Canadian Architect September 2022

EDUCATIONAL SPACES

04 VIEWPOINT

Editor Elsa Lam checks in with architecture firms preparing for a possible recession.

06 NEWS

Ace Hotel Toronto opens; remem bering Barry Downs, 1930-2022.

28 REVIEW

Leah Snyder reports on the CCA’s current exhibition, Towards Home.

32 INSITES

Architecture student Christian Maidankine reflects on the past two years of pandemic schooling.

34 BACKPAGE

11 MANITOU A BI BII DAZIIGAE

A double deck of cards by Lisa Landrum celebrates Manitoba’s women architects.

16 GASTOWN CHILD CARE CENTRE

21 MONTREAL INSECTARIUM

COVER Manitou a bi Bii daziigae, by Diamond Schmitt Architects in joint venture with Number TEN Architectural Group. Photo by doublespace photography.

JAMES BRITTAIN

MICHAEL ELKAN PHOTOGRAPHY

Diamond Schmitt Architects and Number TEN Architectural Group put sustainability at the heart of an innovation centre for Winnipeg’s Red River College. TEXT Lawrence Bird

A rooftop daycare by Acton Ostry Architects checks all the boxes for smart, safe, contemporary design. But does society have the standards wrong? TEXT Adele Weder

A new museum by Kuehn Malvezzi, Pelletier De Fontenay, and Jodoin Lamarre Pratte architects gives visitors an insect’s-eye-view. TEXT Olivier Vallerand

IS A RECESSION COMING?

Are we headed towards a recession? And if so, what should architecture firms be doing to prepare?

Over the past months, the Bank of Canada has steadily increased its policy interest rate, in a bid to control inflation and find a “soft landing” for the economy that tames excessive spending, while avoiding a recession.

“Higher interest rates will help slow de mand and allow supply time to catch up. Consumer spending will moderate as the pent-up demand from pandemic restrictions eases and the cost of borrowing increases,” said Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem in a press conference in mid-July. “Housing market activity is already cooling rapidly from unsustainably high levels during the pandem ic. And slower global growth will reduce demand for our exports.”

John Mollenhauer, president and CEO of the Toronto Construction Association, has said that since the construction sector is currently so busy in his city, even if a fullblown recession were to hit, it would only result in a modest reduction in activity.

Some firms have economic resilience built into their business model. Architect Oliver Lang and partner Cindy Wilson are cofounders of Vancouver architecture firm LWPAC as well as a sister company, Intelli gent City, which produces modular, mass timber housing.

“Housing is probably the most price-sensi tive, interest rate-sensitive product there is,” says Wilson. “In times like this, when the cost of materials is so high and interest rates are rising, how do you de-risk projects?” She and Lang started Intelligent City to cre ate affordable, sustainable urban housing through a process that allows them to control the quality, cost, and time it takes to build the end product. The company has recently opened an automated manufacturing facility for modular, multi-unit housing and raised $30 million in funding.

Sustainability is key to Intelligent City’s buildings, which are produced from mass timber and are highly energy efficient. “Over the lifespan of a building and especially for the operator of a building if it’s rental hous ing the maintenance and operating cost is almost more important than the initial cost,” says Wilson. She sees the demand for

rental housing, especially in the non-profit sector, continuing to grow even as Vancouver’s property market begins to cool.

For Natasha Lebel of 12-person Toronto firm Lebel & Bouliane, much of the eco nomic information we’re getting from the United States doesn’t necessarily apply to local conditions in Toronto, where the city’s growth and prosperity should continue to fuel the construction sector: “We’re in one of the most successful cities, in one of the most successful countries in the world.” She adds that her firm, which divides its work be tween commercial, institutional, and residen tial sectors, has seen renewed growth since the end of July, when they closed out a num ber of projects that had experienced signifi cant pandemic-related delays. They are now energized by starting on new projects.

Lebel does believe that the COVID-relat ed job site closures, labour shortages and supply chain issues will have a significant, but temporary effect on the construction and architecture sector. “We’re currently feeling the bullwhip effect of inefficient construction from two years of pandemic layered onto a continued and growing demand for con struction,” she says. “The bullwhip will flat ten, and we expect our key sectors to recover slowly from shortages and delays in 2023. Most firms in Ontario and Toronto should be able to weather this economic uncer tainty we’re not in a recession yet, and I don’t think we will be.”

“Whatever’s going to happen this coming year, I hope it loosens the reins on the indus try,” says Lebel. “It’s unsustainable to grow with an over-extended and incredibly tight pool of labour, in architecture as well as in the trades. Regardless of industry, it’s a stress on organizations to have too much work, to turn work down, or to over work staff because of sector inefficiencies and skilled labour shortages.

“I believe that the softening of the econ omy what everyone calls the doom and gloom of a recession can be a good thing. It’s a chance for everyone to exhale, to play musical chairs and figure out where they should be,” says Lebel.

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Designer

PROJECTS

Ace Hotel Toronto opens

Ace Hotel Toronto opened its 123-room ground-up project, designed by Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, led by Brigitte Shim and A. How ard Sutcliffe, on July 26, 2022.

The hotel stands in the city’s historic Garment District, at a nexus of neighbourhoods includ ing Queen West, Downtown and Chinatown.

The architecture of Ace Hotel Toronto was designed to convey timelessness. The build ing’s red brick facade recalls the important role bricks pressed from Don Valley clay played in forming the city’s visual identity. In the lobby is Horizon Line , a three-story site-specific art installation abstractly repre senting Lake Ontario’s glittering waters, designed by A. Howard Sutcliffe.

“Our intention with Ace Hotel Toronto was to make a positive contribution to our city, a welcoming civic space where life happens and memories are made, and where both locals and their guests feel equally at home,” says architect Brigitte Shim.

A rhythmic series of soaring, poured-inplace, concrete structural arches rises from the semi-subterranean restaurant to a level above. The lobby, lined in red oak and inspired in form by a wooden tray, is suspended by slender steel rods from these massive supports, offering guests a variety of viewpoints and scales.

“We could not be more proud to open Ace Hotel Toronto the architectural magnifi cence of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects’ work has created a bona fide wonder,” says Brad Wil son, CEO, Atelier Ace / Ace Hotel Group. “They have built an inherently civic space that respects the neighbourhood’s storied past while nurturing its future.

www.acehotel.com

Telus Sky Opens

TELUS’ new headquarters, the 60-storey-tall TELUS Sky, has opened in downtown Cal gary. The building is designed by architects Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Dialog, along with developer partners Westbank and Allied.

As the building rises, its rectangular floor plates slowly reduce in size and pixilate. This provides opportunities for offices with small balconies and terraces; at the top of the build ing, it results in smaller residential floor plates with balconies.

