Canadian Architect April 2013

$6.95 apr/13 v.58 n.04

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14 Åbenbare House A family home in North Toronto by designer D’Arcy Jones delights with a considered attention to detail and impeccable execution. TEXT Leslie Jen

22 Shantih Omar Gandhi’s house for an extended family in Hunts Point, Nova Scotia is a peaceful exercise in restraint that is highly respectful of its oceanside context.

TEXT Ingrid Hansen

28 Z-Town

John Sinal

Greg Richardson Photography

Bob Gundu

Contents

11 News

John McAslan + Partners to lead master plan for Royal BC Museum in Victoria; Toyo Ito named 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate.

35 Technical

Sophisticated timber panelization techologies are detailed by Lloyd Hunt.

38 Books

Campos Leckie Studio designs a compound of four homes in the remote community of Zacatitos in Baja California Sur, Mexico. TEXT Trevor Boddy

hree new publications shed light on T vastly different aspects of the architectural realm.

film still, Coast Modern

41 Calendar

Building Dynamics: Exploring Architecture of Change at the University of Calgary Faculty of Environmental Design; Jane’s Walk in cities across Canada.

42 Backpage

Sean Ruthen introduces Coast Modern, a thoughtful documentary about iconic West Coast Modernist residences from the postwar period.

april 2013, v.58 n.04

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

COVER Zacatitos 003 House in Baja California Sur, Mexico by Campos Leckie Studio. Photograph by John Sinal.

04/13 canadian architect

5

Viewpoint

­­Editor Elsa Lam, MRAIC Associate Editor Leslie Jen, MRAIC Editorial Advisor Ian Chodikoff, OAA, FRAIC Contributing Editors Annmarie Adams, MRAIC Douglas MacLeod, ncarb, MRAIC

ABOVE Rendering of Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15, Lateral Office’s planned exhi­bi­ tion for the 2014 Venice Biennale.

A recent cascade of news has put First Nations front and centre in Canadian architecture. In January, Brett MacIntyre, a Dalhousie graduate of Haida heritage, won the Canada Council for the Arts’ Prix de Rome in Architecture for Em­ erg­­ing Practitioners. A month later, a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture was presented to Mission Kitcisakik, an initiative to improve Anishnabe housing through developing local skills. At the end of February, the second annual First Nations Conference on Sustainable Buildings and Communities met in Edmonton. And just days ago, the curatorship of the 2014 Cana­ dian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale was announced: Toronto-based Lateral Office will spear­head an exhibition on Nunavut.

Canadians have long been interested in traditional Native architecture, but these recent developments are marked by decidedly contemporary and practical viewpoints. The realities of housing shortages, the challenge of creating infrastructures to connect dispersed settlements, and the complexities of contemporary cultural Native identities are at the heart of the present projects.

Perhaps even more important, each project partners Native and non-Native participants.

This premise of collaboration stands in contrast to a long-standing top-down approach towards First Nations communities.

An appreciation for the delicate balance between outsider and insider knowledge underlies the careful network of partners that Lateral Office has assembled for their Venice Biennale exhibition, entitled Arctic Adaptations. In commemoration of Nunavut’s 15th anniversary, project leaders Lola Sheppard and Mason White have gathered 15 collaborating groups: five university schools of architecture, five architecture offices (including their own) who have established relationships with Northern communities, and five Nunavut-based community organizations. On the heels of Arctic-themed studios planned for the fall semester, Sheppard and White will select one student from each 6 canadian architect 04/13

school to develop their project for display in Venice, in collaboration with a North-savvy office and an Inuit community group.

The process entails coordination efforts going significantly beyond a typical exhibition of already completed work. Sheppard and White venture that in return, the partnerships they are fostering between diverse voices will lead to richer and better-informed results.

While southern expertise perhaps still retains the final word in Arctic Adaptations, Mission Kit­ ci­sa­k ik focuses on community capacity-building.

Architect Guillaume Lévesque of Emergency Architects Canada worked to train over a dozen locals to improve living conditions at Kitcisakik, an off-reserve community with neither running water nor electricity. The initiative galvanized support from both public and private sectors, and resulted in the renovation of some 26 homes over four years. A recent Canada Council grant will allow the Native builders, several of whom have earned construction certification through jobsite training, to travel to other First Nations com­mu­ nities and share their knowledge.

Easily the most poignant moment at the Governor General’s awards ceremony was Léves­q ue’s expression of gratitude to his Native collaborators, several of whom attended as guests. With Idle No More protests in full swing and Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike only recently ended, their presence in the Rideau Hall audience offered a powerful exemplar of how mutual respectful collaborations could result in meaningful results for individuals and First Nations communities alike.

We are still some distance from the ideal of self-sufficiency within Canada’s Aboriginal communities. First Nations remain under­ represented among professionals and in Canada’s architecture schools, and for that matter, in universities at large. However, the present initiatives are signs that two-way dialogues are opening, and architects would do well to open the door ever wider.

Elsa Lam

elam@canadianarchitect.com

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News Projects John McAslan + Partners to lead master plan for Royal BC Museum in Victoria.

The Royal BC Museum has appointed the international award-winning lead architect John McAslan + Partners (London, UK) with local support from Merrick Architecture (Victoria, BC) to create a master plan which will lay the foundation for the renewal of British Columbia’s museum and archives. “This is an important next step for the museum, and we are delighted to be working with John McAslan and Paul Merrick on this exciting project. Their approach is always thoughtful, clear and highly professional. John McAslan has worked on master plans for Tate Britain, the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music and Dulwich College.

They are also preparing plans for the Museum of London, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, and a new cultural quarter in Doha, Qatar—including the design of four new and restored heritage museums. Their work shows great strength in resolving complicated and often sensitive planning and design issues with creating better use of existing space,” said Professor Jack Lohman, Chief Executive Officer of the Royal BC Museum. John McAslan + Partners is leading a multidisciplinary team of consultants for this Royal BC Museum project: Merrick Architecture, Victoria; Office of McFarlane Biggar architects + designers, Vancouver; ARUP, Seattle; and Donald Luxton & Associates, Vancouver.

Awards Toyo Ito named 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate.

Toyo Ito, a 71-year-old architect whose architectural practice is based in Tokyo, Japan, is the recipient of the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Ito is the sixth Japanese architect to become a Pritzker Laureate—the first five being the late Kenzo Tange in 1987, Fumihiko Maki in 1993, Tadao Ando in 1995, and the team of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa in 2010. The purpose of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is to honour annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture. The laureates receive a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion. According to Pritzker Prize jury chairman, The Lord Palumbo: “Throughout his career, Toyo Ito has been able to produce a body of work

that combines conceptual innovation with superbly executed buildings. Creating outstanding architecture for more than 40 years, he has successfully undertaken libraries, houses, parks, theatres, shops, office buildings and pavilions, each time seeking to extend the possibilities of architecture. A professional of unique talent, he is dedicated to the process of discovery that comes from seeing the opportunities that lie in each commission and each site.”

