Formae Magazine by Jordan Jackson

Quarterly Architectural Digest

Sustainability Through Design IN THIS ISSUE

Q&A w/ Bjarke Ingels—19 Resilient by Design—30 Amager Bakke Waste-to-Power—40 Sidewalk Labs— 48 University of Toronto— 56

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formae.com Winter 2017

Formae

In This Issue

In This Issue DEPARTMENTS 08 Letter From The Editor Our Very First Issue by Jason O’Neil 10 Opinion Ordinary Briefs for Ordinary People by Finn Williams 12 Opinion Architecture, a Catalyst for Change by Jordan Jackson 14 Cultural Builds African American History Museum by Catherine Osborne 24 Studio Profile Scott & Scott Architects by Erin Donnelly 52 Interiors Zumtobel Lighting by Jordan Jackson 56 School in Review University of Toronto by Jordan Jackson

On the Cover

Unfortunately, it usually takes a natural disaster to remind cities how vulnerable they are—and how urgent long-range resiliency planning is. The San Francisco Bay Area, however, isn’t waiting around.

The final touches are being put on the striking aluminum facade of Amager Bakke, a waste-to-power incierator in Copenhagen Denmark that will double as a ski slope and recreational space.

“As architects we have the responsibility to try and avoid universal solutions,” BJARKE INGELS, PG. 19

60 Small Scale The Chimney House by Ellen Himelfarb 62 Community Pre-Launch Questions & Desires by Jason O’Neil

FEATURES 19 Q&A with Bjarke Ingels BIG ideas, BIG personality by Beatrice Galilee 30 Resilient By Design Challenge to end climate change by Diana Budds 40 Amager Bakke Waste-to-Power An innovative type of public space by Vanessa Quirk 48 Sustainable City Innovations New community by Sidewalk Labs by Jordan Jackson

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Sustainability Formae

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Serpentine Gallery Pavillion Q&A with Bjarke Ingels

African American History Museum Cultural Builds

Sidewalk Toronto Sustainable City Innovations

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Imprint & Contributors

Quarterly Architectural Digest Vol 1 | Winter 2017 | Sustainability Issue

formae.com

Editorial Director Nelda Roger

Lead Art Director Andrew Wong

Associate Art Director Vicky Lee

Photography Director Amanda Yeung

Editor-in-Chief Jason O’Neil

Creative Director Jordan Jackson

Lead Project Manager Kari Silver

Web Editor Jaclyn Tersigni

Creative Director Sandy Kim

Senior Designer Karl Sullivan

Associate Project Manager Judy Yen

Web Designer Daniel Hildreth

Managing Editor Kendra Jackson

Designers Kari Silver Bianca Dipietro Alexis Andrews Quan Tran

Project Manager Interns Johnson Zheng Madison Parker Stacy Jarvis Paige Carey

Web Intern Evelyn Chin

Design Interns Olivia Montagnese Sam Mollicone Illustrators Anna Ballares Albi Bakaru Faizan Anjum Anna Antul

Contributing Editors Veronika Aquila, Alexandra Caufin, Terrence Dick, David Dick-Agnew, Jeremy Freed, Rafael Gómez-Moriana, Leonard Greco, Katie Hayden, Jose Hevia, Matthew Krouse, Andrea Janus, Janna Levitt, John Lorinc, Luis Mora, Philam Nguyen, Carolyn Pioro, Patrick Pittman, Corinna Reeves, Papagena Robbins, David Sokol, Lynda Spark, Eric Staudenmaier, Riley Stewart, Catherine Sweeney, Jeanne Tan, Laura May Todd, Kyle Troutman, Samantha Tse, Henry Tyminski, Alex Wallace

Letters to the Editor Formae welcomes your comments. Please send your letters to: editor@formae.com Staff can be reached at: firstname@formae.com

All rights reserved. Any reproduction of the contents without written authorization from the publisher is strictly prohibited. The publisher cannot be held responsible for loss of, or damage to, unsolicited materials.

Senior Associate Editor Eric Donnelly Copy Editor Helen Guri Contributing Editors Andrew Braithwaite Tim Mckeough Elizabeth Pagaliacolo David Theodore Adele Weder

Publishing Formae is published four times per year (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall) and regularily accept independent contributors for our publications. Published by Formae Publishing Inc. 213 King St. West, Suite 308 Toronto, ON, Canada M6R 2B2 Tel: (416) 203-9674, Fax: (416) 2023-9842 Online: formae.com

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Winter 2017

Formae

Letter from the Editor

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR When it comes to urban planning, there has been little to no change in how we live for the past 75 years. Once people started to become more independently wealthy, the suburban house became more and more desirable. The house of your dreams, in a large lot, with a garden and a driveway. What more could you ask for? But as more of the population started adopting this lifestyle, our cities and modes of transportation were unable to keep up. Hours of traffic became part of our daily lives. Leading to a greater level of frustration, increased carbon emissions, and inefficient cities. The first issue of Formae will focus on the incredible projects happening worldwide that are contributing to making our cities better. Smarter, cleaner, faster, and all with less waste. This quarterly’s cover story features BIG’s (Bjarke Ingles Group) newest project in Denmark, the Amager Bakke Waste-to-Power Plant. It’s a power plant that converts waste into usable energy with extremely low emissions. As we discuss in “From Scraps to Slopes” (pg 40), the plant produces such low emissions that BIG saw an opportunity to embark on a never-before-seen project; turning the entire building into a public ski slope. Taking what is normally an eye sore of the community, and turning it into a point of activity. It’s hard to explain just how difficult it is to defy convention in planning and architecture. You’re fighting against bylaws, purists, and sometimes, Mother Nature. Innovation isn’t always met with acceptance. That seems to be the case in this issue’s feature about Resilient by Design. The Bay Area Challenge put together by municipal and state governments to combat the effects of climate change in the Bay Area, California (pg 30). As flooding, earthquakes, droughts, and wildfires threaten the region, the government has called upon ten different architecture firms from across the globe to come up with innovative solutions to tackle an extremely difficult problem in the area.

With this being the very first issue of Formae, I thought I’d give you more of an introduction as to what we are trying to achieve with this publication. We’re not so much interested in providing you with the most up-to-date content, but rather content that challenges your thinking as an architect, or an appreciator of architecture. A truly in-depth look at new and innovative projects that are making a difference in our world. Case studies, long form articles, photo essays and interviews. We’re doing this because we believe in breaking the status quo. That’s why we decided to tackle the very difficult topic of Sustainable Cities first. With 50% of the world’s population set to move to urban centers in the next 50 years, how will today’s tired infrastructure and planning accommodate all of these extra people? It’s a large question. While this issue tackles parts of it, there will be many left unanswered. In short, we need to be better. I know we can be better.

