineers, there may be no straightforward legal recourse to address this even if the Prov-
ince is in principle still obliged to comply with the Building Code Act, Architects Act, and Professional Engineers Act.
“The government could not possibly have gone further than eliminating all remedies under all Ontario statutes,” said Eric Gillespie, legal counsel for the applicant. “The overarching issue is this: if you can essentially eliminate all laws for Ontario Place, there is now nothing preventing the Government from doing this for anything, including new expressways, airports, eliminating the Greenbelt, or any other government project.”
Bill 154 is just one way in which heritage and planning laws are being legislatively sidestepped by the present Ontario government. Ministerial Zoning Orders (MZOs), a tool that supersedes local planning authority, are meant for situations of extraordinary urgency. The present government has issued over 100 MZOs in the past five years; previous governments had issued about one MZO a year.
As part of the More Homes Built Faster Act, which came into effect in January 2023, the Province amended the Ontario Heritage Act to allow the Minister of Tourism, Culture, and Sport to review and revise the heritage status of any property in Ontario. Moreover, it allowed provincial properties to be exempted from the requirement to comply with heritage standards and guidelines, if the exemption could be shown to advance a provincial priority such as transit, housing, health and long-term care, other infrastructure, or another priority as prescribed by the Province.
Had Ontario Place Protector’s court challenge been successful, the contested developments an indoor water theme park by Austrian developer Therme and a doubling in size of LiveNation’s Molson Amphitheatre would still have been allowed to go ahead as acceptable land uses. But they would have had to do so while respecting the cultural heritage of the site and the environment, including mitigating shoreline impacts, protecting trees, and preserving open space. This process may have resulted in a smaller set of facilities, carefully inserted into their landscape setting. Instead, following the court decision on the Rebuilding Ontario Place Act, the demolition of structures on the West Island of Ontario Place which had paused while the case was heard has now resumed.
EDITOR
ELSA LAM, FRAIC, HON. OAA
ART DIRECTOR
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Ontario Association of Architects Landscape design winner
The Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) has announced the juryselected winner of its Landscape Design Competition an anonymous competition that focused on transforming the OAA property’s landscaping into a more “sustainable, accessible, artful, and welcoming space.”
The winning design team was led by Nima Javidi and Behnaz Assadi of Ja Architecture Studio, with landscape architect Todd Douglas of Janet Rosenberg & Studio and civil engineer Kayam Ramsewak of MTE Consultants. The team was selected for its innovative and sustainable proposal titled “The Grounding Meadow.”
The project pays homage to Indigenous communities by including plants of cultural significance, including a diversity of perennials and grasses that will also attract pollinators, wildlife, and birds.
“Our project tries to address the two core themes of the competition climate change and Reconciliation through one legible protagonist: the ground. We aimed to translate our awareness of the importance of land, its history, and ecology into a spatial and experiential one,” said Javidi.
“By recalibrating the contours of the site, we converged the flow of water, people, and plants into an ecological threshold where the overlay between the act of entering, the collection of water, and the changing landscape will make the visitors physically aware of the interrelationship between architecture, access, and ecology an awareness long embedded into the Indigenous way of coexistence with nature,” said Assadi.
The winning team will be receiving a $20,000 prize and will lead the landscape redesign project at 111 Moatfield Drive in Toronto.
AWARDS
Atlantic Architectural Design Excellence Awards
Reimagine the Outdoor Experience
The architectural associations of Atlantic Canada have announced the recipients of the 2024 Atlantic Architectural Design Excellence Awards. The Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Architects (NLAA) was joined by representatives from the Architects’ Association of New Brunswick/Association des architectes du Nouveau-Brunswick (AANB); Architects Association of Prince Edward Island (AAPEI) and the Nova Scotia Association of Architects (NSAA) for an award presentation in St. John’s, NL, on June 25.
Awards of Excellence were given to Cape Breton Retreat (Cape Breton, NS) by Nicholas Fudge Architects, The Wellington (St. John, NB) by Acre Architects, Queen’s Marque (Halifax, NS) by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects; Highland Village Interpretive Centre (Iona, NS) by Abbott Brown Architects; Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute (Halifax, NS) by Fathom Studio; and Yarmouth Main Street Phase Two (Yarmouth, NS) by Fathom Studio. Awards of Merit went to Thicket Studio (Kingsburg, NS) by Abbott Brown Architects; Meet in the Middle House (Pictou, NS) by Peter Braithwaite Studio; The George (Halifax, NS) by Fathom Studio (Design Architect) with Dexel (Architect of Record); Bioscience Manufacturing Incubator (Charlottetown, PEI) by Open Practice Inc; Diamond Bailey Healing Centre (Halifax, NS) by Fathom Studio: Dalhousie Fountain School of Performing Arts (Halifax, NS) by Lydon Lynch Architects & Thomas Payne Architects; House Hydrostone (Halifax, NS) by Reign Architects; Charlottetown Library Learning Centre (Charlottetown, PEI) by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects and Nine Yard Studio; Province House Rehabilitation Project (Charlottetown, PEI) by DFS Inc.; and O’Brien Farm Foundation (St. John’s, NL) by Woodford Architecture.
“The quality of not only the winning projects, but all submissions, showcases the immense depth of talent producing world-class architecture here in Atlantic Canada. We are proud to have these architects as members in our respective associations and look forward to what the future holds for the region as this amazing talent continues to design architectural projects that aim to improve the built environment for all of us,” said NLAA president Jeremy Bryant. canadianarchitect.com
ABOVE The winning design for the Ontario Association of Architects’ landscape was authored by Ja Architecture Studio with Janet Rosenberg & Studio and MTE Consultants.
Harmony Commons becomes Canada’s largest Passive House
Harmony Commons Student Residence at the University of Toronto Scarborough is officially the largest Canadian building to receive Passive House Classic certification. The 24,620-square-metre building by Handel Architects and Core Architects is also the largest dormitory in the world to qualify for certification.
Designed to house 746 students and supportive resident advisors, the building serves the wider campus with its first full dining hall as well as central offices for student life and campus security.
The University of Toronto is currently pursuing a one-third cut in total greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. To reach that goal, Passive House was identified as an ideal approach for the Harmony Commons project. The project includes an airtight enclosure and high-efficiency heat pumps. www.handelarchitects.com
Launch of Ottawa Architecture Foundation
The Ottawa Architecture Foundation (OAF) launched this June. The OAF is a public-facing organization that is dedicated to fostering conversations about architecture, design, and the built and natural environments. It also aims to stimulate inclusive conversations about architecture, improve design literacy and create a positive design culture in the National Capital Region.
“This is a cross-disciplinary initiative that aims to bring together the voices and leaders in creating and appreciating the built environment, from architecture, to landscape architecture, planning, engineering, and interior design as well as academia and heritage to create a holistic model for conversations on the built environment,” said Toon Dreessen, president of Architects DCA and one of the organization’s founding board members.
“We aim to raise public awareness of the role the built environment plays in our lives so that the public can better appreciate the beauty and quality of the nation’s capital. Through this, we aim to improve design culture and create a better Ottawa.”
The organization’s governance and advisory boards are made up of architects, urban designers, landscape architects, planners, academics, writers, and critics who are committed to this shared vision. ottarchfoundation.com
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Canadian Architect editor Elsa Lam is the recipient of this year’s National Magazine Awards: B2B Leadership Award, recognizing career achievement in B2B media. It is the highest individual honour that the National Magazine Awards: B2B can bestow.
Since becoming the editor of Canadian Architect magazine in 2012, Lam has been active within the community of Canadian architects as a member of advisory boards, and a speaker at industry events and academic institutions. “Elsa’s leadership in addressing critical issues [including gender inequality and the climate crisis] underscores her commitment to fostering a more equitable and sustainable built environment,” reads the award citation. “Elsa lives and breathes the architecture market and profession, and continues to move Canadian Architect forward to reflect both today’s concerns and accomplishments alongside the challenges of the future.”
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IN MEMORIAM
Derek Drummond (1938-2023)
Derek Drummond, OAQ , FRAIC, William C. Macdonald Emeritus Professor of Architecture at McGill University, died on November 17, 2023, three days before his 85th birthday.
A Montrealer by birth, Derek studied architecture at McGill. He graduated in 1962 and soon co-founded the architectural firm Donaldson Drummond Sankey, which became well-known for the design of the Town of Mount Royal Library and a series of innovative elementary schools. He returned to McGill as a lecturer in 1964. For the next 40 years, without a single sabbatical or leave of absence, he taught in the School of Architecture while serving the university, the profession, and the community in a dazzling variety of roles.
Derek was appointed Director of the School in 1975, quickly established his credentials in the international community of North American Schools of Architecture, and completed two terms, stepping down in 1985. He was reappointed to a third term in 1990, and had started his fourth when Principal Bernard Shapiro invited him to join the
University’s leadership team as Vice-Principal Development and Alumni Relations in 1996.
Derek was a gifted administrator imaginative, wise, and compassionate with a legendary sense of humour and a contagious laugh, often punctuated with a double thigh-slap that students and colleagues used as the basis for convincing impressions over the years. His sense of humour was usually characterized as irreverent, especially by senior university officials and the faithful attendees of the 75 Leacock Luncheons and other public events that he moderated over 25 years. However, those of us who worked with him every day saw it as evidence of his intelligence and creativity: a mechanism for establishing connections and a tool that he used with amazing dexterity to defuse a difficult moment in a conversation or a meeting.
