Canadian Architect June 2011

$6.95 jun/11 v.56 n.06

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12 H2Office

T his head office and research facility on the University of Manitoba’s main Fort Garry campus successfully blurs architecture, landscape, water management and sustainability. TEXT Peter Sampson

17 Engineering 5 A new home for the Faculty of Engineering accommodates a complex and diverse program while stitching together disparate parts of the University of Waterloo campus. TEXT Gabriel Fain

24 Regis College City of Edmonton

An extensive renovation and expansion of a Jesuit graduate school on the University of Toronto’s downtown campus welcomes the city with exuberant design gestures. TEXT Jacob Allderdice

Lisa Logan

SHAI GIL

Mike Karakas

Contents

9 News

Schematic drawings for the Art Gallery of Saskatchewan are unveiled; sustainable.TO Architecture + Building wins Passive House Design Competition.

28 Education

Colin Ripley and Kathy Velikov of RVTR report on the significant shift in research and teaching practices within architecture schools around the world.

33 Calendar

Juergen Mayer H. curates exhibition called $H!T HAPPENS In Berlin at the Relative Space/Floorworks showroom in Toronto; Rearview Mirror: New Art from Central and Eastern Europe at the Power Plant Contem­ porary Art Gallery.

34 Backpage

JUNE 2011, v.56 n.06

The National Review of Design and Practice/ The Journal of Record of Architecture Canada | RAIC

Ian Chodikoff discusses the potential im­­ pact of IBM’s Smarter Cities program on shaping the growth and future of our cities.

Engineering 5 Building at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario by Perkins+Will Canada. Photo

by Lisa Logan.

COVER

06/11 canadian architect

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Migrating Landscapes Organizer

Viewpoint

­Editor Ian Chodikoff, OAA, FRAIC Associate Editor Leslie Jen, MRAIC Editorial Advisors John McMinn, AADipl.

Marco Polo, OAA, FRAIC Contributing Editors Gavin Affleck, OAQ, MRAIC Herbert Enns, MAA, MRAIC Douglas MacLeod, ncarb Regional Correspondents Halifax Christine Macy, OAA Regina Bernard Flaman, SAA Montreal David Theodore Calgary David A. Down, AAA Winnipeg Herbert Enns, MAA vancouver adele weder

A conceptul rendering of Migrating Landscapes Organizer’s installation for the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.

above

Held in the beautiful Vancouver Convention Centre at the end of May, the Architectural Institute of British Columbia along with Architecture Canada | RAIC hosted the annual Festival of Architecture—a national conference that attempted to rise above mundane concerns of practice by placing greater emphasis on issues relating to innovation and leadership. Over 600 architects were registered for this four-day event full of keynote sessions, continuing education courses, networking opportunities, and the requisite meetings between architects and administrators of architecture. The conference’s theme—Architecture on the Edge—was certainly a suitable title, given its physical location on the Pacific Coast.

Whether or not the conference succeeded in promoting architectural issues that were in fact “on the edge” as in being on the cutting edge—this was far less certain.

For a profession that struggles to recognize and promote emerging leadership, Architecture Canada | RAIC deserves much credit in promoting and, in fact, partnering with one particularly significant venture—Canada’s next representative for the prestigious 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture. Led by Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic of 5468796 Architecture and Jae-Sung Chon of the University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecture, the Winnipeg-based team officially known as Migrating Landscapes Organizer (MLO) kicked off their fundraising and promotional campaign that will eventually see themselves travel to Venice next year. Hurme, Radulovic and Chon grew up in Finland, the former Yugoslavia and South Korea respectively. All three migrated to the geographic centre of Canada in the 1990s, and are currently practicing and teaching architecture in Winnipeg. The importance of their shared migratory experiences is what drove them to initiate the MLO collaborative, and the proposal for Venice will showcase their own work while incorporating many more 6 canadian architect 06/11

ideas and stories from other architecture students, practitioners and academics from across multicultural Canada, who will contribute to the exhibition with their own migratory experiences.

Whether or not MLO will illustrate quintessential Canadian design philosophy or simply represent an exploration into emerging design philosophies shaping Canadian architecture remains to be seen. Regardless of the eventual outcome of their project, the larger impact of their Venice proposal may not have anything to do with one’s country of origin at all. The significance behind this collaboration is the rare opportunity to showcase at a prestigious international forum how Canadian architecture’s next generation of leaders are forming new relationships, discourse and alliances with each other to shape the context of architecture in this country.

As with many conferences, some of the most interesting moments occurred during breakfast meetings, between sessions, or after official events, where delegates took the opportunity to share recent directions in research and practice with each other in a less structured format. At the end of this year’s Festival of Architecture, this was certainly the case: at a late-night party hosted by the MLO team in a rented penthouse condo at the edge of Vancouver’s Chinatown, it seemed as though every young Winnipegger and Vancouverbased graduate of the University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecture was in attendance to support the MLO team. The surprise event was a show of force and a pure celebration of the talent and leadership potential that exists amongst emerging architects to positively contribute to the culture of architecture in Canada. More than any other event at the Festival of Architecture, this party summarized not only what “architecture on the edge” can be, but was also an inspired grassroots celebration of the potential of Canadian architecture to come.

Ian Chodikoff

ichodikoff@canadianarchitect.com

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News PROJECTS

Proposed concept drawings for the new $84-million Art Gallery of Saskatchewan (AGS) were recently unveiled and approved in Saskatoon. The design is a creation of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects (KPMB) of Toronto in association with Winnipeg-based Smith Carter Architects and Engineers Incorporated. David Hutton of Saskatoon’s local newspaper The Star Phoenix interviewed lead design architect Bruce Kuwa­ bara, and the following information is excerpted from an article published on May 26, 2011. According to Kuwabara, the design of the Art Gallery of Saskatchewan is a prototype for the modern gallery: an art institution that is also a popular social space. Inspired by the flat, horizontal prairie landscape and the river valley, the four-storey, 125,000-square-foot L-shaped building will feature a façade that will be constructed predominantly of glass with large bay windows that allow light in, ensuring views of the river are maintained throughout. Two large walls of stone will be built at the entranceway on Second Avenue, and perforated copper will cover the glass bay windows on the upper floors to close off the exhi­bi­tion rooms. The terraced building overhangs the ground with cantilevered structures allowing views of the river on the second, third and fourth floors, creating layers that “make the gesture the building is reaching out toward the city and the river,” said Kuwabara. “The design is that you are experiencing the art and you’re experiencing the orientation to nature and the river. The river is intricately integrated into the experience of being in this building. This site is really about thinking about the whole city and how the city connects.”

The gallery’s lobby is grand with a large staircase leading to the second floor, hardwood-panelled ceilings and a massive fireplace and seating area.