Jason O’Neil, Editor-in-Chief jason@formae.com | @jason_oneil

Winter 2017

Formae

Opinion

OPINION | PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE

Ordinary Briefs for Ordinary People by Finn Williams

THE UK IS HOME to the world’s leading architects and designers. It has one of the largest design sectors in the world and boasts an architecture sector worth over £4 billion a year, plus London is “the world’s global capital for creative design and construction skills”. But look out the window – our everyday environment appears very different. What we visualise, design and consume on our screens is increasingly distant from the reality of what’s outside the front door. London may have the greatest concentration of architectural practices of any city in the world, but does it have the greatest concentration of good and practical buildings? Step outside the highest value areas in the capital, or across the country, and the answer is usually written several storeys tall in pastel-coloured render, rainscreen cladding panels, and hit-and-miss window patterns. It is evident in the lack of care for ordinary places; the playgrounds picked from catalogues, schools patched together with Portakabins, and stations surrounded by “value-engineered” white palisade fencing. Our public realm, public buildings and public infrastructure are more real and more important indicators of the health of the country’s design industry than the latest shop interiors. Nowhere is this more critical than our attitude to the design of public housing. The Grenfell

Tower fire is tragic proof that we have got the balance wrong – and an urgent challenge to architects and designers to question who we’re really designing for. To paraphrase Bruce Mau, how has the world of design become so disconnected from the design of the world? Firstly, for the vast majority of the built environment, architects simply aren’t involved. According to the RIBA, only six per cent of new homes in the UK are designed by architects. That means, last year, over 200,000 homes were built in England without the input of an architect. Meanwhile hundreds of practices compete to design a single museum. Of course, just because a building has been designed by an architect doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. But even where architects are involved, their role is increasingly subservient to other consultants, project managers, planning consultants, quantity surveyors and even marketing advisors. The marginalisation of the profession is epitomised by what Terry Farrell calls the paradox of the Maggie’s Centre. Each Maggie’s Centre is beautifully designed by a celebrated architect, to a generous budget. But they “invariably sit next to sometimes woeful mega-hospitals”, claims Farrell. “These mega-hospitals, like many other everyday places including high streets and social housing estates, are often devoid of good design thinking,

as well as ongoing investment in maintenance and stewardship,” he says. Architecture is a profession that is fuelled by inequality, or that even moreso, exacerbates it. The design media propagates this problem by turning its back on mainstream projects like mega-hospitals, and instead training its cameras on the oneoff exceptions. For every exquisitely detailed residential project that was showcased on Dezeen in 2016, there were 262 new homes that were never published. Architects may only design six per cent of all homes, but Dezeen only shows the top 0.4 per cent. Getting in that top fraction of coverage has become more of a preoccupation for some than getting things built. As Marcus Fairs himself recognises, many designers and architects today are little more than quality content providers for the popular media. Where architects do build, they find themselves serving an increasingly narrow public. Developers understand that employing high quality architects is essential to be able to justify charging high prices for Grade A workspace or super-prime property. So the more celebrated the practice, the more likely it is they will be producing architecture that is a luxury not everyone can afford. Today architecture is a profession that is fuelled by inequality, or that even exacerbates it.

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Opinion Formae

“Our public realm, public buildings and public infrastructure are more real and more important indicators of the health of the country’s design industry than the latest shop interiors.”

It wasn’t always the case. Kooperativa Förbundets Arkitektkontor (The Co-Operative Architecture Office) was founded in 1925 to design “new norms for the whole of Swedish society”. By the 1930s it was the largest architectural office in Sweden, attracting brilliant young architects to work anonymously on the most mundane types of buildings; supermarkets, factories, and social housing. Their focus on making good design affordable for ordinary people was taken up and exported by organisations like IKEA. In the UK, the Design Research Unit was founded in the 1940s on a similar set of principles: that design should be co-operative, and it should be for everyone. The Design Research Unit brought together architecture, graphics, and industrial design to “recondition and redesign public utility services”. Associates including Frederick Gibberd, Jock Kinneir, and Richard and Su Rogers designed everything from pub signage, to ferry liner interiors, to the British Rail identity. Meanwhile, a bold and powerful welfare state was attracting architects into local government. Council architects’ departments were hothouses for new talent and new ideas. The LCC Architects’ Department alone incubated the practices of Alison and Peter Smithson, Archigram, Colin St John Wilson, Farrell & Grimshaw, James Stirling and RMJM. By 1976, 49 per cent of all UK archi-

tects worked for the public sector. But from 1979, Margaret Thatcher effectively stifled local government’s ability to build, and that expertise began to drain away. Today, the proportion of architects working for the public sector is 0.7 per cent in England, and just 0.2 per cent in London. The extraordinary wealth of design talent we have is invested in too few projects, and too few places. The poor quality of our everyday environment in the UK isn’t due to a lack of good architects and designers (at least until Brexit). But it is perhaps due to a lack of opportunities for them to work on ordinary briefs, for ordinary people. The extraordinary wealth of design talent we have is invested in too few projects, and too few places. How could this expertise be redistributed to the areas where it really matters, where design can have the most effect? How could we tilt the balance of the industry from creating private value for people who are already rich, towards creating public value for the people who need it most? It was these questions that drove me to launch Public Practice, a new social enterprise that aims to open up an alternative way of working with ordinary places for the public good. We are recruiting a new generation of built environment practitioners – planners, architects, urbanists, and others – for year-long placements within the public sector. These

associates will spend 90 per cent of their time on the frontline of local government, working in strategic, place-based roles with cross-cutting agency. The remaining 10 per cent will be dedicated to collective research and development as a cohort, which will be shared across authorities. The idea of public service reached its lowest ebb under the previous government, who labelled planners “enemies of enterprise”. But the tide is starting to turn. Having been presented as part of the problem, local authorities are beginning to be seen as part of the solution to the housing crisis. Even the current prime minister accepts that it is time for “government to get back in the business of building houses”. A growing number of authorities have been battling against the odds to start delivering homes for the first time in decades. Pioneering councils, including Barking and Dagenham, Birmingham, Croydon, Hackney and Harrow, are showing up private developers by building higher quality schemes with higher levels of affordable housing. I want Public Practice to help increase the public sector’s capacity to build. Enterprising authorities can find the funding for new posts – especially after a long overdue uplift in planning fees kicks in within the next few months. But the biggest barrier they face is finding the right people for the job.

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Opinion

OPINION | ARCHITECTURE & PLANNING

Architecture as a Catalyst for Change by Jordan Jackson

I HAVE BEEN DIVING in head first into the world of architecture by consuming lots of different content. From pictures, to documentaries, to articles and books. I just couldn’t get enough information. From this research that I have been doing, I have discovered that architecture is so much more than just how a building looks. It’s how it’s used, how it’s energy efficient, how it’s low cost, how it’s sustainable, and how people interact within the building. These are the kinds of things that excite me about architecture. Through several hours of thought, I realized that architecture is simply a way of physically interacting with good design. As a graphic designer, we often struggle with trying to get viewers to interact with our content. Because let’s be honest, a 2D advertisement on a piece of paper is only so compelling. That’s why video (combined with social media) is making such large strides right now. Consumers connect with video content much more than static images or pictures. Having that meaningful interaction is key to a happy consumer. However, with architecture, people are always interacting with their design. Whether it’s a private home, or a public library. People live, eat and breathe within this architectural space. Creating not just a small daily interaction, but an essential part of one’s life. But here is where the change begins.