TELUS now occupies the largest LEED Platinum footprint in North America, accord ing to the company, with sustainability features including a storm water management system that recycles rainwater for use in washroom

toilets and urinals, 100 percent fresh air venti lation, a triple-glazed envelope, and a living green wall in the 11-storey atrium.

Canada’s largest public art display is integrat ed into the building’s façade: Northern Lights by Canadian author and artist, Douglas Coupland, which dances across the building’s exterior.

“We see this building and its art installation as a symbol of Calgary’s transformation and its future as one of Canada’s emerging Creative Economy hubs,” says Ian Gillespie, Westbank Founder and CEO. “A LEED Platinum show case, an architectural landmark and a monu mental public art installation that brings work space and living space into downtown Calgary, TELUS Sky will contribute to Calgary’s suc cess economically and culturally for genera tions to come.”  www.telussky.com

AWARDS

Polygon Gallery shortlisted for MCHAP

The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) has announced Patkau Architects’ Polygon Gallery as part of its shortlisted selection. It is the sole Canadian building among 38 projects.

The gallery is the new home for an in dependent photography and media institution that has served North Vancouver’s creative community for nearly 40 years.

The building takes the form of two vol umes: the upper storey containing the galler ies space, administration and a flexible event space; and the lower transparent volume, con

taining retail, reception, workshops, storage and technical areas, that connects the gallery to the waterfront and to the city of Vancouver across the Burrard Inlet.

The gallery, called Presentation House Gal lery when it opened in the 1970s, was initially located in a community centre inside an early1900s girls school. The new gallery’s central mass floats above the ground plane, providing access to a new public space and a sweeping view of Vancouver’s skyline across the inlet. It is marked with a sawtooth profile clad in mirrored stainless steel sitting beneath expanded aluminum decking.

“The outstanding projects exhibited immense diversity across programs, scales and problems addressed; such solutions manifest across a var iety of budgets, scales, and sizes,” said MCHAP 2022 Jury Chair Sandra Barclay. “Regardless of their diversity in approach, every project, within its scope, explores improving the quality of architecture and enhancing life.”

The fourth prize cycle considers built works completed in the Americas between 2018 and 2021. The MCHAP prize winner will be announced in April 2023.  mchap.co

MEMORANDUM

Canadian Architect Awards

The magazine’s national awards recognize design excellence in future projects and archi tectural photography. This year’s deadline for submissions is Monday, September 12, 2022.

ABOVE Toronto’s Ace Hotel, designed by Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, opened its doors at the end of July. The brick-clad building is located in the city’s Garment District.

Redefining Surfaces. Redefining Façades.

Dekton Domoos and Spectra not only add an elegant and sleek appearance, they are the perfect material to withstand the wear and tear of this space for years to come. This awaited stadium will be visited by thousands of people a year and will also be exposed to harsh weather throughout the year - from blazing hot summers, to freezing winters, rain, and everything in between. No matter what, the students and community .

Dekton shines in the transformative SFU Stadium

Architect: Perkins&Will

Installer: Altium Building Corp

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10 Year Warranty. Find more projects, technical info and inspiration at cosentino.com

Barry Vance Downs, 1930-2022

In the ruthless postwar arena to build the nation in the modern para digm, Barry Downs presented an anomaly. Soft-spoken, modest, and devoted to both architecture and family life, he brought a rare sensibil ity to his work. When he died, in July, at age 92, it marked the passing of one of the last giants of West Coast Modernism.

Mr. Downs built his career in the second wave of Canadian modern ism, when verdant lots on the West Coast were cheap and plentiful. The timing allowed him to benefit from the mentorship of the earlier architectural trailblazers, including Ned Pratt and Ron Thom. As he built his career through the late 1950s and 1960s, his houses and public buildings bridged the often-austere high modernism of the day with a more earthy, organic sensibility that fit the coastal context.

Barry Vance Downs grew up in a C.B.K. Van Norman-designed home, whose steeply pitched roof, timber and stucco gables, baronial oak-plank front door, and huge garden made an indelible impression on him as a young boy. During high school, he befriended Art Phillips, who later became one of his first clients and later still one of the most transformational mayors of Vancouver.

After two listless years studying commerce at the University of Brit ish Columbia, Downs moved to Seattle in 1950 to study architecture. Although UBC had just established its own architecture school that very year, Mr. Downs chose the University of Washington’s well-estab lished programme. When he returned to his hometown in 1954, he ap prenticed at Thompson, Berwick, Pratt & Partners at that time the largest and most important firm in Western Canada: “my much-appre

ciated ‘graduate school,’” as he called it. The size wasn’t as important as the connections and mentors it brought to him.

“The major turning point for me was the introduction to Ron Thom and Freddy Hollingsworth and Doug Shadbolt that whole gang,” recalled Mr. Downs in a 2012 interview with this writer. “All my work at the University of Washington was directed towards Mies van der Rohe’s idea of minimalism. But I discovered a whole other design approach here, and I’m forever grateful for that.”

From those early mentors, Mr. Downs absorbed not only their famed sensitivity to the West Coast landscape, but the emotional and sensory aspects of design. “At the start, I didn’t realize that architecture isn’t all about construction and engineering and huge glass walls open to the views. It also has much to do with exhilaration in being in certain spaces,” he recalled in our interview. He began to question the Miesian mantra of austerity, openness, and precision which, he came to realize, did not suit every need in every region. While he appreciated minimal ism and new materials, he recognized the human need for organic tex ture and form, especially on the West Coast.

At the same time, he brought ideas from elsewhere back to his firm. In 1956, with his wife, Mary, he made an international pilgrimage to major architectural landmarks, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park houses and Johnson Wax Building in Wisconsin, and Lever House in New York. Overseas, he visited Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation in Marseille, which he remembers as a building full of “fascinating moments,” whose modularity allowed the building to be scaled to the human figure. He also toured Mussolini’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome, the circa-1940 slab-block tower that he remembered as “cruel, stripped-down rationalism. It was fascist. And yet my simple less-is-more brain sort of liked it!”

Back in Vancouver, Downs became a voracious reader of the Euro pean design journals in the TBP library: Domus, Architectural Review, and a slew of magazines from Finland and Scandinavia, which brought him new ideas about imaginative form beyond the International Style template. His love of craft, landscape, drawing, and watercolours

ABOVE Barry Downs with his young family in Downs House I, Vancouver.

SELWYN PULLAN, COURTESY OF THE WEST VANCOUVER ART MUSEUM

helped endear him to the star designer at Thompson Berwick Pratt, Ron Thom, who enlisted him to render the handcoloured presentation boards for the 1960 Massey College competition as well as hundreds of his other projects.

