Canadian Architect August 2022

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04 VIEWPOINT

53 REVIEW

64 PRACTICE

07 NEWS

Jake Nicholson considers the legacy of Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead and its architectprotagonist, Howard Roark.

Winners announced for PHI Contemporary, Atlantic Architectural Design of Excellence Awards, and GG Medal in Landscape Architecture.

56 INSITES

15 RAIC JOURNAL

A new book by Julia Jamrozic and Coryn Kempster on the children who grew up in iconic modernist houses.

Unveiling the winners of the 2022 National Urban Design Awards.

TOM ARBAN DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

42 POINT WILLIAM COTTAGE

SCOTT NORSWORTHY

STÉPHANE BRÜGGER

40 LES ROCHERS

44 RECEPTION PAVILION OF THE QUEBEC NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

Editor Elsa Lam considers the Canadianess of the winning design for Block 2.

34 T HE IDEA EXCHANGE OLD POST OFFICE

MAXIME BROUILLET

ADRIEN WILLIAMS

38 J ULIS ROMO RABINOWITZ BUILDING & LOUIS A. SIMPSON INTERNATIONAL BUILDING ADRIAN OZIMEK

36 I NDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL HISTORY AND DIALOGUE CENTRE

32 FOREST PAVILION

SCOTT NORSWORTHY

30 THE BREARLEY SCHOOL

28 60_80 ATLANTIC AVENUE

ANDREW LATREILLE PHOTOGRAPHY

LINDSAY REID

DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

NIC LEHOUX

2022 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDALS

Reford Gardens celebrates its 60th anniversary with plans to continue growing its legacy.

62 BOOKS

CANADIAN ARCHITECT

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50 VILLAGE AT THE END OF THE WORLD

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66 BACKPAGE

Les Rochers by la Shed Architecture. Photo by Maxime Brouillet.

Ed Burtynsky’s In the Wake of Progress brings an immersive experience to Toronto’s YongeDundas Square.

COVER

V.67 N.05 THE NATIONAL REVIEW OF DESIGN AND PRACTICE / THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE RAIC / THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE AIA CANADA SOCIETY

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VIEWPOINT

LEFT The winning proposal for Block 2, by David Chipperfield and Zeidler Architecture.

EMBRACING COMPLEXITY As a juror on the Block 2 design competition, I had the immense privilege of participating in rich discussions about the architectural approach most suitable to this complex site.

In the last days of deliberation, as the jury moved towards consensus around a winner, one of the topics that came up particularly resonated with me. Which entry, among the many created by teams involving both foreignbased and local firms, is most “Canadian”?

Architecture, fundamentally, deals in complexity. What makes Canadian architecture “Canadian” is, perhaps, its particular eagerness to engage in the dialogue that allows for seemingly competing interests to be resolved in built form.

This is inherently risky. At worst, it results in places that look and feel disjointed (“designed by committee”). But at its best, Canadian architecture is able to bring together the differing needs of human and non-human stakeholders in a single, clear and unifying vision that is palpable to those who encounter and use the resulting building.

In Canadian architecture, monumental gestures are rare, and often treated with some skepticism by Canadians. In the national capital region, even a place like Raymond Moriyama and Griffith Rankin Cook’s Canadian War Museum is sunk into its site, and is rendered as a series of subtly affecting spaces difficult to capture in a single heroic image.

Moshe Safdie and Parkin Architects’ National Gallery is a bolder presence, but connected to its context by its reference to the parliamentary tower, and by its vast, wild landscape

by Cornelia Oberlander.

The winning proposal by David Chipperfield and Zeidler Architecture explicitly embraces the complex and sometimes contradictory challenges presented in the 200-plus-page competition brief. It addresses the quilt of heritage fabric of the site, retaining every building and even stepping up to the challenge of unifying their diverse floor plates. It makes room around the Indigenous Peoples Space, creating a shared plaza to the east that

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would allow for a ceremonial access to the building and an outdoor meeting place on axis with the Peace Tower. The configuration of the east wing keeps an open corridor for a possible link to the Indigenous Peoples’ Space—a subtle but important gesture that maintains the IPS’s autonomy, while welcoming future connection.

Unifying this is a material palette dominated by copper—a material that references the rooftops of Parliament Hill, as well as linking to Indigenous cultures, in which copper was highly valued. But the overall elevations, on both the Wellington and Sparks Street sides, are most strongly characterized by the varied heritage buildings retained in the scheme.

These retained and restored buildings become a symbol for the notion of diversity, and a commitment to the accommodation of difference.

As with any scheme at a comparable stage of design, there are many things that will still need to evolve and change. Notable among these is the provision of universal access, which is not convincingly integrated in the current planning. As the condition of the heritage building interiors is assessed, it may become viable to suggest a selective removal of existing f loors, allowing for a realignment of f loor levels that would do much towards making the new complex accessible to all, as it unequivocally must be. The public realm and street level facades on the Wellington side—currently blank walls—will need to be further developed. As the client enters into direct conversations with the proponent, they, too, will no doubt bring new requirements to the table that will need to be worked into the design.

But here is a scheme that has shown a willingness to work with such complexity, and to find a clear and compelling architectural expression through it all. In those regards, it is quintessentially Canadian.

EDITOR ELSA LAM, FRAIC ART DIRECTOR ROY GAIOT CONTRIBUTING EDITORS ANNMARIE ADAMS, FRAIC ODILE HÉNAULT DOUGLAS MACLEOD, NCARB, FRAIC ONLINE EDITOR CHRISTIANE BEYA REGIONAL CORRESPONDENTS WINNIPEG LISA LANDRUM, MAA, AIA, FRAIC VANCOUVER ADELE WEDER, HON. MRAIC SUSTAINABILITY ADVISOR ANNE LISSETT, ARCHITECT AIBC, LEED BD+C VICE PRESIDENT & SENIOR PUBLISHER STEVE WILSON 416-441-2085 x3 ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER FARIA AHMED 416-441-2085 x5 CUSTOMER SERVICE / PRODUCTION LAURA MOFFATT 416-441-2085 x2 CIRCULATION CIRCULATION@CANADIANARCHITECT.COM PRESIDENT OF IQ BUSINESS MEDIA INC. ALEX PAPANOU HEAD OFFICE 126 OLD SHEPPARD AVE, TORONTO, ON M2J 3L9 TELEPHONE 416-441-2085 E-MAIL info@canadianarchitect.com WEBSITE www.canadianarchitect.com Canadian Architect is published 9 times per year by iQ Business Media Inc. The editors have made every reasonable effort to provide accurate and authoritative information, but they assume no liability for the accuracy or completeness of the text, or its fitness for any particular purpose.

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PROJECTS

Montreal arts institution PHI has selected Kuehn Malvazzi + Pelletier de Fontenay as the designers of PHI Contemporary, a new cultural hub for Old Montreal. The 6,900square-metre building will house exhibition spaces, a network of new media galleries, research and studio spaces, and an expansive public domain.

The design was selected through an international architecture competition launched last summer, which elicited 65 candidatures from 14 countries. OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen placed second.

Kuehn Malvazzi + Pelletier de Fontenay’s concept proposes an unprogrammed public platform, similar to a city street, that cuts through the entire site and connects four existing heritage building. The structure and its components are all visible from the street, allowing passers-by to appreciate the site’s multiple layers from the outside. The project is conceived as a new, flexible infrastructure, where a variety of events can take place. Artists will be able to take possession of all the spaces in unexpected ways.

“At the centre of the new design is our understanding of the institution as an active entity that is being formed in real time, open and in a state of permanent transformation.

Conceived as an open landscape rather than a building, the design is a simple and solid framework, a contemporary stage for hosting a wide range of activities,” write the designers. www.phi.ca

AWARDS Atlantic Architectural Design Excellence Awards

The Architects’ Association of New Brunswick (AANB), the Architects Association of PEI (AAPEI), the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Architects (NLAA), and the Nova Scotia Association of Architects (NSAA) have announced the winners of the inaugural Atlantic Architectural Design Excellence Awards.

