Canadian Architect July 2012

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14 MCgregor CoMMunity Centre lounge

Migrating Landscapes Organizer

Ben rahn/a-FraMe

terence tOurangeau

Contents

9

news

evitt Goodman Architects reveal the L design for Laurentian University’s School of Archi tecture; prestigious new award for architecture endowed by Raymond Moriyama.

a sMaLL prOject By BOrtOLOttO design architect in a suBurBan at-risk cOMMunity OFFers a saFe and inspiring pLace tO cOnvene. teXt paige Magarrey

18 regent park revitalization

tOM arBan

recent atteMpts tO reintegrate this particuLarLy stigMatized sOciaL hOusing prOject with the greater cOMMunity OF tOrOntO is Fraught with Many chaLLenges. teXt aLex BOzikOvic

25 insites

John Bentley Mays asserts that the process of selection for Migrating Landscapes, the Canadian entry to the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture, is more rigorous, community-minded and public-spirited than any other that has come before.

29 teChniCal

R aymond J. Cole and Amy Oliver present a fascinating argument for regenerative de sign as a means of reframing green design.

33 Calendar

BORN AGAIN: The Repurposed City at Architecture at York Quay Centre in Toronto; BRAVOS: Groundbreaking Spanish Design at the Design Exchange in Toronto.

34 BaCkpage

Photographer Morris Lum documents the changing landscape of the suburban edge city, a world that—according to Stuart Keeler—contains a wealth of identities and notions of sustainable building practices. part OF the regent park revitaLizatiOn prOject, the sackviLLe-dundas apartMents By architectsaLLiance in dOwntOwn tOrOntO. phOtOgraph By terence tOurangeau.

Cover

juLy 2012, v.57 n.07

The NaTioNal Review of DesigN aND PRacTice/ The JouRNal of RecoRD of aRchiTecTuRe caNaDa | Raic

07/12 Canadian arChiteCt

5

aLan LewIs

viEwpoint

­Editor Ian ChodIkoff, OAA, FRAIC AssociAtE­Editor LesLIe Jen, MRAIC EditoriAl­Advisors John MCMInn, AADIpl. MarCo PoLo, OAA, FRAIC contributing­Editors GavIn affLeCk, OAQ, MRAIC herbert enns, MAA, MRAIC douGLas MaCLeod, nCARb rEgionAl­corrEspondEnts halifax ChrIstIne MaCy, OAA regina bernard fLaMan, SAA montreal davId theodore calgary davId a. down, AAA Winnipeg herbert enns, MAA vancouver adeLe weder publishEr toM arkeLL 416-510-6806 AssociAtE­publishEr GreG PaLIouras 416-510-6808

the reCentLy oPened MIdLand CuLturaL Centre was desIGned by howard rIdeout. Its CoMPLetIon eMPhasIzes the vaLue of CoMbInInG eConoMIC and urban strateGIes to ensure the suCCess of sMaLL CItIes and ruraL CoMMunItIes In ontarIo and eLsewhere.

AbovE

The corner of King and Elizabeth Streets in the Town of Midland (pop. 16,300) may not be Ontario’s liveliest intersection of culture and commerce, but it certainly embodies a larger trend of rethinking the strategic importance of smaller communities seeking greater prosperity for their future. What is the primary catalyst in this endeavour? The opening of a new cultural centre for Midland in early June.

Designed by Howard Rideout Architect, the Midland Cultural Centre (MCC) is a 30,000square-foot facility that includes art galleries, classrooms, a black-box theatre, banquet facilities, a café and other performance spaces.

Although its $7.5-million budget may seem insignificant, the MCC’s impact on the community will be transformative. The facility has already proven successful at bringing together leading entrepreneurs and organizations in Midland and the surrounding Simcoe County who recognize that arts, culture and education are integral components to the region’s success. The MCC’s major funder was local businessman Reinhart Weber.

Through his foundation, Weber has also contributed millions of dollars to support local social agencies, hospitals, and educational institutions.

When champions of business, arts and culture work together, communities like Midland become more attractive to outside investors while also offering greater support to existing institutions such as Georgian College and the Huronia Players Theatre. The best investment that Midland can make to ensure its future prosperity is to attract innovation and creativity though partnerships that leverage the community’s cultural and economic assets. These challenges are similar to countless towns of a similar size across Canada. When these challenges are met successfully, more buildings like the MCC will be built.

6 cAnAdiAn­ArchitEct 07/12

Last February, the Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI), a think tank at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, published a report entitled Benchmarking the Creative Economy in Rural Ontario. The report applied the MPI’s Creativity Index to determine where future and sustainable economic growth is most likely to occur in smaller communities across Ontario. MPI’s Creativity Index is comprised of a variety of cultural capital components (i.e., educational resources, knowledge-based business, cultural diversity) that contri bute to a “Creative Economy” where “the ability to mass-produce goods is subordinate to the innate human capability to generate new ideas, concepts, products and processes. The Creative Class is defined as people in occupations paid to think. Regions that attract and retain this group of workers are best positioned to succeed in the future.” The report examined 50 communities across Ontario, including Midland, which was ranked seventh overall.

In Midland, a higher percentage of its population works in art, culture, recreation and sport than in other rural communities examined in the province. Nevertheless, with low population growth, high unemployment and relatively low levels of post-secondary education, Midland still has a number of hurdles to clear.

Realistically, it will take more than a new cultural centre to propel the good fortunes of Midland forward, but the critical lesson to learn is the importance of recognizing a small town’s valiant efforts to link business and economic development with arts and culture—an effort that will undoubtedly serve to attract creative energy and spirit to Midland, thereby fostering greater prosperity for this Ontario community.

Ian ChodIkoff

ichodikoff@cAnAdiAnArchitEct.coM

circulAtion­MAnAgEr beata oLeChnowICz 416-442-5600 ext. 3543 custoMEr­sErvicE MaLkIt Chana 416-442-5600 ext. 3539 production JessICa Jubb grAphic­dEsign sue wILLIaMson vicE­prEsidEnt­of­cAnAdiAn­publishing aLex PaPanou prEsidEnt­of­businEss­inforMAtion­group bruCe CreIGhton hEAd­officE 80 vaLLeybrook drIve, toronto, on M3b 2s9 telephone 416-510-6845 facsimile 416-510-5140 e-mail editors@canadianarchitect.com Web site www.canadianarchitect.com Canadian architect is published monthly by bIG Magazines LP, a div. of Glacier bIG holdings Company Ltd., a leading Canadian information company with interests in daily and community newspapers and business-tobusiness information services. the editors have made every reasonable effort to provide accurate and authoritative information, but they assume no liability for the accuracy or completeness of the text, or its fitness for any particular purpose. subscription rates Canada: $54.95 plus applicable taxes for one year; $87.95 plus applicable taxes for two years (hst – #809751274rt0001).

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LeviTT­goodman­archiTecTs

news

Projects Levitt Goodman architects reveal design of Laurentian University’s school of architecture.

Toronto-based Levitt Goodman Architects have revealed their preliminary design of the Laurentian Architecture Laurentienne (LAL) School of Architecture, set to open in Sudbury in September 2015. Under the leadership of founding director Terrance Galvin, LAL offers an undergraduate program along with a graduate co-operative program, and strives to teach sustainable building design for northern climates. It is anticipated that the design of the entire school will become a teaching tool via exposed building systems and construction details. As the first satellite downtown campus for Laurentian University, the project strives to act as a significant catalyst in rejuvenating the Sudbury core, not only by introducing a new urban landmark, but also by bringing an influx of students, faculty and ideas to the city centre that will positively impact other local institutions and businesses while stimulating further cultural and economic initiatives. Each building wing is conceived as having a unique formal identity and a discernible programmatic character within the school. The two existing buildings are adapted and thoughtfully reused: the Telegraph Building contains faculty offices, and the Market Building houses the gallery and workshop as the centre of production and exhibition. The new North Wing is predominantly made up of studios and is the main face of the school along Elm Street, while the West Wing houses resource programming such as the library and theatre, and will have a higher level of accessibility to the broader community. With an approximate $28-million construction budget, the LAL School of Architecture will provide roughly 75,000 square feet of space for

students and faculty. The two-phased construction project will see the existing building renovation ready for the fall term in September 2013, and the new building is scheduled for completion in September 2015. Having achieved great success with their design of the University of Waterloo School of Architecture in Cambridge in 2004, Levitt Goodman Architects were selected as the design architects for LAL, and worked in consultation with AECOM Engineering, landscape architect Rob Wright, sustainability consultant Ted Kesik, and urban design consultant Susan Spiegel. sid Lee architecture and Ædifica present the salon Urbain at Place des arts.