Meanwhile, his role at TBP transitioned from illustration to fullfledged design. His breakout projects include the 1957 house for his friend Art Phillips; the 1958 Ladner Pioneer Library, designed in col laboration with TBP colleagues Richard Archambault and Blair Mac Donald; his own 1959 glass-and-brick Downs House I; and the 1963 Rayer Residence, later expanded by Blue Sky Architecture + Design into a live-work residence.

In 1964, when an anticipated partnership at TBP failed to material ize, Downs left to start a new firm with Fred Hollingsworth. Their skill sets weren’t entirely complementary, however. Hollingsworth’s penchant for Frank Lloyd Wright differed from Down’s more subdued and minimalist approach. Also, Downs wanted to design larger projects and public buildings, while Hollingsworth remained content to focus on single-family homes.

In 1969, his life and career improved when he teamed up with archi tect Richard Archambault. While at Downs/Archambault, he designed or co-designed several important landmarks, including the North Vancouver Civic Centre, the Brittannia Community Centre in East Vancouver, and Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific on Vancouver Island (with Ron Thom as lead designer), and more houses. His 1972 Oberlander House II, designed in collaboration with urban planner Peter Oberlander and Cornelia Oberlander, was recently sold to a sym pathetic buyer who plans to restore it.

For his second family home, he designed the Downs House II in West Vancouver, with walls curving in a contiguous plane into the roofline like an Airstream trailer. The house is the subject of an eponymous 2016 monograph by UBC architecture professor Christopher Macdonald.

He spent much of his later career on urban projects, including Van couver’s Library Square by Moshe Safdie, and the Roundhouse Com munity Centre plan. “Perhaps most extraordinary in Barry Downs’ career was his demonstrated ability to transform his practice from a modest, largely residential focus to expansive urban design projects,” says Macdonald. “It was precisely this ability that has given us an en during sense of locale both in individual residential design and the dis tinctive contours of our cities.”

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ABOVE A sketch by Downs of his Rayer Residence, in West Vancouver.

BARRY DOWNS

A painting by Jackie Traverse of Manitoba’s Lake St. Mar tin

adorns the underside of the building’s canopy, projecting

the

Red River College Polytechnic’s new teaching centre, Manitou a bi Bii daziigae, is the institution’s most recent of many contributions to Winni peg’s rich, but beleaguered, downtown. Making significant strides in urban, cultural, sustainable and interior design, the building is also an illustration of how a client’s vision is as important as that of the architects. Maria Mendes, at the time Senior Project Manager at RRC Polytech, is an archi tect by training, and worked closely throughout the process with Diamond Schmitt and Number TEN Architectural Group. Together, their sensitivity to the priorities of good design became a key factor in the project’s success. The building’s name was chosen by Paul Guimond and Una Swan, two of the College’s Indigenous Elders-in-residence. It is Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) for “Where Creator sits, brings light.” The sun shines on this building both metaphorically and literally. Depending on weather condi tions, solar power contributes around 20 kWh/m2 in Energy Use Intensity (EUI) to the project’s target EUI of 100 kWh/m2 (LEED Gold certifica tion is anticipated). The wall-integrated solar panels, supplemented by rooftop panels, make use of Kromatix photovoltaics, whose glass is col oured through atomic deposition. In this case, the colour varies from bronze to gold, depending on viewing angle and lighting conditions. The effect seems to reference the gleaming carapace of a turtle or drag on—figures resonating with Indigenous tradition as well as another cul tural presence, the nearby Chinatown. This is the first time that façadeintegrated panels have been used in a building of this type in Canada, a move that results from a highly intentional design investigation. Truly integrated into the cladding, they serve as a rainscreen, and are wired to provide energy data to the building’s mechanical systems. As Dia mond Schmitt partner Michael Leckman explains, only two edges of each rectangular panel are provided with a frame. This made the panels

ABOVE A bridge to the main campus helps frame a pedestrianized por tion of Elgin Avenue. ABOVE Jackie Traverse’s artwork covers the under side of the exterior canopy as well as the ceiling of the adjoining City Room, seamlessly connecting the indoor and outdoor surfaces.

more fragile when being moved around on site, but gives the other two edges a sharp, blade-like, expression that allows each panel a defined pres ence as a component of the building’s “shell.”

Conceived from the beginning as an innovation centre, the building houses many of the College ’s technology-focused programs, from game design to applied computing. Teams of students are led through project work by local Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, many based in the nearby concentration of start-ups and makerspaces known as Innovation Alley. Programs are also informed by Indigenous pedagogy, encouraging pur poseful thinking about people, processes, and places. To accommodate these creative industries and open-ended approaches, the architects drew on Diamond Schmitt’s deep experience with pedagogical spaces. The interiors deploy a gradient of space, from conventional lecture rooms to the highly social spaces of a central public atrium, known as the Agora. Between these are arrayed a range of front-porch-like areas intended to support informal meetings and chance encounters. Leckman refers to these as an “interior urbanism”—and they do read that way. Degrees of transparency, permeability, size and shape, seating possibilities, and markable surfaces foster interaction and discussion. Because of the pan demic, few students have yet been able to use the building, but technical jottings scrawled in dry-erase marker on the glazed classroom walls attest to their use as intended. This pedagogical graffiti recalls the scientific

scribbles seen on the chalkboards of liminal meeting spaces in Kahn’s Salk Institute, similarly designed to provoke creative encounters.

The atrium itself is brightly lit by skylights above and street front glaz ing along its south edge. It is tied together at one corner by a cylindrical volume of stacked spaces, which serves as a kind of pivot, with circulation spaces slipping by tangentially. The circular spaces are Indigenous in inspiration. Accordingly, the largest one—the Roundhouse—is entered from due east, and the mechanical systems of both spaces support smudg ing. Acoustic baffling provides the Roundhouse with a beautiful wood edge, and its walls can be opened up entirely to the Agora for public events. The architects worked with Indigenous Elders on the design of an art piece integrated into the flooring of the ground floor multi-purpose room, while Anishinaabe/Inninew/British artist KC Adams designed an other for the Roundhouse on the second floor. Maria Mendes explains KC Adam’s piece with passion and attention to the minutiae of the design. The terrazzo is inlaid with copper patterns—integrated circuits, Inuit tat toos, a Métis sash, and bitten birch bark—that are folded together into a Morningstar, a motif from Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota cultures.

The building also engages a more recent tradition: the warehouses of Winnipeg’s Exchange District. About a quarter of its floor area comprises the repurposed Scott Fruit Building. As Doug Hanna, Partner at Number TEN explains, the building dates from 1914, when concrete was replacing timber in warehouse structures, and it is one of Canada’s earliest reinforced concrete warehouses. New mechanical services were relegated to subfloor plenums, leaving the ceilings clear and exposing the character-defining mushroom capitals. Original windows were preserved, their assemblies

insulated with new glazing. And the marks and scars of aging masonry were exposed and accentuated. Accommodating older floor levels (includ ing a deep basement) was challenging, but the design team integrated the elevation differences into the vertical ascent of the atrium. These efforts won the project a 2022 Heritage Winnipeg Preservation Award.