His leadership style was simple. He was the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at the end of the day, and his office door was always open. He preferred hand-written notes to email or phone, and he used our offices, not his, for face-to-face meetings, especially if he was sharing bad news. He was unflappable, scrupulously fair, and never expressed anger or even raised his voice in a meeting or conversation.
The accessibility, grace, and interpersonal skills that made him so effective as an administrator also made him a great teacher. Throughout his career, including the years as Director and Vice-Principal, he never stopped teaching. He was best known for the first-year design studio and two popular elective courses, Civic Design and Site Usage, that attracted students from across the University. He attributed a large part of his success as Director to his commitment to teaching, especially the first-year design studio, because it gave him an opportunity to get to know every student in the program from their first days in the School. Almost all of the tributes shared by former students in the weeks following his death thanked him for having shaped their careers and in some way transforming their lives.
Derek was also able to maintain his involvement in practice, at least in the early years. He had a lifelong commitment to research, including through his association with the Livable Cities Group, an international consortium of academics, design professionals and municipal officers. His research, teaching, and many of his public lectures shared a single compelling theme: the city. He studied the use and abuse of public urban space, trends in urban and suburban design, and the behaviour patterns of pedestrians on our sidewalks and streets. His laboratory was the streets and neighbourhoods of Montreal and his methodology was to spend hundreds of hours in patient observation, with a fine-pointed pencil and pocket-sized notebook in hand.
American urbanist William H. Whyte shared Derek’s interest in the city and pedestrian behaviour. In his 1988 book City Rediscovering the Center, he acknowledged Derek’s observational skills with a twinkle in his eye. “Another tough bunch of pedestrians are Montreal’s,” wrote Whyte. “They have much to contend with. On Ste. Catherine, the principal shopping street, the sidewalks are as mean as Lexington’s: twelve and a half feet. The sidewalk flows are prodigious: during the busy period, some 5,000 to 7,500 people an hour. Intersection behavior is understandably anarchic. Derek Drummond, director of the school of architecture at McGill University, has studied the pedestrians’ patterns extensively. ‘The most striking feature of pedestrian traffic along Ste. Catherine Street,’ he reports, with some pride, ‘is that so many people pay no attention at all to the traffic lights.’”
Not surprisingly, Derek’s concern for the quality of the built environment included active engagement in capital project development on the McGill campus. As a member of McGill’s Building and Property Committee and long-time Chair of the Architectural Advisory Committee, he was responsible for significantly improving the project review
process, and raising the level of critical conversation about the design of our buildings and grounds.
Additional evidence of his lifelong commitment to community service is the long list of other organizations that benefitted from his time and wisdom in government, education, health care, industry, environment, and amateur sport. These include the Westmount Architecture and Planning Commission, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the McCord Museum, Marshall Drummond McCall, the McGill University Health Centre Foundation, and the Province of Quebec Society for the Protection of Birds, to name just a few.
In 2005, at a point in his post-retirement career when he was looking forward to writing, sketching (he was an accomplished watercolourist), and spending more time with his grandchildren, Principal Heather Munroe-Blum made him an offer that he couldn’t refuse. He cheerfully assumed his last administrative position: Interim Director of McGill Athletics and Recreation. In his two years in that job, he attended the practices and home games of as many of the 49 varsity teams as possible, and quickly developed an enduring relationship as ‘team advisor’ to the women’s hockey program. When he stepped down in 2007, he observed that his time in Athletics had given him two of the most rewarding of his 50 years at McGill, and he continued to support varsity sports as an unofficial-but-expert photographer at the home games of the varsity teams.
Few of our colleagues have served the University, the profession, and the community with such distinction in so many different roles. Derek’s was a long, exemplary and impeccably balanced life, marked by his dedication to his family, his friends and colleagues, and public service.
Derek was predeceased by his wife of 60 years, Anne (Lafleur), and is survived by four sons, Colin (Jyoti), Gavin (Kate), Rob (Linton), and Louis (Vikki); nine grandchildren, Kayde, Grier, Charlotte, Francesca, Alice, Trinity, Veronica, Thomas, and Roxane; and his sister, Barbara Brodeur. -David Covo
MEMORANDA
Canadian Architect Awards open for submissions
The Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence, recognizing projects in the design and construction stages, and the Canadian Architect Photo Awards are now open for submissions. Entries are due September 12, 2024. www.canadianarchitect.com/awards
Canada Council for the Arts – Architecture Practice Awards
Submissions for the Canada Council for the Arts’ Prix de Rome in Architecture – Professional, Prix de Rome in Architecture – Emerging Practitioners, J.B.C. Watkins Award (Architecture) and Ronald J. Thom Award for Early Design Achievement are due October 5, 2024. canadacouncil.ca
Arthur Erickson Centenary
Fall lectures, exhibitions, and film screenings across Canada mark the centenary of Arthur Erickson’s birth. arthurerickson.com/AE100
For the latest news, visit www.canadianarchitect.com/news and sign up for our weekly e-newsletter at www.canadianarchitect.com/subscribe
24_007762_Canadian_Architect_SEP_CN Mod: July 22, 2024 9:52 AM Print: 07/31/24 11:19:24 AM page 1 v7
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LESSONS LEARNED
A NEW BUILDING ON A COMPLEX INFILL SITE RETURNS MONTREAL’S POST-SECONDARY BUSINESS SCHOOL TO ITS DOWNTOWN ROOTS.
Montreal-based Provencher_Roy has long demonstrated its aptitude for creating dynamic education facilities and university buildings, dating back to one of their breakthrough projects, UQAM ’s J.-A .-De Sève building (1998). The lessons learned from this wealth of work are brightly visible in the Hélène-Desmarais Building, the new centre for Montreal’s post-secondary business school, HEC, in the heart of the city’s commercial core.
Led by then-partner Alain Compéra, Anne Rouaud, and Gerardo Pérez, the architect team transformed an odd-shaped downtown site into a building that feels at once intimate and on-brand with HEC ’s executive-oriented profile. The design takes inspiration from HEC ’s role as an early-twentieth-century institution of the primarily French-speaking side of downtown: in 2000, its original building on Square Viger was transformed in the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec’s Archives Centre, by Dan Hanganu and Provencher_ Roy. Since that time, the institution has operated from two buildings at the Université de Montréal campus, on the other side of the
OPPOSITE The building’s canted volumes maximize daylight, while opening views to St. Patrick’s Basilica on the adjoining parcel. ABOVE A skylit central atrium bisects the building from north to south.
mountain a Brutalist one designed by Roland Dumais and recently renovated by Provencher_Roy, the other a new-build by Dan Hanganu and Jodoin Lamarre Pratte architectes. The new space repositions the school closer to the economic centre of the city, in a historic setting neighbouring Saint Patrick’s Basilica.
The design process built on models of collaborative learning and experimentation developed by the business school itself, which HEC had iteratively explored in its previous buildings. Working in collaboration with HEC research group Mosaic, Provencher_Roy undertook a co-design process that included a full-day workshop with HEC faculty and students, neighbours (including church members), heritage experts and creative professionals, followed by regular discussions with these groups. This process allowed the team to understand neighbours’ fears about the occupation of an empty space owned by the basilica. They worked closely with stakeholders, as well as with engineers, city staff, and government representatives, to develop a shared framework and vision for a contemporary addition to the city that would be integrated in the urban fabric.
The building occupies a comb-shaped site created by the combination of land ceded by the church and two privately owned lots. Throughout the design process, the team had to adjust their design, as HEC didn’t know which private owners would accept to sell their lots. Reacting to the building’s siting anchored in the heart of a city block the team imagined it as forming a campus with the basilica to the north, at the top of the comb. The teeth of the comb, popping out onto Beaver Hall, mask the service sides of adjacent buildings. A planned next phase of the lot redevelopment will redesign the basilica’s forecourt, resulting in better connections to both the new HEC building and De la Gauchetière Street.
To further complicate the design, the site sits on a steep slope, with nearly nine metres (two full floors) of height difference between De la Gauchetière to the east of the building and René-Lévesque Boulevard to the west. This is negotiated by introducing a main circulation axis that steps up from De la Gauchetière, dividing the overall massing of the building into two sections. These volumes were further refined by thinking of the roof as a fifth façade, visible from the tall buildings surrounding it. Mechanical elements are carefully screened, and the top of the facility treated as a landscape of green roofs and terraces accessible from different floors. More shaping occurred in response to the Church’s requests that views be protected, and neighbours’ access across the site preserved. The resulting sculptural form creates a diversity of viewpoints and experiences both inside and outside. This renders it impossible to fully comprehend the building at a glance and yet, easily understandable as one circulates through it.
The interior clarity is achieved by two horizontal circulation axes. These visually connect the interior to the city, and provide for clear views of the vertically stacked program elements: a restaurant on the lower floor, conference and lecture rooms above, followed by classrooms, floors dedicated to continuing education, and foundation and administration offices at the top. Throughout the building, circulation areas and informal collaborative working spaces are positioned along the façades. The composition is anchored by a monumental stair on the first floors, connecting to a more contained sculptural stair on the upper floors. Contrasting black and white walls on each side of the feature stair subtly divide the space. This constellation of events and nodes, all consistently linked to views of the city, make wayfinding easy, despite the building’s unusual shape.
OPPOSITE While the building has a complex site—both in its irregular shape and steep slope—internal clarity is achieved with two circulation axes, which afford views of the stacked program elements.