Sid Lee Architecture and Ædifica have turned the parking area at Montreal’s Place des Arts into a Salon Urbain, a versatile new space ideal for meeting up before or after a musical performance, a gallery visit or a conference. The space fully captures the artistic appeal of the site, located at the St. Urbain entrance of Place des Arts next to the new concert hall. The bar is the pièce de resistance of the Salon Urbain; a sound wave in physical form. It is the key element in a mobile world where people come together, dance and listen. The colour red is omnipresent, associated with performing arts and premiere nights, and becomes the symbol of a hip urban culture that beats to the rhythm of music and the arts. The Salon Urbain is a versatile space, equipped with the latest technology—an ideal venue for a variety of activities. www.sidlee.com and www.aedifica.com

awards Prestigious new award for architecture endowed by raymond Moriyama.

Architecture Canada | RAIC and the RAIC Foundation are proud to announce a major new

aBoVe­The­design­for­LaurenTian­uni­ versiTy’s­new­schooL­of­archiTecTure­ was­recenTLy­unveiLed.­iT­is­expecTed­To­ heLp­reviTaLize­sudbury’s­downTown.

award in architecture called the Moriyama RAIC International Prize. The Prize is named after its benefactor Raymond Moriyama, FRAIC, who made it possible with a generous endowment of $200,000. The Prize will be awarded every two years in two categories. The first will be presented to a Canadian or international architect for an outstanding built project, to be selected by juried competition. The second will be presented to a non-architect from anywhere in the world for outstanding contributions to architecture, to be selected by juried nomination. The inaugural Moriyama RAIC International Prize will be announced in late 2013.

Raymond Moriyama founded Moriyama & Teshima Architects in 1958. He has enjoyed a long and distinguished career, and has received numerous honours including the Confederation of Canada Medal, the RAIC Gold Medal and the Governor General’s Medal in Architecture.

He was also awarded the Order of Ontario, is a Companion of the Order of Canada, and a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. ciGi campus by KPMB architects receives riBa international award.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced that the Centre for International Governance Innovation Campus (CIGI Campus) in Waterloo, Ontario, designed by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, is a recipient of the prestigious International Award for Architecture. The RIBA International Awards are presented to architecture practices based outside the UK building anywhere outside the UK, or to practices based in Britain and working outside 07/12­­canadian architect

­9

the EU. All winners are eligible for the RIBA Lubetkin Prize awarded to the best international building by a RIBA member, which will be announced later in the year. The full list of 12 RIBA International Award winners for 2012 is as follows: Clayton Campus—Monash University, Melbourne, Australia by VN Architecture; Balsillie School of International Affairs, CIGI Campus, Waterloo, Canada by KPMB Architects; Guangzhou International Finance Centre, Guangzhou, China by Wilkinson Eyre Architects; Innhouse Hotel Kunming, China by Integer Intelligent and Green; Yotsuya Tenera, Tokyo, Japan by Key Operation Inc/Architects; One KL, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by SCDA Architects; The Troika, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by Foster + Partners; Auckland Art Gallery by Toi o Tamaki, Auckland, New Zealand FJMT + Archimedia—architects in association; Solaris Fusionopolis 2B, One North, Singapore by TR Hamzah and Yeang; Urban Housing and Crèche, Geneva, Switzerland by Sergison Bates Architects with Jean-Paul Jaccaud Architectes; Frick Chemistry Laboratory, Princeton University, USA by Hopkins Architects; and Sperone Westwater, Bowery, New York City by Foster + Partners. www.architecture.com/Awards/RIBAInternational­ Awards/2012/Internationalwinners.aspx

Paul raff studio wins four awards.

Of over 800 entries from around the world, Toronto-based architect Paul Raff Studio’s Bluepoint Condos project has won two highly coveted International Property Awards. The boutique condominiums in Phuket, Thailand were honoured with two awards at the Asia Pacific Property Awards Gala Presentation in Kuala Lumpur on April 27, 2012. The International Property Awards celebrate the highest levels of achievement by companies operating in all sectors of the property and real estate industry, and are split into regions covering Africa, Asia Pacific, Arabia, Canada, Caribbean, Central & South America, Europe, UK and USA. Raff was also recently presented with two prestigious Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) awards: the Bluepoint Pavilion was recognized with a Design Excellence award for transforming a prefab box-frame and off-the-shelf planks into an artful, dynamic sales pavilion for the Bluepoint Condos; and the studio also won an award in the Artifact category for Regina Gateway, a monumental sculptural public artwork that acts as a gateway into the city of Regina in Saskatchewan.

Regina Gateway was designed in collaboration with artist and architect Jyhling Lee. www.paulraffstudio.com

coMPetitions transforming seattle’s 520 Floating Bridge: 2012 international design ideas competition.

The Transforming Seattle’s 520 Floating Bridge 2012 International Design Ideas Competition is challenging the design and art communities to envision new, innovative reuse strategies. The 520 bridge will be decommissioned in 2014 due to high maintenance costs, damage, and the need for additional lanes. The Washington State Department of Transportation is requiring of the new bridge’s design-build team that it be reused or recycled in a sustainable fashion; current trends for the reuse of pontoons have been floating docks, breakwaters and piers, but what else could be done with such a feat of engineering? Infrastructure reuse has recently made headlines in architecture. Some examples include the High Line in New York, which converted a raised railroad track into a linear park; Kraanspoor in Amsterdam, a project which built an office complex atop a concrete shipyard craneway; and the current debate on New York’s Tappan Zee Bridge, which many are hoping to see reused as a park. This competition seeks (continued on page 33)

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Something in common

Significant challengeS neceSSitate a creative approach to thiS project located in an at-riSk Suburban community of toronto. project McGreGor coMMunity centre LounGe, toronto, ontario architect BortoLotto DesiGn architect text PaiGe MaGarrey photoS shai GiL, Ben rahn

“Basically, the City of Toronto said ‘Here: do something nice,’” says architect Tania Borto­ lotto while sitting in the sun­filled McGregor Community Centre Lounge, a recently com­ pleted city build that’s easily one of her most successful projects to date—and, incidentally, one of the tiniest. The 130­square­metre space, 14 canadian architect 07/12

located within Scarborough’s McGregor Com­ munity Centre and lovingly nicknamed The Commons, is a lesson in doing more with less: less money, less space and less time, all of which resulted in an uplifting space that is already transforming an at­risk community.

Though it’s clearly a landmark project for Bortolotto Design Architect, the 13­year­old Toronto studio is no stranger to the rigours of government and non­profit projects—previous endeavours include the Toronto headquarters for Street Kids International and Castlefield’s

Municipal Works office, and, most recently, a new rest stop for Oakville transit workers.

“They’re very complex compared to a house or private project,” says Bortolotto. “Because of budgets, because of timelines, because of the complexities of the community and the politics.”

And the complexities of The Commons are no exception. The project is one of 26 around the city that benefited from the Priority Neighbour­ hoods program that injected $13 million in government funds into new playgrounds, com­ munity spaces and parks in 13 high­risk neigh bourhoods around the city, from a new skateboard park in Lawrence Park to an arts hub at Jane and Finch’s Yorkwood Library.

Dorset Park, the West Scarborough neighbour­ hood where the lounge is located, is affected by

shai GiL above GenerousLy scaLeD cLerestory winDows ProviDe Privacy anD an aBunDance of naturaL LiGht for this new coMMunity centre LounGe in toronto’s west scarBorouGh neiGhBourhooD.

high poverty (26.5 per cent of the ward), un­ employment and drop­out rates, which have led to gang activity, crime and violence.

The lounge’s budget was limited—just under $800,000 from the federal and provincial Rec­ reational Infrastructure Canada Program (RInC), the city’s Priority Neighbourhoods In­ vestment, and donations from the United Way Youth Challenge Fund. And the schedule was tight; with the added community meetings that drew out the schematic and design development

phases to just under two years, the construction phase was limited to about a year. But the real challenges lay in the site. Situated between two existing—and differently designed—buildings, the McGregor Park Community Centre and the 2004 McGregor Park Library (designed by ZAS Architects), the new lounge was to not only link together the two structures, but also create a new façade for the entire complex along Law­ rence Avenue. “It became a sort of marker for the community centre,” says Bortolotto, who laments that the façade has to compete with the enormous parking lot situated just east of the entrance. “Just the way it fit in with the rest of the building, the site was really challenging.