The building’s presence on the street is as striking as its interiors. The urban design turns on three main gestures. One is the integration of part of Elgin Avenue as a pedestrian space between the original Prin cess Street campus and the new building, which expands the campus to the north. The design team, in particular HTFC Planning & Design, fought hard to convince Winnipeg authorities to close this section of street. Their efforts have been rewarded with an at-grade pedestrian connection that sews together the campus, and brings pedestrians and cyclists into an interstitial zone animated by curving benches, games spaces, and new paving and lighting.

The second gesture is a second-storey bridge, similarly linking old and new. While in Winnipeg as elsewhere there is a perennial debate about the impact of such connections on activity at-grade, in this case, the skywalk supports rather than detracts from life at street level. It shelters pedestrians as they walk between buildings; moreover, framing the street from above and along one edge, it helps define the pedestrianized street as an urban room.

That effect is reinforced by a third gesture: a deep and colourful cor nice projecting over the street. Its underside is adorned with a painting by Jackie Traverse of Manitoba’s Lake St. Martin First Nation. The paint ing flows seamlessly from the ceiling of the City Room—the apex of one’s ascent through the interior Agora—to the eaves high above the

building’s entrance. Effectively, it caps both the building’s interior and urban spaces. Its greens, golds and reds speak of the sun, and richly com plement the bronze and gold of the photovoltaic cladding. As Leckman points out, its sharp projection over the street intentionally recalls the deep cornices characteristic of the Exchange District’s heritage banks and warehouses, which cut sharp angles against the Prairie sky.

One of the most prominent of those projections is the two-metre cornice of another recently completed RRC Polytech property—the Paterson Global Foods Institute, a 2013 adaptive reuse by Prairie Architects of the Union Bank Tower. Other planned developments may also help in the gradual healing of Winnipeg’s fractured inner city. Hollowed out by postwar sub urban flight, the downtown has been much more recently hard-hit by a pan demic-related exodus of workers, as well as an exacerbation of social inequi ties particularly impacting urban Indigenous communities. In her current position as Director of Environmental Stewardship and Campus Renewal, Mendes is acutely aware that the College’s campus projects must connect up with other city-healing projects in the area. The newly pedestrianized Elgin Avenue, for example, leads directly east to City Hall on Main Street, via the Market Lands—the site of an international design competition four years ago (see CA, Feb 2019). Construction is set to begin soon there on an arts hub and affordable housing designed by winning firm Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, with market-rate housing expected to follow.

Manitou a bi Bii daziigae will be another of RRC Polytech’s contribu tions to the ongoing recovery of Winnipeg’s downtown. The building manages to operate at several levels simultaneously: working between technological and cultural space, and between interior and urban design.

OPPOSITE The building’s atrium is tied together by a stack of circular gathering rooms, including a ground-floor multi-purpose space and the second floor Roundhouse. ABOVE Anishinaabe/Inninew/British artist KC Adams designed an artwork that adorns the terrazzo floor of the Roundhouse with inlaid copper motifs.

As students and others occupy its innovative spaces, we can hope its light will shine over a revitalized public realm.

Lawrence Bird (MRAIC) is an architect, urban designer and visual artist. He works in Winnipeg at Sputnik Architecture Inc.

CLIENT RRC POLYTECH (RED RIVER COLLEGE) | ARCHITECT TEAM DIAMOND SCHMITT—MICHAEL LECK MAN (MRAIC), SYDNEY BROWNE (FRAIC), MARTIN DAVIDSON (FRAIC), BIRGIT SIBER (FRAIC), MARTIN GAUTH IER, HALEY ZHOU, LOU-SALOME BIENVENU, PARNIAN MADDAHI, SOLMAZ ESHRAGHI, EMRE GOKTAY,

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

PHOTOS Michael Elkan Photography

Let’s start with the accolades. Everything seems to work seamlessly in Vancouver’s Gastown Child Care Centre. The Passive House project deftly occupies a previously underused stretch of roof atop an inner-city parkade. Its spatial layout and detailing is attentive to safety concerns; the daylighting is strategic and generous; the outdoor space is outfitted with an Astroturf hill and rainbow-hued tricycle track. I can’t help but think of the brightly perfect world of the Teletubbies. The design team com prising Acton Ostry Architects, Durante Kreuk, and an assemblage of consultants and municipal overseers has ticked all the boxes that make a sustainable, functional, contemporary daycare for up to 37 children, and double that number when its southern section opens later this year.

So, the design team has done its job as well as our society will allow. Efficient plan, economical “found space,” a much-needed daycare in a densely populated, gritty neighbourhood on paper, it’s a ten. In the messy world of real life? Depends on what you wish to evaluate, and for whose benefit.

The journey begins in the processional space. Arriving by foot, you enter the glazed elevator box and behold a cinematic view of the parkade’s glass-block exterior, which appears to stream downwards

like a waterfall as you ascend. But despite the neighbourhood’s high population density, most parents drive their tots to the daycare centre, according to staff. By car, the experience is less cinematic-waterfall and more Tarantino pre-climax as you wind your way up a stack of parking ramps to the rooftop.

It’s not the first time a Canadian parkade’s penthouse floor has been cleverly repurposed: in 2008, PH 5 Architecture transformed another Gastown parkade rooftop into a drive-in movie theatre; Revery Archi tecture’s SAIT Parkade includes a full soccer field; Public City Architec ture inaugurated the Calgary parkade-turned-High Park during the pandemic. As cities densify, we can expect planners and developers to transform more rooftops into all sorts of programmes. As a good use of scarce urban space, it makes sense. For reducing car use, its impact in the case of the Gastown Child Care Centre is negligible.

But even those who drive there still get to experience the most delight ful feature of this project: the galvanized-steel-enclosed pedestrian ramp over a jog in the rooftop grade, a metaphorical and literal transition from the grit of Gastown to the entrance of the child care centre. Inside, Acton Ostry has configured the space as an open plan a white-

A ROOFTOP DAYCARE CHECKS ALL THE BOXES FOR SMART, SAFE, SUSTAINABLE DESIGN. BUT DOES SOCIETY HAVE THE STANDARDS WRONG?

PROJECT Gastown Child Care Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia

ARCHITECT Acton Ostry Architects

TEXT Adele Weder

cube gallery without the art. It’s luminous and welcoming at first glance. But children have to spend most of the day in this space, and that makes the design ideal a major challenge. In my own maternal experience of 20 years ago, when daycare spaces were less regulated, I noticed how my kids delighted in exploring the nooks, crannies, and idiosyncratic gestures that make a space intriguing. From the day they take their halt ing first steps, children are instinctively driven to explore. Our society is no longer prepared to expend the resources or accept even a highly limited risk to address that hard-wired need.