Saskatoon artist William Perehudoff’s famous murals, saved before the demolition of the meatpacking plant where they were housed, will be prominently displayed at the entrance to the main-floor Mendel Salon, where the permanent collection will be on view. The second floor will overlook the reception area allowing large audiences to take in performance art and concerts, and it will also include a lecture theatre and multi-purpose rooms. The third and fourth floors will be used for temporary exhibitions, office space, meeting and conference rooms. The building will have a green roof, a café and coffee shop, an outdoor terrace on the main floor, a gift shop, activity rooms and temporary galleries. The AGS is scheduled to open in 2015. www.mendel.ca

KPMB/SMITH CARTER

Schematic drawings for the Art Gallery of Saskatchewan unveiled.

The proposed Art Gallery of Saskatchewan by KPMB Architects in association with Smith Carter Architects and Engineers delivers a much-needed and ethereally handsome anchor to the Saskatoon riverbank. BOTTOM Curved wooden trusses and ample glazing convey a sense of optimism and fluidity in the newly opened Cloverdale Recreation Centre by CEI Architecture.

ABOVE

Cloverdale Recreation Centre opens.

Once known mostly for its racetrack and rodeo, the $22.5-million Cloverdale Recreation Centre marks the modern renewal of Cloverdale and its iconic Fairgrounds. Designed by CEI Architecture, the building is the first of six planned by the City of Surrey for the Cloverdale Fairgrounds site. Fundamental to the design was the use of uniform curved wooden trusses. Varying their orientation allowed the interior spaces to achieve heights needed to meet programmatic objectives and contribute to an incredibly fluid, evocative architectural expression. CEI Archi-

tecture followed the City of Surrey’s sustain­ ability charter and also used the Green Globes sustainable design evaluation process as an internal pilot project. The recreational program includes a twin gymnasium, a 10,000-squarefoot fitness centre, multi-purpose rooms, as well as spaces dedicated to seniors, child-minding and youth programs. Due in large part to the population boom in Clov­er­dale, a significant driver for the facility was, as one citizen said during the initial public consultations, capable of addressing “the exuberance of youth and the mobility of seniors.”

06/11­canadian architect

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AWARDS Adele Weder wins 2011 President’s Award in Architectural Journalism.

Architecture Canada | RAIC has recognized Adele Weder with the 2011 Presi­dent’s Award in Architectural Journalism for her piece “Call of the Wild” published in the July 2010 edition of Cana­dian Architect. Weder is a Vancouver-based architectural journalist and author. Since 1996 she has been a regular correspondent for Canadian Architect, Azure, and several other publications in Canada and the United States. She has also served as a guest curator and consultant for exhibitions at the Maison d’architecture in Montreal and the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, and she received her Masters in Advanced Studies in Architecture at the University of British Columbia in 2005. As a contributing author to B.C. Binning and the Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Vancouver, she is presently working on a monograph of ar­chi­tectural photographer Selwyn Pullan, to be published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2012. www.raic.org

COMPETITIONS sustainable.TO Architecture + Building wins Passive House Design Competition.

Canadian firm sustainable.TO Architecture + Building has taken the top prize in an international competition to design a passive house for New Orleans.

Acclaimed as “an incredibly thoughtful and viable response to this challenge,” sustainable.TO’s “Low Cost, Low Energy House” was selected from 65 entries from around the world. The competition was launched by the ArchDaily website and DesignByMany, a challenge-based design technology community.

The challenge for both students and professionals was to design a passive house for hot and humid New Orleans focusing on key components of the Passive House Standard and the 2030 Challenge, which has influenced the Better Buildings Initiative issued by US President Obama. Submissions came from Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the UK and the US. According to the Canadian Passive House Institute, the Passive House Standard is “the world’s most ambitious and scientifically verified route to truly sustainable buildings, achieving 80-90% energy savings over conventional construction.” Originating in Germany and Sweden, today there are over 25,000 single and multi-family passive houses worldwide. “Low Cost, Low Energy House” features an airtight, thermal bridge-free and super-insulated envelope combined with passive shading in the summer and solar heat gain in winter; concrete floor topping for thermal mass to radiate the heat into the space as required; highly reflective galvalume wall and roof cladding; a balanced energy recovery ventilation system; and split-zoned high-efficiency heating and cooling units with an ultra high-efficiency ondemand water heater and supplemental radiant floor heating. The use of lowcost, durable and long-lasting materials, and proven construction techniques assures value to returning homeowners. In accordance with post-Katrina building codes, guidelines and best practices, the house is raised seven feet above grade, securing its safety during flooding and providing shaded parking, storage, and outdoor living spaces. sustainable.TO Architecture + Building was founded in 2009 by entrepreneur David Daniels and architect Paul Dowsett, and draws on Dowsett’s two decades of green design. www.sustainable.TO Australia launches hypothetical international design competition for new capital city.

A new international ideas competition for a hypothetical capital city has been launched in Canberra, Australia. With total prizes in excess of AUD

$100,000, the CAPITheticAL competition asks the world’s best designers, architects, artists and thinkers to imagine what an Australian capital city might look like if created today. The competition is designed to provoke new thinking about the nature of national capitals and planned cities internationally. Entrants are being asked to consider current global challenges such as climate change and urban density, while celebrating the past, present and future of Canberra. The CAPITheticAL competition is part of the Cenetary of Canberra celebrations. It comes 100 years after the original call for design entries for a capital city for the newly federated Australian nation, which resulted in the establishment of Canberra, designed by competition winners and American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin.

In 1911, in stark contrast to this online competition, prospective entrants from around the world were sent via ship a metre-long wooden box containing competition guidelines and all items which might be needed to design the nation’s capital. As a hypothetical competition, CAPITheticAL asks entrants to look forward to the big ideas that will shape the world’s future cities in the 21st century and beyond, and opens a window to the future and the potential for entries which might outline new satellite-based cities or those based

on the ocean floor, as entrants examine key issues facing built and unbuilt environments today. The winners of the competition will be announced in March 2013, a century after the official naming of Canberra. Stage One competition entries are due on January 31, 2012. www.capithetical.com.au

WHAT’S NEW Migrating Landscapes by 5468796 Architecture Inc. and Jae-Sung Chon selected to represent Canada at the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture.

The Canada Council for the Arts and Architecture Canada | RAIC announced that Migrating Landscapes has been selected to represent Canada at the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture. The project will examine how we as Cana­dians express our diverse cultural memories in the way we live and build. Migrating Landscapes will be presented by 5468796 Architecture Inc. and Jae-Sung Chon, both of Winnipeg, who joined together to create a new entity: Migrating Landscapes Organizer (MLO). The project was inspired by the individual experiences of MLO, consisting of Johanna Hurme (5468796, born in Finland), Sasa Radulovic (5468796, born in the former Yugoslavia),

and Jae-Sung Chon (University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecture, born in South Korea). All are first-generation immigrants, who, like most migrant Canadians, had unsettling encounters with the Canadian landscape and built environment as they settled into their new homes and lifestyles.