What’s the character of this building? How do we fit it in with everything?” In an extra little

twist, the site also had contaminated and wet soil that had to be treated before they could even break ground.

Some of the challenges led to really great things. For example, all projects in the Priority Neighbourhoods initiatives used extensive community engagement to determine what the neighbourhoods really needed; for The Com­ mons, Bortolotto worked with 30 youths from the Dorset Park Youth Council, an organization committed to developing anti­gang and anti­ violence initiatives. Not only did the teens help to establish a community connection to the pro­ ject from the very beginning, they also helped Bortolotto and her team to prioritize which fea­ tures were most important to the actual users.

Top of the list was, of course, safety. There were certain colours to steer clear of completely due to gang affiliation, so the design team stuck to a simple palette of blue and grey. Expensive bulletproof glass was requested for the Law­ rence Avenue façade, which Bortolotto circum­ vented by raising the windows above street level to obscure views of the busy street while bring­ ing in more natural daylight. And she had to fight for outdoor areas, addressing night­time safety concerns by adding security lights and surveillance cameras indoors and out. Really, the community’s needs were very clear: a safe, calm place to grow. But when the safety con­ cerns include guns, gangs and very real vio­ lence, the challenge is to create a safe place that doesn’t feel like a prison.

The answer, for Bortolotto, is uplifting de­ sign—something that she has focused on in pre­ vious projects to dramatic result by using a three­tiered approach. First, an explorative ap­ proach to the form and shape of a building— “carving the space,” as she calls it. The height of the ceiling, the width of the space, and tweaks in the overall proportions of the project don’t usually change the budget too much, she says, but they can make a big impact in deviating from more traditional designs. Despite its small size, the lounge completely changes the face of the community centre from the street by jutting out as close as possible to Lawrence Avenue, with its expansive ribbon of windows reflecting back the surrounding trees and sun. Inside, the double­height ceiling prevents any feelings of claustrophobia and fosters an open­concept approach: aside from a galley kitchen along the southern wall and a space­age all­glass office cube in the corner, the lounge is totally open and reconfigurable—a necessity, considering how flexible the space had to be to accommodate everything from business meetings and seniors’ 07/12 canadian architect

15

shai GiL

Ben rahn

Ben rahn

clockwiSe from top left a curveD ceiLinG-anD-waLL asseMBLy ProviDes fLuiDity to an otherwise MiniMaL aesthetic within this interior sPace; the LearninG coMMons in neutraL shaDes of sky BLue anD Grey; an overaLL view of the BuiLDinG’s MassinG. oppoSite, top right a corner DetaiL iLLustrates the Project’s BaLance of Privacy anD safety with PLenty of visuaL transParency.

lawrence avenue eaSt

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2 4 3

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ground floor 1 2 3 4 5

corriDor LounGe kitchen office courtyarD

16 canadian architect 07/12

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gatherings to youth lunches and movie nights.

It’s the composition that led to one of the most dramatic elements of the space—and Bortolotto’s favourite part of the design. The entrance hallway running along the eastern wall acts as a transitional portal for the space, with glazing on either side that overlooks the sprawling parking lot on one side and the bustling day­care on the other. But as it leads into the lounge, the windows both end, creating a momentary sensation of intense con­ traction before the room opens up and lifts your eyes to the row of glass panels running below the roofline. “Suddenly you’re forced to look up into the sky,” says Bortolotto. It’s a brilliant element, and a problem­solver: it resolved the need for bullet­proof glass, offered the users the privacy they desired, and obscured the less­than­inspiring views of Lawrence Avenue and the parking lot without blocking out the outside world.

And the outside world is another thing that Bortolotto instills in every project she works on to evoke that uplifting feel. In addition to bringing in views of the sky and treetops, she included operable windows for nat­ ural ventilation, and fought to include a small outdoor courtyard through a door on the western wall. “It’s being close to nature. Like we are one,” she says, smiling as she hears her own words. “You have to be part of it and close to it. We’re just automatically attracted to nature, and yet we live in a world so detached from it.”

The final element of Bortolotto’s approach is decidedly open­ended: making the space interesting. This means everything from choice of ma­ terials to the use of textures—and for The Commons, even the cost­saving measures that had to be followed to keep the project under budget. Rather

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than wasting money on expensive finishes, the team focused on a simple pared­back palette with unique twists. The concrete block walls, for example, are raked horizontally to add more texture, and the southern gypsum wall (painted sky blue, a non­gang colour) encloses storage lockers before curving up and across the ceil­ ing, stopping just short of the glazing to create a slightly dropped ceiling that gives the space a feeling of an open pavilion rather than an enclosed space. “The materiality brings the in­ terest,” says Bortolotto. “They’re subtle, not pretentious. You might sit here and not know why it feels good.”

Since its completion in late 2011, The Com­ mons has become home to a lunch program for

Winston Churchill students twice a week, a youth photography course, mentoring work­ shops and youth council meetings. “Everyone seems to be comfortable in the space,” says McGregor Park’s community recreation pro­ BIRCHMOUNT ROAD grammer Terry Cheung. “It can be used for all sorts of different programming.” A simple re­ sponse, but exactly what Bortolotto was hoping for when she first saw the site and envisioned what would grow from it. “It was just a small project,” she says. “But I wanted to know how we could make a great project out of something that’s just a room.” ca Paige Magarrey is a Toronto-based architecture and design writer.

shai GiL

axonometric Site plan

client city of toronto architect team tania BortoLotto, aLex horBer, jerry Lin Structural BLackweLL Bowick PartnershiP LtD. electrical/mechanical jain & associates LtD. landScape fLeisher riDout PartnershiP inc. interiorS BortoLotto DesiGn architect inc. contractor truMBLey & haMPton inc. code DaviD hine enGineerinG inc. area 1,450 ft2 budget $800,000 completion sePteMBer 2011

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Park and re-creation

the massive urban renewal Process well underway in toronto’s beleaguered regent Park reflects the cyclical nature of ideas about urbanism and social engineering.

Regent PaRk Revitalization vaRious alex Bozikovic

ProJect

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Regent Park was Canada’s first attempt at imposing large-scale urban renewal on the city. It was a broad experiment that signalled clear results.

During the development of the neighbourhood between 1948 and 1957, the City of Toronto expropriated and erased 69 acres of Victorian workers’ housing, and replaced that messy swathe of urban “slum” with a perfectly blank slate. Nearby, parts of the Cabbageown neighbourhood soldiered on, with its narrow brick houses and backyard shacks remaining largely 18 canadian architect 06/12

intact. Only one generation after beginning a process of urban renewal that gave birth to Regent Park, the neighbourhood was considered a slum, or as The Toronto Star simply stated in 1968, a “disaster.”

Why? Because it shattered the bones of this part of Toronto. The plan, initiated by the influential planner Eugene Faludi, consolidated the area into a massive superblock largely free of streets; it sprinkled a series of low-rise and mid-rise towers across the site, interspersed with unprogrammed green space and parking.

The buildings and plan bear only glancing relationships to the major thoroughfares of Dundas and Shuter Streets, which cut across the site; as with superblocks in other cities, navigation is difficult and locating addresses even more troublesome. The buildings mixed Garden Cityscaled walkups (four- to-five-storey cruciform brick structures with Spartan detailing and little landscaping, by J.E. Hoare) and five Corbusian 14-storey towers (by architect Peter Dickinson).

It was, in detail and as a whole, a radical break

from Toronto’s 19th-century urbanism. So there is a heavy irony in the fact that the current revitalization project, equally bold, is essentially turning back the clock to a healthier urban life before the superblock.

It is, on a grand scale, a neat illustration of the cyclical nature of ideas about urbanism, social engineering and dwelling in the metropolis. Looking down at a scale model of the site that depicts a massive array of new, still-faceless towers, it would be easy to imagine the project as monolithic and institutional. But despite the scale of the project, no singular authority is in charge here.

When I saw such a model, I was standing in the sales office that a private developer, the Daniels Corporation, has established to sell the market apartments it will build over the next 15 years in an equity partnership with the beleaguered Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC).