Don’t blame the architects; their options are limited. In Japan, Tezuka Architects’ Fuji Kindergarten which includes climbing nets in trees and an open-air rooftop racetrack, connected by slides to the

OPPOSITE The pair of rooftop daycares top a parking garage in Vancou ver’s Gastown, making productive use of a residual urban space and providing panoramic views for children and child care staff.

ABOVE A galvanized-steel-enclosed pedestrian ramp negotiates a jog in the rooftop, creating a bridge-like entrance to the child care centre.

courtyard playground below won the 2017 RAIC International Prize. But here, our architects are forbidden by code to design with such an expanded spatial imagination. Surrounding every daycare project is a nimbus of unspoken anxiety about the facility’s tiny and vulnerable end-users, and their ever-nervous parents and bureaucratic overseers. Each design brief and building code is loaded with direc tives to minimize or eliminate any risk of harm large or small, per ceived or real. The highly codified design of the Gastown Child Care Centre, like others of this paradigm, ensures that no child can conceal themselves at any moment. For better and worse, the design approach transforms the daycare centre into a panopticon, a concept that we col lectively find unsavoury in institutions with adult end-users, but ac ceptable even obligatory for spaces catering to children.

The laudable safety of the Gastown Childcare Centre, as with so much of the contemporary typology, is also its deficit. Officiously secure and smartly laid out, the centre looks and feels more like a pediatric dental clinic than a tot’s paradise. Safety and efficiency come at the expense of intrigue and mystery. There are no hiding places, no shadows, no poetics of space. This is something of a departure for an Acton Ostry project; the firm’s projects are usually enriched with unexpected design gestures. Even to maintain the integrity of the project’s most interesting gesture,

the galvanized-steel entry bridge, the architects had to fend off concerns that a child might trip and scrape their knee on the unpainted perforated metal. This is an example of collective refusal to consider the principle of consequences. If the potential consequence of a design decision might be serious or deadly, let’s be clear: it’s good that we don’t take the risk. That series of locked doors, inside and out, requiring fobs and intercom access? Somewhat inconvenient but undeniably crucial, in this neighbour hood as in many others. Soft-close, pinch-free swinging doors to the interior kitchen and administrative spaces? Good idea, even if the conse quence wouldn’t be deadly, as the implementation of that particular safety feature does not affect a child’s experience.

But a scrape on the knee, a slip off an adult-size chair are they un thinkable events, ripe for litigation? Are we designing out of our kids’ environments the important lessons on the way to growing up? That is: if you do this or aren’t careful with that, you might slip and it will hurt for a few minutes, so now you know and you won’t do it again.

The fact that the Child Care Centre is furnished entirely with childsized furniture, at the operator’s directive, makes the high-ceilinged space seem cavernous and, ironically, less child-centric. Kids know they live in an adult world; I would argue that a happier environment for a child is one that is inclusive, with a mixture of adult and child-sized

chairs and tables. As I watched the children play in the outdoor deck area on a balmy summer morning, I noticed how none of them paid any heed to what most adults would describe as the standout feature: the sublime panoramic view of the north shore mountains. My guess is the view is a strong selling point to the parents, city bureaucrats, and design press but not to the project’s actual end-users. Despite the tem perate weather, many of these preschoolers chose to gather and stand motionless under the area’s only two covered spaces: an arched trellistunnel, and a wooden playhouse. They had to be coaxed out of these sheltered spaces so that this visiting reporter could take an authorized (i.e. child-free) photograph of the spaces.

The benefit of a risk-averse design approach is the near-elimination of any kind of mishap or skirmish among the young charges, which makes life easier for the overworked staff, not to mention the litigationfearing owners and operators. The cost is the denial of the need espe cially within children to find a sense of cocooning and concealment. We would do well to recall Gaston Bachelard’s contemplation of a dream house: “However spacious, it must also be a cottage, a dove-cote, a nest, a chrysalis. Intimacy needs the heart of a nest.”

Architectural curator and critic Adele Weder is a Contributing Editor to Canadian Architect.

OPPOSITE LEFT A play mound echoes the views of the forested north shore mountains. OPPOSITE RIGHT The colourful outdoor track is a tot-friendly spot for tricycles and outdoor play. ABOVE The spacious indoor play areas share in the scenic views, and are outfitted with kid-sized furnishings.

LITRES/OCCUPANT/YEAR

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photo: Scott Norsworthy

MUSEUM METAMORPHOSIS

MONTREAL’S NEW INSECTARIUM GIVES VISITORS AN INSECT’S-EYE-VIEW OF THEIR SURROUNDINGS.

ABOVE A sequence of pollinator gardens lines the entrance to the Insec tarium, on the grounds of Montreal’s Botanical Gardens.

If you expect to see traditional displays of pinned insects and scores of vivariums when visiting Montreal’s freshly rebuilt Insectarium, you might be surprised. Similarly, for those looking for a striking architec tural object, the experience overturns expectations. Rather than focus ing on traditional displays or architectural fireworks, the new building is much more about creating a new type of museum journey one with memorable spaces and lessons that follow visitors long after their visit.

The transformation of the Insectarium resulted from one of three competitions held in 2014 to rethink Montreal’s constellation of nature museums. Founded in 1990 as an addition to the botanical garden, the Insectarium had since grown into one of the world’s largest museums devoted to insects. The competition followed a cultural and scientific project branded as the Insectarium’s “metamorphosis” to reimagine the museum’s mission and museological approach, going beyond the simple display of insects. The team selected for the project included Berlin-based Kuehn Malvezzi and Montreal-based Pelletier de Fontenay and Jodoin Lamarre Pratte architectes. For lead design architect Wilfried Kuehn, the competition represented a rare and exciting opportunity to integrate the team’s experience in landscape, architecture, exhibition design, and in dustrial design. The brief, he notes, was written in a comprehensive way that already paid attention to the different scales of design.

The winning team’s proposal built on the museum’s desire for an innov ative immersive experience for visitors. The concept is centered around an understanding of biophilia that aims to guide visitors through experiencing the world as if they were insects. By better understanding insects and learning to live with them, visitors are encouraged to become agents of change for ecological sustainability.

As is often the case, following the competition, budgetary and tech nical revisions meant that the project was heavily modified it opened five years later than Montreal’s 375th anniversary, for which it was initially planned. But by strategically compressing the plan and tightly

overlapping functions, the team succeeded in retaining the original concept, and only shortening the exhibition path by 14%, while dimin ishing the overall footprint by 50%.

The visitor’s journey starts outside, with a sloped pollinator garden leading down to the entrance. New greenhouses rise above the ground plane, but most of the building is hidden underground, with only a soonto-be vine-covered dome hinting at the expanse of the experience awaiting beyond the greenhouses.