Toyo Ito began working in the firm of Kiyonori Kikutake & Associates after he graduated from Tokyo University’s Department of Architecture in 1965. In 1971, he founded his own studio in Tokyo, and named it Urban Robot (Urbot). In 1979, he changed the name to Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects. He has received numerous international awards, including the 22nd Praemium Imperiale in Honour of Prince Takamatsu in 2010, and in 2006, the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Royal Gold Medal. Additionally, in 2002, Ito received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement for the 8th Venice Biennale International Exhibition. Calling him a “creator of timeless buildings,” the Pritzker jury cites Ito for “infusing his designs with a spiritual dimension and for the poetics that transcend all his works.” www.pritzkerprize.com World Architecture Festival Awards now open.

Taking place from October 2-4, 2013 in Singapore, the World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards, the world’s largest celebration of architectural excellence, has officially launched with a submission deadline of May 24, 2013. This year’s jury includes architectural leaders Dietmar Eberle of Baumschlager Eberle, Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects, Patrick Bellew of Atelier Ten, Ken Tadashi Oshima of the University of Washington, and Ken Yeang of

A view of the inner harbour in downtown Victoria, with the existing Royal BC Museum in the background.

ABOVE

Llewellyn Davies Yeang. The WAF Awards are the only architectural awards where finalists present live to international juries and have the opportunity to receive critique and recognition from the world’s leading architects and global design press. Centered on this year’s theme of “Value and Values,” WAF offers over 60 hours of informative content, packed into three days of pure design inspiration. Keep up to date with the world’s most innovative and exciting architecture with stimulating debates and keynote talks from world-renowned architects and thinkers, including Sou Fujimoto, Charles Jencks, Odile Decq, Kongjian Yu and Leon van Schaik. www.worldarchitecturefestival.com

What’s New Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15 selected to represent Canada at the 2014 Venice Biennale in Architecture.

The Canada Council for the Arts and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) have announced that Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15 has been selected through a national juried competition to represent Canada at the 2014 Venice Biennale in Architecture. The exhibition will be organized and curated by award-winning firm Lateral Office of Toronto, helmed by Lola Sheppard and Mason White. As Nunavut celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2014, Arctic Adaptations will present innovative architecture proposals rooted in Nunavut’s distinct land, climate and culture, reflecting local traditions of migration, mobility and seasonality. It will also explore how, in light of dramatic environmental, social and economic forces that are transforming the Arctic today, architecture might 04/13­ canadian architect

11

help nurture robust, prosperous and vibrant Northern communities. The Venice Biennale in Architecture is the world’s most prestigious architecture exhibition and competition, equivalent to an Olympics of Architecture. It takes place in Venice, Italy from June 7 to November 23, 2014, and will receive more than 350,000 visitors. “This is the first time that we are sending an exhibition about Canada’s North to the Venice Biennale in Architecture,” said Robert Sirman, Director and CEO of the Canada Council. “Given the rise in national and international interest in the Arctic, this is a timely exhibition. Arctic Adaptations will bring attention and insight to the unique challenges and opportunities that Nunavut is facing, and the possibility for architecture to positively impact its future.” Five design teams will work in collaboration with five Nunavut-based organizations. Each team will be made up of a Canadian school of architecture and a Canadian architecture office with extensive experience working in the North. They will create proposals that respond to regional as well as local realities, including climate change, resource extraction and a young and rapidly growing population. A proposal will be developed on each of the five following themes: Health, Education, Housing,

Recreation and Arts. The themes will be explored through architectural models, videos, interviews, photographs, maps, animations and soundscapes within an immersive environment that evokes the unique landscapes and architecture of Nunavut. The exhibition will tell emblematic stories of Nunavut today and in the future, through architecture. A broadly accessible publication will accompany Arctic Adaptations, and the exhibition will embark on an extensive Canadian tour after it returns from Venice. The Canada Council for the Arts and the RAIC are working together to provide financial and project support for Canada’s representation in Venice. This collaboration is part of a larger project to promote the presentation and appreciation of contemporary Canadian architectural excellence in Canada and abroad. www.arcticadaptations.ca IIDEX 2013 Call for Presentations now open for submissions.

Share your insight and knowledge and make a difference in our industry by presenting a seminar at IIDEX Canada 2013. With over 3,000 conference attendees and 75+ sessions, IIDEX is widely recognized as an industry leader by providing thought-provoking and insightful

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Keeping Up With The Joneses

A streamlined bungalow for a family of four embodies quiet elegance suffused with moments of exhilarating expression. Åbenbare House, Toronto, Ontario D’Arcy Jones Design Inc. Text Leslie Jen Photos Bob Gundu Project

Designer

14 canadian architect 04/13

Åbenbare: the Danish word for “reveal.” And a suitable name for a new house in the north Toronto neighbourhood of Wanless Park that embodies this notion in a number of imagi­ native ways. Designed for a family of four including two young children, the project is technically a renovation of a mid-century bungalow, one that builds upon the foundation of the pre-existing structure. In stark contrast to the bloated and vulgar ostentation of so many

LEFT In this courtyard view, The horizontality of the bungalow is emphasized by the gentle slope of the hip roof, which plays off the concrete cantilever of the freestanding cabana. TOP A purity of form, material and light is immediately apparent in the front foyer. ABOVE Floor-to-ceiling glazing at the rear of the house makes the most of southern exposure, allowing the public spaces to be awash in natural daylight.

new-build residential projects in the adjacent Bridle Path neighbourhood, the Åbenbare House is a paradigm of restrained elegance.

Comfortably nested in its site on a quiet street, the low-slung bungalow reveals traces of its past through its insistence on a contextually appropriate profile and scale. There is no max­ ing out of building envelope; in fact, the mass­ ing and gently sloping hip roof are remarkably similar to what existed before. The overall foot­

print expands on the original only slightly. It just feels right.

Upon approach, views of the house produce a slight quickening of pulse and a sense of antici­ pation. The façade is a calming composition of wood screens and concrete planes, and the poetic minimalism of the entry sequence is en­ hanced by a series of stepped concrete slabs forming a path from the driveway to a discreetly concealed front door. Instead of an unsightly

aluminum downspout, a single rain chain hangs silently against the backdrop of a beautifully cast concrete wall. It is moments like this that reveal a certain West Coast Modernist sensibility.

Not surprising, given that designer D’Arcy Jones received the inaugural Arthur Erickson Memorial Award in 2010 from Western Living magazine in conjunction with the Arthur Erick­ son Foundation for Excellence in Architecture.

Born and bred in British Columbia, Jones re­ 04/13­ canadian architect

15

ceived his Master of Architecture degree from the University of Manitoba in 1999, and has worked in Vancouver ever since, opening up his own practice in 2000. Despite his assertion that he “did not want to transport an aesthetic from BC to a suburban project thousands of miles away,” He has imported a certain sensibility to the Åbenbare House that is uncom­ mon in the Toronto market. Which is not at all a bad thing.

As this is Jones’s first Toronto project, he was not familiar with the re­ gion’s climatic constraints and consequent patterns of life. He says, “I was immediately aware of a culture that spends way more time indoors than we do in Vancouver, with humid summers and cold winters, so the elegant

‘lining’ of a bungalow where this family will spend so much time trumped any exterior expression, maybe more than any project I have ever worked on. The exterior is striking and unfamiliar, but mute and subtle at the same time.”

The contemplative solemnity and quiet cadence of the exterior of the house extends into the generous front foyer. A room unto itself, honed charcoal basalt tiles underfoot contrast with vertical panels of rift-cut white oak stained with a translucent white wash, and an immediate view into a tiny enclosed wood-screened garden court surprises and delights.