This plan, led by Markson Borooah Hodgson Architects and Greenberg Consultants Inc., is centred on the deliberate integration of market

denied. It is urban redevelopment and social engineering on an enormous scale. Its urban planning success, both in terms of social and economic development, will depend on the skill with which the builders bridge the gap between its massive scale and the fine grain of its architecture and streetscape.

The results so far are generally good. Most importantly, there is a common aesthetic language that links the public and private-sector projects: a humane Modernism of simple massing and materials, principally red brick, that are compatible with the Toronto vernacular. There are through streets, which reconnect Regent Park back to the adjacent 19th-century city grid. There is a large park and recreation facility at the heart of the development, and its buildings are sited squarely to the secondary streets that now extend through Regent Park which address the major east-west streets in some cases.

The first building completed in the project is right next to the park: the architectsAlliance (aA)-designed Sackville-Dundas apartments

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and social housing. Since the first iteration in 2002, its proposed buildings have grown taller while this part of downtown has undergone a rapid and increasing pace of gentrification and development. Under the current projections, Regent Park will include 3,000 units of private market housing, and nearly 1,600 units of subsidized housing, down from 2,083 in the previous plan. And all of this redevelopment is being monitored by the City’s planning department.

Under the City’s Social Development Plan prepared for the TCHC in 2007, a few other broad principles are equally important to the success of the area: strengthening physical and social links between Regent Park and the city around it; slow phasing so as to maintain the social fabric of the existing community that lives here; and a program to allow social-housing residents to return to the area if they wish. Indeed, this project fundamentally illustrates different ideas than its predecessor about class, social mobility and the ideal form of the city.

And yet, the scope of the project cannot be

the context of Regent PaRk within the city can Be seen in this image of DiamonD schmitt aRchitects’ one cole DeveloPment. above left the RelationshiP Between BuilDing anD oPen sPace was a sensitive Design issue, given the conceRns of safety anD visiBility. above comPleteD in 2009, the sackville-DunDas aPaRtments comPlex was DesigneD By aRchitectsalliance, anD was one of the fiRst PRojects to Be occuPieD. oPPosite toP

which were completed in 2009. This two-tower complex imports the typology of the podium and point tower that aA have employed to good effect in commercially built condominiums around Toronto, as well as a material palette from that register: purple-grey brick façades and expansive windows with irregular, staggered mullion patterns. The taller 22-storey tower is home to 224 TCHC family-oriented apartments (and within its base, the infrastructure for the neighbourhood’s district energy plant); the shorter, eightstorey tower to the south is a seniors’ residence 06/12 canadian architect

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haRolD claRk

one PaRk west By coRe aRchitects maximizes the oPPoRtunities foR Balconies leaDing off fRom as many units as PossiBle; glimPses of the new anD imPRoveD Regent PaRk. below the new sackville-DunDas aPaRtment comPlex incoRPoRates many sustainaBle Design featuRes. oPPosite toP and bottom 40 oaks, DesigneD By hilDitch aRchitects, is an intensely community-focuseD DeveloPment. above, left to right

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atlantis in-gRounD iRRigation system Plantings at gRaDe anD on the Roof stoRmwateR management/wateR conseRvation Regent PaRk community eneRgy system Bicycle PaRking

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hilDitch aRchitect 40 oaks cutaway

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with 159 units, and a daycare on the ground floor.

The building’s parti is intelligent; the small footprint of each tower means the apartments tend to be wide and shallow, therefore bright and comfortably laid out. Meanwhile, the podium provides a site for infrastructure and, on its roof, a large terrace and green roof to be shared between the buildings.

The complex’s design, led by two aA partners— the late Adrian diCastri, and then by Peter Clewes—follows a laudable sustainability program; it is designed to approximate a LEED Gold standard, largely through green roofs and reflective roofs, passive solar strategies and stormwater management. This despite the project’s broad use of glazing units and energy-inefficient protruding balconies on one side. (It is only 50 percent glazed, according to aA associate Adam Feldmann.) More importantly, the design projects an impression of quality and it gives no overt visual clues that it was developed for subsidized housing—an explicit goal for the project which seems to backfire in some aspects of the architecture.

For example, the lobby employs rich Carrara marble used for accent walls and solid, substantial counters in the mailroom. They are expensive and carefully built; yet they differ dramatically from the vernacular of the suburban residential market that many new immigrants coming to Canada—the target purchaser of the development—are most familiar with and may not carry connotations of comfort or domesticity to such residents. However, TCHC’s reported feedback is positive, and so were the comments I heard from the residents I met. On a weekday afternoon, an ethnically diverse group of elderly women hung out in the very chic lounge, comfortably watching The Ellen DeGeneres Show together.

Most importantly, the Sackville-Dundas complex is well detailed at street level. Its entrances, landscaping, and the ground-related townhouses

that stretch along its north side all feature attractive proportions and material choices. The gardens are just large enough to create a comfortable visual relationship between private residences and the sidewalk; the outer layer is gravel, and the hardy evergreen hedges add privacy.

These are sensible decisions; aA has competently handled this interface between residences, landscape and the city, which is so crucial to the area’s long-term success.

The nearby 40 Oaks project presents a similar approach to the street. Located around the corner from the Sackville-Dundas development, it is a bit of an oddity in terms of program and client: it’s the only building in the Regent Park footprint that is neither the work of the TCHC nor Daniels.

The client, the Toronto Christian Resource Centre (CRC), was housed in a church that was one of just two sites in the area not owned by the TCHC. That property stood in the way of a planned linear park along Oak Street.

The CRC hired Hilditch Architect, a 25-yearold firm with extensive experience building in the non-profit sector to advise them about a land swap with the housing corporation. CRC agreed to give up a parcel of land with a church that was subsequently demolished in exchange for a new site along the north edge of the new park. The design brief was then revised to accommodate 87 seniors’ residences upstairs—from bachelor units to two-bedroom units—and a range of public services on the main floor.

The residential spaces benefit from an unusual 06/12 canadian architect

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and the public services, which the CRC has historically provided to the entire community. The answer: separate entrances to the residences on the west façade and to the non-denominational chapel on the east side. A chandelier comprised of constellations of suspended rough glass animates the inside of the cylindrical chapel space located on the southeast corner of the building.

The chandelier was created by Public Displays of Affection, a non-profit collective of designers who supplied over 100 furnishings, fixtures and installations throughout the interior of the building. Invited by Hilditch, the group’s members— a collection of adventurous craftspeople including Made, Brothers Dressler, Lubo Brezina and

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was open and welcoming,” Rosenberg says, “where people could come in, have a shower, take a meal, and rest.” The façade’s combination of red and yellow brick helps visually divide the mass of the building; brises-soleil cut direct sunlight and add visual interest; and its substantial glazing links the kitchen at the front of the building with the park out front. Thanks to extensive advocacy by the project architects, much of the park will become a community garden that supports the CRC’s activities that include such programs as fresh food delivery to the local community.

At the same time, the architects were charged with making a distinction between the residences

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structural system: massive two-storey-tall steel trusses cut through the building along the northsouth axis at different points as the building rises. This allows for column-free spaces through much of the upper floors, creating for flexibility both now and for later. “We like that in the future, if the demographics change, they’ll be able to rearrange the units as needed,” says Charles Rosenberg, an associate at Hilditch who worked on the project. It’s a stark contrast to the immovable shear walls that are standard in marketrate condominium buildings and which—as some local architects, and downtown Toronto city councillor Adam Vaughan have been arguing for years—may prevent adaptive reuse of those buildings, and doom their small apartments to become slums.

But the 40 Oaks building’s most important notes are urbanistic ones. There was no capital funding from the city for any public spaces; the CRC’s membership generated that portion of the budget through fundraising—a powerful civic gesture. The main level now includes offices for social service agencies, a non-denominational chapel and a kitchen that can, and does, serve 200 people at a meal. Rosenberg, who led the project together with associate Ken DeWaal, describes this as “a large living room on Regent Park.” They wanted “to create a ground floor that

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gRounD-oRienteD housing was cRitical to Re-estaBlishing a neighBouRhooD scale. left RooftoP gaRDens anD geneRous teRRaces aRe incentives to attRact new ResiDents to Regent PaRk. bottom the gRassy couRtyaRD of one cole.

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DiamonD schmitt aRchitects

Kathryn Walter among others—have added a layer of humanity and rusticity to the public spaces.