Walking through all the informal working spaces is enough to make anyone jealous of HEC students even before going into the classrooms. These are carefully planned, based on many years of experimentation in HEC ’s other buildings, and informed by lessons learned during the Covid disruptions. The classrooms and formal meeting spaces integrate hybrid teaching and collaborative tools, including webcams and screens on every wall of many rooms. U-shaped fixed configurations and modular tables allow for close interaction between teachers and students. In addition to a traditional 300-seat main auditorium with glazed walls to the circulation spaces, the building includes a “deconstructed” auditorium designed to teach entrepreneurial com-
munication skills, mimicking situations in which students might be asked to work during their professional careers.
Throughout the building, shiny stretched ceilings and mirrored walls provide a visual sense of expansiveness. Fritted glass similarly creates continuity between walls and façades on the white side of the building. The fritted glass doubles as passive shading, playing a role in the building’s energy efficiency strategy an important requirement from HEC even before the adoption of the most recent building code, with its more stringent energy-savings measures. Instead of curtain walls, highly insulated composite walls were designed and prototyped; the resulting modular system helped with the rationalization and constructability of the building’s sculp-
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT A student lounge enjoys prime views of downtown Montreal; a collaboration area is tucked alongside the east façade next to the basilica; U-shaped classrooms allow for close interaction between teachers and students; a feature staircase zig-zags through the atrium.
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tural form. A geothermal system results in smaller mechanical equipment needs, increasing the accessible areas of the building’s roofscape. Subtle gestures are integrated throughout, connecting with both the history of the site and of the institution. For instance, maple links the new building to HEC ’s other facilities in Montreal. Trees from the site, which had to be removed during construction, were reused in furniture for the facility. Outdoor furnishings were designed using stones from the former St. Bridget shelter, a building demolished in the late 1970s, whose foundations are inscribed on the ground floor of the new building.
Provencher_Roy’s site-responsive design promises to become, with time, a central meeting point for the Montreal business community, and an important chapter in the school’s proud architectural history. Once again, HEC teaches here the importance of investing in architecture: both for fostering the collaborations that are at the heart of business, and for expressing the institution’s longstanding role as a civic leader.
Olivier Vallerand is an Associate Professor at the École de design, Université de Montréal.
ABOVE LEFT The west-facing entrance adjoins historic buildings on Beaver Hall. ABOVE RIGHT The facility’s third entrance faces north, with a plaza connection to René-Lévesque Boulevard West.
CLIENT HEC MONTRÉAL | ARCHITECT TEAM ALAIN COMPÉRA (FIRAC), ANNE ROUAUD, GERARDO PÉREZ, CLAUDE PROVENCHER (FIRAC), HENRY CHO, JONATHAN BÉLISLE, OLIVIER CHABOT, GUILLAUME MARTEL-TRUDEL STRUCTURAL/CIVIL
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Meaningful Design to Inspire People’s Lives
LAB-ÉCOLE IN THE SPOTLIGHT
AN AMBITIOUS PROVINCIAL INITIATIVE TO IMPROVE QUEBEC’S ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS YIELDS IMPRESSIVE RESULTS.
TEXT Odile Hénault
ABOVE École de l’Étincelle, located in Saguenay, Quebec, is one of four completed schools in the Lab-École program. The school was designed by a consortium of Agence Spatiale, APPAREIL Architecture, and BGLA Architecture.
ÉCOLE DU ZÉNITH
ARCHITECTS Pelletier de Fontenay + Leclerc Architectes
LOCATION Shefford, Quebec
PHOTOS James Brittain
For the longest time, Quebec’s schools, like many schools in Canada, were associated with humdrum architecture. This was not particularly because of the architects involved (often a stable roster of firms), but because of unimaginative programs, poor budgets, and overemphasis on security issues. Flat roofs were the norm as were artificially lit corridors, predictable classrooms, and paved yards surrounded with chain-link fencing.
And then, on November 7, 2017, totally out of the blue, an unexpected trio held a press conference. Chef Ricardo Larrivée and triathlete Pierre Lavoie, both darlings of Quebec media, had joined forces with well-known architect Pierre Thibault. They were determined to prove that if you provided children with joyous, dynamic learning spaces, if you encouraged them to be physically active, and if you engaged them in learning to prepare healthy meals, you just might have a tremendous impact on their future and on the future of our societies. As Ricardo put it, the trio hoped to create conditions that “would make children eager to go to school.”
The threesome had managed to convince Sébastien Proulx, then Education Minister, to invest three million dollars for a two-year period (a mandate that was later renewed) in the setting up of what they called a Lab-École a research centre for experimental, progressive schooling closely connected with Laval University’s School of Architecture. Initial research for the project included visiting dozens of schools located across the province, but also in Denmark, Japan, and Finland, as well as meeting with teachers, school directors, and others to develop ideas and concrete solutions. Then, work started in earnest, exploring ideas through drawings and models, and developing guiding principles for the optimal
OPPOSITE Lined with a series of interconnected low-scale pavilions, the courtyard plays a central role in the entire composition. Large sculptural skylights bring natural light deep into the building, particularly in the collaboration space and above the bleachers. ABOVE The gymnasium, sunk one level into the ground, is lit by a long horizontal opening where tree trunks from the adjacent forest act as a poetic light-filtering device.
spatial organization of elementary schools. These guidelines were published in manuals that would serve as a base for the Lab-École’s next steps.
The first real-life testing ground for Lab-École’s research took place in a Quebec City neighbourhood. Stadacona School was initially going to be renovated, but had to be demolished. ABCP architecture and architect Jérôme Lapierre, the latter a close collaborator with Pierre Thibault, were selected to design a replacement building, which incorporated some of the ideas being developed by the Lab-École group.
But the bigger effort was yet to come. Five other elementary school locations were then selected across Quebec, and each of them became the object of a major open architectural competition. As this article goes to press, four of the resulting new and renovated schools are now open; the fifth one, located in Gatineau across the river from Ottawa, is still under construction.
Simultaneous design competitions, all with anonymous entries, were launched in 2019 to choose the professional teams that would eventually design and build the five projects, within the Lab-École’s guidelines. The conditions were far from perfect: no remuneration was offered for Phase 1; the schedule was extremely tight; and the requirements were demanding, the competitors having to produce two perspectives, a site plan, plans of all floors, a significant section, as well as a model. Nevertheless, the Lab-École received a total of 160 entries for the five sites. Quite a few well-established firms were among the participants. This was a surprise, since such firms tend to shy away from anonymous, un-
paid competitions. This high level of participation was probably due to the fact that, for decades, most of the province’s schools had been kept in the hands of a very select group of firms. For established firms which had never managed to build a school, entering one of the five competitions was a way to get a foot in the door. And of course, for younger, emerging teams, it was a chance to break through the system.
This is exactly what happened at École des Cerisiers in Maskinongé, a small municipality of 2,250 people. Here, the smallest (2,770 m2) of the five Lab-École schools was awarded to a consortium headed up by two young women architects Lucie Paquet and Paulette Taillefer. The duo was initially selected among four teams asked to develop their concept during a second phase: at this point they teamed up with Leclerc architectes, an established firm with a long record of school building, to eventually win the project.
École du Zénith (4,350 m2) and École de l’Étincelle (3,577 m2) went respectively to Pelletier de Fontenay (again with Leclerc architectes) and to a consortium of two up-and-coming firms, Agence spatiale and Appareil architecture (with BGLA architecture). Finally, École du Boisé-desPrés, the largest (6,365 m2) of the school projects, was won by a consortium of two well-established firms, Lapointe Magne et associés and L’Oeuf.
The vision proposed by the Lab-École researchers was summed up by architect Pierre Thibault in a Radio-Canada interview aired in August 2020: generous interior spaces, sloped roofs, the widespread use of wood, bleachers for various activities, and community gardens outside.
OPPOSITE The new dining room volume projects slightly forward, distinguishing between the older, renovated area, on the left, and the recent addition, including gymnasium, to the right. TOP The dining area enjoys generous interiors. ABOVE Classrooms on the second level flank a welllit library/corridor that includes carefully crafted reading nooks. The idea of a distributed library is common to all of the Lab-école projects.
ÉCOLE DU BOISÉ-DES-PRÉS
ARCHITECTS Lapointe Magne et associés + L’OEUF architectes in consortium
LOCATION Rimouski, Quebec
PHOTOS David Boyer
ABOVE The largest of the four new schools built along the Lab-École principles is located in one of Rimouski’s fairly recent residential communities. Clusters of four classrooms are grouped around central collaboration spaces. OPPOSITE The building’s elongated atrium opens to the upper level and to the outdoors. The gymnasium, located to one side as one enters, is independently accessible to the community outside of school hours.
The projects completed so far are all interesting in their own right, although there is a slightly uneasy similarity between two of them, École du Zénith (four kindergarten and 12 elementary classes) and École de l’Étincelle (three kindergarten and 12 elementary classes). In both cases, the solution was to break the school down into small, interconnected pavilions, grouped around a partially enclosed exterior court. Sloping roofs and wood façades create a home-like feeling, highly evocative of Quebec tradition. At École de l’Étincelle a project that was recently awarded a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture the school also seems to offer a clear nod to the area’s iconic “Little White House.” Within walking distance of the new school, the small building is a strong symbol of resilience for the community, having survived the destructive floods of the summer 1996.
At École des Cerisiers, the site included an existing school, which had to be integrated into the project. The architects’ response was subtle, as they managed to cleverly navigate between the 1950s structure and the contemporary intervention. The project raised a lot of enthusiasm in the municipality, which invested extra funds for its realization. As at several of the other sites, the school’s ground floor was planned so that the gym and the kitchen area could be made directly accessible to the public outside of regular school hours.