MLO is fascinated by this “settling-unsettling” dynamic as a form of contemporary living in Canada and in the world. Migrating Landscapes will act as a forum for young Canadian architects and designers to investigate, provoke, document and expose the unique manifestations of cultural memory that overlay Canada today. To do this, MLO will design the exhibition infrastructure—an abstract landscape—into the existing Canada Pavilion in Venice, and invite emerging Canadian architects and designers to respond to this “new landscape” with original designs for dwellings, based on their own cultural memories. The new dwelling designs will be selected through a national competition to be launched this summer.

Migrating Landscapes was selected by an independent peer assessment committee appointed by the Canada Council for the Arts, and included Eve Blau (Harvard Graduate School of Design), Lynn Osmond (Chicago Architecture Foundation), and Todd Saunders (Saunders Architecture, Bergen, Norway).

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Floating On Water A Winnipeg research building extends itself across a flood-prone landscape, making a definitive statement on the University of Manitoba campus.

H2Office, Winnipeg, Manitoba Cibinel Architects Ltd. Text Peter Sampson Photos Mike Karakas Project

Architect

At a research park located on the University of Manitoba’s main Fort Garry campus, Winnipeg-based Cibinel Architects have designed a new head office and research facility for RTDS Technologies, a digital information company. The project is a disciplined response to a complex construction sequence that involves spanning a large existing retention pond.

The building is located on a 100-acre site being developed by the SmartPark Development Corporation, a subsidiary of the University of Manitoba that has initiated a research and development park on an existing greenfield portion of the campus. SmartPark—a kind of intel-

lectual’s industrial park—is part of a global trend towards research and innovation campuses that bridge corporate and academic research to attract emerging companies in the areas of biotechnology, information technology, nutritional and agricultural science, and advanced material engineering. The client, RTDS Technologies, provides real-time digital simulation for engineering systems in both software and hardware formats. The client is active in 30 countries and this headquarters facility consists mainly of offices for 35 employees, conference space, and training labs catering to clients and staff.

Clad in dark steel, the building is animated only by a mirrored

ABOVE The long and slender form of H2Office—the RTDS Technologies headquarters at the University of Manitoba.

structural silicone glazed curtain wall. The monolithic bar-shaped building is a quiet but uneasy visitor among an architecturally un­ challenging collection of neighbouring buildings. The 200-squaremetre steel-frame structure spans a 50-metre pond, destabilizing the business park’s conventional zoning. George Cibinel claims that “the intent was for the building to blur architecture, landscape, water

management and sustainability.” Having successfully redefined the lot lines, the team created a building site that planners had overlooked. Although it’s easy to understand the bridge reference, the building does not actually span any existing routes. But spanning the difficult site alone appears to be its raison d’être, and construction of the building could not have taken place were it not for a fortuitous layer of ice below and some innovative thinking.

Frozen ponds in the prairies can make for some effective building sites, reducing the need for complex shoring during the excavation process.

Being committed to the realities of a prairie winter, the builders relied upon the temporary grade of the frozen pond, using its icy surface as a place on which to efficiently set the equipment needed for driving piles into the hard ground below. By spring, construction above the melting pond was underway. In one fell swoop, the building attempts to communicate both the innovative nature of the client, and a mysterious intrigue about the lightness of its construction.

George Cibinel considers his office’s integrated design approach with the builder and client as the most effective way to create buy-in for challenging solutions to unconventional building/site problems. “We’ve been practicing integrated design since we began as a small office. But then again, hasn’t every architect?” Cibinel mused when I met him at his Winnipeg office. “It’s about finding value in the collaborations that we depend on.” Cibinel Architects is comprised of 20 staff. As the successor to Corbett Cibinel Architects Ltd., their portfolio includes the awardwinning Red River College, the Brandon Fire Hall, and the Manitoba Pavilion designed for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

The interior of this narrow 12-by-84-metre bar of a building is open in plan with an exposed structural system that conveys a sense of lightness.

An exposed roof structure sits atop clearly expressed round hollow structural steel columns while the floor-mounted glass wall encourages views to the site below. Mirrored glass simultaneously conceals views to the interior while reflecting both the adjacent context and the pond underneath.

These optical illusions alter one’s perception of a pond which appears The simple layout of the interior spaces; the circular-shaped reception desk is one of three freestanding volumes in the office.

BELOW, LEFT TO RIGHT

14 canadian architect 06/11

both below and within the curtain wall itself. Similar efforts to blur the limits of site and building occur throughout the project.

Cibinel’s commitment to a craft-oriented—or even a trade-oriented— made-in-Manitoba approach to his work has produced a portfolio that is strongly influenced by the province’s acclaimed history of modern architecture. Discipline, attention to detail, and a capacity to work within a restrained palette of materials consistently emerges in Cibinel’s work. But the RTDS Headquarters is somehow reminiscent of another architectural canon that belongs to the likes of Jim Strasman and Eb Zeidler, whose projects for a bridge-like cottage at Stoney Lake and Ontario Place respectively, has challenged the notion of “unbuildable sites” with architectural invention. Both projects depend on an integrated sensibility about site and building while investing more in the qualitative experiences of place and less in the singular formal move itself.

This bridge building probably gets more qualitative richness out of its respect for light and the elemental order of architectural sequence than it does from its attempt to span a physical landscape. After all, this is a building that has constructed complexity in a not so overly complex business park, and this may become a central discussion in and of itself.

Indeed, when the floodwaters have left Manitoba, the building will remain a bridge to no clear destination above a landscape that appears to be washing away. CA Peter Sampson is the Principal of Peter Sampson Architecture Studio Inc. in Winnipeg.

Client Smartpark Development Corporation Architect Team George Cibinel, Todd White, Markian Yereniuk Structural Crosier Kilgour & Partners Ltd. Mechanical Epp Siepman Engineering Inc. Electrical SMS Engineering Interiors Cecilia Turner Contractor Concord Projects Ltd. Area 24,650 FT2 Budget $8 M Completion January 2010

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the simply detailed glass curtain wall reflects a range of light conditions, such as this prairie sunset.

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MIXING CHAMBER

A new home for the Faculty of Engineering accommodates a complex and diverse program while stitching together disparate parts of the University of Waterloo campus.

ENGINEERING 5 Building, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario ARCHITECT PERKINS+WILL CANADA TEXT GABRIEL FAIN PHOTOS LISA LOGAN PROJECT

Caterpillar-like stairs in the central atrium are punctuated

by LED-illuminated strips which help define the building’s circulation system.