I recently re-watched (for the fourth time) one of my favorite documentaries on Netflix called “The Human Scale”. In this film, it explains how 50% of the worlds population lives in urban centers, and by 2050 that number will increase to 80%. How will our cities account for that? Most likely by building isolated suburban homes on the outskirts of the city or creating increasingly taller high rise buildings. This is an easy solution but it creates two major problems: Traffic and Human Interaction. If you live in a city above 100,000 people, surely at some point you have been overly frustrated by traffic. I go to school in Toronto, Canada which is the fourth largest city in North America, and arguably, has some of the worst traffic. Toronto is an extremely diverse and ever expanding city and the roads simply can not keep up with the amount of cars flowing through them. There is almost always constant traffic on major freeways and rarely will you go through the city at a reasonable speed. A popular solution to traffic problems in the past has been to create more roads. That way, the load of cars that used to be on one road, can now be on two roads. This is a fairly simple solution that almost never works. No one knows exactly why this never works as planned, but they do know that more roads = more traffic bottlenecks. We can’t keep building sub-

urbs for people with cars, and expect our downtown expressways to hold up. This is something that I never really considered until it was brought up to me in the documentary. The way humans interact with each other has changed drastically in the past 1000 years. We have went from living in clans, tribes, and extended family dwellings, to isolated suburban homes with a garden and a driveway. In many cases there is almost zero interaction between neighbors. Lots of people tell me that they have no idea who their neighbors are, or that they don’t talk to their neighbors. In my opinion, this is a huge problem. With no public areas, meeting spaces or community gatherings, how are we supposed to interact with other humans? Life in cities has become a work(alone), commute(alone), and live(alone) lifestyle. We are biologically social and curious creatures who throughout the last 1000 years have been separating ourselves slowly. On top of all of this, separating ourselves by living in single apartments or far away suburbs has been a detriment to mental and physical health. Never have I heard more people speak of how they are lonely, depressed, or anxious than in the past 10 years. Most of this is probably because they don’t have anyone to interact with, which can be directly attributed to their living situations. Humans were never meant to be alone.

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PHOTO BY DREW PATRICK-MILLER

Opinion Formae

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Cultural Builds

Winter 2017

Cultural Builds Formae

CULTURAL BUILDS

National Museum of African American History and Culture By Catherine Osborne

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALAN KARCHMER

The completion of David Adjaye’s most ambitious project to date has the British architect poised to reach a new level of architectural greatness. OVER THE PHONE, Sir David Adjaye OBE tells me the story of how the National Museum of African American History and Culture got its distinctive inverted-pyramid shape. The three jagged tiers that make up the building’s stunning profile are actually an ornamental cladding made of bronzed aluminum panels, each sporting a permeable pattern reminiscent of lace. Located at 1400 Constitution Avenue NW and encircled by a manicured lawn, the new museum is neighboured most visibly by the Washington Monument. Its unusual shape, Adjaye explains, is based on the crown of a wooden figure carved by Nigerian sculptor Olowe of Ise, though that won’t be news to those who have followed the origins of the project since the British-Ghanaian architect won the international competition in 2009, heading up a team with three other firms, The Freelon Group, Davis Brody Bond of New York, and SmithGroupJJR. The sculptural reference was part of the winning proposal’s inspiration boards, but Adjaye knew of it only through images. It wasn’t until he was in Munich for a retrospective of his work in 2015 that a curator pointed out that the figure was owned by a German historical museum. It is now installed on the third floor of the NMAAHC, providing an almost prophetic symbol for a building that is painstakingly aware of its mission to provide the first official narrative of African American history. Until now, that history has been largely unseen or ignored by the mainstream. The NMAAHC is the last of the 19 Smithsonian museums to be built in the capital, and it has taken 13 years to be realized. Some prefer to say it has taken closer to 100 years, if you count from when African American war veterans first formed a committee to build a memorial. Most of the museum’s 36,000 artifacts were gathered from private donors in recent years, so the museum’s interior had to change constantly, even during construction. The collection ranges from such intimate articles as first-time voter stubs and Nat Turner’s Bible to large-scale items like George Clinton’s beloved 1970s P-Funk Mothership stage prop. Founding director Lonnie Bunch compared the simultaneous building and collecting to “going on a cruise at the same time that you’re building the ship.” For Adjaye, the challenge was to be able to respond to the unknowns. “I think we got it 90 per cent right,” he says of shifting the interiors to accommodate certain artifacts as they were acquired. “There were moments when we retuned things, like when we heard there was a segregated passenger car that was going to be in the collection” – an acquisition that had to be installed during construction due to its size. “We had to anticipate what was coming and hope that we got it right.”

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Cultural Builds

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Cultural Builds

“More than anything, I wanted to make sure the building was complicit in making the connection with its surroundings.” For other reasons, more to do with Washington’s sensitive regulations and to respect existing height- and sightlines, the museum’s above-ground footprint was scaled back. At five storeys high, the completed building is shorter than it is wide – a fact that works in its favour. The building’s grounded shape gives it a gravitas comparable to a regal, almost moody monument. To make up for loss of space, Adjaye dug five levels down. The exhibition’s chronology, which starts with the 14th-century slave trade, begins 24 metres underground. “Very literally, that history is right underneath your feet.” From dark and narrow rooms filled with such morbid relics as shackles and public auction blocks, the galleries enlarge and open up as history progresses. Visitors ascend along ramps, eventually arriving at a wall-sized version of the Declaration of Independence. At ground level, which Adjaye calls the “horizon,” the interior turns airy and light. Escalators then lead to the upper galleries, which house multi-sensory exhibits highlighting political leaders, sports heroes, musicians, entertainers, comedians and fashion legends. “Its narrative is very simple,” Adjaye says. “This idea of darkness to light – that’s the basic premise. It points out some of the crazy things that have gone on in the past and how people have gotten through it. It’s how things grow. Sometimes people sacrifice their lives to find a way, so the museum is about that tragedy and triumph of life.” Since the museum opened in September 2016, tickets have been selling out weeks in advance. The average length of time visitors spend inside is six hours. Adjaye’s team, along with the curators, anticipated the emotional impact the exhibits would have and that people would need time to absorb what they were experiencing. Almost every aspect of the museum’s layout and aesthetic expression has been filtered through that lens. The upper galleries are a series of pancaked boxes surrounded by atriums that face onto glass curtain walls and the building’s elaborate brise soleil. Semi-transparent, the ornamental patterning was inspired by the wrought-iron balconies of Louisiana and other Southern states. Originally, the plan was to make the cladding out of bronze, but aluminum won out due to weight and cost issues. Some critics feel the most dramatic and reflective effects have been lost with the substitution. “Under some lighting, it appears almost leaden,” wrote The Washington Post’s architecture critic Philip Kennicott. What was gained was a more agile construction. The cladding surrounds the building like a lampshade, and is attached along the roofline and by vertical and horizontal trusses that separate it from the glazing by just a few metres. Adjaye says he prefers to have a certain amount of legibility in his designs, which is why these inner workings have been left on display. It’s likely the metallic exterior might have felt claustrophobic, almost cage-like, had there not been this added degree of lightness and space. In some areas, windows have been carved out, providing sightlines of the surrounding historic sites, including the Washington Monument and Federal Triangle. These glimpses act as reminders that the museum is part of a larger history. Adjaye intended that, too. “More than anything, I wanted to make sure the building was complicit in making that connection.”

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BJARKE INGELS The world’s most interesting architect

In Conversation with Beatrice Galilee PHOTO BY JONAS BIE

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Q&A with Bjarke Ingels

Bjarke Ingels’ Danish and US based architecture firm BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) has been breaking convention and defying all odds in recent years. The global (and ever popular) style of modernism failed to offer people choice and is now forcing residents to adapt their lifestyles to the buildings. Architects are finally realising what Bjarke has known for years—people want to live in different ways, requiring different styles of architecture that need to be responsive to vastly different and changing environments.