For École du Boisé-des-Prés, the architects delivered a much larger, complex project under an imposing roof structure. The program provided for eight kindergarten classes and 17 elementary classes. The
building is characterized by its large aluminum-clad volumes and the strong presence of a community-accessible gym to one side of the public entrance. The sloping site also made it possible to locate the school kitchen so that it can be reached directly from outside, or by using the interior stairs. The school’s pièce-de-résistance is its central agora, with its generous bleachers that project to the exterior. One of the lead designers, architect Katarina Cernacek, acknowledged that the Patkaus’ early school projects had been a source of inspiration.
Conclusion
Studying the whole Lab-École operation, one cannot ignore the serious budget overruns which, to be fair, were in large part due to Covid-related difficulties such as the increased cost of materials and labour shortages. Looking back at the work accomplished and at the results, Lab-École co-founders prefer to talk about “investment” rather than “expense.” They might be right.
Curiously, a rather similar school building program had been initiated in British Columbia during the 80s and 90s. Thanks to the efforts of Vancouver-based Marie-Odile Marceau, then regional architect for the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, a series of award-winning, well-published schools were built across the province for several First Nations communities. The use of wood, welcoming interiors, natural light, proximity to nature it was all there! It took decades, but finally, the message has made its way across the continent.
ABOVE The evocation of Quebec’s traditional houses is particularly vivid in this school, with its sloping roofs and its widespread use of wood. The pavilions are organized into two wings on either side of an abundantly lit central area open to the courtyard. OPPOSITE Inviting bleachers, lined with books, provide a warm, welcoming space for children to gather and engage into a variety of activities. Thanks to the topography, the architects were able to partly sink the gymnasium into the ground without altering the building’s overall scale.
This time, the Lab-École experiment may have a lasting effect in Quebec education. Even though the Province may not launch another school competition for a while, expressions such as “child creativity,” “natural light,” and “collaborative spaces” have now found their way into official Guidelines for primary school design in Quebec. That, in itself, is a huge victory. And the unexpected trio Ricardo Larrivée, Pierre Lavoie and architect Pierre Thibault should be thanked for it.
Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect.
ÉCOLE DU ZÉNITH, UN LAB-ÉCOLE LOCATION SHEFFORD, QUEBEC | CLIENT CENTRE DE SERVICES SCOLAIRE VAL-DES-CERFS ARCHITECTS PELLETIER DE FONTENAY + LECLERC ARCHITECTES ARCHITECT TEAM THOMAS GAUVIN-BRODEUR (LECLERC ARCHITECTES), HUBERT PELLETIER (PDF), ETIENNE COUTU SARRAZIN (PDF), GHISLAIN GAUTHIER (LECLERC ARCHITECTES) STRUCTURAL LATÉRAL (THIBAUT LEFORT AND ALEXANDRA ANDRONESCU) MECHANICAL BPA (MARCO FREITAS) | ELECTRICAL BPA (JEAN-CLAUDE CORBEIL) | CIVIL GRAVITAIRE LANDSCAPE FAUTEUX ET ASSOCIÉS IN COLLABORATION WITH AGENCE RELIEF DESIGN (JEAN-FRANÇOIS BERTRAND | INTERIORS PELLETIER DE FONTENAY | CONTRACTOR BINET CONSTRUCTION (CHARLES-ANTOINE BUSQUE) | AREA 4,350 M2 | BUDGET $30.5 M COMPLETION JAN 2024
ÉCOLE DES CERISIERS, UN LAB-ÉCOLE
LOCATION MASKINONGÉ, QUÉBEC | CLIENT CENTRE DE SERVICES SCOLAIRE DU CHEMIN-DU-ROY | ARCHITECTS LUCIE PAQUET - PAULETTE TAILLEFER + LECLERC ARCHITECTES | ARCHITECT TEAM
PAULETTE TAILLEFER, LUCIE PAQUET, THOMAS GAUVIN BRODEUR, ELAINE TAT, LESLIE BELLESSA, IBTISSAME ZANDAR, HUGUES PATRY, ÉTIENNE PELLETIER, ALEXANDRE CHARTRÉ-BOUCHARD | STRUCTURAL/MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL STANTEC LANDSCAPE MOUSSE ARCHITECTURE DE PAYSAGE | INTERIORS LUCIE PAQUET - PAULETTE TAILLEFER | CONTRACTOR THERRIEN BUILDING ENVELOPE ENVELOP3 | AREA 2,770 M2 | BUDGET $16.8 M COMPLETION NOVEMBER 2023
ÉCOLE DU BOISÉ-DES-PRÉS, UN LAB-ÉCOLE
LOCATION RIMOUSKI, QUEBEC CLIENT CENTRE DE SERVICES SCOLAIRE DES PHARES ARCHITECTS
LAPOINTE MAGNE ET ASSOCIÉS + L’OEUF ARCHITECTES IN CONSORTIUM ARCHITECT TEAM KATARINA CERNACEK, SUDHIR SURI, JENNIFER BENIS, PASCALE-LISE COLLIN, MARTIN-F. DAIGLE, ALAIN DESFORGES, AURÉLIA CRÉMOUX, AGATA NAJGEBAUER, OCÉANE PURNHAM, ALINE GABRIEL-CHOUINARD, BENJAMIN RANKIN, RONNIE ARAYA, RENÉ CHEVALIER, CHANTAL AUGER, CAROLINE CORBEX, DANIEL PEARL | STRUCTURAL LATÉRAL CONSEIL | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL GBI
EXPERTS-CONSEILS INC. LANDSCAPE PRATTE PAYSAGE | CIVIL VINCI CONSULTANTS INTERIORS
LAPOINTE MAGNE ET ASSOCIÉS + L’OEUF ARCHITECTES CONTRACTOR CONSTRUCTION TECHNIPRO BSL ARCHITECT COLLABORATOR FOR SITE SUPERVISION PROULX SAVARD ARCHITECTES | AREA 6,365 M2 BUDGET $35 M | COMPLETION JUNE 2024
ÉCOLE DE L’ÉTINCELLE, UN LAB-ÉCOLE
LOCATION SAGUENAY, QUEBEC | CLIENT CENTRE DE SERVICES SCOLAIRE DES RIVES DU SAGUENAY ARCHITECTS CONSORTIUM AGENCE SPATIALE – APPAREIL ARCHITECTURE – BGLA ARCHITECTURE ARCHITECT TEAM STÉPHAN GILBERT (BGLA), KIM PARISEAU (APPAREIL ARCHITECTURE), ÉTIENNE BERNIER (AGENCE SPATIALE), LYDIA LAVOIE (BGLA), MARC-OLIVIER CHAMPAGNE-THOMAS (APPAREIL ARCHITECTURE), JOHANIE BOIVIN (PREVIOUSLY WITH AGENCE SPATIALE), JÉRÔME DUVAL (AGENCE SPATIALE), PASCAL DROLET (BGLA) ENGINEERS LGT (NOW WSP) | LANDSCAPE COLLECTIF ESCARGO + ROUSSEAU LEFEBVRE | ENVIRONMENT/SUSTAINABILITY MARTIN ROY & ASSOCIÉS | MEP
PRO-SAG MECHANIQUE
ECONOMY OF MEANS, GENEROSITY OF ENDS
A PEI CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH, LIKE THE PROVINCE IT’S SITUATED IN, PUNCHES ABOVE ITS WEIGHT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY.
PROJECT Canadian Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation, Saint Peters Bay, PEI
ARCHITECTS Baird Sampson Neuert architects, part of the WF Group with SableARC Studio
TEXT David Sisam
PHOTOS Brad McCloskey
Building on a reputation for delivering environmentally progressive institutional buildings, Toronto-based Baird Sampson Neuert (BSN) has once again designed a notable academic building with ambitious sustainability goals. This time, the project, completed with Sable ARC Studio, is situated on Prince Edward Island, a small province with a remarkable history of initiatives to combat the threatening consequences of climate change.
The Canadian Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation (CCCCA) is a 30-minute drive across the eastern tip of the Island from Spry Point, the site for the 1976 Ark, an experimental built demonstration of a selfsustaining house and ecological research centre by architects David Bergmark and Ole Hammarlund. That landmark project from 50 years back officially opened by no less than Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was built under the auspices of the US-based New Alchemy Institute, with funding from the federal government and land from the province. The Ark was the first in a long series of environmental initiatives on PEI: in 1981, the Wind Energy Institute of Canada was established in North Cape, where there is a Research and Development Park testing a great variety of experimental wind turbines. By 2018, 23 percent
LEFT The living laboratory sits on a ridge overlooking the village of Saint Peter’s Bay, Prince Edward Island. Its location gives researchers and students access to nearby wetlands, forests, and coastal habitats.
OPPOSITE To limit upfront carbon, the structure is made primarily from stick-frame construction, with the occasional use of glulam beams and steel columns. The centre is clad with locally harvested wood. ABOVE The building follows the site’s natural slope, providing for greater volume in the drone workshop at its east end. Drones are used for ongoing research projects including monitoring the region’s shoreline.
of the electrical energy on PEI was supplied by wind turbines. In 1999, the Island Waste Management Corporation was created. Its Waste Watch program has converted 65 percent of the Island’s waste to compost or recycling. From 2019 to 2023, the Green Party formed the Official Opposition in the PEI legislature for the first time in the history of any Green Party in Canada.
These bursts of environmental consciousness are not surprising on a small island with no oil and gas reserves, a fast-eroding shoreline, limited space for landfill, and other vulnerabilities to climate change, including the effects of sea level rise. These vulnerabilities became clearly evident in 2022, with the widespread damage of post-tropical storm Fiona. The storm destroyed 40 percent of the island’s forests, and coastline erosion was in many cases measured in metres.