Every two years, the organizations will recognize architecture design excellence in the Atlantic Region through the awards program.

The 2022 winners of Awards of Excellence are Maison Du Bocage in Caraquet, New Brunswick, by Nordais Architecture; Unbridled Path in Rothesay, New Brunswick,

by Acre Architecture; and Emera Innovation Exchange in St. John’s, Newfoundland and

COURTESY PHI

PHI Contemporary winner announced

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Kuehn Malvazzi + Pelletier de Fontenay’s competition-winning design for PHI Contemporary, in Old Montreal, is united by an unprogrammed public platform.

ABOVE

Labrador, by LAT49 Architecture. Awards of Merit were given to On the Boardwalk in Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick,

by Acre Architects; Birch Point in Lakeview, Nova Scotia, by Acre Architects; UNBSJ Whitebone Pizzeria in Saint John, New Brunswick, by Studio Shirshekar; The Sheds of Charlotte County in L’Etete, New Brunswick,

by Acre Architects; Our Lady of the Snows Church in Sheshatshiu, Newfoundland and Labrador, by Woodford Architecture; B2 Lofts in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, and Anne of Green Gables Visitors Centre in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, by Root Architecture. nsaa.ns.ca

Governor General’s Medal in Landscape Architecture

The Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) has announced that Professor Ron Williams, AAPQ , FCSLA, FRAIC, is the 2022 recipient of the Governor General’s Medal in Landscape Architecture.

The long-time professor and director at the School of Landscape Architecture of the Université de Montréal graduated from McGill University in architecture (1964) and the Sorbonne (Diplôme de civilisation française, 1965).

During the late 1960s and 1970s, Williams worked in Montreal with John Schreiber, architect and landscape architect, as an employee and a partner. From 1970 to 1972, he studied landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley (MLA).

In 1987, he co-founded the Montreal landscape architecture and urban design firm WAA (Williams, Asselin, Ackaoui and Asso-

ciates) along with partners Vincent Asselin, Malaka Ackaoui, and Sachi Williams.

He participated in many of WAA’s awardwinning projects including the Montreal Beach Park on Ile Notre-Dame; the Biodôme de Montréal; and the Jardin de l’Espace Saint-Roch and the rehabilitation of avenue Honoré-Mercier in Quebec City.

Williams has also written and lectured extensively at academic, professional, and cultural events. His most significant contribution to the history of landscape architecture is the book he has been diligently writing over fourteen years of research: Landscape Architecture of Canada. The book chronicles the evolution of landscape architectural thought and practice in changing geographical, historical, and cultural contexts.

“A leader, an academic, a practitioner, an author, a researcher, an advocate: Ron Williams has had a significant national impact in every facet of his 50+-year career,” writes the CSLA jury. “He helped develop the landscape architecture program at the University of Montreal, became a beloved professor, applied rigorous research standards to his own work, and built a nationally recognized repertoire of work as a founding partner of WAA.” www.csla-aapc.ca

Canadian projects win CTBUH international Awards of Excellence

Four Canadian developments have been announced among the winners of the 2022 CBTUH Awards of Excellence. The program recognizes “extraordinary contributions to the advancement of tall buildings and the urban environment.”

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ABOVE Telus Sky in Calgary, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (design architect) with DIALOG (architect of record), has won a CTBUH International Award of Excellence.

The winners include: King/Portland Centre by Hariri Pontarini Architects (Best Tall Office Building); Tour de Montréal by Provencher_Roy (Renovation); Telus Sky by Bjarke Ingels Group (Design Architect) and DIALOG (Architect of Record) (Structural Engineering); and King/Portland Centre & Kingly Condos by Hariri Pontarini Architects (Urban Habitat: District/Masterplan Scale).

Winners in all categories will present their projects at the CTBUH 2022 International Conference, held in-person in Chicago in November, where the overall winner in each category will be announced. awards.ctbuh.org

Ontario Library Association Awards

The Waterloo Public Library’s Eastside Branch and Richmond Hill Public Library’s Oak Ridges Branch have won an Ontario Library Association 2022 New Library Building Awards.

The awards program encourages and showcases excellence in the architectural design and planning of libraries in Ontario. The OLA New Library Building Award highlights projects that were completed and in-use between July 2019 to July 2022.

Designed by Perkins&Will, the 1,850-square-metre Oak Ridges Library is located north of Richmond Hill’s downtown core, and introduces a more interactive and inclusive setting for social exchange, collaborative learning, and creative exploration.

The Waterloo Public Library’s Eastside Branch was designed in joint venture by John MacDonald Architect Inc. of Kitchener and Ward99 Architects of Vaughan along with Waterloo Public Library and City of Waterloo staff. “The architects delivered on the commitment to a green, nature-inspired facility with the new Eastside Branch of Waterloo Public Library,” writes jury member Darcy Glidden, Manager

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NEWS

of Community Libraries, Barrie Public Library. “Thoughtful site placement combined with a striking design and the use of appropriate materials results in a facility that fulfills the community desire for an ‘eco location’. Designing and constructing a building that is awash in natural light enlivens a previously utilitarian recreation complex.” www.accessola.com

WHAT’S NEW

Saidye Bronfman Professor Emeritus in Architecture Alberto Pérez-Gómez, from McGill University’s Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, has been appointed as an Officer to the Order of Canada. He is cited for “his contributions to architectural education as a renowned historical theorist, and for his phenomenological approach in discourse.”

On June 29, 2022, Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada, announced 85 new appointments to the Order of Canada and 4 promotions within the Order. The new appointees include 1 Companion (C.C.), 13 Officers (O.C.) and 71 Members (C.M.). As well, 3 individuals were promoted from Officer to Companion, and 1 Member was promoted to Officer.

They will be presented with their insignia at future investiture ceremonies, with dates to be determined.

The Order of Canada was created in 1967, by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, to honour people whose service shapes our society, whose innovations ignite our imaginations, and whose compassion unites our communities.

Partners Healthcare Administative Campus, Somerville MA | architect: Gensler | landscape architect: OJB Landscape Architecture | photographer: Kyle J. Caldwell

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STEVEN EVANS

Alberto Pérez-Gómez appointed to Order of Canada

ABOVE Winner of an Ontario Library Association Award, the Waterloo Public Library’s Eastside Branch was designed by John MacDonald Architect in joint venture with Ward99 Architects.

Research partnership forms on Quality in the Built Environment

A major research partnership on quality in the built environment is bringing together 14 universities, 70 researchers and 68 public and private organizations at the municipal, provincial and national levels, for the first time.

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$8.6M, with $2.5M from SSHRC, and $6.1M from partners, including $4.2 M of in-kind contributions.

Coordinated by the Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competitions and Mediations of Excellence at the Université de Montréal, the “Quality in Canada’s Built Environment: Roadmaps to Equity, Social Value and Sustainability” partnership addresses the diversity of public environments impacting the everyday life of millions of Canadians in urban spaces, buildings and landscapes.

The program has three aims: analyzing the current limitations of environmental norms and sustainability models to bring us closer to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); co-designing new paths to equity, diversity and inclusion in the built environment; and defining new frameworks for the definition of quality so as to enhance the social value of the built environment through roadmaps to quality.

It brings together representatives from citizens, municipal agencies, professional associations, and universities in a series of interdisciplinary research projects addressing these themes.

“The project gathers 14 Canadian universities, including all of those with schools of architecture, as well as most landscape architecture and environmental design departments,” write the organizers. “It mobilizes 23 disciplines concerned with the impact of built environments on citizens. Sixty-eight partner organizations, including national institutions and not-for-profits, will join in a conversation pertaining to four thematic clusters to address urgent considerations on quality relative to spatial justice and heightened quality of life; integrated resilience, material culture and adaptive reuse; inclusive design for health, wellness, aging and special needs; and processes and policies supporting the reinvention of built environments.”