Once inside, an unadorned concrete reception area welcomes visitors, filled with light and opening towards the landscape. The bright space is a palate cleanser, before visitors are invited to enter a dark, tight corri dor built from reinforced sprayed concrete to mimic the rammed earth construction originally planned, and immediately calling to mind an ants’ nest. If obvious, the metaphor certainly works: you are being called to ex perience your environment as an insect. After a few months, the material is already somewhat smoothed out by the touch of visitors, lending it an organic feel that echoes the natural environment of insects. Hubert Pelletier, one of the design architects, explains that the team conducted

OPPOSITE Visitors are led though a twisting tunnel, reminiscent of insect burrows. ABOVE A series of a half-dozen cave-like rooms invites people to experience the world as if they were insects; in this case, travelling like a grasshopper between blades of vegetation.

ABOVE AND BELOW The underground spaces culminate in a dome-topped exhibition space, where preserved insects are arrayed by colour in a top set of cases, and by evolutionary characteristic in the cases below. OPPOSITE A ramp leads visitors to the butterfly greenhouse, where they are invited to encounter a range of live insects.

extensive on-site experimentation to develop a wall construction that would wear well over time, rather than being merely a surface effect.

The tunnel then opens to six cave-like rooms, each with different sensorial experiences aimed at conveying how insects perceive the world differently than us. Here again, the architecture is an integral part of the scientific knowledge being shared, through a floor that vibrates, ultra violet lighting showing patterns on the floors, an upside-down space, and tight passages. Even though they are fully integrated in the archi tectural experience, these spaces feel primarily geared towards young children, who are more prone to wholeheartedly accept the invitation to play and spend time engaging with the spaces than adults.

Visitors then exit the tunnel to a more traditional exhibition room, though with a twist. At the centre of the room, immersive vivariums with curved glass fronts allow visitors to have a 180-degree view of live insects. On the room’s walls, live feeds from cameras inside the vivariums project videos of both the insects and the visitors’ faces, for the benefit of those who might not be comfortable getting so close to the live insects.

Visitors then gradually ascend to the dome-roofed room glimpsed from outside a contemplative space quite different from the initial twisting tunnel, even if built from the same sprayed concrete. A double row of display cases encircles the walls, a visual treatment calling for different scales of reading. The top row organizes insects following

a chromatic circle, while the bottom row contains thematic displays. Here again, the experience is completely different from what people might expect from an exhibition: the focus seems to be on the overall impact of the space as much as the individual vitrines, creating a sur prisingly versatile space that successfully accommodates both quiet mo ments and the activities of excited children.

The final space, reached through a long ramp and sliding doors, is the walk-in vivarium housed in a large greenhouse. In a suddenly hot and humid environment, visitors are welcomed by swirling butterflies as well as other insects on an elevated ground, many corralled into small openair display pens. Along one wall of the glass house, leaf-cutter ants parade along a long, root-like path between their nest and a feeding ground of leaves and flowers.

Unlike many other nature museums, this one does not hide the mechanical systems behind fake trees or in ponds. The design team has chosen instead to highlight the complex integration of the different sys tems necessary for this artificial environment to survive in Montreal’s climate a great challenge for a building aiming for LEED Gold. On view as well is an adjoining production greenhouse, where the habitat plants for the insects are grown. The only thing hidden is the com plexity of the underground network of offices, exhibition spaces and technical services creating the artificial topography of the greenhouse.

The decision to make everything visible also underscores the re search mission of the museum. An app designed for visitors to iden tify the insects they see in the greenhouse and later in their everyday life facilitates scientific exploration, while also helping staff map how insects navigate the space, allowing for a better management of the collection over time. The app is part of a maximally inclusive approach espoused by both designers and curators, where visitors can find different levels of engagement that break the traditional scripted museum experience.

The Insectarium’s management team was thrilled to work with architects open to a co-design process: something they saw as essen tial to their cultural and scientific project. In response, the architects moved away from typical big, formal gestures, to create instead what Hubert Pelletier describes as “a series of experiences.” Very few infor mational exhibits are present in the museum, rather, the architectur al experience itself creates meaning and becomes the exhibition. Insectarium director Maxim Larrivée is already planning further col laborations with the same design team when the exhibitions need updating. Both the client and design teams emphasize how they took risks with this project. They hope visitors will be as excited as they were to put their fears away, and become better acquainted with their small neighbours.

Olivier Vallerand is Assistant Professor at l’École de design, Université de Montréal.

ABOVE The butterfly greenhouse, shown here, adjoins a production greenhouse, where most of the plants needed to sustain the insects in the museum are cultivated.

PELLETIER

CLIENT ESPACE POUR LA VIE | ARCHITECT TEAM KUEHN MALVEZZI—WILFRIED

TOWARDS HOME

TEXT Leah Snyder

PHOTOS Mathieu Gagnon © CCA

ABOVE Visitors are greeted by a replica of a porch from a Northern home, designed by Sámi architect and artist Joar Nango and Métis architect and exhibition designer Tiffany Shaw. OPPOSITE A radio on the kitchen table of a matchstick home is tuned to Uvatinni Uqaalajunga / J’appelle chez nous / I’m Calling Home, a trilingual broadcast by Inuk artist Geronimo Inutiq.

The idea of home is adaptable, meaning many things to many people. It also has meaning to other mammals, birds, reptiles and insects who construct their dwellings instinctually, by way of hereditary genetic knowledge. As humans, we wrap our inherited culture and traditions around us in the form of structures, as well as with objects that are functional, decorative or both. Our structures and what we place in them buffer us from the elements, and provide an emotionally imbued space inside of which we gather together.

The current exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, poses questions around what home is, and for whom. It considers how Indigenous con cepts as well as Indigenous design from inspiration and aesthetic to process and construction offer considerations that can, in the words of the curators, “support northern Indigenous forms of sovereignty shaped by an understanding of home.” The collaborative curatorial project be tween Indigenous and Settler curators (Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, Joceyln Piirainen, and Rafico Ruiz) acknowledges that “the work of deepening architecture’s engagement with Indigenous designers and their communities needs to above all centre the knowledge and experi ences of being at home on the land.” The exhibition is also part of the CCA’s commitment to a “living land acknowledgement,” an initiative

THE CCA’S CURRENT EXHIBITION EXPLORES NORTHERN INDIGENOUS CONCEPTS OF HOME.

that takes the form of discussions, research, and installations that work towards “fostering affirmative relationships with Indigenous and other peoples across Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal” and beyond.