In 2019, the province’s track record of environmental initiatives continued when the federal government, along with the province and the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI), announced combined funding for the new Canadian Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation (CCCCA) at UPEI. The CCCCA is located remotely from the main UPEI campus in Charlottetown and overlooks the Village of Saint Peter’s Bay (pop. 231).
PROGRAM AND BUILT FORM
The rather heroic presence of the CCCCA takes its position on a ridge above the picturesque village, on land donated by three families. It is a location that in previous generations might have been occupied by a grand mansion or a church. In effect, it symbolizes the necessary effort that will be required to counter the real threats posed by climate change. Innovation is also evident in the Centre’s program, which accommodates the internationally recognized UPEI Climate Research Laboratory, as well as other teaching and living spaces. Its unique 24-hour live/learn/research programme includes teaching, research, maker and social spaces that extend across the ground level, and compact accommodation for twenty-one residents on the upper levels.
The entrance to the Centre is a double-height space with a view through to a grass forecourt, which hosts a drone launching pad and a solar array. At the east and west ends, a drone port/workshop, art gallery, and resource room/kitchen break free of the bar to further define the forecourt. The drone port/workshop takes advantage of the site’s topography to allow a greater volume for the space. The teaching and research spaces all have abundant natural light, and faculty offices border a 57-car parking lot on the north side.
As a living laboratory and educational destination, the building enables world-class sustainability-focused research, as well as immersive experiential learning for graduate and undergraduate students. The Centre specializes in coastal climate science, precision agriculture, and climate adaptation research. Its location gives researchers and students access to nearby wetlands, forests, and coastal habitats, as well as facilitating the monitoring of PEI ’s shoreline by drone.
The CCCCA doubles as a community hub, hosting workshops and public meetings with local residents, including the neighbouring Abegweit First Nation, and engaging the local community with significant global climate change research.
HEADWINDS
When the project was awarded to BSN in association with SableARC Studio, immediate headwinds were encountered. Essentially, there was that all-too-familiar problem of too much program for too little money, and too little time. Within a fast-track 21-month design and construction schedule, the architects had to reprogram the facility from its initial 4,180 square metres to 3,530 square metres to meet budget limitations. Even then, the building and its ground source geothermal system were realized for $295 per square foot a remarkable feat given the sustainability achievement of the project. Significant site costs were required to service the lot and to provide onsite capacity for firefighting, including water storage, booster pumps and back-up emergency power systems. In an additional set of challenges, the project was designed and built during the peak of Covid pandemic lockdowns, a period of significant material price escalation.
SUSTAINABILITY
Because of the Centre’s research mandate, for the architects it was a given that the CCCCA building would need to showcase the best in sustainability practices. Implementing a carbon sequestering design approach, the structure primarily consists of conventional wood stick construction with occasional use of glulam beams and steel columns. The exterior walls are made up of prefabricated, thermally broken wall panels and
locally harvested wood cladding. Triple-glazed and operable Passive House certified windows provide daylighting, views and natural ventilation for all regularly occupied spaces within the building. The Centre is sited to address the grass forecourt, maximizing views, access to daylight and microclimate conditions. The Centre achieves the CaGBC Z ero Carbon Performance Standard, based on an all-electric design approach which includes a ground-source geothermal heating and cooling system, coupled with 100 KW of onsite solar panels, and a low-voltage power distribution system for lighting and electric vehicle charging.
ABOVE A drone landing pad sits at the centre of the grass forecourt, allowing for clear landings. Geothermal boreholes underneath the grass and solar panel arrays to the south contribute to the building’s achievement of the CaGBC Zero Carbon Performance standard.
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The Achilles heel in the sustainability profile of the CCCCA doesn’t have anything to do with its architecture, but rather with its location and car dependency. While its live/learn program is intended to help address this, the Centre is located 51 kilometres from the main UPEI campus and over 10 kilometres from the nearest grocery store. Recognizing the problem of distance, UPEI has made arrangements with the provincial bus service to allow opportunities for daily trips between the Centre and the main campus on its regular route, and provides subsidies for students to use the service. Resident students typically carpool for grocery store outings.
WHAT IF?
There were several sustainability initiatives proposed by the design team that were not possible to implement due to the budget constraints. These included green roofs, permeable paving for the entry drive and parking lot, as well as brise-soleils for the art gallery/multi-use gathering space and drone port/workshop. A proposed second-floor rooftop terrace was a casualty of value engineering during the construction management delivery process.
When asked what would have been different if the project had a larger budget and a more forgiving timeline, principal Jon Neuert of BSN allowed that the community space would have been more developed, and that the built form would have been more granular in nature, as is typical in BSN ’s portfolio of university academic and residence projects.
This finer grain would also allow the built form to be more attuned to the village of Saint Peter’s Bay, with its array of small buildings and church spires, while at the same time maintaining its strong presence atop the ridge.
Notwithstanding these ‘what ifs’ and other built form options, the CCCCA as constructed is a remarkable achievement, and provides UPEI and its students a fertile setting for teaching, research, community activities and living accommodation. The client and the architects have done more with less economy of means, generosity of ends reflecting the Island’s tradition of punching above its weight in its efforts to tackle the threatening consequences of climate change.
David Sisam is Principal Emeritus of Montgomery Sisam Architects. He and his family have a summer place near Malpeque on the north shore of PEI.
ABOVE The glazing-ringed workshop offers a prime vantage point to the village and surrounding landscape.
Palmer High School
The school in Colorado Springs, Colo., needed an update because codes, technologies and building materials changed over the years. There was no applicable standard for testing or maintenance on the existing smoke vents, which opened with a complex system of ropes and pulleys.
School officials also expressed concern with the vents, which lacked insulation and allowed noise infiltration that interfered with school events. The school’s auditorium is located directly underneath the vents. The existing vents remained in place and were sealed and insulated to improve energy efficiency and acoustics.
Project Snapshot
• Palmer High School, which was built with support from the Works Projects Administration in 1940, needed new smoke vents installed on the roof.
• The existing vents were loose, uninsulated and did not have a UL listing. They were also installed in vertical walls of a pop-up, cast-in-place concrete structure on the roof of the school.
Acoustical Smoke Vents
• 4 BILCO acoustical smoke vents installed atop the school prevent noise infiltration and support firefighters by allowing smoke and gases to escape in case of a fire. The vents include burglar bars to prevent unauthorized entry.
• Acoustical smoke vents are frequently installed at theaters, concert halls and other applications that require limiting noise from external sources.
"Even weather, such as hail, can be loud. We wanted to make sure during performances we could mitigate exterior noise. We like the BILCO products. They seem to be the one that we see on most of our projects.”
– Frank Kaiser, Architect, LKA Partners
CRAFTING ARCHITECTURE
TEXT Lawrence Bird
FABRICATION IS A CORE PART OF ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE FOR THREE FIRMS IN WESTERN CANADA.
What are the boundaries of architectural practice? For three firms in Western Canada, they lie far beyond buildings. Patkau Architects, designer Omer Arbel, and Sputnik Architecture have developed branches of their work dedicated to the fabrication of products, furniture, lighting and artwork. All three of them deploy these parallel practices as forms of research, with a significant impact on their architectural thinking.
Patkau Architects began their fabrication practice over 30 years ago, with what John Patkau refers to as “analytical models” of their own built work not intended as representations, but as tools for working through the formal characteristics of their buildings. As John puts it (with considerable modesty and a touch of irony) “our firm was never ‘successful’,” which led to slow periods when they had to generate their own activity. During these fallow periods, their “well-provisioned” workshop became the site for the analytical models, and eventually, at the instigation of Patricia Patkau, for bolder experiments with materials. A cluster of bent plywood shelters was one of the first full-scale
prototypes to emerge from this work, developed as a contribution to Winnipeg’s Warming Huts project, then dispatched to London’s V&A Museum. That project’s experimentation morphed into the steel Cocoons for the Tokyo flagship store of fashion house Comme des Garçons. This was only possible because alongside the Patkau’s research into origami the elusive quest for a sheet structure generated by a single fold and a single bend they had developed original breakform processes, with new machines of their own invention. Their fabrication work has since expanded into furniture, lighting design, and production, most of it carried out in-house.
While it’s clear that their formal discoveries are often made during hands-on testing of materials, the Patkaus don’t shy away from digital tools. Their competition entry for Daegu Gosan Public Library in Korea deployed parametric modelling software Grasshopper to translate sheet-inspired research into a reciprocal structural frame made of timber components. They took a similar approach for the Temple of Light in Kootenay Bay, British Columbia. Completed in 2017, this
OPPOSITE Patkau Design Lab’s Cocoons evolved from an experiment in how to generate a structure from applying a single fold and a single bend to steel sheets. The resulting pavilions are installed in the Tokyo flagship of fashion house Comme des Garçons. ABOVE LEFT Patkau Architects worked closely with timber fabrication firm Spearhead on the Temple of Light, a building in Kootenay Bay, BC, that creates complex curved forms using standard twoby-fours. ABOVE RIGHT The experimental work of Patkau Design Lab originated in the analytical models the firm created of its own work.
SPEARHEAD
project evidences collaboration with other skilled makers: they worked with local, internationally experienced timber fabrication firm Spearhead. The Temple applies discoveries about form and material assemblies made on the library and other unbuilt projects, perching eight petal-like shells on existing foundations to enclose a sanctuary. While they are currently developing a products division distinct from their architectural practice, the Patkaus fundamentally see their fabrication work as research into the design and construction of architecture.