The research will take place over the coming five years.

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OAA names two Honorary Members

At the Annual General Meeting held as part of its Conference, OAA members voted to include two individuals as Honorary Members.

The membership elected author and Canadian Architect editor Elsa Lam for Honorary Membership, based on her advocacy and elevating education of the public with respect to architecture.

The membership also selected Her Honour the Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, in acknowledgement of her support of the architectural profession, including her direct involvement with the OAA Design Excellence Awards over the years.

An Honorary Member is a person who has given valuable and distinguished service to the architectural profession or has scrupulously upheld the objects of the Association. www.oaa.on.ca

McGill establishes Architecture, Energy, and Environment Chair

McGill University has announced the establishment of a Chair in Architecture, Energy, and Environment in the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, to develop turnkey solutions for mass building climate retrofits.

Supported by funding and in-kind contributions that total over $6 million, the Chair will be held by Associate Professor Michael Jemtrud, and is funded by the NSERC Alliance program – the largest grant awarded in Quebec – with primary support from Hydro-Québec, and the Quebec Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources.

“Sustainability and climate change are defining issues of our times,” said Benoit Boulet, Associate Vice-Principal, Research & Innovation. “The ambitious agenda of this chair demonstrates

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COURTESY RPBW / NORR

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ABOVE The New Toronto Court House, by Renzo Piano Building Workshop with NORR, is one of 11 projects featured in a new exhibition.

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McGill’s commitment to finding and implementing solutions to these problems.”

“This chair is more than an opportunity to urgently reduce emissions,” said Professor Michael Jemtrud. “It is a holistic attempt to transform physical, social, and economic regimes for the benefit of all in adapting to the accelerating consequences of climate change by building more resilient communities.”

The program plans to leverage strengths in architecture, engineering, computer science, planning, and management to develop a digital tool set – the ReCONstruct platform – and to implement the research and development efforts in a series of pilot projects that will inform the research.

The research will become the basis for a scalable turn-key solution that reconfigures conventional procurement, finance, and legislative structures as well as design, manufacture, and construction workflows for mass retrofitting Canada’s existing building stock.

In addition to being named to the new Chair, Professor Jemtrud is a member of the newly formed DeCarbonizing Architecture and Buildings (DeCARB) research group along with McGill architecture colleagues Salmaan Craig, Naomi Keena, Philip Tidwell, and Nik Luka. Additionally, he is co-lead with Prof. Craig on the $19.2-million Building Architecture Research Node (BARN) research facility currently in design and planned to be operational in 2024. www.mcgill.ca

CCA launches Indigenous-led exhibition

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The CCA has launched Towards Home, an Indigenous-led exhibition and publication project that explores how Inuit, Sámi, and other communities across the Arctic are creating self-determined spaces.

Co-curated by Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, Jocelyn Piirainen, and Rafico Ruiz, the project takes shape as an exhibition, a publication, a design workshop, and a summer festival. The exhibition is on display in the CCA’s main galleries until February 12, 2023.

The project is informed by the perspectives of a group of Inuit, Sámi, and settler co-curators who share the ambition to support

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northern Indigenous forms of sovereignty shaped by an understanding of the land as home.

“Caring for and living on the land is a way of being. (angirramut) in Inuktitut or ruovttu guvlui in Sámi means ‘towards home,’ says the CCA. “To move towards home is to reflect on where Inuit and Sámi people find home, on what their connections to their land means, and on what those relationships could look like into the future.”

The project examines and celebrates practices of designing and building on the land that empower Indigenous communities.

The co-curators “acknowledge that the work of deepening architecture’s engagement with Indigenous designers and their communities needs to above all centre the knowledge and experiences of being at home on the land.”

of the construction process is also key to RPBW ’s work, which places importance from the early stages on how each project will be designed “piece by piece.”

The selection of projects includes the Centre Pompidou (Studio Piano & Rogers, 1977), The California Academy of Sciences (with Stantec, 2008), the London Shard (with Adamson Associates, 2012), the Children’s Hospital in Uganda (with TAMassociati, 2021) and the soon-to-be-completed New Toronto Courthouse (with NORR , 2022).

The exhibition is being hosted by the Harbourfront Centre in partnership with the Instituto Italiano di Cultura, Toronto, and runs until September 11, 2022.

Piece by Piece: Inside Renzo Piano Building Workshop opens in Toronto

The article “Generating Ideas” in our June 2022 issue incorrectly gave full credit for the design of the G.M . Shrum Generating Station at W.A.C. Bennett Dam to Andrew Gruft. We have since learned that Andrew Gruft was part of a design team under partner-in-charge Rand Iredale which included project architects Alan Scott and Horst Messer. The renderings published in our pages were by Glen Cividen.

www.cca.qc.ca

A new exhibition at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre showcases the work of Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW). Piece by Piece: Inside Renzo Piano Building Workshop is composed of 11 tables with 11 projects selected to ref lect RPBW ’s working process.

The works present the studio’s diversity in architectural production, spanning a wide range of places and times. “Visitors will experience a world-tour of sorts that provides impressions of our firm’s DNA ,” writes Amaury Greig, associate at RPBW. “The vastly different projects are connected by a design approach that is driven by the specific context of each site, and by a fundamental objective of designing ‘places for people’.” A careful consideration

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www.harbourfrontcentre.com

ADDENDA

In our April 2022 issue, the article “Alberni at the Vanguard” highlights the role of Peter Cardew in the design of the 1978 Crown Life Block. We would like to add that the partner-in-charge of this project was William Rhone.

For the latest news, visit www.canadianarchitect.com/news and sign up for our weekly e-newsletter at www.canadianarchitect.com/subscribe

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15 Briefs En bref

RAIC Journal Journal de l’IRAC

The RAIC returns to in-person events with the Congress on Architecture In October, the RAIC Congress on Architecture Week 2022 will bring together professionals for celebrations and conversations on architecture.

It will feature important discussions on architecture and provide participants with an opportunity to explore the historic coastal town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick. Space is limited for this event, so register early to secure your spot: raic.org/congress2022

Le Congrès sur l’architecture de l’IRAC est de retour et en personne La semaine du Congrès sur l’architecture de l’IRAC 2022 rassemble des professionnels dans le cadre de célébrations et de conversations sur l’architecture. L’événement se tiendra en octobre.

Les délégués auront l’occasion de célébrer et de discuter de questions d’architecture importantes tout en visitant la ville côtière historique de Saint Andrews, au Nouveau-Brunswick. Le nombre de places est limité, inscrivez-vous rapidement pour garantir votre place : raic.org/congress2022

RHFAC Professional Designation The RAIC is committed to providing the architectural community the tools and resources they need to create a better world for all. We are pleased to partner with the Rick Hansen Foundation to bring the Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification™ (RHFAC) Training to the RAIC community.

The online course provides participants with the fundamental skills and knowledge required to rate a site using the RHFAC.

Désignation professionnelle RHFAC L’IRAC est déterminé à offrir à la communauté architecturale les outils et les ressources dont elle a besoin pour créer un monde meilleur pour tous. En partenariat avec la Fondation Rick Hansen, l’IRAC a le plaisir d’offrir le programme menant à la certification en matière d’accessibilité de la Fondation Rick Hansen (RHFAC). Le cours en ligne donne aux participants les compétences et les connaissances fondamentales nécessaires pour procéder à l’évaluation d’un site selon le système de la RHFAC.

The RAIC is the leading voice for excellence in the built environment in Canada, demonstrating how design enhances the quality of life, while addressing important issues of society through responsible architecture. www.raic.org L’IRAC est le principal porte-parole en faveur de l’excellence du cadre bâti au Canada. Il démontre comment la conception améliore la qualité de vie tout en tenant compte d’importants enjeux sociétaux par la voie d’une architecture responsable. www.raic.org/fr

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A message from the RAIC President Un message du président de l’IRAC John Brown AAA, FRAIC, Immediate Past President AAA, FRAIC, président sortant de charge

Now more than ever, architects, as stewards of the built environment, need to step forward and work toward the design of a better future.