It is clear that the house is resolutely articulated in the language of A

A 9

8

7

9

9 2

10

3

1 5 13

11

13

4 B

1 3

4

6

7 15

13 6

14

13

9

C

12 13

13

10'

0

Ground Floor entry office kitchen dining living room

B

8

13 2

1 2 3 4 5

5

10'

6 mud room 7 master bedroom 8 ensuite 9 bedroom 1 10 bedroom 2

16 canadian architect 04/13

11 bathroom 12 shed/cabana 13 garden 14 fire pit 15 bridge

10’

Basement Floor 1 2 3 4 5

guest room bathroom guest room ballet room hockey room

6 7 8 9

playroom utility room laundry room light well

C

OPPOSITE, LEFT TO RIGHT The pleasing complexity of the oak-sheathed ceiling planes is complemented by a skylight over the corridor; the expansive living room enjoys a full view of the lush back garden. ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT A partial view of the kitchen and the skylit corridor leading to the front entry foyer; a Japanese influence can be detected in the sublime minimalism of the front entry.

Modernism; spare, yet warm. Straight away, the conceptual driver of the reveal is expressed in a formal sense. The overexaggerated separation of materials through gaps, spaces and contrasts is apparent in the perfect reveal between the bottom of the oak wall panels and the hard tiled floor, becoming a graphically satisfying composition that follows the profile of the generous oak stair treads leading up to the home’s primary spaces.

A dynamic is established in the episodic progression from the front of the house to the back, and the design accentuates the low-ceilinged, subdued compression of the entry foyer giving way to the increasingly bright, sun-filled and energetic spaces at the rear of the house. A subtle origami-like folding of the oak-lined ceiling planes reflects the inter­ secting hip-roof forms that provide a sculptural complexity, and a sky­ light in the wide corridor introduces constantly shifting patterns of light throughout the day.

The main floor contains the expected living and dining areas, along with a spacious open kitchen and the family’s three bedrooms tucked dis­ creetly along the east side of the house. Remarkably, the bedrooms are all modestly sized, in keeping with smaller room sizes from a previous era.

They are unadorned—almost Spartan—though Jones designed the beds, night tables and all storage millwork. An oasis of greater calm claims the central core—a semi-enclosed office that is prevented from being hermet­ ic through partial walls that don’t quite reach the ceiling.

Expansive floor-to-ceiling glazing opens up the back of the house to capture southern sun that illuminates and warms the main gathering spaces. The L-shaped configuration forms a hardscaped courtyard con­ taining a fire pit. This assemblage is anchored by a cast-on-site concrete pavilion with a generous cantilevered overhang—a cabana/storage shed that incorporates a built-in barbecue that theoretically permits yearround outdoor cooking.

Reveals are present everywhere. Wall planes of gypsum board pull away ever so slightly from the complex symphony of oak-sheathed ceiling planes, and built-in millwork pops out from walls through intentional dark crevices and gaps. Jones maintains that this strategy “elevates dry­ wall to the same level as white oak or basalt, and enables each material to be singularly sculptural and part of a considered composition at the same time...like people in a family, like houses on a block.”

Section A

Section B

Section C

0

10’

04/13­ canadian architect

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Site Plan

10'

0

50’

LEFT, TOP TO BOTTOM The master ensuite bathroom provides a cool counterpoint with charcoal basalt tiles, white Caesarstone quartz countertops and high-gloss cabinetry; D’Arcy Jones designed the bed and all the millwork in the master bedroom, a peaceful retreat that is refreshingly modest in size.

CLIENT Withheld DESIGN TEAM D’Arcy Jones, Amanda Kemeny, Milos Begovic, Daniel Laubrich, Daan Murray, Douglas Gibbsons PROJECT MANAGER Melani Pigat STRUCTURAL Moses Structural Engineers BCIN/BUILDING CODE Gordon Crowhurst LANDSCAPE D’Arcy Jones Design Inc. with Rina Zweig INTERIORS D’Arcy Jones Design Inc. STYLING Catherine Wilkie Designs CONTRACTOR Derek Nicholson AREA 2,500 ft2 main floor plus basement (partially unfinished) BUDGET Withheld COMPLETION October 2012

18 canadian architect 04/13

The sense of contrast is continued further in the kitchen, where, unlike the pale millwork present in the rest of the house, the full wall of oak cab­ inetry is instead stained dark to match the bronze anodized frames of the windows and doors. This device enables the appliance wall to function as a powerful anchor in the open-plan kitchen/dining area.

While most of the budget was spent on the main floor, the basement level is equally considered in terms of program: playroom, hockey room, ballet/yoga studio, laundry room and two guest suites, plus an astonish­ ingly vast amount of storage space. Strategically placed light wells open up the basement, and illuminate otherwise potentially dark rooms.

It is the insanely detailed customization of the house that reveals how this family actually lives. A nine-month dialogue between clients and designer preceded the construction process; all this only after they had already consulted with a number of architects that had proposed predict­ ably generic boxy structures. Instead, Jones offered up a vision and ethos that meshed seamlessly with the clients’ own perspectives.

Delightfully effusive, one-half of the client pair jokes that her wish list began with a desire for a suitably configured storage closet for her Swiffer—something she got, along with a plethora of other well-considered features such as a separate shower for the family’s large dog, a deeper than usual counter for folding laundry—particularly for bed sheets which require more surface area, a massive closet in the mudroom to contain bulky hockey and sports gear, benches at entries to facilitate footwear removal, and loads of built-in storage throughout the house to mitigate the inevitable clutter. Superfluous items were dispensed with: a carport accommodating a single vehicle takes the place of an enclosed heated garage, and the master ensuite is equipped with only one sink because the extra counter space is so much more useful.

Despite the fact that this is an extraordinary kind of home prohibitive to most budgets, it does reflect a refreshing honesty in how people really live and how they want to live. It is designed for specific and unique func­ tions rather than operating on preconceived notions about what luxury living ought to be. In this regard, Jones has raised the design exercise to sublime heights, exhibiting a deftness and mastery for one so young.

He has exceeded what he sought to accomplish in the Åbenbare House.

And it is a revelation indeed. CA

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3/6/13 2:44 PM

Fancy Shanty

A beach house in Nova Scotia pairs generous living spaces with a low-slung exterior that defers to its small-town context.

Shantih, Hunts Point, Nova Scotia Omar Gandhi Architect Inc. TEXT Ingrid Hansen PHOTOS Greg Richardson Photography PROJECT

ARCHITECT

Hunts Point is a small community located on the south shore of Nova Scotia about two hours down the main highway from Halifax. Once central to the province’s hearty fishing industry, the region now survives almost exclusively on seasonal tourism. Wedged between two popular vacation hubs, the weathered village maintains an old and still active fishing wharf

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and an authenticity that is becoming increasingly rare. It is here, among a handful of unpretentious homes that line a sheltered cove, where you will find Shantih. But you’ll have to look for it.

Architect Omar Gandhi designed Shantih with considered sensitivity towards its surrounding cultural landscape. As a result, the almost 3,000-square-foot beach house is barely visible from the road. Its long, low exterior façade appears at the bottom of a gently sloping driveway. High-set strip windows run the considerable length of the east-facing elevation.