ALL IMAGES PROVIDED BY BIG

You are pretty young for an architect—42 years old. When we first met, which was quite a few years ago, we talked about your career starting at a time where Frank Gehry was becoming an icon maker, and people were becoming dot-com millionaires. Can you tell us a little bit about your early years? One of the dilemmas of architecture in general is that there is a Catch-22 – you can’t actually get to be commissioned to do certain types of building until you’ve already built that type of building. So it seems to be incredibly hard to get going. We were very fascinated by this idea of dot-com billionaires being in their 20s, and we weren’t looking forward to being unable to get commissions until we were deep into our 40s. So we actually tried to apply for different grants for doing IT projects and some films. In the end, we secured zero funding for all of our non-architectural attempts. We also worked on some open competitions on the side, which we actually end up winning, so it turns out to be easier to become what you trained for six years in school rather than changing professions. One thing that I really discovered since moving to America five years ago, is that Europe is a little bit stuck in the

technocracy and bureaucracy of public tendering projects that I actually experience over here a much more courageous ability to think laterally, to basically say: “Ok, you guys have already proven that you can think, that you can handle complex projects whether large projects or complicated situations, so even though you haven’t necessarily done [a project] like a museum or a concert hall or stadium or whatever it is, we can see that you are capable of handling complex situations, and we are willing to bet on your ability to do so.” We actually got the commission from the Smithsonian Institution to rethink their entire south campus master plan project for $2 billion, at the point where we had not even completed the Danish Maritime Museum yet. They are basically entrusting us with the crown jewels of American subculture and history, having not really built the museum yet, which I think is a uniquely American way. This is almost unimaginable in Europe. How much do you think your success is to do with also the way you talk about your work—your ability to talk about architecture in a way that is very persuasive and compelling?

One of the conditions of architecture is that a building has to be able to live in its own right. A building shouldn’t rely on having somebody speak on its behalf. It should speak for itself. But the problem is that it is always judged before it is built. Other art forms can somehow be materialised, a painter can actually paint a painting and you can judge the artwork from being done. In architecture, building is so expensive and relies on so many permits, so many different decision makers need to make decisions around it, so that in order for a building to be able to prove its worth as an artwork or as environment, you already have to get past like a thousand nos. For a painter, it’s a canvas, a brush and a paint, that is his or her materials. For the architects, it is our capacity to listen to the concerns and demands of the users and the clients, and then to communicate our ideas to the clients, to the public officials, to the craftsmen going to build it – because if you can’t transmit your ideas, they will never get materialised. For architects, our ability to communicate ideas and transmit ideas is almost like our paint and brush. Continued on the following page.

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Q&A with Bjarke Ingels Formae

Top: Pavillion at the Serpentine Gallery in London | Left: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Habitat 2.0â&#x20AC;&#x2122; King West in Toronto | Right: New Google Charleston East campus

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Q&A with Bjarke Ingels

that throw stones at the buses, because it seems like they’re accelerating gentrification, but actually it is a great thing that they are doing. We just want to try to continue this incredible citizenship that they actually show by contributing to the resilience of Mountain View with landscaping, by actually making the building really inviting and open, people can literally pass through them. In fact, I couldn’t think of a more generous company... I feel like I drank the Kool-Aid.

How does that work when you work with, for example, technology? Architecture is slow, and you are dealing with Google, who are much more nimble – they are already 10 years ahead. How do you catch up with technology as an architect? I think quite often you ask a lot of architects, to try to combine available materials and available technologies in interesting ways to create new qualities. But I think in the case of Google, it is a company where their entire business model is that they are used to actually sinking a lot of resources into non-recoverable engineering, and then eventually, once they actually hit the gold, then they can actually replicate that infinitely and it can become valuable. They don’t want marble floors, gold leaf or solid gold, but they don’t mind spending a lot of resources on trying to develop a technology or material or product that once it has been developed, you can then replicate very affordably. There is an incredible belief in the value of research and development and design. In one of our first conversations, Larry Page was talking about some kind of system that could pick up people’s cars and deliver them. It sounded like he was referring to an existing system, and I asked if it was something that is available in the industry that we could look into. He said “we did a little bit of research, and it is not something really out there, but it is not something that $50 million can’t solve.” We haven’t seen that amount of resource yet, but at least there is this idea

that it is really worth it and valuable to spend a lot of energy trying to develop something that isn’t yet available. Your Google campus project has been described as the Truman Show. How do you feel about that? Potentially with Google, you are kind of absorbing a brand identity that some people regard as slightly terrifying in terms of controlling, absorbing information and so on. You are creating a work environment that is potentially politically a bit scary. I think Google is an incredible company, it has an incredible company structure. The reason that they are now being seen as this thing to be suspicious about is because of the incredible success of the produces which they are giving away basically for free, right? Because it is so incredibly accessible, of course they become our window to a major part of our research, our knowledge, etc. So I think it is like a non-criticism – because of their awesomeness that they cause people to be suspicious. The project we are making for them is so incredibly generous to the neighbourhood that they are part of. They have created bus lines that allow them to take cars off the highway, off the public system, by picking up their own workers and facilitating the commute with a free communal, collective transportation system – that’s awesome! But because the people of Google like to live closer to where the bus lines are, it is driving up the real estate value, and suddenly they are encountering people

Ok, I will just end with more of a ‘sustainably themed’ question. How do you think that people want to live now? I think the easy answer is that people are different, and therefore housing should also be different. You want to somehow contribute as many different qualities as possible. I am actually shopping for an apartment right now. I’m really obsessed about the outdoor space. And I think traditionally, places like New York have been very anti-outdoor space. But I think most of the developers that we are working with are beginning to realise that there is actually something there. I think maybe the fact that New York is a much cleaner city now than it was maybe 20 years ago makes the outdoor more desirable. Modernism was based on this idea that for every problem, there is a universal solution that would be an ideal solution that could be repeated infinitely. I think today the realisation is much more that people are different, therefore the way that people want to live is incredibly different. As architects, as clients, and as developers, we have the responsibility to really try to not think about universal solutions, but actually try to take the risk and show the courage to put some diversity out there. Because once you put some choices out there, there are actually a lot of different tastes rather than this narrow real-estate-agent-driven definition of demand. People kind of require something that they can’t really request. There is almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy that if you only offer a certain way to live, then of course that is going to be sold, and inhabited and rented out. This conversation was edited for editorial transcript purposes. Original content from the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art lecture series.

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Formae

Studio Profile

STUDIO PROFILE

Scott & Scott Architects

Written by Erin Donnelly Photography by S&S Architects

Meet the husband-and-wife team behind Scott & Scott Architects, a Vancouverbased architecture firm whose exploration of raw material and the power of craft is earning high praise. YOU MIGHT NOT BELIEVE that a monster truck rally helped

launch one of Canada’s most subtle and meticulous young architectural practices, but it’s true. “It was at the Halifax Metro Centre,” says David Scott of his first outing with his future partner and wife, Susan. The British Columbia natives first met while studying in Halifax, Nova Scotia at Dalhousie’s renowned school of architecture. After graduating in 2000, they headed back west to put their training to use and quickly began to develop a knack for making the most of readily available materials. David’s father had salvaged the steel frame of a derelict pump house from a mine and intended to turn it into a retirement cottage. That summer, the young architects started the project on Lac le Jeune, and for the next dozen years they picked away at the cabin, eventually finishing the interior with pine salvaged after a beetle infestation felled over 100 trees on the site. All the while the couple worked at some of Vancouver’s most significant firms: Susan at James K.M. Cheng Architects and later with McFarlane Green Biggar Architects + Designers; David at Peter Cardew Architects. In 2006, they started work on a cabin for themselves, unaware that when it was completed six years later it would be the first project billed under the name Scott & Scott Architects. Inspired by a nearby utility pole manufacturer, they framed the cabin around six raw wood columns that run straight through the interior. Similar to the Lac le Jeune cabin, the cabin combines a meticulous, restrained approach with locally available materials to achieve an aesthetic that evokes the charismatic minimalism of spaces by John Pawson or Brian MacKay-Lyons.