ABOVE

The need to create a distinct image and identity has been a common trend in the design of new academic buildings emerging on university campuses across the country. With one of the top-ranked engineering faculties in Canada, the University of Waterloo is no exception and they have embarked on an ambitious project to expand and transform their aging facilities. The Engineering 5 building designed by Perkins+Will Canada represents the first bold move for the Faculty of Engineering as part of a master plan which will eventually include five new academic buildings.

06/11­canadian architect

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The envelope’s clever frit pattern uses varying degrees of density to give the illusion that the building is clad with a three-dimensional pyramidal surface. OPPOSITE TOP A view of the front façade illustrates the bridge connections, landscape and the visual effect of the building’s curtain wall.

ABOVE

Engineering 5 manages to distinguish itself with only a few simple gestures. It stands assertively on a raised landscape as the first building outside the existing campus ring road on a new parcel of land specifically designated for the Faculty of Engineering. Its immediate context is rather uninspiring with several old Research in Motion buildings, a single-storey plaza complex, and a research centre designed by Ron Keenberg—all within walking distance. The success of the project is as much about its ability to stitch 18 canadian architect 06/11

together disparate parts of the campus into a coherent whole as it is about housing a diverse set of programs within a monolithic volume. The building itself operates on two distinct levels—it is on one hand a showcase for student work, while on the other hand it is a social mixer where communities can be formed between undergraduate, graduate and faculty members.

The Engineering 5 building represents a significant departure from the existing engineering facilities characterized by deep-plan buildings

with endless corridors. The new six-storey building accommodates research, teaching and administrative spaces while consolidating previously fragmented departments including Mechanical, Electrical, and Systems Engineering. The strength of the building is the way in which the plan is resolved so as to seamlessly integrate two different types of spaces: the garage-like spaces of the Student Design Centre (SDC) on the lower two levels, and the more generic departmental floors with labs, offices and classrooms on the upper four levels.

The SDC in particular is intended to be the main showpiece for the building and serves to broadcast Waterloo’s award-winning student work to the rest of the campus. It is conceived as an industrial production space with concreteframed work bays and shops supporting the design, construction and testing of student projects such as alternative fuel vehicles and robotics. Al-

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though the SDC does have a major presence in the interior of the building, its exterior public face seems underwhelming as a showcase. This is due in part to the large concrete entrance staircase which dominates the west elevation of the building and a landscape consisting of a stormwater retention pond—both of which create barriers to get up close to the students and their design work.

Despite these drawbacks, the upper levels of the interior of the building offer exceptional working environments. The majority of the interior spaces, in fact, were developed to be highly modular and transformable. Within a regular concrete structural system, interior partitions can be moved to accommodate various uses. Simple and economical materials are used throughout the interior while hints of colour applied on walls lend functional spaces a more human dimension.

At the heart of the building is a large atrium defined by a snake-like feature stair which ties into the social gathering spaces for each of the departments. The space of the atrium is a key component in setting up relationships between students and faculty and gives each department a unique address and visibility within the building.

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engine test cell welding offices dissection lab space service rooms washrooms

RIGHT, TOP TO BOtTOM The interior of the new academic building allows for maximum programmatic flexibility and student interaction; the stormwater retention pond and wetland.

OPPOSITE TOP The connecting bridge to existing engineering buildings is generously proportioned.

20 canadian architect 06/11

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0 7 computer room 8 common area lounge 9 faculty lounge 10 green roof 11 washrooms 12 bridge link to existing building

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the length of the atrium, the feature stair is clad in a black acoustic baffle punctuated by linear LED lights. The lights become a motif defining a larger circulation system, tracing a path beyond the building itself through a dramatic curving bridge which links to the rest of the campus fabric. The idea of connectivity is a main theme in the project, as the design anticipates a planned expansion in 2014. Upper-level corridors will form bridges to the Phase 2 building, while a second atrium will create a central pedestrian spine through the campus precinct.

Although not a LEED-certified building, Engineering 5 is designed to a Silver rating. The envelope consists of a prefabricated unitized curtain-wall system with a white ceramic ink pattern. The frit is not only decorative but is strategically applied with varying degrees of density to allow for views and

to provide shading. Operable fresh-air vents are also incorporated into each façade module. From a distance, the graphic gives the building its recognizable image. It creates the illusion of a three-dimensional surface consisting of pyramidal projections—a pattern not entirely arbitrary but derived from the interior of the building’s anechoic testing chamber.

The constant play between transparency and opacity allows for multiple readings of the building at various scales and at different times of the day.

The elegant skin of the building, however, is disrupted only once by a somewhat misplaced cut-out made on the west façade. Here, the intent was to create an open terrace which offers views of the entire campus. But a large planter and an accessibility ramp take up most of the space, leaving very little room for outdoor seating. Having only been open for less than a year, it

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penthouse hydrogen bay service court design centre classroom

06/11­canadian architect

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will be interesting to see how the engineering students take ownership of these types of spaces in creative ways.

Overall, the building is a good example of clear and economical planning principles given that federal and provincial funding programs allowed for only an eight-month design period. With this type of facility and its planned expansion, there is no question that a new sense of identity will be formed that builds upon the rich academic culture and reputation of Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering. CA Gabriel Fain recently graduated from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto where he was awarded the Heather M. Reisman Gold Medal in Design.

Clockwise from top left the illuminated staircases emphasize the interconnectedness of the building; garage doors slide open to enhance the flexibility and function of the laboratories; exposed ceilings, natural daylight and operable windows contribute to a healthy learning environment; Another view of the illuminated central stair.

Client University of Waterloo Architect Team Andrew Frontini, David Mitchell, Werner Sommer, John Potter, Aimee Drmic, Larry Silva, Gavin Guthrie, Athir Jamil, Heath Churchill, Elizabeth Livingston, Cameron Turvey, Clara Shipman, Joe Somfay, Perry Edwards Structural Read Jones Christoffersen (Mike Moffatt) Mechanical Smith + Andersen (Kevin Farbridge) Electrical Crossey Engineering (David Sylvester) Landscape GSP Group (Mark Zuzinjak) Interiors Perkins+Will Canada Contractor Bondfield Construction (Steve Aquino) Lighting Crossey Engineering Costing A.W. Hooker Associates Life Safety Randal Brown & Associates Area 175,00 ft2 Budget $48 M Completion September 2010

22 canadian architect 06/11

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The Red Lantern A spiral red-painted steel stair provides the perfect anchor for the revitalization of this Jesuit Graduate Faculty of Theology.

24 canadian architect 06/11

Project Regis College at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario Architects Larkin Architect Limited Text Jacob Allderdice Photos Shai Gil

Regis College, a Jesuit graduate school at the University of Toronto, has a new home. Its location, at Queen’s Park Circle and Wellesley Street, is kittycorner to Ontario’s Parliament buildings and on a critical university spine.