They worked with light fixtures, wood and pews salvaged from a demolished United Church in affluent North Toronto.

One of the area’s market-housing counterparts is One Cole, the condominium tower designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects Inc. (DSAI), which has anchored the redevelopment at the major corner of Dundas and Parliament since fall 2009.

It houses a grocery store clad in an attractive glass façade with well proportioned, narrow mullions. Its addition is a boon for residents in the area. Adjacent to the grocery store is a large and extremely busy Tim Hortons coffee shop. Above

this podium, two point towers—one nine and the other 19 storeys—full of condominiums rise above. One Cole is a close match to the SackvilleDundas complex, just one block away, in both form and parti—amenities and green roof space along the top of the podium with some very well designed red brick townhouses along one side.

One Cole was a test case and a billboard for the commercial component of the Regent Park revitalization—and the sales of the condos were quickly successful. So successful, in fact, that The Sun, Toronto’s right-wing tabloid, has accused City and Daniels officials—such as local councillor Pam McConnell, who now lives here— of profiting from their involvement.

Once those accusations are resolved, One Cole will retain its importance as a signpost of the good design and urbanism that have shaped this project. DSAI principal Don Schmitt, who led the design, has been a loud advocate for the entire revitalization project. It shows some of his skill, and reflects DSAI’s long-running commitments to community causes and well-made “fabric” buildings—including the Regent Park Community Health Centre (1999), a gem of a building right across the road.

With One Cole, DSAI has established an appropriate tone for the architecture in and around Regent Park in many ways, despite the unnecessarily fussy articulation of the spandrel panels on the upper floors. Similarly, One Park West by Core Architects, the other condo Daniels has completed at Regent Park, compromises its fine massing with awkward façade detailing; the irregular pattern of vertical lines crashes into the top of the building in a pile-up of stucco, mechanical units and (again) unattractive spandrel panels. Nonetheless, its three-storey townhouses hit the mark with simple, well-designed façades and pedestrian-friendly design. Another adjacent set of townhouses, these by Graziani and Corazza—which inexplicably won a Toronto Architecture and Urban Design Award—employ a similar scale and material palette, but their façades are both clunky and fussy.

Across the street from One Cole is One Oak Street by Kearns Mancini Architects Inc. (KMAI), a TCHC building development that follows a more sober approach to the aesthetic problems of Regent Park. This 12-storey building, housing 84 mostly family-sized units, makes a self-conscious effort to build on the loft conversions and quasiloft condos that have become ubiquitous in downtown Toronto. “We wanted to get that Toronto language in, through the loft building,” says KMAI principal Jonathan Kearns, who led the project.

That meant adopting (and slightly stretching) the foursquare proportions of early 20th-century industrial mid-rises, and cladding them with matte red brick and matching grout colour.

This project, like One Cole, was subject to the design review panel that the City has established for Regent Park, and the heights and envelope were largely set by the area plan. “Our main play was in manipulating the building planes and the windows,” Kearns says. His team chose to group the windows—which make up only 31 percent of the façade surfaces—into discrete elements that extend across the floor plates so that, according to Kearns, “You get the scale, but not the number 06/12 canadian architect

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of floors.” Formally speaking, it is a successful move that yields a cleaner composition for the building. Kearns is most proud of the building’s straightforward plan with its single-loaded corridors that provide uniformly pleasant apartments.

The building’s formal modesty and attempts at a friendly, vernacular aesthetic were some of the other goals for the project. “We’ve done a lot of affordable housing,” notes Kearns, “and we’re very conscious of the end users’ perception of the building. The residents’ quality of life is the most important thing.”

This raises an important point regarding the cultural connotations of Modernist architecture, especially in the social-housing context. Regent Park is evolving at a time when the Toronto real estate market is fully embracing contemporary design. Driven by architects and clients free of market pressures, the design vocabulary at Regent Park is in a similar Modern idiom, and harmonizes with the architecture being sold by intelligent developers such as Daniels. But while Modernism may be what established and assimilated professionals want, is this what lowerincome citizens and recent immigrants want?

The planners and architects shaping Regent 24 canadian architect 06/12

Park have collectively made the best possible response to that conundrum, being neither too formally bold nor too timid. Hopefully, there will remain room for more architectural bravado within individual buildings over time. The TCHC is currently under siege for its allegedly spendthrift practices and high-handed approach to tenants; even if most of the specifics are disproved, the accusations have left the organization on the defensive. Because of the TCHC’s focus on long-term sustainability and its freedom from market constraints, its buildings can and should be laboratories for responsible architectural innovation. Their next projects with DSAI, the Paintbox condo and the Regent Park Cultural Centre, will be slightly unusual—but only in a superficial way, applying rainbow-hued spandrel panels on buildings of grey and black brick and glass. One other building on the Regent Park horizon, a TCHC tower currently under design

by Giannone Petricone Associates, has more of an adventurous spirit and promises some very creative but economical brick detailing.

Thankfully, the TCHC has invited in a variety of architectural voices, including the firms already mentioned in this article. Over time, involving a

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variety of architectural approaches will accomplish a sense of vitality to Regent Park that avoids the stigma of a “housing project,” only encouraging its integration into the neighbouring context.

By all accounts, it’s important to note that the TCHC is ensuring that each building functions well at its most important benchmarks for success: the layout of the units themselves and the urban design principles shaping the area.

Social-housing clients deserve buildings and civic neighbourhood blocks that can effectively serve their needs. With this latest version of Regent Park, the people are getting what they need—and happily, Toronto is learning how to appreciate the bold and thoughtful architecture that it deserves. ca Alex Bozikovic is a journalist and critic based in Toronto who focuses on architecture and design.

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Migrating to Venice

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Nobody goes to the pageants generated by La Biennale di Venezia—the architecture or visual art shows, the film, music, theatre or dance festivals—expecting to see things that are conventional or prêt-à-porter. According to a tradition going back to the 1920s, what’s displayed in the various editions of Europe’s most famous cultural jamboree is supposed to be new and cutting-edge, or at least considered important by leading trendsetters. The national showcases of architecture and art clustered in Venice’s public gardens and scattered elsewhere throughout the island city, especially, should represent the most trenchant thinking and artmaking in each home country.

Of course, not everything featured in every Biennale exposition has hit this high target. But hitting it dead-centre is the intention of anyone who tackles the daunting, glaringly spotlit job of putting on a show for the Biennale—including David Chipperfield, the well-known British architect and curator of Common Ground, the centrepiece group display in this year’s 13th International Architecture Exhibition, opening on August 29. “Above all,” Chipperfield writes in a statement posted on the Biennale’s website, “the ambition of Common Ground is to reassert the existence of an architectural culture, made up not just of singular talents but a rich continuity of diverse ideas united in a common history, common ambitions, common predicaments and ideals.”

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The notion that this “rich continuity” needs serious reinforcement seems to have been in the air during the last few years. For instance, a full year before Chipperfield announced his theme, a team of enterprising Canadians—Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic, principals in the Winnipeg firm of 5468796 Architecture Inc., and University of Manitoba architecture instructor Jae-Sung Chon—came up with an ambitious proposal meant both to produce Canada’s 2012 Biennale entry and, long before the festival opened, to affirm and enrich “architectural culture” in the Canadian homeland.

The project they offered to the Canada Council for the Arts, which awarded them the commission in May 2011, is called Migrating Landscapes. On Canada Day last year, Hurme, 07/12­­canadian architect

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Radulovic and Chon broadcast a call under this title to players under the age of 45 in the country’s architectural and design communities to undertake two tasks: “to reflect on their cultural migration experiences and un/settling encounters” and “to design dwellings—in a sense, first acts of settlement—onto the new landscape” fashioned by the organizers. This “landscape” (or armature) on which the models would be situated is described as “an abstract assembly made of wooden modules.” To me, it seems less of a landscape than a miniature city with no streets and densely packed skyscrapers rising to various heights.

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Contestants were invited “to act as its first immigrants. The act of constructing the first dwellings will be enactments of first immigration onto this abstract landscape.” In keeping with the subject of uprooting, the models of these dwellings were required to “be portable and meet the luggage requirements of regular national and international commercial air travel.” Applicants were also asked to provide short videos in which they tell their migration stories, and reflect on their “specific, personal instances, encounters or memories of un/settling.”