Curriculum Vitae Principals David and Susan Scott Location Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Established 2012 Selected Awards | 2016 • Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Young Architect Award Recipient • Restaurant and Bar Design Award, The Americas Restaurant (Torafuku)

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Left: Whistler Cabin exposed to the elements | Right: Whistler Cabin loft atmosphere | Bottom: North Vancouver Houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s natural living area

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Studio Profile

PHOTO BY BRIEF AGENCY

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It was the couple’s children that finally launched their firm, says Susan. “After two kids, we were looking at child care, and we needed to renovate our house. Rather than paying for it all, we decided to just do everything ourselves.” The 2012 reno added a studio and an industrial design workshop to the main floor of their East Vancouver home; meanwhile, two commissions came along: transforming a timber frame into a multi-use barn for a Gulf Island farm, and inserting a 25-seat eatery called Bestie into a tiny storefront in Vancouver’s Chinatown. The beer-andsausage joint, with its warm, unpretentious interior, made an ideal public debut for Scott & Scott Architects in June 2013. Like many of their projects, Bestie was built by the clients themselves, with help from the Scotts. Not only is the couple often on-site during construction, tools in hand, but they also fabricate bespoke details such as lighting, hardware and furniture. The hands-on approach allows them to refine ideas as they are realized; they are hesitant to ever call a project finished. “We like the idea of our work being a part of someone’s home for the rest of their lives, or part of the restaurant that provides them with their livelihood,” says David. “To us that’s more meaningful than other forms of design.” In order to build such lasting spaces, Scott & Scott Architects rely on a select material palette of wood, concrete, metal, leather and traditional finishes that are meant to endure. By repeatedly using these elements, the pair continually gain a better understanding of how the materials work. And with this understanding comes a slow and steady evolution. Though utility informs aesthetics in the firm’s design process, the results are nonetheless exquisite. Raw materials are used in unexpected ways: in a North Vancouver house renovation, for instance, the kitchen sink is carved into a monolithic countertop, formed from an 800-kilogram slab of marble.

Similar restraint is found in the use of that most ubiquitous of Canadian materials: wood. Bestie is wrapped in an economy-grade spruce; the interior of the Scotts’ studio is clad in Douglas fir, oiled and stained black; and inside the firm’s second resto, Kin Kao, the same species appears as blue-tinted plywood. Concrete, used subtly in the Scotts’ earliest works, moves to a starring role in the kitchen at Whistler Cabin and as an impressive formwork table at Torafuku. The materials can be “slightly scrappy,” says David, but they’re economical, locally sourced and meant to age well. “Our intent is that our projects wear and become more familiar, like jeans or a leather jacket,” he says. The firm appears to be wearing well, too; last spring the Scotts were announced as the recipients of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Young Architect Award. Though to date the projects the Scotts have completed all stand in their home province, their reach is extending. Last winter they were invited – along with Ola Rune of Claesson Koivisto Rune and Norwegian architects Casper Mork-Ulnes and Svein Lund – to collaborate on Norden Cross, an intriguing alpine community in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. But the firm’s participation in this master plan doesn’t mean we should expect to see big changes in its work, says David. “We appreciate the notion of progression in a practice; like in skateboarding, there are progression tricks where you learn a trick and keep adding little elements to it. It’s not about reinvention every time.” As part of this momentum, Scott & Scott Architects have decided to turn a handful of their furniture, lighting and hardware into a production line. They’re planning to start small, launching online later this year. “We started with a sausage joint and a barn,” David says. “We’re just seeing where that takes us.”

Left: Torafuku signage casting an angular shadow inside the restaurant | Bottom: Interior seating area at Torafuku

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Unfortunately, it usually takes a natural disaster to remind cities how vulnerable they are–and how urgent long-range resiliency planning is. The San Francisco Bay Area, however, isn’t waiting for the next big one. This year the Rockefeller Foundation announced a $4.6 million grant to jump-start the Resilient by Design competition. By Diana Budds

The Bay Area is one of the most scenic, desirable regions in the country, but the very things that make it beautiful also pose the greatest risks to inhabitants. Sea levels in the region will rise an estimated 3.4 feet by 2100. Scientists predict chronic inundation and flooding in areas near the shoreline. Earthquakes shaped the bay’s rolling hillsides and mountains, and the specter of the next “Big One” looms large. The area’s natural ecosystems face myriad negative impacts stemming from development and pollution, too. Resilient by Design asks experts to envision how the region should adapt. The 10 design super-teams are diverse, including internationally renowned architecture and engineering firms, MacArthur Foundation fellows, local landscape architects, Ivy League research groups, National Design Award winners, and more.

Top: Floating housing concept proposed by BIG + One + Sherwood | Bottom: The current shorline for much of the Bay Area which is prone to flooding

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EACH OF THESE teams independently investigated the social and ecological vulnerabilities in the Bay Area and designed solutions addressing the core challenges of sea level rise, flooding, ecological health, and social enrichment, but focused on different problematic sites around the bay region. As a result they each created dramatically different solutions–everything from autonomous vehicle infrastructure to a new Transbay tube to artificial wetlands. The competition winner will be announced in 2018, but all of the proposals contain insights into how coastal cities can adapt over the coming decades. And perhaps one, or many, of these ideas will take hold to reshape the Bay Area.

Sling Some Mud Public Sediment, a team that includes MacArthur Fellow and founder of the landscape design firm SCAPE in Brooklyn, Kate Orff, took a deep dive into the sea level rise in the Bay Area and they hit pay dirt–literally. Their solution involves recontouring the entire region by restoring the natural hydrologic cycle, which has been interrupted by many manmade interventions

like paving over creeks, damming rivers, and diking off portions of the bay. All of that has made the region more susceptible to flooding. Public Sediment proposes “softening” the edges along the bay with marshland that lets tidal waters flow more naturally and less forcefully. In the South Bay, much of the tidal marshland has been converted into salt ponds or diked off and filled in for development. The team proposes harvesting sediment deposits that collect at dams upstream from the bay and using that mineral-rich material to regrow the tidelands that have been lost. The team estimates that this change could mitigate about four inches of sea level rise while adding much needed habitat for birds, sharks, and small mammals. They also envision creating new infrastructure that lets sediment–usually trapped by dams– flow to the bay. The region’s creeks, which naturally transport sediment, have also been paved over, fenced off, and rerouted. Instead of viewing creeks as heavy infrastructure, Public Sediment imagines transforming them into recreation space that both filters stormwater and contributes to the region’s long-term health.