Adhering to the values outlined in our strategic plan, the RAIC plays a vital role by focusing on integrity, climate action, reconciliation, social justice and innovation.

The RAIC advances action on areas of importance within the architectural community, with targeted advocacy on issues such as counteracting climate change, building and strengthening our relationship with Indigenous peoples, and creating a just culture that strives for social and spatial equity. The RAIC embraces and respects inclusivity, fosters diversity and is accessible to all, making us a leader in designing a better future for Canada’s architectural community.

Maintenant plus que jamais, les architectes, comme gérants de l’environnement bâti, doivent aller de l’avant et travailler à la conception d’un avenir meilleur. Adhérant aux valeurs décrites dans son plan stratégique, l’IRAC joue un rôle vital en se concentrant sur l’intégrité, l’action climatique, la réconciliation, la justice sociale et l’innovation.

L’IRAC prône l’action dans des domaines d’importance au sein de la communauté architecturale, avec un plaidoyer ciblé sur des questions telles que la lutte au changement climatique, l’établissement et le renforcement de nos relations avec les peuples autochtones et la création d’une culture juste qui vise à l’équité sociale et spatiale. L’IRAC soutient et respecte l’inclusivité, favorise la diversité et est accessible pour tous et toutes, ce qui fait de nous un chef de file dans la conception d’un avenir meilleur pour la communauté architecturale du Canada.

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National Urban Design Awards The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP), and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) are pleased to announce the 2022 National Urban Design Award winners. Public spaces, social housing research and community plans are among this year’s thirteen winning projects from across Canada. The awards are a part of a two-tier program held in cooperation with Canadian municipalities.

L’Institut royal d’architecture du Canada (IRAC), l’Institut canadien des urbanistes (ICU) et l’Association des architectes paysagistes du Canada (ELCV) sont heureux d’annoncer les lauréats des Prix nationaux de design urbain 2022. Treize projets à travers le Canada ont été sélectionnés en allant d’espaces publics, à la recherche sur le logement social, à des plans communautaires et plus encore.

Les prix font partie d’un programme à deux niveaux organisé en collaboration avec les municipalités canadiennes.

The public plaza of True North Square in the evening.

A view from the upper terrace shows the arc geometry of the square.

La place publique de True North la nuit.

ANDREW LATREILLE

La forme en arc de la place vue de la terrasse supérieure.

Urban Architecture - Award of Excellence

Architecture urbaine - Lauréat

True North Square, Winnipeg, MB Perkins&Will

Place True North, Winnipeg, MB Perkins&Will

Capturing the unique spirit of Winnipeg, True North Square addresses its location with a climate-responsive design for a communityfocused development. Creating towers of modest height responding to a central public square, the project prioritizes the pedestrian and seeks to repair the long-neglected fabric in which it is located.

Product of a national competition, the project is active year-round, specifically focusing on transforming the character and lifestyle of the downtown. The ambitious public realm provides a myriad of amenities and open space to create a vibrant, 24/7, urban experience. The pedestrian-centric design also provides improved access to public transit and encourages active transportation.

La place True North saisit l’esprit unique de Winnipeg et tient compte de son emplacement en adaptant un complexe centré sur la communauté au climat. En créant des tours d’une hauteur modeste qui répondent à une place publique centrale, les architectes ont donné la priorité au piéton et cherché à réparer le tissu longtemps négligé sur lequel elle se trouve. Résultat d’un concours national, la place fourmille d’activités tout au long de l’année et elle vise particulièrement à transformer le caractère et le style de vie du centre-ville. Ce projet ambitieux du domaine public offre une myriade de commodités et des espaces verts pour créer une expérience urbaine vibrante en tout temps. La conception axée sur les piétons offre aussi un meilleur accès aux transports en commun et favorise les modes de transport actifs.

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A landscaped courtyard creates a green oasis in the city.

The showroom is set back within the courtyard.

On a utilisé des briques récupérées pour créer une façade qui rappelle celle d’un bâtiment antérieur sur le terrain.

NANNE SPRINGER

Reclaimed brick was used to create a façade that recalls an earlier building on the site.

Urban Architecture - Certificate of Merit

Architecture urbaine - Certificat de mérite

Montauk Montréal, Montreal, QC Cohlmeyer Architecture

Montauk Montréal, Montréal, QC Cohlmeyer Architecture

A highly invested client and enthusiastic design team convinced a reluctant authority to proceed with this daring showroom retrofit.

Open space and natural light are integral to the project. Four storeys were opened up onto a green courtyard by carving out forty feet from the building. Each long showroom floor is bookended by either a full height glass wall overlooking the garden or a four-storey light well to the north. A reclaimed brick façade and subtle detailing reinforce an idea of reimagined architectural ruin. With deceptive simplicity this project convincingly rejuvenates an otherwise forgettable building into a beautiful showroom gallery and urban jewel.

Un client très investi et une équipe de conception enthousiaste ont convaincu une autorité hésitante à aller de l’avant avec cette rénovation audacieuse d’une salle d’exposition. Quatre étages ont été ouverts sur une cour verte en taillant un espace de quarante pieds dans le bâtiment. Chacun des longs étages de la salle d’exposition est encadré par un mur de verre pleine hauteur donnant sur le jardin ou reçoit la lumière naturelle d’un lanterneau donnant sur le nord. Une façade en briques récupérées et aux détails subtils renforce l’idée d’une ruine architecturale réimaginée. D’une simplicité trompeuse, ce projet redonne vie de manière convaincante à un bâtiment autrement négligé pour en faire une magnifique salle d’exposition et un petit bijou urbain.

Urban Design Plans - Award of Excellence

Plan de design urbain - Lauréat

Saugeen First Nation GZHE-MNIDOO GI-TA-GAAN (Creator’s Garden and Amphitheatre) Master Plan, Southampton, ON Indigenous Design Studio / Brook McIlroy Inc. & Saugeen First Nation

Plan directeur du GZHE-MNIDOO GI-TA-GAAN (Jardin des créateurs et amphithéâtre) de la Première Nation Saugeen , Southampton, ON Indigenous Design Studio / Brook McIlroy Inc. & Saugeen First Nation

The Saugeen First Nation Amphitheatre and Creator’s Garden Master Plan will strengthen the community’s long-term economic viability while supporting the recovery of land-based knowledge known to Indigenous Peoples for millennia. The project is a co-design between community members and an interdisciplinary team led

by Indigenous architects and designers. The restoration of Saugeen First Nation’s land surrounding the Amphitheatre is integral to the future success of the site, and supports the Garden’s emphasis on medicine knowledge, land-based learning and traditional storytelling. This emphasis heightens the potential for future programming based around medicine knowledge from a health, healing, and a horticultural perspective.

Ce plan directeur renforcera la viabilité économique à long terme de la communauté tout en soutenant la récupération du savoir basé sur le territoire connu des peuples autochtones depuis des millénaires.

Le projet est une conception commune entre les membres de la communauté et une équipe interdisciplinaire dirigée par des architectes et des designers autochtones. La restauration des terres de la Première Nation Saugeen qui entourent l’amphithéâtre fait partie intégrante de la réussite du site et soutient l’importance accordée par le Jardin au savoir médicinal, à l’apprentissage fondé sur le territoire et aux récits traditionnels. Cette importance accroît le potentiel d’un futur programme basé sur les connaissances médicinales du point de vue de la santé, de la guérison et de l’horticulture.

Une cour paysagée crée une oasis de verdure dans la ville.

La salle d’exposition est en retrait dans la cour.

A view of the proposed Visitor Centre at night.

Rendu de l’endroit de rassemblement du jardin central.