The conceptual concerns with movement and place that are expressed in the competition

brief, by the way, come from deep sources: like millions of other Canadians, all three members of the team were born outside Canada, and arrived as strangers to the anglophone North American world they now live and work within.

Submissions came in—about 120 in all—and the labour of sifting out wheat from chaff began.

This work was to take the form of a competition, but no ordinary one. Instead of handing off the proposals to a single blue-ribbon jury and running a simple contest, the Winnipeg group empanelled no fewer than seven teams of judges— architects, artists, designers, academics, critics (for the record, I was not one of the critics)—in every section of this country. Each regional jury selected regional winners, whose work was then exhibited on top of a version of the signature wooden substructure or “landscape” in one of seven regional shows. The first exhibition in this series was launched in Vancouver in November 2011. Finally, in March of this year, the organizers gathered the winning proposals from every region into the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and asked yet another jury—this one composed of painter Eleanor Bond, Canadian Architect editor Ian Chodikoff, and architects Anne Cormier, Bruce Kuwabara and John Patkau—to select who would go on to Venice.

In one sense, the Biennale display in Enrico Peressutti’s eccentric little 1958 Canada Pavilion will be the culminating moment in this trans-Canada story of jurying and showing. The installation will feature 18 brief narrative videos made by the participants and presented on as many small digital screens, a longer overview video projected on a single larger screen, and 18 physical models. The wooden “landscape” will flow through the pavilion’s spiralling interior space, and spill out the door into the terrain between the nearby German and United Kingdom showcases. Laconic, obviously made in a hurry—the deadlines were tight—the objects are smart and deft, poetic, emotionally very cool, frequently wry. In the videos, the architects and designers tell tales about migrating ancestors, homelands and hometowns forsaken, arrivals in strange countries, new languages and new cities.

Certainly, the show in Venice will be a kind of climax; but viewed from another angle it will be only a late trace of the intense and elaborate creative process that will be remembered long after the show in Italy has closed. Months before the Biennale’s gates swing open to the international culturati in August, myriad Canadians in the country’s largest population centres will have been touched, somehow or another, by the cumulative, roll-forward motion of Migrating Landscapes. David Chipperfield hopes Common Ground will help restore architecture’s shaken confidence in “shared space and shared ideas.”

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Over the last year, the Winnipeg team has been acting energetically on that very confidence as though it had never flagged, generating real spaces for dialogue and learning—in one city after another. It’s hard to imagine a scheme for making a Canadian splash in Venice that would involve more people in an act of communitybuilding than this one.

So after the year-long unfolding of Migrating Landscapes in Canada, will the contents of the Venice version deliver that splash? I think we should want it to, and it might well make an impression. Since 1980, the Biennale’s architectural exhibitions have usually highlighted such topics as urban experience and “architecture beyond building” (as one recent installment was subtitled)—not the quiddity and practicality that most people think of when they hear the word “architecture.” So both Migrating Landscape’s philosophical theme and the oblique, speculative treatments of it on view are likely to be understood quickly and appreciated by veteran Biennale visitors. But these people are also, unfortunately, always in a hurry for a cultural fix. In accordance with the competition’s rules mentioned above, the models are suitcase-sized and occasionally intricate, and they will be perched on or embedded in the large, heavy wooden framework that will surge dramatically throughout the pavilion and out the door. This impressive armature grabs and holds the viewer’s attention, and is slow to let go. As I found in Winnipeg, it takes a moment for the mind to register the fact that the often slight and sketchy architectural models are situated there among the very conspicuous clustered timber uprights.

And that moment may be too long for visitors busily speed-dating their way through the Biennale’s pavilions on a sultry Venetian afternoon.

But those who do pay close attention to the videos and material works, and who acquaint themselves with the terms of the competition in order to figure out what this show is actually about, could find themselves facing problems of a different order. A couple have to do with the instructions given to potential contestants. They were invited, you will recall, not to devise architectural solutions for the real problems of immigrants (housing, disorientation, alienation from the new context, and so on), but rather “to act as [the landscape’s] first immigrants. The act of constructing the first dwellings will be enactments of first immigration onto this abstract landscape.” While urging a student to play the role of a disembodied Cartesian intellect designing things in pure Euclidian space may be common practice in the architecture schools, it strikes me as curious. Outside the novels of sci-fi fantasists, the calculations of real-estate developers, the offices of mathematicians and the propaganda of colonizers, abstract, un-

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peopled and empty landscapes do not exist.

“Dwelling,” on the other hand, always occurs in a specific place with a geology, a story, a form, a political economy—and it is this grounded character that gives questions of dwelling their urgency, relevance and resonance.

The organizers of Migrating Landscapes did not ask contestants to address these urgent questions about migration, and encouraged them instead to recall it as adventure, pioneering, being newcomers in a strange new land full of surprises. The videos destined for Venice, accordingly, too often offer nostalgic recollections of the usual upsets of changing one’s location in

the world—upsets, in each case, handily survived and transcended by ancestors or by the artists themselves. And with a couple of exceptions, the models are abstruse, unpinned to any real place, and are as abstract as the wooden substructure—designed according to the rule given to their makers. Largely missing is the pathos inevitably present in any narrative that sets out to talk about migration as it actually is.

I missed some note of that sadness in the competition brief. I think it’s not there because the organizers of this show see migration as a difficult but ultimately positive and lifeaffirming phenomenon—as it has been in their 07/12­­canadian architect

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is a city, so the myth goes, of masks and fantasies and luxurious façades and fugitive shimmers and shadows. Myths, of course, have a way of becoming facts—and this urban myth of postmodern slide and empty pomp certainly colours a great deal that goes on in Venice’s public realm, not least the events staged by the Biennale organization.

Despite the efforts of one artistic director after another to make audiences sober up and get serious—David Chipperfield is merely the latest in a long line of morally earnest curators— the Biennale’s art and architecture shows are, in the end, extravagant spectacles put on for the entertainment of the sophisticated and very inquisitive bourgeois layfolk and professionals who come from all over the world to see what’s being talked about by the international highcultural elite and the mini-elites in various

own passages from elsewhere to Canada, resulting in successful, fulfilling careers in the architectural field. But for countless migrants, and for the earlier dwellers forced or persuaded to make room for the newcomers, the story of the movement of peoples in the modern world has been marked by immense sorrow and suffering. Indeed, somewhere in the background of almost every modern migration and settlement tale is a crime or calamity—the disaster or injustice or hunger that prompted the migrants to seek a new homeland in the first place, the misery (or worse) inflicted on the newcomers by the people they came among, or by the new immigrants themselves on those who came before.

But Venice is probably not the place for such melancholy ponderings, even had the curators of the Canada Pavilion asked anyone to do so. It

countries. It would be unfair to ask any Biennale exhibitor to do anything more than please these large, cosmopolitan audiences. And, indeed, if they give time and proper regard to the Canada Pavilion, visitors will discover that young Canadian architects and designers have been thinking alertly and optimistically, if not profoundly, about the subject of migration. But if visitors go further, and inquire about the generation of the Venice show, they will find a process of selection more rigorous, community-minded and public-spirited than any other in the history of Canada’s participation in this occasional celebration of architectural imagination. ca John Bentley Mays is an architecture critic and writes regularly for The Globe and Mail.

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technicaL

the neXt regeneratiOn

introduction

Over the past five years or so, the notion of “regeneration” has been garnering increasing interest as a means of reframing green design.1 Unlike conventional green building practices which are directed at reducing environmental impact, regenerative design promotes a coevolutionary, partnered relationship between sociocultural and ecological systems rather than a managerial one and, in doing so, builds, rather than diminishes, social and natural capitals.

It is not the building that is “regenerated” in the same sense as the self-healing and selforganizing attributes of a living system but, as Pamela Mang and others in the Regenesis Group2 argue, by the ways that the act of building can be a catalyst for positive change within the unique “place” it is situated. As Peter Clegg3 of the UKbased Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios further suggests, this produces “built form and infrastructure that begins to ‘heal the wounds’ that have already occurred.” Within regenerative design

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and development, built projects, stakeholder processes and inhabitation are together focused on enhancing life in all its forms—human, other species, and ecological systems—through an enduring responsibility of stewardship. In short, regenerative design aims to rethink how buildings are designed, built and managed.