One of the many talented individuals who have spent time working in the Patkaus’ office is Vancouver-based designer Omer Arbel. Besides the Patkaus, Arbel has worked for architects including Enric Miralles and Peter Busby. From each of them, he took away a different experience of practice from what he describes as the “operatic” mode of Miralles’ office to the “quiet prayer” of the Patkaus. But while Arbel came “within a hair” of getting licensed, he grew disillusioned with what he saw as the dominant role played by the architect in North America: as a service provider.
A unique opportunity led him down a different path. While still at Busby’s office, Arbel independently produced four prototype furniture designs for display at New York Design Week in 2005. Uncomfortable with the number four (stemming from a personal sense of numerology), he felt he needed a fifth element, more as a compositional anchor than as a design for production but his furniture fabricator had gone bankrupt. In the few weeks left before the event, he worked with
ABOVE Bocci’s headquarters (project 86.3) include apertures made of hay-cast, saw-cut concrete. LEFT For Bocci’s project 71.2, jewelry is created by allowing nickel to slowly accrete on copper wire.
friends to put together a hand-cast glass luminaire to be that anchor piece. It was a hit, and that piece the first Bocci light remains in production today. The success of this product eventually led him to launch the lighting firm Bocci with friend and client Randy Bishop.
Since then, Omer Arbel Office has produced, besides an array of lighting products, glassware, furniture, set designs, sculptures, a book and yes architecture. Rather than a name, each design bears an accession number as though each is a distinct realization of an essentially undifferentiable and potentially infinite font of creativity. All of the work comes from direct and daring experimentation with materials. Arbel, perhaps drawing on his early experience with Miralles, seeks a “celebratory” approach to making, rather than what he sees as the overly critical culture nurtured in schools. In contrast to work born of an author’s imagination including the products of parametric design he finds it much more exciting to “let the form occur.” He reflects, “If you explore what materials themselves want to do, you can discover a much more radical form, with a fraction of the resources.”
The result is a dizzying array of over 100 material and formal experiments, and counting. Arbel says of these experiments: “They fail all the time, they’re a total failure!” Yet it’s impossible to look at this body of work and not see success. From the extremely slow accretion of nickel to copper wire in the jewelry of 71.2, to the sandblasting of pine to produce chair 68.3, Arbel embraces growth and decay, creation and destruction, in equal measure. Seemingly uncomfortable juxtapositions of material the blown glass and copper wire of vase 84.0, or the hay-cast, saw-cut concrete of Bocci’s headquarters 86.3 result in a strange, even excruciating beauty. In his clifftop house (94.2), he salvages cedar burls as concrete formwork and then, audaciously, repurposes them as cladding. Such works are testimony to Arbel’s willingness to risk everything: perhaps a glassblower’s attitude, applied to architecture.
TOP Anvil Tree created Lantern from agricultural waste for an event last winter in Selkirk, Manitoba, and ritually burned the structure on the following Spring equinox. ABOVE The company is also fabricating the Sadie Grimm memorial in Winnipeg Beach Provincial Park. In 1914, Grimm was the first woman to win a Canadian motorcycling prize in a competition open to men. She won the medal by making the strenuous 100-kilometre trip from Winnipeg to Winnipeg Beach.
Grains seem to be having a moment in maker culture. Hay or in this case, flax straw was also the focus of a recent project by Anvil Tree, the fabrication satellite of Winnipeg’s Sputnik Architecture. Peter Hargraves, founder of Sputnik, created Anvil Tree as a sister company that could help realize Sputnik’s designs, and a home base for his life-long interest in sculpture. Flax straw is the key material in Lantern, a project inspired by conversations about the European tradition of straw structures between Anvil Tree creative director Chris Pancoe and visual anthropologist and artist Vytautus Musteikis. Pancoe and Hargraves met Musteikis while building a room for Sweden’s ice hotel in 2022; they brought him to Canada to work with them on Lantern and continue the dialogue.
Lantern was woven from agricultural waste and salvaged wood last fall as part of Holiday Alley, a Selkirk event celebrating creativity. Left on display over the winter, it was set ablaze for this year’s spring equinox. The intention is to make the burning of a straw sculpture an annual community event in Selkirk, as it is in agronomy-based cultures around the world.
Such social even ritual events are a forte of Anvil Tree. The firm is responsible for the fabrication of most of Winnipeg’s Warming Huts an annual event for which Sputnik was a founding organizer, and for which the Patkaus built their bent plywood shelters in 2011. Anvil Tree carries out ice harvesting and installation for ice carving competitions in Winnipeg, as well as for rural events like the Trappers’ Festival in the Pas, northern Manitoba. Their grove of glowing bicycles, suspended from trees, has become a prominent part of Winnipeg’s Culture Days celebrations.
While Lantern was assembled by hand, Anvil Tree is also dextrous with parametric modelling and plasma cutters. Lean In is the first of a number of anticipated artistic/urbanistic interventions for Sputnik’s master-
plan in Fort Francis, Ontario, where they are working with Rainy River First Nation. A new box office for Winnipeg’s Dave Barber Cinematheque used plasma-cut perforated steel to solve several tricky service and security problems for Winnipeg’s main art-house cinema. They’ve also built a restaurant in remote Churchill, Manitoba a tricky logistical challenge. In such work, the company demonstrates a tight symbiosis with the architects and interior designers of Sputnik Architecture.
But Anvil Tree’s first love remains art. For artist Wayne and Jordan Stranger’s monument to Indigenous leader Chief Peguis at the Manitoba Legislature, the Strangers are casting the bronze for the 14-foot statue in Peguis First Nation. The steel interior armature was fabricated by Anvil Tree in their workshop in Winnipeg.
It’s in this facility a former welding workshop that now includes a woodworking studio, a metal shop, a finish shop and ancillary buildings for materials and equipment that Hargraves plans to see the full realization of Anvil Tree’s mission. “The goal is to have this constant collaboration with artists that are here; and now, if they want to do something big, they have access to a workshop,” says Hargraves. The second-floor workshop spaces will be used to train visiting artists in fabrication techniques, as well as to host design-build studios for architecture students.
As they carry their architectural practices into new realms, Patkau Architects, Omer Arbel, and Anvil Tree manifest a broader definition of the Greek architektōn master maker than is encompassed by professional practice alone. From “quiet prayer” to operatic ambition, their fabrication practices provide a wealth of lessons in the artistic, technical and social potential of architecture.
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Lawrence Bird, MRAIC, is an architect, city planner and visual artist based in Winnipeg.
ARTHUR ERICKSON’S HOMECOMING
TEXT Hadani Ditmars
A FILM FESTIVAL, EXHIBITIONS, BUILDING TOURS, A LECTURE SERIES, AND THE REOPENING OF THE RESTORED MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY MARK THE CENTENARY OF ERICKSON’S BIRTH.
Fittingly for a shape-shifting city with a celluloid skin that has played countless other places in Hollywood movies, centenary celebrations for architect Arthur Erickson in his hometown kicked off with a film festival
As I watched Erickson’s architecture Simon Fraser University, Robson Square, the Macmillan Bloedel building come to life on the screen, I realized how ubiquitous his buildings are. They are not only touchstones in my childhood memories of growing up here, but also integral to the very civic fabric of this place.
As film fest curator Trevor Boddy pointed out, “LA got Arthur before Vancouver did.” Buildings that were taken for granted (or even ridiculed) by Vancouverites were long celebrated in the City of Angels, where Erickson once had an office and friendships with the likes of Shirley MacLaine.
Indeed, when I first met Arthur in 1997 in Singapore, where his international reputation still preceded him, Canadian publications weren’t interested in features on his latest projects. Magazines in Europe wanted to publish his late career works, but a shadow from his bankruptcies still hung over his story here at home.
But now, with a cornucopia of events, lectures, and exhibitions celebrating Erickson’s life and work over the next 12 months, there is a sense
that the celebrated architect’s hometown is finally honouring and appreciating his considerable legacy.
June 14 which would have been Erickson’s 100th birthday was officially declared “Arthur Erickson Day” by the mayor of Vancouver’s office. A packed house at the Vancouver International Film Festival watched Richard Gere play a very Arthur-like architect in the 1994 film Intersection, gazing at a model of the Museum of Anthropology with Sharon Stone. The day before, the actual Museum of Anthropology had reopened: Nick Milkovich, a longtime Erickson associate, had taken on the formidable task of demolishing and rebuilding the museum’s Great Hall in a $40-million seismic upgrade. It was Nick who had also made the model shown in the film.
As art and life danced around each other in the darkened theatre, scenes of a pre-Vancouverism city seduced us with their gritty innocence, from a time before tower and podium prototypes competed with view corridors.
We are edging ever closer to Erickson’s visionary 1955 sketch of a tower-lined city by the sea, so watching the Hollywood remake of a French film about an architect who must choose between his wife and his mistress proved instructive. “Can we have our cake and eat it too?” I won-
GLENN
Arthur Erickson contemplates a model of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. The museum was recently reopened after a seismic upgrade led by architect Nick Milkovich, who worked extensively with Erickson, including on the original museum project. ABOVE In a production still from the 1994 movie Intersection, Richard Gere plays an architect, and is here seen gazing at a model of the Museum of Anthropology with Sharon Stone, who plays the architect’s wife and business partner.
dered as patrons licked crumbs of Erickson’s birthday gâteau served in the lobby. Can we bridge the gap between home and away, this city and the world, nativism and globalism? Erickson managed this in a series of enlightened architectural maneuvers. Why can’t we?