Vue du pavillon d’accueil proposé la nuit.

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BROOK MCILROY

Rendering of the Central Garden Gathering Place.

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COURTESY JAMES KM CHENG ARCHITECTS

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Urban Design Plans - Certificate of Merit

Plan de design urbain - Certificat de mérite

Plaza of Nations, Vancouver, BC James KM Cheng Architects Inc / Canadian Metropolitan Properties Corp.

Place des Nations, Vancouver, C-B James KM Cheng Architects Inc / Canadian Metropolitan Properties Corp.

The project is centrally located in the False Creek waterfront area of Vancouver as part of the designated Entertainment District. It is also one of two last remaining undeveloped waterfront sites in Vancouver. The goal of the project is to provide a much-needed waterfront gathering place for a world-class waterfront city. The project serves many roles: as a destination, a connector, a portal, a foreground, as well as a backdrop to the skyline of Vancouver. Therefore, the project is designed to be experienced at various scales as a unique, lively destination with a diverse public realm.

Le projet est situé au centre de la zone riveraine de False Creek à Vancouver et fait partie du quartier désigné pour les divertissements.

C’est également l’un des deux derniers sites riverains non aménagés de Vancouver. Le projet vise à offrir un lieu de rassemblement riverain indispensable pour une ville de bord de mer de classe mondiale. Il joue plusieurs rôles, agissant en tant que destination, de connecteur, de portail, de premier plan et de toile de fond sur le profil de Vancouver.

Le projet est conçu pour offrir diverses expériences, comme destination unique et vibrante au domaine public diversifié.

An artistic rendering of the view from the Grand Stair.

The project offers panoramic views towards the seawall.

Un rendu artistique de la vue à partir du grand escalier.

Le projet offre des points de vue panoramiques sur la digue.

TOM ARBAN

Seat-walls form an outdoor classroom and gathering space with the ravine as the backdrop.

Civic Design - Award of Excellence

Projets d’aménagements municipaux - Lauréat

University of Toronto Scarborough Valley Land Accessible Trail, Toronto, ON Schollen & Company Inc., Brown & Company Engineering, MoonMatz Ltd., GeoTerre Limited

Sentier accessible menant à la vallée, Université de Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON Schollen & Company Inc., Brown & Company Engineering, MoonMatz Ltd., GeoTerre Limited

This precedent-setting project exceeds the requirements of provincial accessibility legislation, providing an important link between the University Campus and the Highland Creek Valley corridor, a highly biodiverse Environmentally Significant Area. The trail offers all people access to nature in an equitable manner. The media has described the trail as “breathtaking” and a “new landmark” within the City of Toronto. The surrounding natural setting of the ravine is considered a “living laboratory” by the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC) and supports natural sciences-based curricula. The trail establishes an environmental and accessibility legacy for the UTSC and greater community.

Ce projet dépasse les exigences de la législation provinciale en matière d’accessibilité. Il offre un lien majeur entre le campus universitaire et le corridor de la vallée Highland Creek, une zone d’importance environnementale en raison de sa grande biodiversité. Les médias l’ont décrit comme étant « à couper le souffle » et comme un « nouvel emblème » de la ville de Toronto. Le cadre naturel environnant du ravin est considéré comme un « laboratoire vivant » par le campus Scarborough de l’Université de Toronto qui y voit un soutien à ses programmes de sciences naturelles. Le sentier est un legs environnemental et accessible au campus et à la communauté élargie.

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Elevated boardwalks bring visitors up into the tree canopy.

Les murs-sièges créent une classe en plein air et un lieu de rassemblement avec le ravin en arrière-plan.

Les passerelles surélevées amènent les visiteurs dans la canopée des arbres.

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Hockey de rue sur l’asphalte peint parmi une rangée d’icônes.

Un couple partage un repas à l’icône de piquenique.

INGLEWOOD BIA

A couple shares a meal at the picnic icon.

PUBLIC CITY ARCHITECTURE

A group plays street hockey on the painted asphalt surface amongst a row of icons.

Urban Fragments - Award of Excellence

Fragments urbains - Lauréat

PARK PARK, Calgary, AB Public City Architecture

PARK PARK, Calgary, AB Public City Architecture

PARK PARK is a surface parking lot in Calgary transformed into a multi-use space for people and vehicles. A two-year tactical intervention, it views the vehicle as a guest in an otherwise neighbourhood-oriented urban room. The pedestrian-focused park/ parking lot features a phone charger, bike pump, library, basketball hoop, hockey targets, skateboarding elements, and a handwarming area. The space also offers places to sit, eat, gather, or trade goods during community events. Meanwhile, revenue generation is maintained as only five of the original thirty parking spots were surrendered to the reconfigured urban park… park.

PARK PARK est un parc de stationnement en surface de Calgary transformé en espace polyvalent pour les personnes et les véhicules.

Ce projet considère le véhicule comme un invité dans une pièce urbaine autrement orientée vers le quartier. Le parc/parc de stationnement destiné aux piétons comprend un chargeur de téléphone, une pompe à vélo, une bibliothèque, un panier de ballon-panier, des cibles de lancer de hockey, des éléments pour planche à roulettes et une zone pour se réchauffer les mains. L’espace comprend également des endroits pour s’asseoir, manger, se rassembler ou échanger des biens lors d’activités communautaires. Le parc de stationnement continue de générer des revenus, car seulement cinq de ses trente places originales ont été cédées au parc urbain reconfiguré.

Urban Fragments - Certificate of Merit

Fragments urbains - Certificat de mérite

Place Monique-Mercure, Montreal, QC Civiliti

Place Monique-Mercure, Montréal, QC Civiliti

Place Monique-Mercure celebrates the landmark Art Deco architecture and interior design of the prestigious Théâtre Outremont in Montreal. Taking advantage of the removal of several parking spaces, the new design offers a small urban landscape with signature seating and lighting features. The seating is composed of a continuous band of granite and stainless-steel inserts that honour a typical Art Deco geometrical line motif, as do the simple sculptural volumes that create the different spatial nooks. Three stainless-steel lightboxes create a warm night ambiance. Their floral design reinterprets a pattern found in the interior of the main theatre.

La place Monique-Mercure est un hommage à l’architecture et au design intérieur Art déco du prestigieux Théâtre Outremont à Montréal. Profitant de l’enlèvement de plusieurs places de stationnement, le nouveau design offre un petit paysage urbain avec des sièges et des éléments d’éclairage distinctifs. Les sièges sont composés d’une bande continue de granit et d’insertions en acier inoxydable qui rappellent un motif géométrique linéaire typique de l’Art déco, tout comme le font les volumes sculpturaux simples qui créent différentes alcôves. Trois boîtes lumineuses en acier inoxydable créent une ambiance chaleureuse. Leur design floral réinterprète un motif que l’on trouve à l’intérieur du bâtiment principal.

A continuous granite band provides for flexible seating areas.

Une bande en granit continue crée des zones flexibles pour s’assoir.

La nuit, des appareils d’éclairage illuminent la voie piétonne.

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MAUD THERY

At night, lighting fixtures illuminate the pedestrian road.

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JAMES BRITTAIN

An interior view of the bridge, showing Hudson’s Bay in the background.

Urban Fragments - Certificate of Merit

Fragments urbains - Certificat de mérite

CF Toronto Eaton Centre Bridge, Toronto, ON WilkinsonEyre, Design Architect; Zeidler Architecture, Executive Architect

CF Toronto Eaton Centre Bridge, Toronto, ON WilkinsonEyre, Design Architect; Zeidler Architecture, Executive Architect

Located near the busy intersection of Yonge and Queen Street, the CF Toronto Eaton Centre Bridge is a striking public landmark that replaces a non-accessible bridge from the 1970s. The new structure seamlessly links two contrasting buildings— the Romanesque Revival Hudson’s Bay Building at its south end, and the postmodern CF Toronto Eaton Centre to the north.