A secondary wall with a recessed porch pivots back on a slight southwest angle. The front door—tucked in a passage where the two sections overlap—is easy to miss. Clad in precise rows of lightly bleached cedar shakes, the street façade blends into the horizon and exudes a curious intimacy with a remarkably human scale. It serves as a friendly exchange between the house and historic community that’s not so much modest as it is a thoughtful gesture, like removing your hat when you take your seat in a theatre.

Shantih’s ocean façade presents a striking contrast. A dynamic central section with a shed

Shantih’s horizontal, closed street elevation gives the house a mysterious presence; On its beach side, the house expands to an open, airy volume. OPPOSITE BOTTOM, LEFT TO RIGHT A low entryway contrasts with the high-ceilinged kitchen, dining and living space; The house wraps around a natural hollow facing an ocean cove.

OPPOSITE TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT

roof and glazed wall soars to a height of 17 feet above a natural sloping hollow. A white brisesoleil hangs over the top half, softening this vertical volume. Two asymmetric wings, containing the guest rooms on one end and the main bedroom on the other, flank each side and stretch towards the sea. Shantih echoes the curve of the sheltered bay and embodies a similar protective quality within its composition. The shape of the building is reminiscent of someone holding up their arms about to give you a hug. Perhaps it’s this gesture, combined with the playhouse, trampoline and swings in the yard, that makes

the site feel entirely private and protected from the world, like a magical playground.

Gandhi acknowledges the challenge of designing something at the scale of Shantih and placing it next to smaller existing homes without dominating the site. His process involved extensive research and reading of the landscape, but also following his instincts as a young practitioner. After interning with firms including Kuwa­bara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects and MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, Gandhi began his Halifax-based practice in 2010. A forwardthinking critical regionalist approach is alive in

his work, not overly ideological but honest and pragmatic. It evokes a sense of living in the present while contributing to a living his­tory.

Shantih’s central room, supported by twofoot-deep engineered beams, contains the open kitchen, living and dining areas, including a six-foot-long gas fireplace set into a wall of custom-made cabinets. Natural light sweeps through the glazed façade and animates the space. A large adjacent sunroom features a suspended wood fireplace and folding glass doors that provide a seamless transition between inside and out. The direct association between

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LEFT Generous windows and skylights invite sunlight into the central room.

MIDDLE LEFT A strip of windows offers pano­r amic views of the ocean cove from the main bedroom. BOTTOM, LEFT TO RIGHT Folding glass doors fully open the lounge with its suspended wood fireplace to the outdoor deck; The guest-wing corridor doubles as a photo gallery. OPPOSITE BOTTOM Shantih’s en­­trance is tucked discreetly within a cedar-shingled façade.

the heart of the house and the shore is easy and inviting. It integrates a simultaneous liberty to play or simply to watch. Gandhi’s clients, a retired couple who live primarily in Halifax, devote much of their energy to an organization they founded to support youth living with mental illness. They asked Gandhi to build a refuge that would be full of light, easy to maintain, and able to accommodate their growing extended family. “It’s a very simple idea,” Gandhi says.

“It’s really just about family and looking into the centre and feeling calm.”

While the central room promotes activity, the wings are more subdued. The guest-wing corridor functions as a gallery. Its long, windowless wall is strung with a line of the clients’ travel photos—they’ve circumnavigated the planet by sailboat twice. A series of uniform doors leads to three small bedrooms with high sloping ceilings and two strangely generous, sparse bathrooms. A glazed door at the far end of the hall lures the visitor back outside.

The opposite wing includes a shorter corridor leading into a relatively small main bedroom.

Large windows provide an expansive 180degree view from the front yard with its inground swimming pool to the active wharf at the foot of the bay. The wide span of everchanging scenery is absorbing. As a platform for passive observation, the room feels much like the dome car on a train paused on its tracks.

Shantih exaggerates drama. The geometry of the beach house captures transient Maritime light in its varying moods—bright, soft, hard or dim—as it moves through rooms or bleeds around corners. Each window is situated to frame a distinct view of the diverse surroundings. Locally sourced materials, such as yellow poplar and Eastern white cedar, add texture and warmth. But perhaps the most dramatic gestures occur in the thresholds leading between Shantih’s central room and the entry and bedroom wings. In these compression zones, ceilings lined with acoustic buffers shift from almost claustrophobically low to the unusually high volume of the central room. There is a kind of hush created in the in-between. Gandhi likens the experience to that of Muhammad Ali walking down a quiet corridor and then setting foot into an arena with a crowd yelling and 24 canadian architect 04/13

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Section BB

Section AA

whistling and going crazy. The result—although not at the scale of a big boxing match—is effective, yet somewhat disconcerting at first.

Many architects wouldn’t want their client to name a new building. Gandhi didn’t mind.

The referent is Sanskrit, roughly translated by T.S. Eliot as “the Peace which passeth understanding,” which is repeated at the end of his 1922 poem The Waste Land. “Sometimes we call it a shanty,” the clients say, revealing a sense of humour that “irritates the rest of the family.”

They also say that moving through the compression zones is “like coming through a birth canal.” To the clients’ and architect’s credit, Shantih’s expression is thoroughly modern, devoid of fashion, romantic nostalgia or folksy quaintness.

Shantih’s sense of honesty and meaning derives in large part from the architect’s openness to making the house about the people who live in it. Gandhi takes pleasure in pointing out the pencil markings on a bedroom wall that record the heights of his clients’ grandchildren, or the jumble of packages on the open shelves in the kitchen pantry. “It’s pretty satisfying when this stuff happens,” he says. For Gandhi, it’s not just about the designed building—it’s the playhouse in the middle of the yard, the clothesline strung

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between the house and a nearby tree, and the pencil marks on the wall that attest to Shantih’s success.

Standing in the central room with its lofty ceiling and long wall of glass, I look out towards the white sand cove and sunlight gleaming on the surface of the sea. I feel nothing. Not a desolate or sentimental sort of nothing, but the kind of nothingness you might feel in those rare moments when you inexplicably trust everything is going to be okay. The nothingness that leaves no choice but to turn and embrace the future.

Which is, I think, exactly the state Eliot was alluding to in his poem, and exactly executed in the design of Shantih. CA Ingrid Hansen is a freelance writer based in Mon­ treal and Nova Scotia’s South Shore.

ClientS Rosemary and Keith Hamilton Architect Team Omar Gandhi Structural Andrea Doncaster Mechanical Brian Conrad Electrical Lee Whynot Landscape T&R Landscaping Interiors Omar Gandhi Architect Inc. Kitchen Bulthaup Contractor Deborah Herman-Spartinelli (Trunnells & Tenons Construction) Millwork Len Michalik Physical Model Chad Jamieson Area 3,000 ft2 Budget Withheld Completion Summer 2012

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Wire Mesh Building Envelopes Halifax Stanfield International Airport | Los Angeles Police Department | Aurora GO Transit Station 1-800-325-5993

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CANADA

Off-Grid in Z-Town A Vancouver firmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sequence of houses in a remote Mexican town offers lessons in passive environmental design.