Designed by Toronto-based Larkin Architect Limited, it includes significant renovations to the historic Christie Mansion (one-time home of the great cookie mogul Mr. Christie) and a new “lantern”—a 1,000-square-foot atrium linking the original building with a 1950s-era college building behind. The two buildings sit at half-levels relative to each other, requiring careful attention to barrier-free design, including a ramp to the street and a new elevator.

Previously cloistered on a quiet minor street, but now on display at a major civic intersection, Regis has a mandate to welcome the city. Earlier this year, it had the chance to do just that when it served as the venue for a rare Toronto lecture by Swiss architect Mario Botta, thereby launching the new Larisey Lecture Series.

You might remember Botta of the symmetrical geometry and the gargantuan oculus at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art (1995). Perhaps you might remember his inclusion in Kenneth Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History. As early as 1980, Frampton had identified Botta as a key figure in the Critical Regionalism movement. A project by Botta’s Swiss colleague, Alberto Sartoris, graces the cover of Frampton’s now-classic textbook.

Dr. Peter Larisey, professor of Art History at Regis College and the name-

located beneath a central oculus, the expressive curving stair is a perfect counterpoint to the historic Christie ­ Mansion. ABOVE The addition is inserted between the original 19th-century building and the 1950s expansion. The latest addition creates a small but welcoming forecourt to the ­ college’s entrance.

OPPOSITE

sake of the lecture series, knows better. Larisey has studied and travelled widely to visit Botta’s work. As a Jesuit, Larisey finds God in all things, including art and architecture. But as a modern art scholar, Larisey asks, “Why is the church so alienated from Modernism?” This question has been the focus of his career and an ongoing book project.

A colleague of Larisey’s, professor Peter Warrian, had the idea of funding a lecture series in Larisey’s name. Warrian is a philanthropist, engineer and economist who in 1999 sold a computer application he’d developed to Micro­soft. Today he runs the Lupina Foundation, which gives away close to $1 million every year. He is taken with “Larisey’s hypothesis” that the Church has been able to embrace architects “in ways it has not been able to always accept artists.” Warrian created a lecture committee including artist Sarah Hall, writer John Bentley Mays, Larisey and others. Ultimately the committee chose Mario Botta to launch the series and to celebrate the completion of Regis College’s new digs.

Architect Kevin Weiss, partner at Larkin since 2007, ran the Regis College project. Weiss’s pedigree includes years at Diamond + Schmitt Architects as well as with Ian MacDonald Architect. He received a postprofessional degree in urban design from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, where he continues to teach occasionally. Weiss is jumpy and intense, with a roving curiosity. On his desk at the 06/11­canadian architect

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chapel student lounge office book drop forecourt back garden

Larkin office is a well-thumbed copy of Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. When he speaks about Regis College, he boasts: “I took the stair in the old Christie mansion as a personal challenge.

I wanted to best it.” He’s speaking of the sinuous wooden stair that rises through four floors toward an ornate glass oculus in the 1890s mansion. His exuberant, poetic response of a redpainted steel ribbon takes the shape in plan of a stylized fish—“but it is actually an homage to Richard Serra.”

The new stair takes centre stage in a newly constructed atrium that connects the Victorian mansion with Fontbonne Hall, a 1950s university building behind. Regis College occupies the entire mansion, plus the basement and ground floor of Fontbonne. The atrium serves as a “welcoming lantern,” notes Weiss’s partner at Larkin, Roberto Chiotti. The lantern serves as front door, with an address on Wellesley Street. Enormous light wells flank the new entrance and flood the base26 canadian architect 06/11

0

10M

ment library with daylight.

One major impetus for the Regis College re­ design was a gift of a full-scale facsimile of the St. John’s Bible, the first illuminated bible to be drawn in over 500 years. Larkin Architect designed a custom stand for the bible, in red-painted steel to match the new stair, and mounted it on the wall by the entrance. The stand had to provide security, humidity and light control, but also ease of access: each day a page is turned, offering passers­by a chance encounter with the sacred.

A simple circular skylight was inserted into the flat ceiling of the atrium. According to Weiss, the theology students at Regis refer to this oculus as “the eye of God.” Indeed, a trinity of gazes converge at the signature stair. Besides the oculus, there is the ubiquitous black bubble of a wallmounted security camera and the hall porter’s desk at the upper landing. Curiously enough, it’s the latter that commands pride of place—one is greeted by a security desk after ascending the

curved stair. Situated as it is beneath the oculus, this perch would have been the ideal station for the display of the new illuminated Bible.

On the ground floor of Fontbonne Hall is a 250-seat chapel, where Mario Botta lectured. The space felt weary that evening: with pews, cracked terrazzo floors and a trio of tall stained-glass windows. Botta showed his slides on a juryrigged screen consisting of a portable whiteboard, draped with a sheet to reduce glare. Light levels lacked fine control, and Botta asked periodically for adjustments.

Weiss acknowledges these deficiencies, but explains the uncertain future of Fontbonne.

Heroic engineering in the form of a massive concrete shear wall buttresses Fontbonne’s west flank: should Fontbonne ever go, the “lantern” will remain standing alone. Thus, while the design originally included chapel renovations, these were cut from the budget without remorse.

As with the shear wall, engineering heroics were also called on to “hang” the second floor archives within the historic mansion: an invisible insertion designed to carry an enormous new load while leaving the irreplaceable plasterwork of the reception hall below untouched. The other major insertion was a new elevator, set into the back of the Christie Mansion, providing barrier-free access between the two buildings. A door on one side opens into the basement and main floor of Fontbonne Hall, and on the other side, half a level up, into their counterparts in the Christie Mansion.

The Christie mansion is a “listed” Toronto heritage building, and the University paid careful attention to the Larkin design. A committee that included Toronto architects Brigitte Shim and Bruce Kuwabara praised it, according to Weiss, for its “well-behaved” connection to the old building. “It’s Victorian in a way,” says Weiss—it has to mediate between historic eras, and pays careful attention to the discovery of governing lines between the 1890s mansion and the 1950s

OPPOSITE, LEFT TO RIGHT Architect Kevin Weiss was inspired by this 19th-century curved stair at Regis College; The new stair pays homage to the work of artist Richard Serra—a sculptor whose steel-plate installations grace galleries and public spaces around the world; an overview of the new atrium. RIGHT Natural light penetrates the college’s basement library.

hall. The new main entry is up a shallow threestep climb or a ramp from Wellesley Street. Beneath a zinc-panelled fascia, signage announces REGIS COLLEGE in sans-serif letters—formed from a single piece of steel. Low-iron glass used in this wall is exceptionally clear, allowing visibility through the “lantern” to the glazed back door at the north.