The exhibition opens by welcoming visitors into a threshold space in spired by a porch from a Northern home. Inuk artist and curator Taqralik Partridge, who worked with Métis architect and exhibition designer Tif fany Shaw on the installation. They describe the porch as an important space for objects for daily activities, and for storage for all of the tools connected to being out on the land. In the corridor of the CCA , it acts as it would when connected to a house: as a threshold from which to transi tion between inside and out, a catch-all area for seasonal clothing, and storage for hunting and fishing gear. A kettle and a box of Salada tea sit ready to be put into use at the arrival of a guest. The installation is like the vestibule or mudroom from any residential structure, where objects from our day-to-day eddy into a comforting pool of familiarity.

From there, the exhibition spreads out into six other galleries. In the middle gallery, the work of artist Geronimo Inutiq (Inuk) provides the initial soundscape that filters into the other rooms, an important audi tory component that adds an affective resonance. Uvatinni Uqaalajunga / J’appelle chez nous / I’m Calling Home is produced as a tri-lingual Northern radio program that “aims to bridge diverse communities.”

In a model of a government-issued matchbox house, chairs positioned around a radio are an invitation to sit and take time to listen. From throat singing to rap performed in Inuktitut and English, along with a weath er report and an artist Q&A , what is heard are the contemporary voices of the North. The work addresses how dialogue connects people to others, as well as to the land in the North, even when at a distance from it while living in urban centres in the South. The sound of traditions pre viously banned as with women performing throat singing are a sen sual accompaniment through areas where it filters in, prompting an in quiry to unpack: why were/are Indigenous women promoted as a threat to the colonial apparatus, and why were/are Indigenous women dis placed from their homes?

Inissaliortut / Making Room , by Inuit artists Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and Tagralik Partridge, assists in the unpacking.

In this profound and powerful piece, larger-than-lifesize images of the two women, standing barefoot and clothed in blue and red shifts adorned with beadwork, are projected onto individual plywood screens that reside in two corners of the northwest gallery. They deliver astute assessments of how we arrived at the current state of housing crises among Indigenous communities in the North, as well as homelessness among Indigenous populations in cities in the South. Laakkuluk lists

what has been taken away (self-determination / food sovereignty / cul ture / children / women) itemizing the replacements (capitalism / food insecurity / unemployment / heartache / loss). She details a Settler solu tion for dealing with the symptoms: And out come the calipers and the calculators to problem-solve the problematization And suddenly there’s a capital city filled with people hired to solve the problems.

“Colonization is a pyramid scheme,” Tagralik concludes. It is by de sign, they explain, that when Indigenous children, women and men (as well as other species) become inconvenient and cease to serve the mar ket economy, a system, process, or structure is implemented to enforce their removal. Similar to the Inuit, the Sámi also endured the banning of traditional subsistence and cultural practices: their drums were burned as part of a campaign towards Christianization, and restrictions placed on their nomadic existence, tied to reindeer herding. State oppression and the displacement of the Sámi still continues.

Although the destructive symptoms of colonization and capitalization are underscored in the exhibition, / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home provides visitors with multiple pathways forward. In the north gal lery, where the soundscapes pool together, some of the most aesthetically lush work in the exhibition can be found. The gallery contains the results of the CCA’s Futurecasting: Indigenous-led Architecture and Design in the Arctic workshop series, an inter-generational gathering of Inuit, First Nations, Métis, and Sámi designers co-curated by Inuk archi tectural designer Nicole Luke. Printouts mounted to the wall document the participants’ reflections and illustrate their design processes, which take form as stunning prototypes and maquettes. In Rivière aux rats by Robyn Adams (Métis), strips of intricate beadwork, with a palette that suggests land and water, sit atop a cross section of soil. “[O]ur culture and

values are embedded into the built world,” writes Robyn. In Lost Natures by Naomi Ratte (Anishinaabe), red beads traverse a river-shed topog raphy carved from ash wood. The colour can be interpreted as an alert or as representing the blood of most animal species. “The land is phar macy, kin, story, grocery store, ceremony, food, medicine, and time,” writes Naomi. It is “wendaaji’owin that which sustains life.”

There are several large structures installed throughout the galleries, including the tent-like shelter Nuna , by artist asinnajaq (Inuk) in con versation with Tiffany Shaw, which invites a moment of rest and con templative reflection. A series of drawings of life in Nunavik produced by Inuk artist Tuumasi Kudluk hangs alongside Nuna , presenting in sight into how the land can provide aesthetic cues when thinking about shelter. In the opening corridor, Inuk curator Jocelyn Piirainen has as sembled works from the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq’s collection, including an early drawing by Shuvinai Ashoona. Family in Tent (2003) depicts an archetypal domestic scene: parents and their children with the remnants of a shared meal, a Red Rose tea box nestled between them while they lie on a communal cot.

This extensive exhibition has many strengths, yet its setting creates some constraints. Joar’s Sámi Architectural Library, a collection of books and artifacts that “adapts and expands as it moves from place to place” with the intent to “reconnect architecture to the land” elicits some of these challenges. In 2019, it was installed in the main entrance of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, as part of their exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art, À badakone / Feu continual / Continuous Fire. To prepare the hides that would be used in the installation, tan ning areas were set up outside of the National Gallery. When walking towards the Gallery from my own home, on unceded Anishinaabe Al

OPPOSITE TOP Inissaliortut / Making Room, by Inuit artists Laakkuluk Wil liamson Bathory and Tagralik Partridge, takes form as a conversation about effects of colonialism on First Nations. OPPOSITE BOTTOM Nuna, by asinnajaq in conversation with Tiffany Shaw, is a shelter that evokes the four elements. ABOVE Joar Nango’s Sámi Architectural Library includes mix of books, research documents, maps, videos, and arti facts, all set amidst makeshift furnishings.

gonquin aki (land), the aroma of the fires could be smelled from blocks away. Each visitor entering through the doors carried the scent in with them, altering the sensory experience of the building. Once installed, the hides continued to emit the scent inside. Yet in the CCA configur ation, that smell is almost imperceptible a missed opportunity to more powerfully evoke the land beyond our structures.

What can be gathered from / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home is the idea that home is not a construct fixed to location. Rather, home can be understood as a set of values considering our impact on the land, acknowledging how we share space with non-human neigh bours, modelling reciprocity in our relations. As we carry these values forward, spaces along with the buildings and communities that exist in them will change for the better, for all.

Leah Snyder is an Ottawa-based digital designer and writer. Snyder writes about cul ture, technology and contemporary art, and contributes regularly to Heffel, the Na tional Gallery of Canada, and other Canadian art publications.

/ Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home is on display at the CCA, Montreal until Feb ruary 12, 2023. A companion publication will be available this fall.

HUSTLE CULTURE DOESN’T WORK AT HOME

TEXT Christian Maidankine

OPPOSITE A drawing by Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism student Dominic Dumond entitled A Strange Classroom explores the world of virtual learning.