As Iraqi architect Moafaq Al Taie, who worked with Erickson on his Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired floating Baghdad cultural centre on the Tigris (sadly foiled by the Iran/Iraq war), put it : “Erickson spoke in two languages, not only one.” Indeed, his work beautifully expressed both the regional and the international.
Two documentary films amply demonstrated this. In 2002’s Concrete Poetry, a septuagenarian Erickson and a younger version of myself walked up the Temple of Hatshepsut-inspired ramps at his Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, next to its shimmering slanted cone, inspired by local industry. The other, the 2023 film Dyde House, showcases a recently rediscovered Erickson gem hidden in the Canadian woods.
But the ethos of being both international and local is best epitomized in Simon Fraser University, a place I literally grew up in during the early 1970s, when my parents were students there. This was the very time and setting for the last film in the series, a 1972 action flick called The Groundstar Conspiracy. It was a rare treat to see the
Simon Fraser University of my childhood with unimpeded views its architectural integrity still intact before unfortunate 90s additions, and the demolition of the married students’ residence, Louis Riel House, where my family lived.
Inspired by mountaintop Aztec cities, the Al Azhar Mosque and University in Cairo, Mogul architecture, and Greek hill towns all witnessed by a young Erickson on a travelling scholarship Simon Fraser University is also deeply embedded with a sense of its own place.
The academic quadrangle was lifted up from its foundations to reveal stunning views of West Coast mountains and forest. In precise, processional choreography, Erickson designed SFU as a descent from the eastern peak of Burnaby Mountain, sloping towards the west in the path of the sun. Conceived as a series of open terraces cascading down the mountainside, it was built as a singular vision, with a classical sense of scale and an inventive modernism that channelled ancient sites.
It was certainly a magical place to spend one’s childhood. I remember running away quite regularly from the hippie daycare (designed by Erickson associate Bruno Freschi, who also worked on SFU as a whole) and getting happily lost in the architecture. The central mall, conceived as an interdisciplinary meeting space, was often the
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“I think with any work of art, once the persona is developed, it takes over. It may take a lot of wrestling to find out what it is but there is that point when you recognize the persona, and then your business after that is whittling away at everything that is contradictory to that character, and letting the character develop and grow and assert itself even stronger. I think you often hear about the concept of simplicity, which is often misunderstood: that simplicity is not doing something that is ‘plain’ it’s only clearing away all the periphera, the things that are inconsequential to that central character and meaning, and it’s more clarity than simplicity. But something, to be clear, has to be very simple.”
idea of breaking down silos into an architecture that imagined the university as a city. “It was a physical, poetic interpretation of how to create a community of scholarship,” he told a rapt crowd.
It was also, he said, an example of the way Erickson created “spiritual space embodying a higher aesthetic statement and challenge.”
“Once you go into a building, you leave the building behind,” he said.
Watching The Groundstar Conspiracy in the presence of Erickson’s old colleagues was an exercise in nostalgia. Not just for my childhood, but for a time when a pre-digital world still imagined and made films about the evils of technology, and the loss of privacy and individuality.
For a moment, the lobotomized protagonist struggling to remember his true identity became a symbol of mine and Arthur’s hometown, Vancouver, struggling to find its place in the world.
And yet, for me, Erickson’s architecture always made that struggle seem effortless: his buildings bridged worlds.
site of public concerts, where daycare renegades could be found dancing in the sunlight. The fountain, announcing entry into the plaza, was a favourite spot for water play. The hollow slanted troughs on either side of the stairwell leading to the rotunda were the perfect hiding places for a three-year-old on the lam.
Fortunately, Freschi was on hand for a pre-film discussion about SFU. Erickson’s genius, he said, was to transmute the interdisciplinary
At the reopening of the Museum of Anthropology, I recalled the architect’s 80th birthday celebration at the same place, when he joined Haida dancers in shared ceremony. Leading a tour of Erickson’s 1976 masterwork after completing its major seismic upgrade, Nick Milkovich said, “If I did my job well, you won’t notice any difference.” Indeed, the changes are seamless, and subtle but radical.
The new architectural and curatorial vision one that has added to the permanent exhibition 50 new artifacts and signage that contextualizes the objects on display in terms of cultural genocide and contempor-
— Arthur Erickson, f rom a 1986 interview by Abraham Rogatnick, included in the film Dyde House
MICHAEL ELKAN PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY UBC
In a recently completed renovation, the Great Hall of the Museum of Anthropology was demolished and rebuilt to include extensive seismic
reopened Great Hall is a faithful reconstruction of the original design; exhibitions have been curated afresh to include contemporary Indigenous perspectives.
ary issues are of a piece with the original. The landmark restoration aimed to address signs of deterioration, and to earthquake-proof the building, whose capacity to withstand quakes was at only 25 percent of current standards. To accomplish this, the Great Hall was demolished and rebuilt with precast columns and beams. The new structure sits on a new cast-in-place concrete slab, thickened under the columns, all of which rests on isolators within the crawl space.
The old tempered glass, which would have shattered instantly in an earthquake, has been replaced by stronger, laminated sheets with UV protection. Plates of glass are cantilevered from the concrete columns and are fixed to a steel roof suspended from the channel beam, allowing them to move in concert with the movement of the structure. Now, “they can dance with the building,” according to Milkovich.
Now, there is an even clearer sense of the building’s connection to the land and, if one goes deeper, a clearer view of the settler/patron’s place in what artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (who now has an iteration of his work An Indian Shooting the Indian Act displayed prominently at the museum) is fond of calling “the morgue.”
With its cleaner, brighter transparency and new concrete columns, there is a greater articulation of Erickson’s original intent. Like SFU, the Museum of Anthropology part Shinto shrine, part cathedral, part longhouse is a temple to learning, as well as a sacred space. Its design hopes to transcend the colonial context of the museum, moving from the darkened entranceway through to the great hall,
a place birthing light. Views of water and mountains beckon us into a future of reconciliation.
Already satiated by the centenary year’s first week, it’s hard to imagine that there’s more to the Ericksonian moveable feast and yet there is. You may have missed the summer house and garden tours, and the West Vancouver Art Museum’s exhibition A Refuge: Arthur Erickson that recreates the living room of the architect’s beloved home in Point Grey, Vancouver, where he lived from 1957 to 2009, and presents photographs by Selwyn Pullan of Erickson in his converted garage-turned-haven. Or the West Vancouver Art Museum’s homes tour, featuring Erickson’s Eppich Houses 1 and 2. But there’s still time for other talks and film screenings, including the Arthur Erickson Centenary Lecture Series a series of seven lectures to be given by architects, critics and theorists in cities across Canada this fall. It’s presented by the Arthur Erickson Foundation, with the support of Canadian Heritage, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and the institutions hosting the lectures. There’s also an exhibition of correspondence between Erickson and artist Gordon Webber, opening soon at the CCA in Montreal. In November, Ericksonphiles can look forward to the première of a new documentary film at the Architecture and Design Film Festival, Vancouver, produced by Leah Mallen.
As I write this, I’m looking forward to the July 7th centenary celebration at Robson Square, featuring Mexican music, Haida carving, opera
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upgrades. ABOVE The
MICHAEL
singing and Taiko drumming. While hopefully offering more personal opportunities for eating cake and dancing about architecture, revisiting Erickson’s urban oasis in the heart of Vancouver with its cascading pools and gardens (designed with Cornelia Oberlander) will also offer further reflection on our hometown.
In the midst of a place still struggling to define itself, Robson Square like so much of Erickson’s work reminds us, both subtly and radically, to become less like a celluloid city, and more like ourselves.
Hadani Ditmars is a writer, journalist, and photographer. She is the author of Wallpaper* City Guide Vancouver (Phaidon, 2020), now in its fourth edition, and Dancing in the No-Fly Zone: A Woman’s Journey Through Iraq (Interlink, 2005).
ABOVE The author, Hadani Ditmars, is seen at left in this artistically abstracted photo, playing in the plaza of Simon Fraser University as a child.
LEFT Children craft models of the Museum of Anthropology at an Erickson Centenary celebration held in Vancouver’s Robson Square.
LOUISE BLANCHARD BETHUNE: EVERY WOMAN HER OWN ARCHITECT
By Kelly Hayes McAlonie (State University of New York Press, 2023)
Architect, mother, cyclist, partner: Buffalo architect Louise Bethune was all of these and more. And although she was the first professional woman architect in the United States, her story has remained largely untold. In a notable new book—one of two biographies of Bethune to appear in the past decade—architect and Canadian ex-pat Kelly Hayes McAlonie offers a comprehensive and compelling account of Bethune’s life and career. What may at first glance seem like a minor story in a minor place is, in fact, an inspiring history of everyday professional determination and ethics, situated in a region that was a centre of innovation and wealth at the time.
The thoughtfully researched narrative offers an extensive look into Bethune’s career, including the founding of her office in 1881, where she was later joined by her husband, Robert Bethune, and then by architect William Fuchs. Together, the “partnership of equals” designed numerous residential, commercial, and public buildings, especially schools. In 1888, Bethune was the first woman elected to the American Institute of Architects, and in 1889, she became the AIA’s first female fellow.
Louise’s crowning achievement was as lead designer and construction supervisor of the 1904 Hotel Lafayette in Downtown Buffalo, the largest luxury hotel of its decade. (The building was renovated and its public areas were restored to their gilded glory in 2012.) The hotel is one of the office’s 179 built and unbuilt works, many still standing, but even more demolished, which are documented in an appendix of the book. I wish that there had been a map associated with the list to allow readers to visually locate (and potentially visit) the remaining buildings.