On the evening of Botta’s lecture, this back door, which leads to the street and other university buildings, was locked, leaving many guests standing in the cold, waiting for a passing soul to let them in. Unfortunately, a registration desk at the front door, tucked away in a niche within the handicap elevator projection, holds no view of the back door, necessitating its being kept locked. A more welcoming design would have incorporated a registration desk where the St. John’s Bible is placed, thus allowing views to both front and back.

The registration desk niche focused attention on the busy elevator projection that night. The projection’s tiles intersect the historic brick wall of the mansion, saw-cut to fit around a sandstone cornice. Weiss explains that the elevator, half in and half out of the historic building, drove the sense of a “collision” here. He meant it to be very different from the poetic way his new stair reaches for—but hesitates without touching—the historic mansion. In this he succeeds.

Botta’s lecture, entitled “Architecture and Memory,” focused on his portfolio of sacred architecture that includes chapels, a synagogue, and a cathedral. He rarely dwelt on details, although his work shows a clear mastery of them.

For Botta, architecture cradles memory: it makes memory possible. The renovations at Regis College, with its thrill-ride red steel stair, will create lasting memories in all who experience it.

Peter Larisey, recalling the lecture, speaks with particular awe of Botta’s 1996 accomplishment at Ivry, France where, in a highly diverse city of many immigrants, he completed France’s first cathedral in the past century. The Ivry cathedral features a huge oculus, a theme in Botta’s work. This one is ringed by trees at the roof level. “New forms liberate us,” Larisey explains. “They are new to everyone, so they affect each person equally.” To Larisey, the diverse culture of Ivry has resonance here in Toronto, where diversity is a watchword.

Is there a deeper motive in bringing Mario Botta to Regis College? Is there a project on offer in Toronto? Larisey welcomes this question. “It’s

in the air. People talk of a new Catholic cathedral in town. The existing cathedral [St. Michael’s] is in terrible shape. It takes millions just to hold it up.” Lecture committee member Sarah Hall elaborates: “There are a number of us who would love to have Botta build something in Toronto. And Toronto needs a new cathedral.” Peter Warrian adds: “Toronto is a major site of Modernist architecture: think Mies van der Rohe. In his diary, [Mies] said his one regret was that he never got a commission to do a cathedral. I have had the idea of running a juried competition for architecture students on what kind of cathedral he would have designed for Toronto. The purpose would not be to decide about St. Michael’s Cathedral; that is entirely the jurisdiction of the diocese—but to raise the profile of the dialogue between architecture and spiritual values.”

This seems like a reasonable starting point, for

any work of architecture. For Botta, spirit is found in geometry and symmetry. For Larkin, spirit lies in exuberant colour and sharp surprise. At Regis College, if only for an evening, these two approaches merged, leaving lasting memories for all. CA Jacob Allderdice teaches Interior Design at RCC Academy of Design’s new Bachelor of Interior Design program. He previously worked at Larkin Architect Limited on St. Gabriel’s Parish Church in 2005.

Client Regis College Architect Team Kevin Weiss, John Reynolds, Roberto Chiotti, Scott Bailey, Monika Bederna, Noah Slater, Andrea Gaus, Jon Reed Structural Blackwell Bowick Partnership Ltd. Mechanical/Electrical PPM Engineering Landscape Vertech Landscape Architects Interiors Larkin Architect Limited Contractor Buttcon Area2,400 m2 (existing); 200 m2 (addition) Budget $6.35 M Completion 2010

06/11­canadian architect

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Education

Lateral Office

A Theory to Stand On

Entitled “Where do you Stand?” The 2011 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture conference challenged architectural educators to adapt not only to the ever-changing needs of society, but to current and future architecture students.

TEXT

Colin Ripley, Kathy Velikov, RVTR

The past decade has seen a significant shift in research and teaching practices within architecture schools across North America and the world.

Confronted with rapidly developing technology, a renewed urgency around environmental sustainability, and a new awareness within the architectural community of the role of large-scale ecosystems and infrastructural networks, younger faculty have come to redefine the role and practice of the architect-researcher.

In early March of this year, this shifting ground for architectural education was foregrounded at the 99th Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) in Montreal. All accredited architecture programs in the United States and Canada are members of ACSA. In addition to the annual meeting, ACSA holds an administrators’ conference and a number of theme conferences every 28 canadian architect 06/11

year, oversees the production of the Journal of Architectural Education, runs several student competitions, has a robust awards program for educators, and is an important advocacy body for the schools.

Not surprisingly, the ACSA Annual Meeting is rarely held in Canada. In Montreal, over four intense days at the Hilton Bonaventure, a new Canadian region of ACSA was formed (previously, Canadian schools were divided among the North East, North Central and North West regions), partly from a desire on the part of the Canadian schools to have a distinctly Canadian voice, but also partly because the American schools recognize that Canada can present a critical external viewpoint on American architectural education.

The organizers of this year’s conference—Anne Cormier from the Université de Montreal, Alberto Pérez-Gómez from McGill University, and Annie Pedret from the University of Illinois at Chicago—took full advantage of this Canadian externality, choosing as a theme for the meeting the simple question that would focus the discussion on a critical reappraisal of architectural education and, for that matter, architecture: Where do you stand?

The ACSA Annual Meeting always has the potential to be an important moment for architec-

tural education, as the gathering of academics from across North America and beyond allows people to see what their colleagues are doing and hear what they are thinking about. The conferences both mirror recent developments in the schools and—largely because of the preponderance of junior faculty who show up to deliver papers—point to directions the schools may be headed. The Montreal conference appeared to live up to this potential, offering up an unusual and perhaps surprising consistency in terms of paper presentations as well as what a number of attendees referred to as a generational shift.

Two key events at the conference seemed to open up and clarify both the importance of this moment as a transitional point in architectural education. First, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, in his introduction to the opening keynote speaker, called for a rethinking of design education to move beyond instrumentality and to integrate history, philosophy, society and ethics into the practical.

These sentiments were echoed by the keynote speaker, Nasrine Seraji, an architect and educator currently practicing in France while directing two schools of architecture: one in Vienna and one in Paris. The rethinking of design pedagogy, especially with respect to the question of the integration of history in design studio, was taken

Lateral Office

up by both paper and special focus sessions over the following three days.

However, as Annie Pedret made clear in her introduction to the closing keynote speaker, the conference as a whole was dominated not only by issues of pedagogy, but by an idea of expansion— of architecture expanding beyond its traditional field of operations. In these sessions, in papers presented in other sessions, in poster presentations, and in casual conversations at the conference, ideas and practices were put forward that challenge a traditional (even if never really accurate) conception of the architect as a designer of buildings. Work was presented that brought architectural methods and strategies to bear on systems that operate at a much larger scale, from that of landscape to that of regions, megaregions, or watersheds. The tendency of architects, or at least architectural academics, to work at these greatly expanded scales has been developing over the course of the last decade or so, in the wake of theoretical concepts such as landscape urbanism. At the previous ACSA meeting in New Orleans, work of this type was limited to one hugely popular session; in Montreal it seemed to have achieved dominance.