“I wanted to convey a message [about] how our trad itional learning space has morphed into something quite bizarre and incomprehensible,” says Dumond. The drawing won an Honorable Mention in the Azrieli School’s 2021 Murray & Murray drawing competition.

Architecture school has always been a hectic place filled with young, driven students. Every member of my class entered the program look ing to become an architect, without any real understanding of what the profession entails. We quickly learned the pace, expectations, and rig our that an architectural education required. Before the pandemic, our culture of high-intensity work was maintained on campus, includ ing in long, unhinged all-nighters spent in studio, and when a deadline was finally over, we could return home to recover.

Like every other aspect of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic com pletely overturned our education in March of 2020. I immediately felt how the way we had been operating would not work at home. I would sit at my dining room table with my laptop for hours a day, eventually having to make space when it was time for family dinner. School and home very quickly mutated together, creating an environment which was not suitable for either.

Our school was forced to quickly adapt to using online platforms, a process which was quick for students, but a challenge for some faculty. Their frustrations strained our education, fostering an even more stressful situation. As everything around us was shut down, I ended up constantly working on my various classes and studio projects. There weren’t really any genuine breaks, and it quickly resulted in exhaustion.

After the 2020 winter semester ended, I began my co-op term in a single-person practice based in Toronto a welcome change from the time in school. But starting in a work-from-home situation, and only communicating through emails and phone calls, felt quite isolating. There was no opportunity for natural conversation or casual learning asking questions felt like I was being bothersome, and feedback became constrained to certain points in the day. Opportunities to visit project sites emerged as the most exciting and rewarding moments: I could see a detail I drew on AutoCAD being constructed in front of me. These experiences as well as the patience and understanding of the architect

I worked with solidified my desire to pursue licensure as an architect. Even in a global pandemic, I was able to enjoy what I was doing.

I entered my final year in the fall of 2021, in another online semester. Isolated in my bedroom this time in a shared apartment in Toronto there was a similar pattern to the year before. I spent countless nights producing something to present to a screen of blank squares. I would get some feedback from the professors and guest critics, say thank you, close my laptop, and that was it. There was little to show for these projects not even poster boards or a model. Just some digital imagery, and done.

By the time I began my final semester, like many of my peers, I had little energy left. While we now had the opportunity to have in-person studios, it was too little, too late. I could barely focus on completing the required work, yet it also felt like one of the busiest and most hectic periods of my education. I had to take one assignment at a time, find ing it very difficult to think weeks in advance to plan some sort of schedule. I kept telling myself that I just needed to finish, despite feel ing drained, uninspired, and dissatisfied.

I will be continuing in my master of architecture in the fall; many of my friends are getting full-time positions in firms across the country. Most students in my pandemic cohort are continuing in architecture. However, we are exhausted by the experience of our education, and are entering the profession with an outlook shaped by this schooling. Education during the pandemic highlighted the importance of bound aries between work and life: having access to studio spaces when need ed, but also having the opportunity to sometimes work from home is crucial to maintaining balance. People can be passionate about architec ture, but without breaks, burn-out can happen suddenly, even among students and young professionals.

Christian Maidankine is a Master’s candidate in the Department of Architectural Sci ence at Toronto Metropolitan University.

AN ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE STUDENT EXPLORES HIS DISSATISFACTION WITH TWO YEARS OF ONLINE EDUCATION.

UNSTACKING THE DECK

TEXT Elsa Lam

In 2011, a student asked architect and historian Lisa Landrum, an associate professor of archi tecture at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Architecture: why were women absent from the architectural history curriculum?

It launched Landrum on a decade-long re search project to redress the gender balance in her teaching and in the design history of her adopted home province. One of the results of that work is a double deck of playing cards re leased this spring.

The cards celebrate early women architects who studied and worked in Manitoba, from Ethelyn Wallace, the first woman to graduate from UM’s architecture program, in 1932, to Gerri Stemler (née Holland), who became the first woman president of the Manitoba Associa tion of Architects, in 1998. It also includes women who forged careers in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Lana Kinoshita (née Cheung), an early graduate of the UM interior design program founded by Joan Harland, who also figures in the decks.

One of the two decks includes photos of the women; the second features capsule bios. A re

search booklet provides sources and prompts for further investigation. “Players can invent games to match women with their story, play any regular card game, or use them for trivia and as mnemonic devices,” writes Landrum.

The research for the cards was conducted in collaboration with Marieke Gruwel, an art and architectural historian with the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation. Much of the ma terial was gleaned from the university’s year books, which yielded both dignified cap-andgown portraits, as well as evidence of comparative bias: while male graduates from 1932 were characterized as clever and ambi tious, Wallace is deemed to have a “nice smile.” The yearbook speculated that Patricia Kettner, who obtained her B. Arch sixteen years later, wanted to marry a millionaire. “In fact,” notes the biography on the cards, “she immediately joined GBR, designed schools, hospitals […] became the third woman to register with the MAA in 1953, then moved to Nelson, BC, to work with a women-led firm.”

A trio of special cards open doors towards further action needed to address equity and

inclusion. The Jack of Hearts highlights the need to go beyond gender boundaries, noting that the UM Campus Gay Club was launched around the same time as the Women’s Studies program, in 1971. The Queen of Hearts points toward Indigenous Sovereignty, put ting the spotlight on the recent founding of the Indigenous Design and Planning Students Association. The King of Hearts turns a lens towards racial diversity, looking back to the 1950s, when barely a handful of visible min orities had studied architecture at UM.

The cover art on the cards incorporates the painting “Breath of Life,” by Ojibwe artist Jackie Traverse. The art depicts an Indigenous woman encircled with blossoms and dragon flies. “The woman in the painting may be ex haling her last breath, wishes or words,” writes Landrum, “but her breath embodies a powerful circle of life, transformation and transcendence.”

Likewise, Landrum sees the cards as bridg es towards transformative inter-generational conversations. “Most of the women in the deck are no longer living,” she says. “But they’re still speaking to us, if we care to listen.”

ABOVE A double deck of cards created by Winnipeg-based Lisa Landrum celebrates Manitoba’s women architects.

CANADIAN

INVITES ARCHITECTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS TO ENTER THE 2022 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

ENTRIES DUE SEPTEMBER

Deadline: September 12th, 2022

Architecture project entry fee: $195 *

Architectural photo entry fee: $75 *

Since 1967, our annual national awards program recognizes the architectural excellence of projects in the design and construction phases.

Submissions will be accepted in PDF format, up to 12 pages with dimensions no greater than 11”

Total file size is not to exceed 25 MB. There is also the option to submit a video up to two minutes in length.

This year, we are also presenting the fourth edition of the Canadian Architect Photo Awards of Excellence, open to professional and amateur architectural photographers.

Winners of the architectural project and architectural photo competitions will be published in a special issue of Canadian Architect in December 2022.

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

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