Though privileged in many respects on account of her race and social mobility, Louise also faced misogyny and discrimination, and was radically pragmatic by necessity. While a pioneer, she was not a feminist advocate and did not officially participate in the suffragist movement. She was, however, according to Hayes McAlonie, “engaged in women’s equality on her own terms.” We learn unequivocally that Bethune was a staunch believer in a women’s right to equal pay for equal work. It was this principled attitude that prevented her from competing for the design of the Women’s Pavilion at the Chicago World’s Fair. Bethune was well positioned to win the competition, but refused to enter, since the award was only one tenth what male designers earned for the other pavilions.
Bethune was also a cycling enthusiast: she was the first woman in Buffalo to own a bicycle, and a cofounder of the Women’s Wheel and Athletic Club. It is as a “wheeler” that readers may connect to Bethune most viscerally, imagining the physical constraints of the 19th-century garments worn and eventually shed, along with the social roles they implied when mounting a bicycle and claiming the freedoms it afforded.
Author Kelly Hayes McAlonie shares a relationship across time with Bethune: though originally Canadian, Kelly is now based in Western New York, and was the next woman in Buffalo, after Bethune, to successfully become a fellow with the AIA. In the author’s words, “the parallels gave me a unique insight into her life and career, and it certainly enhanced my passion in researching and telling her story.” Through this book, Hayes McAlonie continues her advocacy for women in the archi-
tectural profession an earlier accomplishment was working with Despina Stratigakos to convince Mattel to bring Architect Barbie to market.
As a humanistic biography, Louise Blanchard Bethune: Every Woman Her Own Architect presents Louise as a pioneering professional, but also in her multiple roles as a mother, a spouse, a property owner, and a person with hobbies (wheeling, history and genealogy). In this sense, the book is an intimate and timely portrait that speaks to the continuing need for architects of all genders to espouse a moral compass, to pursue work-life balance, and to provide a professional standard of care all pressing topics for the practice of architecture today.
Julia Jamrozik
THE SUICIDE MAGNET: INSIDE THE BATTLE TO ERECT A SAFETY BARRIER ON TORONTO’S BLOOR VIADUCT
By Paul McLaughlin (Dundurn Press, 2023)
In 2003, the Luminous Veil a suicide barrier designed by Dereck Revington Studio along Toronto’s Bloor Viaduct opened. Revington’s full vision did not come to completion until a full 12 years later, when the steel strings were finally illuminated with a ribbon of 35,000 LEDs. As it turns out, the journey to erect the barrier in the first place was also long and hard-fought.
The push for erecting a permanent safety barrier for the Bloor Viaduct started with a series of widely reported suicides in the mid-1990s, which brought light to the fact that the bridge had the second-highest rate of suicides in North America, after San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. MacLaughlin recounts the stories of several of the 400 people who died of suicide from this spot, the trauma and mental illness that led to their deaths, and their choice of the Viaduct as their jumping place. As the families of the deceased, medical specialists, and advocates learned about how a suicide barrier might prevent future deaths, their efforts became concentrated around two men: retired salesman Al Birney and journalism student Michael McCamus. Together, Birney and McCamus spent close to five years lobbying Toronto’s City Hall to create a safety barrier on the bridge.
After laborious discussions and meetings led by the two men, City Council greenlit a design competition for the barrier. The competition was ultimately won by Revington, working with two students at the time, Geoffrey Thün and Jonathan Tyrrell. The project overcame a crucial challenge with the help of architect Ellis Kirkland, who led a private fundraising campaign when bidding came in $4 million above the original budget. (The initiative ultimately faltered, and the City absorbed the extra costs for the barrier’s construction.) Funding for the illumination of the Veil materialized a decade later, with the impetus of Toronto’s hosting of the 2015 Pan and Parapan American Games.
McLaughlin’s chronicle is a detailed telling not only of a suicide barrier, but of Toronto’s complex politics, and the people who battled through its challenges to get the Luminous Veil built and illuminated. It is, as well, a plea to recognize the struggles associated with mental illness, including among friends and family, and for design and architecture’s role in creating compassionate cities where all may live and thrive.
Afnan Al-Rashid
RESIDE: CONTEMPORARY WEST COAST HOUSES
By Michael Prokopow (Figure.1, 2024)
A decade ago, Greg Bellerby’s book The West Coast Modern House: Vancouver Residential Architecture chronicled key developments in West Coast Modern architecture, including several contemporary practices continuing that legacy. The present volume is positioned as a continuation, foregrounding new voices in a selection curated by architect Clinton Cuddington.
The 34 projects range in size and geography, from Openspace’s expansive 8,200-square-foot Trail’s Edge residence, on a forested site in Whistler, BC, to Simcic Architecture’s 450-square-foot Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency, which occupies a platform that also includes a restored 1927 wood cabin that serves as an artist’s studio. A group of city buildings spans from single family homes by architects including A A Robins and Haeccity Studio Architecture, to the multi-unit East Georgia Flats by AIRstudio with Birmingham and Wood.
Prokopow visited each of the houses in the book, sometimes accompanied by architects and hosted by owners, and sometimes on his own, retrieving keys from hiding spots in sheds. His thoughtful commentary touches on the history and culture of the different sites, the composition and materials of each project, and the experience of moving through the houses often emerging onto a top floor with expansive views of nature.
Both Prokopow and Cuddington are at pains to address the elephant in the room: what is the relevance of a book on luxury homes in the midst of a housing affordability crisis? Cuddington writes: “Each practitioner [included in the selection] strives on a daily basis to engage with projects that further an appropriate community response to [the evolving set of pressures placed upon residential architecture], inform a larger
discussion of affordable housing, and increase the domain of who can inform that work […] In some way, each has also acknowledged that they struggle with the privilege inherent in this typology, but embrace a sincere goal of using the platform of this publication to grow a conversation of those who have not been at the table, and in service of those who have not had an opportunity to benefit from the response.”
For Prokopow, “these houses say much about the states of residential architecture in British Columbia, and about the place itself” including the inherently elitist, settler-colonialist contexts that produced the houses themselves. “Mindful of the larger histories of architecture and society, it is possible to engage with the actuality of a house and its multiple meanings,” he adds from its aesthetic power and form, to its applications of current technology, to the philosophical statement that these projects offer about the meaning of home.
-Elsa Lam
ABOVE Simcic Architecture Studio’s Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency pairs a restored 1927 log cabin with a deckhouse atop a floating concrete-and-steel plinth. The pair of buildings serve as a studio and residence, respectively, and the ensemble docks in various waterways.
OPPOSITE TOP Trail’s Edge, a cottage in Whistler, BC, by Openspace Architecture, embraces its forested site. OPPOSITE BOTTOM Designed by AIRstudio with Birmingham and Wood, East Georgia Flats is a ninestorey tower with 28 affordable units. Floor-to-ceiling windows and balcony doors provide generous daylight and natural ventilation to the compact units.
BACKPAGE
MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY
TEXT Nick Milkovich, interviewed by Adele Weder
ARCHITECT NICK MILKOVICH ON REBUILDING THE GREAT HALL OF ARTHUR ERICKSON’S MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY.
On June 13, 2024, Arthur Erickson’s beloved Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia reopened after 18 months of closure. During this time, its iconic Great Hall was entirely rebuilt from the ground up. The epic reconstruction was steered by Vancouver architect Nick Milkovich, whom Erickson first hired in 1968 and who worked on the original building. Here’s Milkovich’s account of the project, drawn from an interview with Adele Weder.
Since the Museum of Anthropology was built, the knowledge of earthquake impact has changed; the building was about 25 per cent of what it should be for current codes. The building was already showing signs of deterioration: the plastic skylights leaked like hell, steel reinforcements in the concrete were starting to show, things like that. The Great Hall was the worst off. We started out by scanning the building components. That’s when we discovered that the concrete columns were actually hollow. Fifty years ago, the lifting capacity of the construction equipment was more limited; it
would have been difficult or impossible to raise the largest column, which was 50 feet high. So that’s probably why they were thinned out and hollowed. The engineering consultant had said that it would come down fast in an earthquake and that’s before we found out that the columns were hollow!
When we found out that it was that bad, we thought it would be really difficult to reinforce it without showing a lot of steel, but doing it that way would have changed the whole character of the building.
The key to the seismic upgrade is what’s called base isolation, so the building can move in an earthquake. The old structure was slab-on-grade concrete, resting directly on the ground. We rebuilt it with precast concrete, with a crawl space under the building and a huge beam under the columns that helps supports it.
And underneath every column, we incorporated rubber-and-steel tips called base isolators. They’ll act like shock absorbers in an earthquake. Our projection is that the building will be able to move up to one foot two
ABOVE The Museum of Anthropology was recently reopened after an 18-month-long seismic upgrade that involved demolishing and completely rebuilding the Great Hall.
inches, in two or three seconds. That was the big move.
The existing walls were tempered glass, which wouldn’t break into deadly shards but in an earthquake, all that glass would all instantly shatter and pile up on the ground at the foot of the building. We replaced that glass with laminated sheets of glass, which are stronger and still safe.
Before, the glass plates were pinned to the columns and hung from the beams. Now, long plates of glass are cantilevered over the columns a bit, meeting at the vertical glass plates at a right angle, caulked together with a steel rod in the middle of the caulking, and that allows for a bit of movement in an earthquake.
I hesitated for about a week before I took on the job. I’m not a huge political animal; I’m just a guy who likes to make things. I had to decide if I could handle the politics of it all. But I knew I could handle the architecture part, and I knew the building well.
And I realized too there was an obligation a moral obligation, in a way.
MICHAEL
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