Encased in floor-to-ceiling glass and bronze panels with spiralling angles, the bridge’s dynamic sculptural form gently hovers over busy Queen Street. It is a prominent reminder of the importance of creating infrastructure that is accessible and functional, yet graceful and eye-catching.

Située à proximité de l’intersection achalandée des rues Yonge et Queen, la passerelle du CF Toronto Eaton Centre est un point de repère remarquable qui remplace une passerelle inaccessible des années 1970. La nouvelle structure relie harmonieusement deux bâtiments très différents – l’édifice de la Baie d’Hudson, de style néoroman, à l’extrémité sud, et le CF Toronto Eaton Centre de style postmoderne, à l’extrémité nord. La passerelle à la forme sculpturale dynamique s’étend au-dessus de la rue Queen. Elle est vitrée sur toute sa hauteur, les panneaux de verre étant séparés par des panneaux de bronze aux angles en spirale. Ce projet est un rappel notable de l’importance de créer une infrastructure accessible et fonctionnelle, tout en étant élégante et attrayante.

From the exterior, the CG Toronto Eaton Centre Bridge’s twisting form creates a striking urban presence.

Vue intérieure de la passerelle montrant le magasin Baie d’Hudson en arrière-plan.

Vue de l’extérieur, la passerelle en spirale du CF Toronto Eaton Centre crée une présence urbaine remarquable.

DAVID MEIJA MONICO

CLINT LANGEVIN, PERKINS & WILL

Volunteers paint the Corner Commons section of the parking lot.

Community Initiatives - Award of Excellence

Initiatives communautaires - Lauréat

Corner Commons, Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre, Toronto, ON Perkins&Will

Corner Commons, Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre, Toronto, ON Perkins&Will

Coordinated by the Jane/Finch Centre, Corner Commons is a temporary, free, and accessible public space. Installed for summer 2021, Corner Commons hosted a wide range of activities with local artists, resident leaders, grassroots groups, and various community organizations from the neighbourhood. As part of Perkins&Will’s Social Purpose program, employees were given the chance to contribute to our communities in direct and personal ways. The members of the Toronto studio helped design, paint, and repurpose the corner of the Jane Finch Mall parking lot into a thriving community hub.

Coordonné par le Centre Jane/Finch, Corner Commons est un espace public temporaire, gratuit et accessible. Installé pour l’été 2021, Corner Commons a accueilli une foule d’activités avec des artistes et des dirigeants locaux, des groupes et des organisations communautaires du quartier. Dans le cadre de son programme Social Purpose, la firme Perkins&Will a donné à ses employés l’occasion de contribuer à nos communautés de manière directe et personnelle. Les membres de l’atelier de Toronto ont contribué à la conception, à la peinture et à la transformation d’un coin du stationnement du centre commercial Jane Finch en un carrefour communautaire vivant.

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A speaker on stage at the Enough-isEnough event.

Des bénévoles peignent la section de Corner Commons du stationnement.

Un intervenant sur la scène à l’événement Enough-isEnough.

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A rendering of outdoor activities along the water.

L’aménagement du site comprend une place publique qui mène au lac Ontario.

CICADA DESIGN INC.

The site’s design includes a public square that leads to Lake Ontario.

Special Jury Award for Sustainable Development - Award of Excellence

Un rendu des activités de plein air au bord de l’eau.

Lakeview Village, Mississauga, ON Lakeview Community Partners Limited

Prix du développement durable- Lauréat Village Lakeview, Mississauga, ON Lakeview Community Partners Limited

Lakeview Village is a 177-acre development combining high-quality housing, office and retail space, dedicated arts and cultural facilities, and recreational areas including trails for walking and cycling. The 15-minute city also includes local access to a portion of Lake Ontario that was once occupied by a coal-fired power plant. Lakeview Village integrates greenspace, transit accessibility, and sustainable low-carbon green technologies such as District Energy and vacuum waste collection. The site’s natural environment serves as an outstanding feature of the development through the remediation of Serson Creek, a 600-metre pier on Lake Ontario, and access to the adjacent Jim Tovey Lakeview Conservation Area.

Le village Lakeview est un complexe qui s’étend sur 177 acres et qui comprend des bâtiments résidentiels et des espaces de bureaux et de vente au détail de grande qualité, ainsi que des installations culturelles et des espaces récréatifs, y compris des sentiers pédestres et cyclistes. Le village dans lequel tout est accessible en 15 minutes comprend également un accès local à une partie du lac Ontario qui était autrefois occupée par une centrale au charbon. Le village intègre des espaces verts, l’accès au transport en commun et des technologies durables sobres en carbone comme l’énergie de quartier et la collecte pneumatique des déchets. L’environnement naturel du site est mis en valeur par l’aménagement grâce à l’assainissement du ruisseau Serson, une jetée de 600 mètres sur le lac Ontario et l’accès à l’aire de conservation adjacente Jim Tovey Lakeview.

Special Jury Award for Small or Medium Community Urban Design Award - Award of Excellence

Prix de design urbain dans une petite ou moyenne communauté - Lauréat

Yarmouth Main Street Redevelopment Phase 2, Yarmouth, NS Fathom Studio

Yarmouth Main Street Redevelopment Phase 2, Yarmouth, N-É Fathom Studio

This project re-imagines the relationship between people and their ‘Main Street’. It recognizes what makes a town’s setting unique and highlights it for visitors and the local community in the public realm.

The regionally specific design language reinforces Yarmouth’s sense of place and creates an unforgettable experience. This project represents a true placemaking effort that brings to life the community’s needs and aspirations through clever and carefully considered design details. Yarmouth’s Main Street is an example of what other municipalities can do to instill a sense of pride within their community and attract people and business to their region and downtowns.

Ce projet réimagine la relation entre les gens et leur « rue principale ». Il met en valeur l’emplacement unique de la ville dans le domaine public, tant pour les visiteurs que pour les résidents. Le langage conceptuel particulier de la région renforce le sentiment d’appartenance à Yarmouth et crée une expérience inoubliable. Ce projet donne vie aux besoins et aux aspirations de la collectivité par des détails de conception intelligents et soigneusement étudiés. La rue principale de Yarmouth est un exemple de ce que peuvent faire les municipalités pour insuffler un sentiment de fierté au sein de leur population et attirer les gens et les entreprises dans leur région et leur centre-ville.

The project creates a new, welcoming gateway to downtown Yarmouth.

Arrêt d’autobus de la place Alma, le jour.

Le projet crée un nouveau portail accueillant pour le centre-ville de Yarmouth.

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HARRISON NEWMAN JARDINE

Alma Square Bus Stop by day.

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Student Projects - Award of Excellence

Projets étudiants - Lauréat

Mobile Support as Shelter Support Infrastructure, Toronto, ON Yongmin Ye, Michelle Li, Edward Minar Widjaja Professor: Drew Adams

Soutien mobile comme infrastructure de soutien au logement, Toronto, ON Yongmin Ye, Michelle Li, Edward Minar Widjaja Professeur: Drew Adams

Mobile Support as Shelter Support Infrastructure is an urban design project with the goal of constructing a mobile support system to serve the unhoused and precariously housed populations of Toronto.

Homelessness is a dynamic issue where transportation is a major barrier to access services. Mobile Support as Shelter Support Infrastructure proposes a mobile support network accompanied by community-oriented interventions. The goal of this project is to provide people who are perceived as invisible and with no sense of dwelling in society a place with a permanent address.

Soutien mobile comme infrastructure de soutien au logement est un projet de design urbain visant à construire un système de soutien mobile pour servir les personnes sans abri et celles qui ont un logement précaire de Toronto. L’itinérance devient un problème dynamique lorsque le transport est un obstacle majeur à l’accès aux services. Le projet propose un réseau de soutien mobile accompagné par des interventions axées sur la communauté. Il a comme objectif d’offrir un endroit avec une adresse permanente à des personnes qui sont perçues comme étant invisibles et n’ayant pas le sentiment de faire partie de la société.