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Projects Zacatitos 001, Zacatitos 002, Zacatitos 003 and Zacatitos 004, Baja California Sur, Mexico Architect Campos Leckie Studio Text Trevor Boddy Photos John Sinal

On a 1980s writing trip, influential architect Ricardo Legorreta led me on a tour of his firm’s work in suburban Mexico City. Our last stop was a housing development called Las Palomas. Make that potential development, as the planned hillside tracts had been stopped cold by the recession, with not a single house constructed. What Legorreta had been able to complete was a series of coloured concrete monuments inspired by his mentor Luis Barragán: a tall azure cylinder, a train of low ochre terraces and an oversized mustard-coloured wall with dozens of perches and cavities—a high-rise condo for pigeons. Legorreta caught my sense of amazement at these powerful shapes strewn over an almost empty landscape, and said with a smile: “We Mexicans build monuments but never get around to the infrastructure. You Canadians build infrastructure but never get around to the monuments!”

I thought of Legoretta’s words upon arriving in Zacatitos, a not-quitetown 45 minutes up a dirt road from San José del Cabo, at the southern tip of Baja California Sur, Mexico. Zacatitos has neither monuments nor infrastructure. There is no water supply other than weekly purchases off a truck, no streets other than shifting tracks through the cactus and dunes, no power lines, no sewer, no bus, not even a store—I had never before visited a Mexican pueblito without a single tienda. There is no plaza other than the beach where desert meets the Sea of Cortez surf, and nothing civic other than a forlorn gazebo, almost never used. Zacatitos is a gathering of second homes for a population one-third Mexican, one-third American and one-third Canadian, who call it “Z,” “Zac” or “Z-Town.” It is also a wonderful place for fresh thinking about the nature of houses.

Z-Town’s most interesting constructions have all been designed by two Vancouverites. Chilean-born Javier Campos went to high school in Montreal and completed undergraduate then architectural studies at the University of British Columbia, where Toronto native Michael Leckie also studied a few years later. Over a decade, the duo has built four innovative and powerful seasonal residences in Zacatitos, all of them off-grid. They have now commenced work on a small resort nearby for a progressive Vancouver developer. We Canadians dote on infrastructure, investing fortunes in supplying full services to our new suburbs, and heavily taxing new downtown development to create a social infrastructure of parks, galleries and daycares. Canada’s planning is conservative, our tract developers controlling of façades and finishes, and our architectural culture rewarding of conformity. Off the grid, off the street and almost off the map, the Campos-Leckie works in Zacatitos are refreshingly original, taking notions of inhabitation and environmental control back to their creative fundamentals.

Zacatitos 004 (Z-4)—House for a Novelist

The most recent Z-Town house by Campos Leckie Studio is both the smallest and most assured. The client, an author of romance novels in her 50s, pointedly asked her designers to shape a house to get away from writing, not to pursue it. Accordingly, there is no writing or work room, just a raised master bedroom with a distant ocean vista, linked by a long corridor to a guest room with its own views over a cactus grove. A west-facing masonry wall flanks the hallway to collect heat away from the bedrooms; perforations provide breezes and patterned light. The long box of the A series of pavilions wrapped around a natural hollow comprise Z-1, one of the first inland houses in Zacatitos.

Left

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Above, left to right A freestanding wall defines the entrance to Z-4 and directs breezes over a cooling pool; cantilevered concrete steps lead to the bedrooms. Opposite left Upstairs in Z-4, a perforated wall serves as a heat sink while admitting wind and dappled light.

sleeping level, capped by bedroom windows, is set on an L-shaped supporting wall backed into a small hill. A second, largely cantilevered wall defines the entry sequence.

Upon arrival, one passes between the two walls and turns a corner punctuated by cacti to enter into Z-4’s most important room, a courtyardcum-pool-deck living space. Here, the house’s subtle passive environmental control strategies come into focus. The space is shaded from the desert sun most of the day, but admits buffered late-day rays, the fireorange glow that ends every Baja day. The two entrance walls also catch and amplify even the tiniest of winds, drawing air across the pool to naturally air-condition the exterior deck and adjacent kitchen/dining room, whose sliding glass walls are pulled open most times and seasons. A galley-style kitchen groups most services along the downslope wall, its line continuing to a bathroom and exterior shower. At the far end of the house on the same plan alignment, a services unit houses pumps, batteries and controllers for solar energy and water systems. The discreet deployment of electrical and hot-water solar panels on the roof, paired with its confident contemporary forms, makes Z-4 both infrastructure and monument.

The play of light around Z-4’s poolside courtyard is a constant marvel, with shadows and reflections changing their angles and intensities by the minute, all through the day. In this modest house of little over 100 square metres of enclosed rooms, Campos and Leckie offer conceptual innova30 canadian architect 04/13

tion by pulling apart functions into separated blocks, then filling the gaps with light and wind. The presence of walls and choices of material passively temper the environment. The house’s main mass is lifted above the ground, supported by entrance walls at one end and the kitchen-dining pavilion at the other. This centrifugal strategy creates livability at the heart of the plan. Studying Z-4’s sections and energy diagrams confirms that the roofless courtyard is the most artfully composed room in the house. Campos and Leckie have written that their Zacatitos houses are “devices to mediate and focus inhabitants’ experience of the site.” That this philosophy is combined with a simply eloquent repertoire of detail, and in so modest a house, is doubly impressive.

Zacatitos 001 (Z-1)—House for a Software Mogul

The client for Z-1, a sprawling residential enclave, is a Canadian who cashed in his shares from a large software company a dozen years ago to invest in new startups. He is also working with Campos Leckie Studio on a compact residence nearing completion at Whistler’s Green Lake. While Z-4 links its disaggregated program elements with freestanding and perforated walls, Z-1 deploys a set of sublime desert plantings to connect five discrete pavilions: garage/gatehouse, living/dining room, master bedroom, guest rooms and pool cabana.

One of the first dozen houses in Zacatitos, Z-1’s pavilions are arrayed at different alignments around the slopes of a natural bowl to maximize

Z-4—Sun + Wind DiaGRAM

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both views and privacy. The hub of the five is the living/dining block, set on a rise of land. Its rooftop living area, equipped with a large barbecue and built-in seating, is dominated by a Miesian shade pavilion in light steel, which frames 360-degree desert and mountain views. A stair is set against a higher wall and is open to the sky, collecting and directing winds to cool the main living spaces below. Similarly, throughout Z-1, roof plates are extended out from walls to provide shade, deflect breezes, and create shadows that visually define the concrete volumes. Corridors and hallways—open at their ends, ceiling or both—provide further opportunities for cooling through amplified breezes.

Z-1

Zacatitos 002 (Z-2)—House for an Art Curator

This seasonal vacation and retirement house for a Vancouver art curator and an artist partner is located a mere 200 metres downslope from Z-1.

On a much more modest budget than Z-1, the house is a single volume, with a central courtyard set in between a public zone (living, kitchen, dining) and a private zone (sleeping and bathing). Above the courtyard, a large round opening was designed to accommodate a Palo Blanco tree.

The tree died, but the opening has a welcome vestigial life as a large oculus. The west end of what the designers call Z-2’s “convertible living space” is a large outdoor living room covered with a steel and woven cane canopy, which wraps around to the south, shading the ground floor including the area enclosed by its sliding glass doors. As with the other Zacatitos houses, this outdoor living room extends occupation into the landscape, while the sliding doors define a smaller enclave for storm season.