Act Socially Most resiliency projects require millions– even billions–of dollars of investment and take many years to develop and implement. But to the design team P+Set, the most urgent need isn’t infrastructure, it’s a culture of resilience. Rather than waiting in limbo while bureaucrats debate what to build, P+Set believes that community outreach should be a top priority and this work should begin immediately. In their minds, infrastructure usually fails–and it’s the networks of people who are able to pool their resources and rebuild their communities that need to be the strongest. P+Set proposes public workshops and seminars that will train residents to become “community resilience ambassadors” so that leaders in the most vulnerable communities have a seat at the table during discussions about public investment. They can also help their communities acquire the skills needed to bounce back after a natural disaster. Get Highways Low As in many regions, the Bay Area’s highways are destabilizing forces in neighborhoods. They isolate communities and

IMAGE COURTESY OF HASSELL+

HASSELL+’s vision of the Fruitvale Foreshore area. Open space for water management and flood capacity, calmer streets along the waterfront

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use a lot of land, but still serve a valuable mobility purpose. Two design teams in the competition proposed burying large stretches of highway and reclaiming the space for housing, parks, and other public-use development. The Field Operations Team focused on ways to boost environmental and economic resiliency. For the former, the team is proposing seawalls to reinforce Oakland’s inner harbors and estuary and also offer more waterfront access for pedestrians. It suggests building a new Transbay tube to shuttle trains between Oakland, Alameda, and San Francisco, which would increase mobility for the region’s residents with the hope that increased transit options would widen access to economic opportunity for all. Alongside the underground tube, the Field Operations Team imagines building a below-grade highway–for sections of the current stretch of 980–that will then free up land for development in the West Oakland area, which is currently physically separated from downtown. The team also proposes sinking portions of Amtrak’s train lines and interstate 880 and building green boulevards that support multimodal transportation.

It took Katrina to start Rebuilding New Orleans. It took Sandy for us to start rebuilding new york. This time, we’re not waiting around. Shawn Donovan Former u.s secretary of hud Another team, Bionic, proposed a similar solution for Highway 101, in the North Bay city of San Rafael. It believes taking the dramatic approach of sinking the highway will create opportunities for housing and greater connectivity to the waterfront, which would be redeveloped into a recreation space that also insulates surrounding communities from flooding and other potential threats.

Bring Neighborhoods Into the Water The traditional flood-management strategy is to move as far away from water as possible–but two Resilient by Design teams suggest building neighborhoods on top of the water. The team composed of BIG–the Danish firm that’s designing Lower Manhattan’s post- hurricane Sandy “Big U”

IMAGE COURTESY OF HASSELL+

HASSELL+’s vision of the Lion Creek area. Waterside ecological engagement and learning, community events, festivals and markets

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we know whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening, we know the risks. But now, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re looking at what the solutions are. resilient by design provides solutions for communities. innovative designs that will protect, but at the same time provide incredible benefits and

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– Shawn Donovan

amenities for all residents to enjoy. It’s not about reacting anymore. If we are to succeed as a region of innovation, we need to be proactive in our decisions. they won’t only affect us now, but millions of others in future generations.”

Bay Area Challenge Formae

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infrastructure–One Architecture + Urbanism, and Sherwood proposes transforming the South Bay into a network for floating villages that bleed into the bay itself. The All Bay Collective also proposes floating neighborhoods for East Palo Alto, a city struggling with an extreme housing shortage and wide inequality gap. Nurture Postindustrial Neighborhoods Mare Island–a peninsula west of Vallejo–is home to a decommissioned Navy Yard. P+Set proposes transforming this area into the sustainable and resilient neighborhood of the future by constructing wetlands that can help mitigate flooding and sea level rise; building affordable housing for vulnerable populations; installing solar and wind farms; and cleaning up polluted brownfields that have only been capped. Team Uplift–which includes the National Design Award-winning landscape architect Margie Ruddick, the architecture firm Gensler, and the engineering firm Arup–suggests redeveloping large swaths of West Oakland, an area adjacent to the Port of Oakland that’s home to industrial uses, residential neighborhoods, and lots of heavy rail. It suggests covering the railyards and tracks and building mixed-use development on top that includes housing, commercial areas, parks, and more. Flood Parks One of the most consistent suggestions from all teams and for all sites around the bay is to create recreation space that can also flood in the event of storms or rising tides. For example, the Home Team suggests a marsh-as-recreation area for the East

Oakland waterfront near the Coliseum and for North Richmond. In addition to boosting the ecological health of the bay by adding habitat, and boosting community health through opportunities for running, walking and biking, it also offers a sea level rise buffer for development further inland. Hassell+ suggests a similar approach for Redwood City’s waterfront. The proposals from the 10 teams are ambitious, and not without their drawbacks. Funding a project that attempts to redesign the region’s entire watershed is surely astronomical and moving sediment around could pose risks when it comes to invasive species. Bringing new development to neighborhoods that have struggled economically does not necessarily mean current residents will welcome it, or that adding supply will help alleviate the high costs of housing without other policy changes. Burying a noisy and dirty freeway sounds enticing, but considering the region is susceptible to freeway-collapsing earthquakes it’s likely to be met with skepticism. Filling in the bay at all is a long-standing controversy. Some of the plans emphasize connecting fragmented regions in the Bay Area–a move that seems intuitive–but many communities, like those in the North Bay, are purposefully insular. Most of the plans are nudging the region as a whole into service-based economies, and make no mention of industrial and manufacturing industries, which are important to keep in the mix. The toughest hurdle for Resilient by Design won’t be dreaming up visions for a more resilient future; it’s finding ways to combat the region’s anti-development, move fast and break things, NIMBY-centric reputation.

IMAGE COURTESY OF BIG + ONE + SHERWOOD

Properly designed flood plains turn into public space in this Golden Shoals concept by BIG + ONE + Sherwood

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Edward Lee Former Mayor of San francisco

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From

Scraps to Slopes

The final touches are being put on the striking aluminum facade of Amager Bakke, a waste-to-power incinerator in Copenhagen, Denmark that will double as a ski slope and recreational space for the city when it opens early next year. Another innovative and mind-bending concept from Danish native Bjarke Ingels with his firm BIG that fundamentally changes the way we look at the mix between industry and public space.

Text by Vanessa Quirk Photos by BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group)

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“Our approach to architecture is really the art of turning science fiction into fact.” – BJARKE INGELS

THE GERM of the idea that would become Amager Bakke actually sprouted over a decade ago, about three years before BIG, when Bjarke Ingels’ firm went by the name of PLOT. The young company was devoted to getting their name out, hoping that their ingenious, outlandish ideas would captivate the imagination of the public and become reality. And so they decided to enter a competition, despite not being qualified to enter it, for an urban project in a city in Denmark. What they proposed was to insert a public urban space in the densest area of Copenhagen. But how? By putting it on top of the largest department store in the city, forming a man-made landscape with amazing views and, because ski-loving Danes are plagued by their country’s flat plains, a topography that could be used as a ski-slope in the winter.

Although they won the competition in 2002, it’s perhaps not shocking that the project never came to fruition. However, the effort was an important lesson for Ingels, who would carry the experience with him. Fast-forward ten years later, and BIG was commissioned by the 10 municipalities of metropolitan Copenhagen to come up with a vision for the city in the year 2050. And the first project under that plan is none other than Amager Bakke, the waste-to-energy plant that will replace Copenhagen‘s existing plant and provide 97% of its homes with heating and about 4,000 people with electricity. It will act as a man-made ecosystem, harvesting natural resources (daylight filters through the facade of planters, rainwater is captured, etc.) and turning the city’s waste into its energy.

PHOTO BY CHRISTOFFER REGILD

Every detail counts Bjarke Ingels discussing the latest model with Lord Mayor of Copenhagen, Frank Jensen.

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PHOTO BY KIM HÇžLTERMAND

Shadow Patterns The aluminum facade of the plant creates a stunning visual pattern while letting plenty of daylight inside.

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Amager Bakke

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Figures 1 The building is gently wrapped with a continuous facade made out of stacked aluminum bricks. The openings between the bricks are letting cascades into the process hall and the administration space.

4 Access to the ski slope is through an elevator adjacent to the smokestack. The elevator has a glass wall facing the interior of the plant, allowing recreational buffs and sightseers to have a glimpse at the inner workings of the plant.