View of a food truck in the courtyard.

Locations for other potential mobile support units.

Vue d’une cantine ambulante dans la cour.

Emplacements pour d’autres unités potentielles de soutien mobile.

VINCENT CHUANG AND ZIHAO WEI

Rendering of the proposed sculpture studio.

Student Projects - Certificate of Merit

Projets étudiants - Certificat de mérite

Filling Pieces - Hall’s Lane Creative Studios, Kitchener, ON Vincent Chuang and Zihao Wei / Professor: Rick Haldenby

Filling Pieces - Hall’s Lane Creative Studios, Kitchener, ON Vincent Chuang et Zihao Wei / Professeur: Rick Haldenby

This project envisions the future of Hall’s Lane, in downtown Kitchener, as an active cultural corridor where artists can exhibit and create their work while the community engages and learns. Eight artist studios of varying types are located between Queen Street and Gaukel Street, providing community building activities through workshops, tools, and events. The laneway in this proposal is re-explored as a pedestrian space where the process of art and making is unfolded through the architecture. By partnering with local grassroots organizations, this project builds from, and emboldens, the existing arts and cultural infrastructure in downtown Kitchener.

Ce projet imagine à quoi pourrait ressembler Hall’s Lane, au centreville de Kitchener, comme corridor culturel dynamique où les artistes peuvent exposer et créer leurs œuvres tandis que les promeneurs engagent la conversation avec eux. Huit ateliers d’artistes de diverses disciplines sont situés entre les rues Queen et Gaukel et proposent des ateliers, des outils et des événements qui renforcent la communauté. Cette proposition réexamine la ruelle comme un espace piétonnier dans lequel le processus de création artistique se déploie à travers l’architecture. En s’associant avec des organisations locales, les auteurs de ce projet s’appuient sur l’infrastructure artistique et culturelle existante du centre-ville de Kitchener et la stimulent.

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A painting studio is another of the eight studios proposed to activate Hall’s Lane.

Rendu de l’atelier de sculpture proposé.

Un atelier de peinture parmi les huit ateliers proposés pour dynamiser Hall’s Lane.

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INTERVIEW

FRANK GEHRY: “YOU DON’T SEE WHAT’S GOING ON, UNTIL ALL OF A SUDDEN, THERE IT IS.”

COURTESY GREAT GULF GROUP, DREAM, WESTDALE PROPERTIES

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IN A CANADIAN ARCHITECT EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, FRANK GEHRY OPINES ON THE EXPLOSION OF GROWTH IN DOWNTOWN TORONTO—INCLUDING HIS OWN SUPER-TALL FORMA TOWERS. In late June, Canadian Architect editor Elsa Lam sat down with Canadian-born, L.A.-based architect Frank Gehry. Gehry was back in his hometown, Toronto, for the launch of Forma, a pair of 73- and 84-storey towers in the downtown Entertainment District.

Despite the fanfare surrounding the launch, Gehry was ambiguous about the idea of super-tall buildings downtown. He’d prefer to see downtown Toronto developed less intensively—but since the floodgates have been opened, he offers Forma as a high-quality, artistically conceived alternative to the norm.

Here’s our interview with Frank Gehry.

Canadian Architect: I was hoping to talk a little bit about architecture in general, to give context to this project….

Frank Gehry: When we’re doing it, and when we’re in the soup, you don’t realize how good or bad it is. You’re too focused on temporal issues that are right there, without thinking a lot about what you’re leaving. It’s different.

[The Forma towers are] only one piece, it’s not the whole city. The city has gone ahead and done a bunch of stuff that most of us never expected. Some of it’s not good.

CA: When the renderings first came out for this, nine years ago, the big talk was about how this was extremely tall for Toronto. Now, there’s several towers that are similar in height, and lots more on the boards.

FG: And so, if we could have gotten together and talked about it, we could have done a better job. Instead of everybody going their own way.

But that’s democracy.

CA: A lot of the narrative around this project has been about your roots in Toronto. I’m curious if you think of yourself as a Canadian architect, or as an American architect, or as some hybrid?

FG: My DNA is Canadian, and I think my—whatever it is, my modesty

or false modesty—comes from being Canadian. Americans go out and blow their horns. I think that’s Canadian, that you don’t blow your horn as much, right? Am I right? I don’t know if that’s how it is now, but that’s where I came from and that’s where I feel comfortable. I’m proud to be part of that feeling.

CA: When I think about your career, you’ve gone from a rebel architect, when you were designing your own house from scrapyard pieces, to…

FG: In my mind, it’s all logical. I went to a factory that made chainlink in L.A ., and in one hour, they made enough chainlink to cover

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ABOVE Canadian-born, L.A.-based architect Frank Gehry is the designer behind Forma, a pair of 73- and 84-storey towers in downtown Toronto.

one lane of the Santa Monica freeway from downtown to the ocean.

Why was I interested in chainlink? Because it was a material that was ubiquitous, everybody used it, it was everywhere. Everybody’s yard had one. I said, if you’re going to use it, let’s see, can we make it better? It’s like fabric, it takes the light in a beautiful way. If you hang it, it shimmers. There’s all kinds of things you can do with chainlink to make it better. But when I used it, people said, “Why are you using that crappy material?” So I turned to them and said, “Why are you using it?” And the same with corrugated metal. Those were available very inexpensively, so I used them, and got in a way to like them, I used them so much.”

“The guy next door to me came to my house one day and said, “How dare you do this to my neighbourhood!” So I pointed to his house, and said, “you got two trailers in the backyard, and you got a chainlink fence—I was just being inspired by you.” But he didn’t see it that way.

So that’s the disconnect.

I think a lot of that’s the same here—you don’t see what’s going on, until all of a sudden, there it is.

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CA: Given this context, I’m wondering if you can talk a little about what the future is from your vantage point now.

FG: There’s always a demand for places to live, places to work, all over the world. Then politics comes into it. It’s different in Finland and Sweden; Scandinavian countries, their political approach makes for different kinds of cities, makes different kinds of environments. Toronto is a little bit of that—for me, that’s the nice part, the modesty part, the “don’t look at me, we’re making things.” That sounds like a frail comment in the context of two of the biggest towers in Toronto. So there are these inconsistencies in how we feel and what we do.

If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t be doing buildings like this here, I would have thought of it much differently in scale. But if you look from the freeway coming in, you’ve already opened the door to stuff that you’re going to be living with for a long time. Over time, you rationalize why it’s there, and what it looks like, and it’ll become the historic neighbourhood in 50 years. Compared to what happens after, it’s going to look modest and tame.

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2022 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDALS IN ARCHITECTURE

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EVERY TWO YEARS, THE PRESTIGIOUS GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDALS IN ARCHITECTURE RECOGNIZE AND CELEBRATE OUTSTANDING DESIGN IN RECENTLY BUILT PROJECTS BY CANADIAN ARCHITECTS. THE COMPETITION, ESTABLISHED

BY THE ROYAL ARCHITECTURAL INSTITUTE OF CANADA IN COLLABORATION WITH THE CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS, CONTINUES A TRADITION INITIATED BY THE MASSEY MEDALS IN 1950. HERE ARE THIS YEAR’S WINNERS.

MATT MACKAY-LYONS

Brian MacKay-Lyons’ Village at the End of the World, in Upper Kingsberg, Nova Scotia, is one of the winners of a 2022 Governor General’s Medal in Architecture.

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BEN RAHN / A-FRAME

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

28 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

60_80 ATLANTIC AVENUE LOCATION

Toronto, Ontario BDP Quadrangle

ARCHITECT

60 and 80 Atlantic are a pair of linked office buildings that stand in the heart of Toronto’s Liberty Village, a former industrial zone located between the 19th-century Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and the Gardiner Expressway. Comprising the adaptive reuse of a historic building and a contemporary expansion, the project offers sustainable, contemporary workspaces, along with urban connectivity, within a quickly gentrifying historic neighbourhood.