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Conclusions

Campos undertook an extended design process for Z-1 including periods spent living on site. When the house opened in 2003, it was his first completed design. The three other houses were designed jointly by Campos and Leckie, and demonstrate an evolving understanding of passive house design. “We wanted to go beyond the ‘clip-on’ solar and wind devices we had learned in school,” says Campos. “The four houses are our sequential refinement of a belief that environmental control can be accomplished through architectural elements alone.” Indeed, Z-4 is a stunning distillation of the principles of the previous houses, and its low budget and constrained site set into a hill make it the most cogent demonstration of the approach’s success.

Few Canadian architects have the opportunity to spend a decade de-

Z2—Rendered Section

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signing a sequence of off-grid houses where desert meets ocean. Our issues in passive house design are finding and holding heat, rather than displacing or reducing it. But the lessons of good design travel widely, and Campos Leckie Studio’s rigour, their thoughtful iteration and reiteration, their dialogue of built and landscape forms, and their questioning of the gizmo-dominated clichés of passive design apply back home. Future Cana­dian buildings will need to provide more of their own infrastructure through virtuous environmental design, and if we get a monument or two in the process, as did Z-Town, so much the better. CA Vancouver architecture critic and urbanist Trevor Boddy is the editor of two justreleased books, Blue Sky Living: The Architecture of Helliwell and Smith (Images Press, Sydney) and Pools: The Aquatic Architecture of HCMA (ORO, San Francisco).

The shaded outdoor living space in Z-2; a sculp­tural oculus punctuates Z-2’s central courtyard. ABOVE left Located on a more exposed site than the others in the series, Z-3 features enclosing walls that protect the house from the elements. ABOVE RIGHT The strategic configuration of Z-1’s corridors creates breezes through the Venturi effect, as air funnels from high-pressure to low-pressure zones within the house.

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Zacatitos 001 Client Withheld Architect Team Javier Campos, Matthew Chan, Henning Knötzele, Peeroj Thakre Construction Ian McGonagle (Aguaclara S.A. de C.V.) Structural Francisco Hernández Váldez, Paco Alcabo Area 3,575 ft2 interior; 5,800 ft2 exterior including pool area and roof deck Budget Withheld Completion 2003

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Zacatitos 002 Client Greg Bellerby and allyson clay Architect Team Javier Campos, Tom Chung, Joanna Kolakowska, Michael Leckie, Laura McMurran, Shamus Sachs, Mark Sin, Daniel Sontag, David Zeibin Construction Ian McGonagle (Aguaclara S.A. de C.V.) Structural Francisco Hernández Váldez, Paco Alcabo Area 935 ft2 interior; 1,510 ft2 exterior including roof deck Budget $264,000 Completion 2011 Zacatitos 003 Client Autio/Schachter Architect Team Javier Campos, Tom Chung, Michael Fugeta, Joanna Kolakowska, Michael Leckie, Christopher Pollard, Mark Sin Construction APA Arquitectura Structural APA Arquitectura Area 1,830 ft2 interior; 2,600 ft2 exterior including pool area and roof deck Budget Withheld Completion 2011 Zacatitos 004 Client Withheld Architect Team Javier Campos, Jessica Croll, Maria Alejandra Herrera, Michael Leckie Construction APA Arquitectura Structural APA Arquitectura Area 1,230 ft2 interior; 1,550 ft2 exterior including pool area and exterior living room Budget $320,000 Completion 2013

Z-1—Site Plan 1 east villa 2 main villa 3 west villa

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TECHNICAL

Panelization Takes Command

The complete factory construction of wood-frame buildings using sophisticated timber panelization technologies produces high-quality results.

TEXT

ABOVE A wall panel in production at Brockport Home Systems, a largely automated facility in Toronto.

Lloyd Hunt Brockport Home Systems Ltd. unless otherwise noted

PHOTOS

In 1956, my father built the house where he is still living, on the top of the Niagara Escarpment in a snow belt. At that time, everything from customsized windows down to kitchen cabinets was built on site. In an era when roofs were usually stick-framed, he made a radical move in deciding to construct roof trusses. He ordered drawing templates from Practical Builder magazine, laid the trusses out on the main-level subfloor, and fastened them together with 2” galvanized concrete nails and 3/8” plywood gussets, single shear on each face. The trusses were then set aside while the exterior walls were constructed. Since its completion, the trusses have been repeatedly tested for strength and deflection by many a winter storm.

On-site truss assembly was an exciting new method of construction for the time. Today, it is assumed that residential trusses—along with stairs, doors, windows and kitchens—are all factory-made. Designing kitchens is as easy as a visit to IKEA where “your dream kitchen [is] coming right up” and “you do not have to be handy.” Truss designers use Mitek Sapphire Structure software to create three-dimensional truss layouts from scratch or from imported Revit or SoftPlan drawings, and then send the files to the factory floor for construction. These high-tech tools allow for advanced assemblies and therefore require less expertise on site. Timber construction has also advanced in the last 30 years with the introduction of manufactured wood products, notably wood I-joists, laminated veneer lumber (LVL), parallel strand lumber (PSL), laminated strand lumber (LSL) and oriented strand board (OSB).

While at first it may sound radical, the complete factory construction of wood-frame buildings using timber panelization is a logical development from these advances. This technology functions by building all floors and walls in panels on the factory floor and assembling them on site. The logic is similar to using precast hollow-core concrete floor slabs or precast concrete walls, but offers the advantages and economies of wood-frame construction.

In the most advanced panelization facilities in Canada, the process is to a large part automated, ensuring a high level of precision. Brockport Home Systems in Toronto, for instance, uses software similar to Mitek Sapphire Structure to create 3D drawings for entire wood-frame buildings, which are subsequently fed into computer-controlled cutting and assembly machinery. Going beyond regular construction drawings, panelized shop drawings allow for scrutiny of every timber component in a project. The detailed review of 3D drawings allows for potential conflicts between systems to be detected and accommodated early on. For instance, at the design stage, an extra I-joist may be added to coordinate with 4” plumbing drains. This is the kind of change that, with traditional construction, requires foresight, planning and communication on site—a challenge with the highly compartmentalized trades found on presentday construction sites. High-precision 3D models also double as excellent record drawings at the end of the project.

Price-wise, factory-constructed panelized buildings are not necessar04/13­ canadian architect

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Quadrangle Architects

Quadrangle Architects ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT An interior rendering of HOT, a development designed by Quadrangle Architects to maximize the capabilities of panelization technology, displays the long spans possible with panelized systems; Exterior rendering of HOT, with façade elements tailored to its corner site. BOTTOM, LEFT TO RIGHT OSB sheets are moved onto the cutting table by suction cups; Multi-functional machine heads incorporate gluing and nailing tools; Completed floor panels ready for placement; Typical panelized construction site.

ily cheaper than conventional on-site wood constructions, but the advantages in terms of quality are numerous. To start with, the source materials can be controlled in a more rigorous manner. Brockport’s director of research and development, Robert Kok, explains that the factory’s high construction volumes allow them to demand premium-quality materials from suppliers. Materials are sorted before they enter the manufacturing process and any defects are rejected, including badly warped or knotted studs. This is in stark contrast to the “no picking, no sorting” notices typically seen at lumberyards. The environmentally controlled factory environment allows for wood to be properly acclimatized and not subject to the elements as they would be on a construction site, where materials are often unprotected from rain or subjected to freezing.