2 The bricks on the facade function as planters, creating a green facade and turning the building into a green mountain from afar with a snow white top.

5 The roof is not only going to function as a ski slope, but like a real mountain with forested areas, hiking trails, climbing walls, and possibly a mountain bike track. On top of the slope, there will be a small plateau and a quaint cafĂŠ to relax after many hours of runs.

3 BIG proposed to turn the roof of the power plant into an artificial ski slope, where it will be possible to ski all year round. The slope will be ecological, upending the convention of the energy intensive indoor or alpine ski resort.

Top: The plant stands tall over the adjacent S/K Lynetten marina | Bottom: Architectural render of the mixed use possibilities on the slope

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Sustainable City Innovations

The Quay to Urban Revitalization Quayside is a joint effort by Waterfront Toronto and Alphabetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sidewalk Labs to create a new kind of mixed-use, complete community on Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Eastern Waterfront. Compiled by Jordan Jackson

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Eastern Waterfront will be a new type of place that combines the best in urban design with the latest in digital technology to address some of the biggest challenges facing cities, including energy use, housing affordability, and transportation.â&#x20AC;? Dan Doctoroff CEO, Sidewalk Labs

Community Elements Interactive and connected wayfinding solutions 1

Improved use of waterways for transport and recreation 2

Cable car public transportation to avoid traffic 3

Community driven markets with local vendors 4

Vast web of digital infrastructure 5

Illustrations courtesy of Sidewalk Toronto

Article on page 42

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Transportation, networks, and utilities will be reworked from the ground up leaving a much improved surface experience.

SIDEWALK TORONTO WILL BEGIN with a new neighbourhood, called Quayside, located at Parliament Slip, just southeast of Downtown Toronto. Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto aim to bring the innovations advanced at Quayside to scale across the Eastern Waterfront, more than 325 hectares (800 acres) that represent one of North America’s largest areas of underdeveloped urban land. After exploring opportunities all over the world, Sidewalk Labs responded to a Request for Proposals issued in March 2017 by Waterfront Toronto that sought an innovation and funding partner for the Eastern Waterfront, beginning with the development of Quayside. Several local and international firms submitted responses to Waterfront Toronto’s RFP, describing their vision, implementation plan, team strength and experience, and financial and technical capacity. Following a rigorous evaluation process, Waterfront Toronto selected Sidewalk Labs. Through Sidewalk Toronto, we hope to: establish a complete community that improves quality of life for a diverse population of residents, workers, and visitors. Create a destination for people, companies, startups, and local organizations to advance solutions to the challenges facing cities, such as energy use, housing affordability, and transportation. Make Toronto the global hub of a rising new industry: urban innovation. Serve as a model for sustainable neighbourhoods throughout Toronto and cities around the world. The Eastern Waterfront will be a new type of place that combines the best in urban design with the latest in digital technology to address some of the biggest challenges facing cities, including energy use, housing affordability, and transportation. It will be a place that embraces adaptable buildings and new construction methods to make housing and retail space more affordable. A place where people-centred street designs and a range of transportation options make getting around

more affordable, safe, and convenient than the private car. A place that encourages innovation around energy, waste, and other environmental challenges to protect the planet. A place where public spaces welcome families to enjoy the outdoors all day and all night and where community ties are strong. A place that’s enhanced by digital technology and data, without giving up the privacy and security that everyone deserves. Knowing that great neighbourhoods aren’t planned from the top down, Sidewalk Toronto will create the conditions for a community to be built and innovations launched by people, companies, startups, academic centres, and local organizations over many years. Sidewalk Toronto aims to make the Eastern Waterfront the global hub of a new industry focused on urban innovation to improve the quality of city life, tapping into Toronto’s already-thriving tech sector and developing innovations that could benefit communities and neighbourhoods elsewhere in the city. To help get started, Alphabet plans to move Google’s Canadian headquarters to the Eastern Waterfront. Our response to Toronto’s RFP represents early thinking about what neighbourhoods of the future could look like. Ideas we hope will now be shaped by a public conversation that involves all Torontonians. Visit SidewalkToronto.ca for more information and to submit your ideas.

‘The neighbourhood of the future starts with your ideas.’

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Interiors

INTERIORS

Zumtobel Lighting By Jordan Jackson

For more than 50 years, Zumtobel has been developing innovative, custom lighting solutions that meet extremely exacting requirements in terms of ergonomics, economic efficiency, environmental compatibility, and incredibly sleek, industry leading aesthetics. AS AN INNOVATION LEADER, Zumtobel supplies an extensive range of premium luminaires and lighting control systems for various professional building lighting application areas. With an international customer presence thanks to its own sales organisations, they have retail locations in 23 countries and commercial agencies in more than 50 others. The company has its roots in Vorarlberg but sets great store by international contacts in order to maintain its worldwide network of specialists and design partners in the lighting sector. Their incredibly vast selection of lighting solutions allows customers to create lighting scenes that make it possible to

experience the interplay between light and architecture in all its diverse complexity. The combined use of luminaires, lighting management, and emergency lighting systems is geared towards the architecture of a variety of buildings and the particular application situation. Constantly looking to improve, Zumtobel also conducts research into the health-promoting effects of light. And are constantly working with architects, behavioral psychologists, and scientists alike to make it even easier to exploit these effects in order to provide people with the best possible lighting quality. The small details that make our life better, one day at a time.

IMAGES COURTESY OF ZUMTOBEL

Vaero on display The new Vaero pendant light enhances any large room with its clean lines and weightless look.

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Mellow Light Surface Mount Evolution (single-channel) offers gentle and uniform lighting, infinity (dual-channel) offers separately controllable light channels – the two lighting wings as well as center direct lighting component. Lumens Temperature Watts

2955 — 3041 lm 3000 K 34 W

Ondaria Recessed Homogeneous illumination with diffused wide-area lighting makes rooms appear larger and wider, circular design allows fully flexible positioning in the room, easy installation without opening the luminaire. Lumens Temperature Watts

11180 lm 3000 K 124 W

Ondaria Pendant Homogeneous illumination with diffused wide-area lighting makes rooms appear larger and wider, provides up to 20% uplight component with separate switching options, circular design allows fully flexible positioning in the room. Lumens Temperature Watts

1180 — 1390 lm 3000 K 124 W

Onico Track Head Compatible with GLOBAL trac TEK and HTEK systems, passive cooling achieved by innovative thermal design, driver integrated into the housing. Lumens Temperature Watts

2100 — 2751 lm 3000 K 24 W

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School in Review

Text and Photography by Jordan Jackson

TOWERING OVER the urban sprawls of Toronto’s Chinatown district just north of Spadina Ave and College St stands the University of Toronto’s newest showcase, The Daniels Building. It’s the university’s new space for the faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Although it’s hard to classify this as a new endeavor, as part of the building has been standing at 1 Spadina Crescent since the humble beginnings of the city in 1874. It began as Knox College, which was connected to the University for the first 30 years of its life span. Once World War I became an international priority, the building was converted to the Spadina Military Hospital and trained nurses while relieving nearby facilities from wounded soldiers. The building had several other uses up until its purchase by the university in 2014, including a medical laboratory creating penicillin, a student newspaper, and a low-level radioactive waste facility. I was lead through the building by first year Masters student, Jonathan Miura. Fresh off the completion of his degree at Carleton University, and a second summer work-term at world-renowned Toronto based architecture firm, KPMB, Jon was eager to share the experience of his new home with me.