While having proven to be an enormously valuable vehicle for mainstreaming green building practice, LEED’s checklist format that allows users to select what are deemed achievable credits is considered by many as incapable of guiding design in a systems-approach manner and establishing positive links between buildings and their context. Regenerative design uses green building technologies and strategies, but complements these by facilitating positive connections to the social, economic and ecological context.

Moreover, whereas green building solely focuses on reducing the environmental impacts of buildings, regenerative design and development is viewed as a process that can accelerate the development of the systems-thinking, shared vision, shared ownership and shared responsibility necessary to transition to a sustainable future.

Though many of its core tenets—systems-thinking, community engagement, respect for place— also have long individual histories in architectural discourse and practice, regenerative design

begins to tie them together in a cogent manner.

Broadly speaking, regenerative design seeks ways in which sociocultural and ecological systems can mutually benefit each other; in other words, its long-term aim is to support the harmonious coevolution of sociocultural and ecological systems. American environmental biologist John Cairns4 argues that “mutualistic coevolution is the only path to success” and that “a ‘partner’ unable to coevolve with the other partner is in serious, probably fatal, trouble.”

Synergies between ecological and sociocultural systems lead to designs that are much more than the sum of their parts and do not simply look after their own needs. To illustrate, regenerative buildings may restore or even create natural habitats, purify water, sequester carbon, produce oxygen, generate energy, and enhance human connections with their environment.

Shifting Scale

While the ambition of regenerative design is both positive and inspiring in comparison to the “doing less harm” emphasis of green design, recent critiques emphasize some practical and operational concerns—challenging its feasibility in the urban context and whether or not its core design tenets are scaleable (building, neighbourhood, community and city). For example, re08/12­­canadian architect

­29

generation operates most effectively at a larger spatial scale than that which most architectural projects are commissioned and so raises questions about the ways and extent that individual buildings can participate in the regenerative design process. American anthropologist and historian Joseph Tainter5 raises several important concerns about scale. “If it is too small,” he suggests, “the system will require constant human intervention” and, “it is prudent to assume that a system that requires endless subsidies is not sustainable.” He continues, “[u]nfortunately, this is likely to be the spatial scale (i.e., too small to be self-sustaining) at which many regenerative designs are commissioned. Thus, there may be a scalar contradiction between the aspirations of regenerative designers and the realities of their profession.” extending time Frame

Current green design practice and assessment tools concentrate on describing the initial performance of a building prior to occupancy and can, within the limits of simulation, do this with some degree of certainty. However, it rarely explicitly acknowledges that future performance and changes in a building’s context are always unknowable. Regenerative design, by contrast, accepts this future uncertainty. The notion that the successful performance of a building can neither be predicted nor guaranteed at the completion of design clearly represents a major challenge for architects and other design consultants, particularly in the way that they convey their proposed strategies to clients. Since regenerative performance cannot be known at the design stage, the measure of success in regenerative design is represented in terms of the capacity invested in a building at the outset and stakeholder input that will encourage the coevolution of sociocultural and ecological systems. However, determining if and to what extent a capability has been invested in a project will be based on the collective experience of the design team, continued stakeholder engagement, feedback, reflection and learning.

Given the concerns raised above, how can individual buildings participate in the positive coevolution of sociocultural and ecological systems? Can regenerative design offer positive direction to the day-to-day practice of designing buildings amidst a host of time, cost and regulatory constraints?

There are currently very few recent examples of building projects that exemplify regenerative design and, given the absence of evidence that demonstrates that claimed benefits and outcomes can and have been delivered, it remains largely an aspiration. The University of British Columbia’s Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (see CA, March 2012) is important 30­canadian architect­08/12

in this regard in that its unfolding performance and consequences will be fully monitored and documented. CIRS is a clear manifestation of core regenerative strategies. It will provide “netpositive” benefits to the environment—creating drinking water from fallen rain collected on site, treating more than its own wastewater on site, and powering itself and a neighbouring building with renewable and waste energy. The combination of an on-site photovoltaic system and creative energy exchange with the neighbouring Earth and Ocean Sciences Building greatly reduces the university’s overall carbon emissions.

By being constructed primarily of certified wood and pine beetle-killed wood (that would otherwise lead to carbon emissions as it decays), its wood structure locks in more than 500 tonnes of carbon. This offsets the GHG emissions that resulted from the other non-renewable construction materials—cement, steel and aluminum— used in the building. CIRS can thus claim carbon-negative performance (both embodied and operational). While a university campus permits opportunities not often permissible in most contexts in which architects operate, CIRS nonetheless is illustrative of the potential implications associated with the coevolution of sociocultural and ecological systems—that is, how design strategies offer multiple benefits beyond the boundaries of an individual building.

The use of on-site renewable energy and other fortuitous energy supply options, such as those used in CIRS, become an important strategic choice after all possible energy-efficiency and passive strategies have been pursued. Onsite renewable energy options are place-specific— dictated by the seasonal climatic variations and any modifying effects resulting from the surrounding physical context. Fortuitous energy sources and exchange opportunities are also place-specific and dependent on the ways and extent that the energy profiles of adjacent or nearby buildings and systems match that of one being designed. CIRS does exactly this—capturing waste heat exhausted from the Oceans and Sciences (EOS) Building, satisfying its thermal needs and then returning excess back to EOS. Set against the technical potential offered by such synergistic links are a host of sociocultural factors such as a willingness to accommodate renewable energy, matching of energy quality to operation use, enabling inhabitants to understand energy processes and to adjust the systems to meet their changing needs, etc. More broadly, social or industrial metabolism—the socially organized exchange of materials and energy between societies and their environments—represents a critical link between the built environment and the coevolution of ecological and sociocultural systems.

While nuclear energy is gaining increasing support as a necessary and seemingly attainable and

expedient response to climate change, clean, renewable energy sources are recognized as key to a sustainable future. Renewable energy options have the potential to contribute to long-term energy security and the withstanding of shortterm disruptions, and enable building inhabitants to understand energy processes and adjust systems to meet changing needs.

Figure 1 illustrates the expanded questioning of the role and responsibility of design strategies similar to that embedded in CIRS. It highlights the potential link between building design and the coevolution of sociocultural and ecological systems resulting from the use of renewable energy. Building design (situated in the upper half) can be both informed by ecological systems and/or sociocultural systems that may be placespecific or more universal. Resulting strategies can lead to a building offering positive sociocultural and ecological benefits for its local site context. This place-specific approach to design— drawing on and relating to context—invests a building with the potential for improved performance and contributes to its wider social, cultural, ecological and economic context as shown in the lower half, in the end having benefits that extend beyond its property lines.

In summary, green design is directed at reducing environmental impacts—doing less harm, and regenerative design aspires to restore lost capacities—ecological, social and economic— when they are missing or disrupted and establishing new ones. Both are necessary and complementary in transitioning to a sustainable future. While the performance of individual buildings remains of central importance— depending on the process of engaging all relevant stakeholders, understanding and engaging the opportunities afforded by context, and creatively forging synergistic links between these same strategies—these buildings can offer a great deal more. ca Dr. Ray Cole is Professor at and past Director of the University of British Columbia‘s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. He holds the designation of Distinguished University Scholar.

Amy Oliver holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of British Columbia and works at an architectural firm in Vancouver.

1 Cole, R.J. Regenerative Design and Development: Cur-

rent Theory and Practice. Building Research & Information 40.1 (2012): 1-6.

2 www.regenesisgroup.com 3 Clegg, P. Commentary: A Practitioner’s View of the “Regenerative Paradigm.” Building Research & Information 40.3 (2012): 365-368.

4 Cairns, J. Sustainable Co-evolution. International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology 14 (2007): 103-108.

5 Tainter, J.A. Regenerative Design in Science and Society.

Building Research & Information 40.3 (2012): 369-372.

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Dissenting Histories: 25 Years of the Power Plant

March 24-August 26, 2012 This exhi­ bition is an ongoing project de­ signed to activate and put into dialogue the Power Plant Contem­ porary Art Gallery’s rich histories.