The assembly process itself is also highly controlled and incorporates testing. For instance, floors are constructed with 4’ x 12’ x 7/8” OSB and assembled with high-quality low-VOC elastomeric glue. Machine-controlled nailing ensures that the specified nails and spacing are used, and each nail is precisely centered in its joist or stud. Samples are tested after 24 hours, seven days and 30 days, ensuring a solid, no-squeak floor. Since the glue can cure in a controlled environment free of water penetration, the panels are unlikely to develop “freeze crack” once the heat is turned on in a building, and there is no need for surface sanding to correct edge expansion of the OSB. The floor panels are all designed to the highest building code standards for deflection, allowing porcelain tiles to be installed on any OSB floor surface without concern that the grout will crack.

Factory-built wall panels, for their part, are also higher-quality products. Machines that control the spacing and depth of nailing make a

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noticeable difference in shear-wall construction—averting on-site arguments with builders due to common mistakes that affect shear-wall performance, such as over-nailing. Two pre-drilled holes in each stud allow electrical wiring to be quickly installed. Finally, wall panels are equipped with a high-quality air barrier that will experience no wind loads greater than the wind from delivery trucks travelling at posted speed limits. In the final building, further air leakage is reduced due to the precision fit of the panels.

For both wall and floor panels, efficiencies in terms of material and time are notable. Wood LVL, PSL, LSL and I-joists are all delivered to the factory within 1/16” of specified length. Other materials are cut in a planned way to minimize waste. For clients seeking extra LEED points, wood can be specified from certified forests.

Factory construction ensures safer and more efficient labour conditions. David Moses of Moses Structural Engineers notes that, according to an Arizona State University study, homebuilders spend the majority of their time waiting, whether for trades, weather, deliveries or other delays.

“Imagine you own a factory manufacturing a product,” he says. “You would never have your people and equipment sitting around idling for 50% of the time. You’d be out of business.” In a plant, semi-skilled labour can work on construction in two shifts, rather than the typical single shift of skilled labour on site. When complete, the panels are numbered and systematically packaged for quick installation. Typical assembly time for a 4,000-square-foot house is two days. This is fast enough that neighbours do not have time to file complaints about construction noise—nor can clients or contractors make last-minute changes to the design.

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Component Diagram

With our woodsmen history, Canadians have been stereotyped as “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” This manifests in Part 9 of the National Building Code, where, regardless of professional engineering or architectural credentials, all are permitted to construct simple buildings less that 600 square metres in floor area and three storeys in height. The tacit prerequisite for the use of the rafter tables referenced in National Building Code Article 9.23.4.2 is a firm grasp of the imperial framer’s square. Today, the articles of Part 9 referring to timber structural design are becoming quickly obsolete with declines in common skill, changes in timber technology, improved timber products, consumer demand for much larger homes (and spans that exceed the building code design tables), and the requirement by many building departments for stamped engineering drawings regardless of building size.

Panelization with its sophisticated construction and longer spans makes timber construction securely a family member in Part 4 of the National Building Code, taking its place alongside steel and concrete in terms of use and spans. Changing building codes are encouraging timber construction up to four storeys across Canada and up to six storeys in British Columbia. The HOT development in Mississauga by Quadrangle Architects provides a hopeful example of the potential results. Working in concert with an enlightened developer, the architects are employing panelized timber to construct a series of four-storey mid-rise residential buildings. Similar to modern European designs, HOT takes shape as a

simple block with added modules. The long deck spans available with panelized construction allow for open plans and deep light penetration into the residential units. The use of renewable wood construction accrues measurable environmental benefits.

Moreover, by building in wood, significant cost savings are achieved relative to a comparable concrete construction. In 2010, Grant Roughley of RHC Design Build assessed cost savings when constructing two buildings of identical size and occupancy, one with a steel structure and the second with wood construction. Grant concluded that the cost difference was 16.3% lower on the overall project budget for the woodframed system.

Timber construction has evolved radically from the time when entire buildings were crafted on site. Over the past decades, individual building components have come to be assembled in factories and only installed on site. We are not far from a moment when, as Kent Larson of MIT’s Open Source Building Alliance puts it, “building homes on site makes as much sense as building a car in your driveway.” As its efficiencies and advantages emerge, it is clear that we are preparing for an era where panelization will take command. CA Architect Lloyd Hunt has a practice based in Glen Huron, Ontario. He teaches timber design and building codes at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture.

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Books profiled. Still, it’s a huge contribution to archi­ tectural education everywhere.

Annmarie Adams is William C. Macdonald Professor and Director of the School of Architecture at McGill Uni­versity.

Architecture and the Canadian Fabric Edited by Rhodri Windsor Liscombe. UBC Press, 2011.

Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities

By Alexandra Lange. Princeton Architectural Press, 2012.

Architects are notoriously poor writers.

Two new books address this problem—Alex­ andra Lange’s Writing About Architecture and Tom Spector and Rebecca Damron’s How Architects Write. The simultaneous appearance of these texts and the question of how to teach architec­ ture students to write are the focus of an edify­ ing Pedagogy blog recently hosted by the Society of Architectural His­torians. The discussion topic of “Teaching Writing to Architects” makes abundantly clear that more than a few archi­tec­ ture schools are trying to address the problem.

Lange’s book is particularly groundbreaking in its stance as a handbook. She takes six classic pieces of critical writing in architecture and analyzes each one’s rhetorical strategies. Lewis Mumford on Lever House, Herbert Muschamp on Bilbao, Michael Sorkin on adding to the Whit­ney, Charles Moore on the monument, Fred­erick Law Olmsted on parks, and Jane Jacobs on cities: these all serve as snapshots of archi­tectural criticism since 1870, and espe­ cially since 1952.

Lange believes that we can all become better critics by studying the writing techniques of these masters. This incitement to imitate (plus a healthy dose of repetition) is the way we learn to dance, to play music, to cook, to drive and even to design buildings.

Limitations? It’s written from a decidedly New York point of view. And some readers may wonder why a piece by the late Ada Louise Hux­ table, who set high standards for criticism as the first full-time architecture writer hired by the New York Times, isn’t among the six works 38 canadian architect 04/13

This tome collects essays from a range of scholars deploying some of the latest approaches for the study of Canadian architecture. The scope of the collection is ambitious, beginning with two strong pieces on European perceptions and symbolic landscapes in New France, proceeding through Upper Canada, Confederation and modernity, closing with a useful excursus on ways of learn­ ing about First Nations building practices.

The most compelling essays break new ground in the analysis of familiar buildings or bring previously obscure architectural works to light.

These include an appreciation of the postwar Quebec bungalow and a particularly coherent assessment of the term “Brutalism” and its ap­ pearances in Canada. Other essays of note in­ clude an exploration of the imagined national space emanating over the radio waves from Maple Leaf Gardens, an analysis of typological change in six different city markets built on a single site in Toronto, and a study of a federal architectural experiment in modern Arctic colonization.

The deployment of contemporary critical theory and the serious investigation of vernacu­

lar architectures are very welcome. As a criti­ cism, the Prairies and the Maritimes, not to mention the category of “users,” figure only mar­ ginally in this collection. That said, the essays greatly advance the field of architectural history in Canada. Given the breadth on display, Cana­ dian architects and historians surely will find items of interest and pertinence to their practice.

David Monteyne is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary.