Upon entering, one can immediately tell that the building is still very much under construction. While the grand opening of the building happened in mid 2017, many projects were patched up for the event and then later restarted in order to complete them fully. Large projects at universities are frequently extended past their original timeline, and this seemed like no exception. Without stepping in more than ten feet, I was met by the smell of sawdust mixed with drywall, several under construction signs, and a cold draft coming from the constant opening of doors from workers carrying materials. “Ya, it gets loud in here” Jon exclaimed as the echo of an electric screwdriver bellows through the corridors of the main foyer. The entrance then opens up into a two-floor loft which provides a sneak peek of the undergraduate studio above, as well as the state-of-the-art shop facility through the window below. I stood with my face pressed up against the glass enamored as I tried to piece together what I saw into some sort of visual pattern. There was chairs, eight-foot-tall models, and dust everywhere. This already seemed like a place where people got down to business.

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“The best value for coffee you will ever find” as Jon distracts me and points toward the covered sliding door where a Teacher’s Assistant (TA) run café is usually open. “$1.25 for an Americano and it’s only a dollar if you bring your own mug. I usually get a double.” Coffee seems to be as valuable as gold to these students as I would soon come to find out. We head towards the west wing when we dip into a student work space which displays the spectacular sunken library approximately 14 feet below the first floor. The room itself is small, but due to the incredibly tall ceilings, it provides students with an immense sense of space that marvels some of UofT’s much larger libraries on campus. This part of the building is built upon the original from 1874 and has been adapted perfectly to its new role. Unique architectural features, craftsmanship, and exposed brick were left intact while introducing modern lighting, windows, and furniture. It created an amazing duality that is often done quite poorly in similar projects. NADAAA Inc, a storied architecture and urban design firm from Boston was brought in to merge the old building into a new space. With extensive experience in the academic space that includes buildings for the Melbourne School of Design, Harvard GSD, and MIT, they were awarded the project and did not disappoint. After a brief tour of the somewhat mangled undergraduate studio space on the second-floor, we stop and watch a student pitch her concept for a residential development to her professors. She has seemingly prepared many hours for this moment, no stutters, stops, or hiccups. But with the end of the semester

coming around, lots of other students are scrambling to impress their peers and finish off strong. Only adding to the mess in the studio and the tension in the air. We then moved our way up the central staircase to the main attraction on the third floor, the massive open concept area that is home to the graduate studio space. “You’re going to love it man, this space has been all over the architectural press since it was opened.” Jon normally wouldn’t over exaggerate something of this scale so I was extremely eager to see what the all the fuss was about. When he opened the door I was blown away by the expanse of the space. Over 20,000 square feet entirely filled with students hard at work on their final projects. Desks, papers, and models seemingly thrown everywhere. It was amazing. But while the space initially struck me, the roof kept me staring. Initially quoted an astronomical number for their innovative and beautiful roof design, NADAAA took it upon themselves to show the contractor how it could be built much simpler than they had originally planned. Without being prompted, they created near life size models of the roof and presented it to the university. The contractors reworked their quote based off the model, and effectively saved the roof and millions of dollars. But ultimately, the building is only the start of the legacy that the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design will create. These kinds of projects set a precedent for other universities across the nation, and internationally, that the University of Toronto is heavily investing in young, innovative thinkers to lead our cities into sustainable futures that we oh so desperately need.

Facing east, the unique roof design by NADAAA Inc provides spectacular light effects onto the third floor graduate studio space.

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Clockwise from Top Left Light leaks from the angled skylights; A Gothic staircase merges the two buildings; Roof in the graduate studio space on the third floor; Eastfacing facade showing the connection of new and old.

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Small Scale

PHOTO BY FLAVIO CODDOU

SMALL SCALE

The Chimney House Written by Ellen Himelfarb

Location Logatec, Slovenia

IN A RURAL COMMUNITY near Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, where inland Europe descends toward the Mediterranean, there’s a 16th-century church with a steep, slender spire, and a gabled barn clad in dark wood. Situated between these structures, Chimney House nods to each. But in a clever bit of visual reduction, it takes only its silhouette from the familiar form of a pitched-roof house. Architects Aljoša Dekleva and Tina Gregorič of local firm Dekleva Gregorič have taken the notion of the traditional chimney, present in the silhouette, and

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“The position of the house offered the opportunity to redefine the edge of the village.”

stretched it the length of the building, using the exaggerated size to accommodate a bank of skylights that draws natural light into the interior. Meanwhile, the entirety of the facade, including the roof, is covered in vertical larch boards – treated with dark oil, says Gregorič, “to obtain a patina that matches the large neighbouring barn.” Though the real chimney takes up a fraction of this windowed recess, it informs the overall concept of the house. In a concession to history, Dekleva and Gregorič placed a wood-fired stove at the

home’s nucleus, where the owners cook and entertain, and like stoves of yore, it heats the entire house from the kitchen out. Encased in a vertical volume and faced with distinctive 4-millimetre-thick metal plates, it’s such a significant presence that it’s personified in the firm’s literature as “Stove.” Running up from the foundation and through the roof, the volume is plumbed, piped and ventilated, and draws everything else into its orbit. A wood-burning stove forms the organizational centre of the room and in this way, the architects

have reinvented the “work triangle” and streamlined the hardest-working areas of the home. This innovation frees up the rest of the space for living. Interior walls of oiled oak, rising up to a roof of reinforced concrete, are thick enough to integrate storage and deep, “inhabitable” window niches. Expanses of glass uninterrupted by mullions frame views to the village and countryside. In marking a transition between two places and two eras, Gregorič says, “the position of the house offered the opportunity to redefine the edge of the village.”

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Community

COMMUNITY | YOUR CHANCE FOR INPUT

Pre-Launch Questions & Desires

Before we launched, we sent out surveys to prospective readers on the type of content that they would like to see featured in the magazine. We received a lot of great feedback, which heavily informed our choices for not only this issue, but one’s in the future. John Jorgensen I’d like to see more possibilities for adding energy systems to architecture in ways that add to the aesthetic, rather than looking like tack-ons. Linda Foss Smartly designed, small, sustainable homes. The world desperately need this. But no tiny homes, please.

Drew Hunter Highlighting projects that use sustainable, recycled, and local materials will encourage more of the same, as well as help promote sparing the Earth from the ravages of logging and the subsequent clearing of forests.

Tracy Shull Since most of the US housing supply is preexisting houses (in other words, most people don’t get to build a house from scratch but have to work with an older structure), I would like to see some remodels in the magazine.

Priya Govindarajan Details of how the sewer and HVAC systems are handled. Some of the houses I see featured in other magazines are in the middle of nowhere.

I would prefer these stories to not be about gut renovations, but about simpler remodels. Don’t get rid of the completely remodeled homes, but just think about adding some more partial upgrades which more people can actually implement in their existing homes without an enormous cost or always hiring an architect.

Online Content While our print magazine is only published four times a year, we upload many articles weekly at formae.com. Still the same long form articles, case studies, and in-depth looks that you crave available when you want it.

Join the conversation Formae welcomes your comments on our articles, design, and even suggestions for new departments and content. Interact with us!

Formae.com | Exclusive Online Content

Casey House, Toronto, Canada Sanjay Puri’s Student Residence Paul Laurendeau’s Amphitheater

Susana Herrera’s Observatory Inside the World of Kengo Kuma Why we Need More Women Architects

Paul Bendorius Small houses are exactly what Formae needs. San Francisco alone is a case study in what happens when population growth exceeds housing supply. my obsession is to re-conceptualize the

humble (and usually ugly) trailer home as a modern, sophisticated design. Can it be done well?

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Winter 2017