The import of this shift was made clear in the closing keynote by Mason White of Lateral Office,

InfraNet Lab and the University of Toronto.

White was a late substitution for David Adjaye as keynote speaker, and the content of his presentation, as well as his work, is perhaps emblematic of this larger shift. With his partner at Lateral Office, Lola Sheppard, White is the 2010 winner of the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture in recognition of a significant collection of design research projects rather than the more typical large body of built work. Lateral Office is the third Prix de Rome winner in a row—after Pierre Bélanger in 2008 and RVTR in 2009—whose work is primarily based within the academic world of design research based on analysis and intervention at the regional scale.

After presenting a theoretical positioning of the expanded scope for architecture, based closely on Rosalind Krauss’s influential 1979 paper “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” White presented several design research projects by Lateral Office and InfraNet Lab that operate as clear examples of this expanded scope. Most interesting, though, was the title of his talk: “Architecture After Discipline.” The title implies a radically changed view of architecture, one in which we see architecture not as a discipline linked to the study of buildings, nor as a profession linked to the production of buildings, but as a set of prac-

Mason White of Lateral Office presented his speculative design for an “Ice link” in the Bering Strait at the recent ACSA conference; Lateral Office’s examination of an improved water management infrastructure in Salton City, California.

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT

tices that are available to be applied to multiple situations and scales. The architect in this postdisciplinary framework is defined not by technical knowledge, but by a collection of modes of operation. This is a significant shift in thinking.

While attention has been paid at ACSA conferences in the recent past to architecture as a discipline, seeking to consolidate disciplinary knowledge and to operate in interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary modes, White points to architecture’s transdisciplinary potential; architecture as a set of practices transcends disciplinary knowledge. These practices also include actively redefining the discipline, as well as producing new audiences for the work through media such as the InfraNet Lab Blog and the [bracket] almanac publication.

Back to Discipline

Architecture’s transdisciplinary expansion presents exciting possibilities for those of us 06/11­canadian architect

29

Lateral Office

Fred Hunsberger

Lateral Office/InfraNet Lab’s exhibition entitled Next North at the Cambridge Galleries in 2011 bridged forwardthinking research with relevant contemporary issues; Lateral Office’s diagram for the “Ice Link” in the Bering Strait. BOTTOM A perspective of White and Sheppard’s exploration of water economies/ecologies for Salton City, California.

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT

no longer Homo Faber, man the maker, but now Homo Ludens, man the player, as our ages-old ability to grip becomes less important than our newfound facility with our fingertips on a keyboard (and now, with the advent of motion-sensing systems, our gestures in space). Fittingly, next year’s annual conference will be entirely dedicated to architecture’s newly developed “digital aptitudes.” In these times of drastic disciplinary transformations, it is good for us to remember that the institutions that govern architecture— the schools, the practices, and the professional bodies—are all less than 200 years old, with many dating only from the last century, and all products of the series of revolutions that at that time ushered in the modern world. At such times when institutions come under new pressures to adapt to changing societal conditions, we will all have to ask ourselves: Where do we stand? CA Colin Ripley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson University, where he is Director of the Master of Architecture program.

Kathy Velikov is an Assistant Professor at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. Ripley and Velikov are partners in RVTR.

Lateral Office

engaged in research and teaching in architecture. It is also readily accepted by students, who are eager to apply their new skills of conceptualization, integration, projection and visualization to situations beyond the scope of a building. It is likely that in the coming years we will see a concurrent expansion in the scope of design and research projects posed in studios in the schools. Faculty will develop expertise not so much in the area of building design, but in landscape, urban design, regional planning, ecological design, and so on.

What is not so clear, however, is the effect that this expansion will have on the profession. We can imagine, for example, architectural offices continuing to diversify their production, focusing less and less on the technical tasks of designing buildings and more and more on the tasks of conceptualization, integration, projection and visualization. We can imagine, over time, the development of new revenue streams—new clients, governmental and corporate—to support this work. We can imagine profound ramifications for the structure of the profession, for licensure and for liability insurance, ramifications ranging from diversification to irrelevance. Perhaps this is all well and good, as technical knowledge becomes lodged more and more in the coming decades in our machines. However, we can also imagine a retrenchment into disciplinary solidarity, a demand for increased technical competence, a backlash against transdisciplinary expansion. However, this backlash will likely not come from the current young generation of educators and practitioners at this last conference—they seem to have all drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid and are happily (and productively) riding this current wave of disciplinary expansion, rewriting design pedagogy in the process.

There is little doubt that technical developments of the last 30 or so years have had, and will continue to have, radical impacts on the form of our societies and on its institutions. The Brazilian-Czech media critic Vilém Flusser posited in 1993 that the computer has ushered in a new species of human—

30 canadian architect 06/11

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5:

Calendar Micah Lexier: A Week at a Glance

January 3, 2011-January 1, 2012 This one-year exhibition at the Rodman Hall Art Centre at Brock University features the work of artist Micah Lexier, and changes every Monday when one of the four objects displayed is replaced with another drawn from Lexier’s personal collection of everyday items. www.micahlexier.com Anthony Caro on the Roof

April 26-October 30, 2011 Sculptures

by Anthony Caro—who is considered the most influential and prolific British sculptor of his generation, and a key figure in the development of Modernist sculpture over the last 60 years—will be featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org Knoll Textiles, 1945–2010

May 18-July 31, 2011 The Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design

History, Material Culture (BGC) in New York presents this comprehensive exhibition devoted to a leading producer of modern textile design, bringing the sartorial dimension of the Knoll brand and the underrecognized role of textiles in the his­ tory of modern interiors and design to the forefront of public attention.