The Disappearance of Darkness

By Robert Burley. Princeton Architectural Press, 2012.

In 2005, as Kodak Canada announced the clos­ ure of its Toronto plant, architectural photog­ rapher Robert Burley set out to document the final collapse of the analog photography indus­ try. Within years, Kodak’s empire would be reduced to rubble, Polaroid’s once state-of-theart complex—designed in part by Alvar Aalto— abandoned, and Agfa left bankrupt. Only Ilford, the British producer of high-quality films and papers, would survive to cater to a small minor­ ity of diehard film fanatics.

Burley remains, to date, one of these. All of the images in this volume are shot in film—a testament to his enduring love for and trust in the tools of his trade, tinged with a certain irony.

These spaces are sad to contemplate, bearing their disuse like open wounds. In time, nearly all will be demolished, built over to house the new technologies that crept up so stealthily on the industry: dead before they hit the ground.

Among the crowd of ex-Kodak workers gath­ ered to watch the demolition of the Chalon-surSaône plant in France, Burley acutely observes that he is the only one to document the event with film. In a cloud of smoke, the building seems to let out a final cry: “Et tu, Brute?”

Cerys Wilson is a photographer and writer based in Montreal.

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Calendar Building Momentum for Transportation Funding

April 23, 2013 Taking place at the Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto and moderated by Matt Blackett of Spacing magazine, this event focuses on civic engagement and funding structures. http://ebw.evergreen.ca/whats-on/ special-events/innovation-talks Private Jokes, Public Places

April 23-27, 2013 Set in an architecture school’s final adjudication proceedings, Oren Safdie’s play at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto lets an audience sit in on a battle of egos. https://twitter.com/seventhmethod Grow Op: Exploring Landscape and Place

Teddy Cruz lecture

April 25, 2013 As part of the Urban Field Speakers series at the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art in Toronto, award-winning architect Teddy Cruz speaks at 7:30pm about alternative housing and public infrastructure. www.prefix.ca Building Dynamics: Exploring Architecture of Change

April 26-27, 2013 This international symposium at the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary explores what change means in architecture and how it is manifested: buildings weather, programs change, envelopes adapt, interiors are reconfigured, systems replaced. www.building dynamics.org

April 24-27, 2013 This exhibition Pulp Art Party: Architecture for presents indoor conceptual landHumanity Toronto fundraiser scape installations in the rooms of April 27, 2013 This promotional the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. fund­raiser at the Metropolis SOPREMA_PubSoprabase-CanadianArchitect.pdf 1 12-10-11 10:05 www.gladstonehotel.com Factory in Toronto invites design-

ers to design and build installations and furniture out of reclaimed material. Proceeds go to Architecture for Humanity Toronto future projects. http://pulpartparty.ca/about/ Jane’s Walk

May 4-5, 2013 Jane’s Walk is a celebration of people and cities taking place all around the world on the first weekend of May, to coincide with the birthday of Jane Jacobs.

Created in 2007 in Toronto by friends of the urban thinker Jane Jacobs, the event has grown from 27 walks to over 500, from Calgary to Canberra and Guelph to Guadalajara. www.janeswalk.net Sustainable Building Symposium in Edmonton

May 7, 2013 Alberta’s premier green building event at the Edmonton Expo Centre enables attendees to spend the day with architects, engineers, builders and green

product experts involved in Alberta’s sustainable building industry. www.asbs2013.ca Industrial Spaces to Public Parks

May 14, 2013 This discussion at the Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto focuses on turning industrial spaces into modern multi-use public parks. Mira Shenker of PROFIT magazine moderates a panel comprised of architecture critic Christopher Hume, architect Joe Lobko, urban planner Jennifer Keesmaat, landscape architect Netami Stewart, editor Edward Keenan, and Dave Harvey of Toronto Park People. http://ebw.evergreen.ca/whats-on/ special-events/innovation-talks For more information about these, and additional listings of Canadian and international events, please visit www.canadianarchitect.com

04/13­ canadian architect

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BACKPAGE

film still, Coast Modern

West Coast Classics

Six years in the making, Coast Modern uses evocative video footage to tell the story of the mid-century modern house’s dissemination along the western seaboard.

TEXT

Sean Ruthen

Documentary film, like architectural photography, is a byproduct of our Modern age, and hence the perfect medium through which to explore the subject of Modern architecture.

Recently, films on Louis Kahn, Charles and Ray Eames, and Pruitt-Igoe have graced silver screens across North America. Coast Modern can now take its place among them as a thoughtful reflection on postwar architecture. As admitted newcomers to the subject, directors Mike Bernard and Gavin Froome set out to distill the spirit of numerous Modern houses along the western coast of Canada and the United States.

By not being architects themselves, the directors have captured the houses through a distinctively human lens, resulting in a documentary with broad-reaching appeal.

While a film on West Coast residential Mod­ ern­ism might at first seem to be only of interest to architects, Bernard and Froome make their topic accessible through down-to-earth interviews with practitioners, educators, critics and residents. In lieu of a voice-of-God narration technique, the filmmakers rely on the interviewees, along with contemporary footage in the homes, to recount the evolution of the Modern42 canadian architect 04/13

Architect Peter Pratt’s son plays ball against a concrete fireplace in their West Vancouver family home. Pratt created the house as well as restoring the adjacent 1951 dwelling designed by his father, the late Ned Pratt—a seminal figure in Vancouver’s architectural community.

Above

ist house up and down the Pacific West Coast.

Starting with the Eppich house by Arthur Erickson, other treats include tours through Richard Neutra’s and Rudolph Schindler’s iconic works, along with a gracefully aging Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house in Seattle.

As a general primer on Modernist design, the directors travel to Fallingwater and to the Villa Savoye in Poissy, with a quick stop in New Canaan to visit Philip Johnson’s Glass House.

While this does much to ground the film in the larger lens of Modernism, it is the visits to the West Coast houses themselves, and the depiction of the present-day life going on in them, that gives the movie a sense of poetry. For instance, one sequence shows a family with two young boys who live in the Eppich house going about their day-to-day activities, gathering veggies from terrace planters and catching rain on their tongues. Several interviews, unfortunately, had to be cut out for time—seven hours were left on the editing room floor. Some of this footage will re-emerge in the movie’s DVD release, including interviews with Bruce Haden, Barry V. Downs and Barry Griblin.

Coast Modern is most effectively summed up by two of the movie’s introductory remarks. The first reflects on the spirituality of “going West”

while the second comments on how Modernism is a beautiful failure—pretty as a picture but not everyone’s cup of tea. In a sense, the film testifies to Modern architecture’s growing heroic status. The public at large is beginning to give Modernism a second look as the most notable structures of the era are added to heritage registries. At a Q&A with the directors following the screening I attended, there was a general sense of bewilderment as to why this style of architecture did not gain more traction in the postwar era. Perhaps the film’s appeal has been in opening “eyes which do not see.”

In the end, the film is both a comprehensive and concise overview of West Coast residential Modernism, certainly as it is expressed in an array of beautiful settings between the mountains and the sea. And with invitations by homeowners including Douglas Coupland to film inside their private residences, a layer of domestic reality is added that challenges the charge that these houses are beautiful failures. CA Sean Ruthen is a Vancouver-based architect and writer.

Coast Modern screening and DVD purchase information is available at www.coastmodernfilm.com.

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