Installed in a space designed by Markus Miessen, a German archi­ tect and writer who has considered institutional histories and has contributed to our thinking about participation in public space and design, the archive exhibition con­ siders the gallery’s history within local and international contexts, as well as within present spatial and theoretical concerns. www.thepowerplant.org Santiago Calatrava: The Quest for Movement

June 27-September 30 2012 This retrospective exhibition at the world­renowned State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia examines iconic architect Santiago Calatrava’s innovative style through various artistic realms such as never­before­seen paint­ ings and sculptures, and celebrated architectural models and sketches. www.hermitagemuseum.org/ html_En/04/2012/hm4_1_305.html Tools for Conviviality

June 30-August 26, 2012 This group exhibition at the Power Plant Con­ temporary Art Gallery in Toronto concerns work united by the idea of art as tools, specifically those which are interactive and which operate as mechanisms towards self­help, political shifts, ritual devices, defence and critique. www.thepowerplant.org MADE—Intersections and Directions in Current Canadian Design

July 8-August 5, 2012 Julie Nicholson and Shaun Moore of MADE have curated an exhibition of 32 design objects for the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, which reflects on the many ways in which independ­ ent Canadian designers and mak­ ers both produce and consider their work. Some of the designers

news featured include: the Brothers Dressler, Elsworthy Wang, FELT Studio, Barr Gilmore, Loyal Loot Collective, Propellor, Toma Objects and Anneke van Bommel. A cur­ ator’s talk will take place on Sun­ day, August 5 at 2:00pm. www.vac.ca/current-exhibitions.html 60 Years of Designing the Ballet

July 11-September 2, 2012 This exhi­ bition at the Design Exchange in Toronto provides a behind­the­ scenes look at the fantasy of ballet.

Magical tales are unravelled with costumes, props, sets, lighting and dance in an ephemeral voyage through the design of ballet.

Admission is $10; free for DX members. www.dx.org BORN AGAIN: The Repurposed City

July 20-September 16, 2012 This ex­ hibition at Architecture at York Quay Centre in Toronto features three Toronto architecture firms— DTAH, Kongats Architects and unit a architecture inc., along with installation artist Gareth Lichty, who have created new installations that explore the adaptive reuse of existing buildings and structures within the urban landscape. www.harbourfrontcentre.com/ visualarts

(continued from page 10) design proposals which either utilize the bridge in its current state or take the bridge apart and reuse its pontoons at a new site on Lake Washington, Lake Union or in the Puget Sound in Washington State. Designers need to constantly assert the need for advancement in creative reuse; our ideas drive design forward. The competition is open to professionals and stu­ dents of the international design and art communities over the age of 18.

Participants may enter as individuals or in teams of up to four members.

A registration fee of $100 must accompany each submission; the deadline is August 10, 2012. www.rethinkreuse.org/competition.html

what’s new raic Foundation presents its first centennial Fund for interns and intern architects.

The RAIC Foundation is pleased to present its first College of Fellows Centennial Fund for interns and intern architects to Team Canada, the 13 young intern and intern architect members of the Migrating Landscapes team who are now part of Canada’s official entry to the 2012 Venice Bien­ nale in Architecture. The award of $5,000 was recently presented during the 2012 Architecture Canada | RAIC Festival of Architecture in St. John’s.

The Centennial Fund for interns and intern architects was created with donations received from members of the College of Fellows and members of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada to support a deserving intern, intern architect or group of interns/intern architects wishing to promote the value and image of the profession. www.raic.org

Image courtesy of Roy Ooms

calendar

Alberta Wood WORKS!

BRAVOS: Groundbreaking Spanish Design

August 8-23, 2012 This exhibition at the Design Exchange in Toronto introduces the most innovative product design from the Spanish design boom, and features 21 of the most talented and successful art­ ists and designers who are set to trailblaze the future of Spanish de­ sign, such as Jaime Hayon, Patricia Urquiola, Martin Azua, and young experimentalists Curro Claret and Nacho Carbonell. www.dx.org For­more­inFormation­about­ these,­and­additional­listings­oF­Canadian­and­international­events,­please­visit­ www.canadianarchitect.com

Call for Nominations

The Annual Prairie Wood Design Awards celebrate excellence in wood construction in the Prairie Region and the Territories.

Nomination forms are available online and are due August 17th, 2012.

wood-works.org/alberta Alberta Wood WORKS! is a project of the Canadian Wood Council established to promote the use of wood products.

07/12­­canadian architect

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Backpage

expansive Terrain

A photogrAphic Artist exAmines the evolution of the postwAr suburbAn lAndscApe of mississAugA. TexT

stuArt Keeler morris lum

pHOTO

Mississauga-based Morris Lum is an urban/ suburban geographer who records the plaza spaces and recycled architectural icons of popular culture located in the edge cities of Ontario. Within his new body of photographic work, night-time abandoned spaces become symbols of the impersonality of supermodernity. The artist presents these spaces as areas where the human figure is void and the automobile is central to the experience, capturing the physical space of the strip mall, the parking lot and other marginal places, highlighting social isolation and unease.

A distinguishing aspect of Lum’s voice is the attention paid to the liminality of suburban space. Born in Trinidad-Tobago, he and his family immigrated to Mississauga in 1989.

Always interested in the photographic image and the landscape of a city in flux, Lum focused upon this interest while attending Ryerson University. Active in the Toronto art scene, he is committed to the exploitation of a new suburban terrain, and we are asked to assess the order, value, and even beauty of the

suburban Mississauga landscapes that Lum knows intimately.

The images clearly have a visual force and intellectual rigour that command attention and consideration. Ultimately, the buildings that Lum documents are recycled: a former Pizza Hut with the iconic hip roof is now a Cambodian restaurant, and an old Taco Time fast-food outlet has morphed into a Vietnamese noodle house whose cactus-emblazoned signage is now overwritten with the new establishment’s name. The artist reminds us that the social space of the newcomer to Canada reimagines the built environment, unwittingly employing sustainable practices in the process, for the benefit of all.

The work creates a new understanding of decentralized social spaces to provoke thought about the future of the edge city as a postsuburban condition. Lum also demonstrates that an emotional bond or exploration of the familiar is crucial to the understanding of a place. Philosopher Yi-Fu Tuan suggests that the built world should strengthen our memories, enhance the self, and provide layers of meaning to a space.

In his study of Divine Wok 2010/Saigon King 2012, Lum exploits the immigrant’s dream as a terrain, forcing us to question normative, reflexive ideas about metropolitan order

TOp golden squAre mAll in mississAugA houses A continuAl string of new businesses thAt unwittingly pArticipAte in A sustAinAble recycling of retAil spAce. BOTTOM suburbAn strip mAlls such As this one in mArKhAm Are becoming defined by the new immigrAnt cultures thAt Are creAting fAscinAting new identities for the cities they inhAbit.

and beauty, as well as our assumptions about suburban/urban conformity. Again, does the recycling of built form lose its associations?

The effect of urban sprawl is also considered—the houses and developments continue as if in fractal formations, the repetition a complex headache of sameness. This sameness can be witnessed in recycled architectural forms such as the famed yellow arches, the alltoo-familiar icons of the North American fastfood economy. At the core of this body of work, Lum points to the aging of postwar suburbia, and the suburbanization of new Canadians and others who have created, in their edge cities, a world that contains more identities and notions of sustainable building practices in the quake of forging a new landscape. ca

Stuart Keeler is the Curator and Director of Programmes at the Art Gallery of Mississauga.

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Scan here with your smartphone for the MAPEI thin-tile installation guide, or contact your local MAPEI sales representative.

5544 Canadian Architect July2012_Thin Tile.indd 1

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Loewen Window Centre of Winnipeg Winnipeg, MB 204.942.6945

Loewen Window Centre of Calgary Calgary AB 403.569.8282

Loewen Window Centre of Oakville Oakville ON 905.829.1310

Centre Loewen De Montreal Montreal, QC 514.484.6203

Loewen Window Centre of Edmonton Edmonton, AB 780.452.3753

Loewen Window Centre of Ottawa Gloucester, ON 613.822.6291

Loewen Window Centre of Kingston Kingston, ON 613.546.7111

Loewen Window Centre of Vancouver Richmond, BC 604.233.0477

Loewen Window Centre of Victoria Saanichton, BC 250.544.1553

VI SION IT’S IN OUR NATURE

As an architect, you’re driven by vision. Guided by a sense of purpose to create things never seen before. It’s this passion to stretch the limits of what is and isn’t possible that directs us too. At Loewen, our vision is to create wood windows and doors that outperform and outlast anything ever created. Because we share that same passion to achieve something great. And after a century of innovation, we’re not letting up anytime soon. After all, the vision that drives our company is inspired by you.

Visit your Loewen Window Centre and share your vision with us.

www.loewen.com

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IT’S IN OUR NATURE

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