Institute of Chicago. Focusing on six highly influential international artists—John Heartfield, Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky, Ladislav Sutnar, Karel Teige, and Piet Zwart—this exhibition features nearly 300 works from a landmark acquisition, including photography, photomontage, book and poster design, and household objects. www.artic.edu

Don’t Stop Believing

June 8-August 20, 2011 Taking place at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto, this ex­hi­ bition features Vancouver-based artist Kevin Schmidt and includes several recent conceptual and cinematic installations. http://jmbgallery.ca/exhibitions.html Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life

June 11-October 9, 2011 A vibrant and critically important moment in EastCentral European Modernism is comprehensively explored in this major exhibition on view at the Art

$H!T HAPPENS In Berlin

June 17-July 8, 2011 Curated by German architect Juergen Mayer H. and Relative Space principal Tyler Greenberg, this exhibition at the Relative Space/Floorworks showroom in Toronto explores the aesthetic and technical innovations of creatives in the city of Berlin, showcasing both emerging and established designers. www.berlinhappens.com Rearview Mirror: New Art from Central and Eastern Europe

June 30-September 5, 2011 This exhi­

bition at Toronto’s Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery brings together the work of a new generation of artists from Central and Eastern Europe. The work of the 22 artists in the exhibition engage post-conceptual strategies and forms, and collectively challenge accepted notions of Eastern Europe as a social, political and art historical monolith. www.thepowerplant.org Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition

July 8-10, 2011 This annual event takes place in Nathan Phillips Square, and features original work for sale from hundreds of established and emerging artists in Canada’s largest juried outdoor art exhibition. www.torontooutdoorart.org For more information about these, and additional listings of Canadian and international events, please visit www.canadianarchitect.com

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City of Edmonton

A smarter city?

A City of Edmonton engineer surveys the municipality’s computerized traffic circulation system. Using vast amounts of collected data, a team of IBM employees recently descended upon Edmonton to determine how to maximize its transportation infrastructure.

LEFT

A formidable collection of city-related data is being used by IBM to leverage its business systems consulting.

TEXT

IAN CHODIKOFF

Architecture 2030 is a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing the building industry’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Its founder, Edward Mazria, recently delivered a lecture in Vancouver, suggesting that architects are poised to become the most important profession of our age, given our vital role in solving numerous environmental and technological challenges facing the world’s cities. Architects wish this statement to be true, but sadly, reality suggests otherwise. It is partly true that designing healthy cities demands the invaluable skill sets of architects in possession of complex spatial problemsolving abilities, but to corporations in the business of selling information technology and management consulting services, optimizing the health of cities is largely dependent upon the collection and dissemination of spatially unrelated data to key government and private-sector leaders—most of whom are non-designers. One such company is IBM, who has been leveraging its data management capabilities with its three-year-old Smarter Cities initiative. For decades, IBM has remained synonymous with computers and computationally based business solutions around the world. The corporation is still one of the largest technology consulting services operating in Canada today, and it’s no wonder that it has entered the business of city-building.

To see the world through the lens of IBM’s 34 canadian architect 06/11

Smarter Cities is to see how cities can optimize their various systems to attract creativity and innovation—key drivers contributing to economic growth. The Smarter Cities initiative is an eyeopening realization of the power inherent in the vast amounts of data required to quantify challenges like improving public safety, reducing traffic congestion, and increasing the level of services offered through streamlined public transportation systems. IBM’s initiative is mindboggling in terms of developing an unprecedented level of interconnectedness that decisionmakers at the municipal level are being offered by the private sector. Is this a harbinger of governments becoming increasingly reliant on private business to furnish important metrics related to city-building components such as energy use, communication, health care, social services and education?

Emerging from a global recession, we are living in a time when the world’s cities are competing for investment. Therefore, it should be no surprise that IBM has been aggressively marketing increasingly sophisticated information technology, a process that involves the collection of data, often managed in real time to coordinate a tailored system for cities to improve their competitive edge over each other. One interesting offshoot of Smarter Cities is CityForward.org, a website that allows users to compare data such as the cost of living and transportation systems within or between select cities. The site currently contains data from only three Canadian cities— Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto—but as more data is collected and disseminated, architects, plan-

ners, developers and policy-makers will be able to improve the means by which land use, utilities, energy consumption, personal income, population growth and job data can be visualized to formulate better action plans.

Another offshoot of IBM’s urban health mandate is the Smarter Cities Challenge. At the end of May, a crack team of around a dozen IBM employees arrived at Edmonton’s City Hall to examine the city’s transportation infrastructure before flying home and releasing a public report three weeks later. Edmonton is the first Canadian city to receive a Smarter Cities Challenge Grant. The $400,000 grant is part of IBM’s largest philanthropic initiative in the company’s history. The goal of the program is to give away $50 million to various municipalities and organizations over the next few years. Edmonton was one of 200 applicants from 40 countries worldwide to apply for the 24 grants. In Edmonton, as in other cities participating in the Smarter Cities Challenge, there will be no local IBM employees participating, only corporate experts of various backgrounds and nationalities.

The Smarter Cities Challenge is a curious experiment. While it is an opportunity to unleash the power of IBM’s vast corporate network and assets in terms of both technology and employees, there are no architects, urban designers or planners participating in the exercise. Any participating “architect” will likely be an “information architect” whose work will be complemented by experts in such fields as outsourcing, supplyside management, marketing and computer engineering. It is too early to evaluate the long-term implications of the entire IBM Smarter Cities business. However, its existence will irrevocably alter the course of professional consulting, and should be carefully monitored by the design profession to judge its efficacy. To be sure, Mazria was referring to the legal definition of an “architect” to save our cities from environmental ruin, rather than the disproportionate number of information architects advising on the future health of our cities. CA For more information on Smarter Cities, please visit www.ibm.com/thesmartercity or www.cityforward.org.

UNEXPECTED ANGLE

Expanding design possibilities while shrinking their impact on the environment.

The Appaloosa Branch Library in Scottsdale, Arizona is not just a LEED Gold-certified building, it’s also a stunning example of how PPG’s building products are helping to change the face of modern architecture. To enhance the beauty of the exterior and reduce cooling costs, the library’s architect used PPG Duranar® VARI-Cool™ coatings, which reflect the sun’s energy and dramatically shift color according to viewing angle.

Our Solarban® 60 Atlantica™ low-e glass allowed him to incorporate vast areas of emerald-green glass while reducing the size of the library’s HVAC system and its energy bills. These are just two from the wide array of innovative glass, metal coatings, and full line of architectural coating choices you’ll find through PPG IdeaScapes™. From building materials to consumer products, automotive to aerospace, marine and protective industrial coatings, we’re bringing innovation to the surface. Visit ppg.com to learn more.

Bringing innovation to the surface.™ PAINTS - COATINGS - OPTICAL PRODUCTS - SILICAS - CHEMICALS - GLASS - FIBER GLASS “Bringing innovation to the surface.” is a trademark of PPG Industries Ohio, Inc.

Introducing Folio.

Looks from Mother Nature.

Performance by Father Time.

A collection of rubber tiles inspired by nature.

Six foliage patterns, each strong enough to go it Arbor

alone, yet designed in pairs to play well together.

Case in point: Arbor and Branches, the two patterns shown here. Folio lets you create accents and insets, borders and highlights. The perfect balance of beauty and performance, Folio is a great

Branches

addition to our integrated, high-performance flooring system. To learn more about Folio, visit johnsonite.com or call 800-899-8916.

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