In phase one, the 1898 brick building at 60 Atlantic—originally built as a wine warehouse—was repurposed as a three-storey mixed-use building and urban catalyst. Its Corten-steel and glass addition contains a new circulation spine and washrooms, addressing today’s accessibility standards. The glass-wrapped stairway towers transform into illuminated beacons at night. An oversized graphic denotes the historic building’s street address, number 60, a reference to the industrial neighbourhood’s tradition of signage painted on warehouses. A sunken courtyard serves as a patio for the brewpub that resides on the basement level, breathing new life into the neighbourhood.

The five-storey office building constructed in phase two continues the narrative, with a refined material palette and reimagining of the brick-and-beam typology for the 21st century. Mass timber—primarily glulam and nail-laminated timber (NLT)—is used for the structural framework of 80 Atlantic, creating Canada’s first contemporary mass

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timber office building outside of British Columbia. Steel and concrete have been integrated into the structure to provide additional strength and fire protection where necessary. The glass curtainwall along the south façade overlooks the courtyard and showcases the exposed mass timber inside.

80 Atlantic links to 60 Atlantic, creating a three-walled public gathering space for office workers, neighbours and passing pedestrians.

Universal accessibility is provided by the sloping plaza between the two structures and the interior ramped entrance corridor at 80 Atlantic, visible through its glass façade. The plaza is framed by walls clad in porcelain tile, Corten steel, and glass curtain wall, establishing visual connections between outdoor communal space and indoor workplaces.

Parking and service entrances are sequestered at the rear of the buildings, reinforcing the street front as their public face.

With its two complementary structures forming an architectural diptych, 60_80 Atlantic Avenue enriches and revitalizes the neighbourhood. :: Jury :: The jury respected the deft use and juxtaposition of architec-

tural intervention in this project. The integration of existing elements with the addition and adaptation of the required modern spaces highlighted a successful architectural process within the constantly evolving built environments around our cities.

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JEFF HOWARD

DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

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CLIENT HULLMARK DEVELOPMENTS LTD. WITH PARTNER BENTALLGREENOAK ON BEHALF

OF SUN LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANY OF CANADA | ARCHITECT TEAM RICHARD WITT, MICHELLE XUEREB, JAN SCHOTTE, WAYNE MCMILLAN, KAZ KANANI,WILL MARENCO, ANDREW FOOTE, DEREK TOWNS, COURT SIN, CAROLINE ROBBIE, ANDREA MCCANN, JULIE SUMAIRSKI, KATHY ROUDSARY, DIANA SMICIKLAS, DYONNE FASHINA | CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT (80 ATLANTIC) EASTERN CONSTRUCTION COMPANY LTD. | CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT (60 ATLANTIC) FIRST GULF | STRUCTURAL READ JONES CHRISTOFFERSEN | MECHANICAL & ELECTRICAL (80 ATLANTIC) SMITH + ANDERSEN | MECHANICAL & ELECTRICAL (60 ATLANTIC) INTEGRAL GROUP | HERITAGE PHILIP GOLDSMITH ARCHITECT | LANDSCAPE VERTECHS DESIGN INC. | ENVELOPE RDH BUILDING SCIENCE INC.- | SUSTAINABILITY RWDI | BUDGET $38 M | OCCUPANCY JUNE 2020

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OPPOSITE 60_80 Atlantic is located in Liberty Village, a neighbourhood in downtown Toronto known for its repurposed industrial-era buildings. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP The public realm is enhanced by 60_80 Atlantic’s shared sunken courtyard, which includes the patio space for a brewpub; the interior of new-build 80 Atlantic uses mass timber to evoke the aesthetic of older industrial structures; 60 Atlantic is an adaptively reused brick-and-beam building.

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

30 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

THE BREARLEY SCHOOL New York City, New York KPMB Architects PHOTOS Nic Lehoux LOCATION

ARCHITECT

How can design create a platform for asserting the intellectual and physical presence of the girl in our society—and her potential to transform the world?

Brearley’s mission combines outstanding academics with a higher purpose to nurture the intellect and character of young girls, preparing them to be leaders and innovators of social transformation. The design of its first new building in over a century began in 2014, and was welltimed with the rise of young women’s voices: that same year, Malala Yousafzai received the Nobel Peace Prize and Emma Watson addressed the United Nations on gender equality.

The original 1929 School building stands on the bank of the Hudson River in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The 12-story masonry fabric building blends in with the residential neighbourhood, but its program is invisible to the street. By 2014, the facilities were outdated, space was at capacity, and there was no room for expansion. The strategy was to expand by adding a new, free-standing building just one block west.

The design creates a ‘gateway’ into the expanded Brearley campus and is extroverted compared to the original school. The masonry façade features bold geometry, and the transparent two-storey street base improves safety and street animation in the neighbourhood.

The design objective was to unlock the power and potential of the Brearley program and community with a f lexible, interconnected, light-filled, multi-purpose learning landscape. The plan organizes the

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program in ascending order from community, to teaching, to exercise and play. A cafeteria, library, and a 600-seat auditorium are located on the lower levels. Spiral stairs interconnect classrooms, art and science labs, and makerspaces in the middle levels. Upper levels feature a gymnasium and culminate with a rooftop playground.

The eco-friendly, LEED Gold-compliant building is meant to act itself as a teacher. Students participate in the sustainable design features: they plant and maintain the green roof as part of the science curriculum, monitor rainwater collection, and activate natural ventilation to reduce mechanical system use by up to 800 hours per year. The design inspired the school to advance the adaptive reuse of its original building, with the goal of creating a net-zero campus by 2050.

Brearley was one of the few private schools in New York City to remain open and functional during the pandemic. 800 people attended daily and stayed healthy. The well-proportioned classrooms, fresh air, efficient filtration systems, operable windows, wide hallways, and interconnecting stairs facilitated COVID-19 protocols.

Kinesthetic learning—using paper and pencils, and reading books instead of watching screens—is at the core of Brearley’s pedagogy. When the virtual and the real are out of balance, this project reminds us that architecture must support human well-being with beautiful, tactile, light-filled, wellventilated spaces for gathering, learning, creativity, and collaboration.

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The pandemic exposed significant inequities, and reinforced the need for the education and empowerment of women for a sustainable future.

Every design element advances Brearley’s mission to cultivate confident, independent leaders. :: Jury :: The implementation of a school in a dense urban environment

presents significant challenges. The jury noted well distributed vertical functions without affecting the fluidity of movement while simultaneously creating collaborative spaces. The new tower is finely integrated into the urban fabric both by its massing and the composition of its facades, creating a gateway to the campus. This project is a bold urban redevelopment project that showcases student life activities on the street: a sign of hope for the future.

CLIENT THE BREARLEY SCHOOL | ARCHITECT TEAM MARIANNE MCKENNA, LUIGI LAROCCA, DAVID CONSTABLE, LUCY TIMBERS, DAVID SMYTHE, CAROLYN LEE, TALAL RAHMEH, ALISTAIR GRIERSON, THOM SETO, LUKAS BERGMARK, LILY HUANG, RAMIN YAMIN, JOSEPH KAN, PETER KITCHEN, RAFAELA AHSAN, JESSICA JUVET, ILANA ALTMAN, JORDAN EVANS | STRUCTURAL/ENVELOPE ENTUITIVE | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL/PLUMBING THOMAS POLISE CONSULTING ENGINEERS | CODE CCI | AV/IT/SECURITY TM TECHNOLOGIES | ACOUSTICS LONGMAN LINDSEY | THEATRE ACOUSTICS SOUND SPACE VISION AND STAGES | LEED STEVEN WINTER ASSOCIATES | CLIMATE ENGINEERS TRANSSOLAR | SIGNAGE ENTRO | BUDGET $67.2 M | OCCUPANCY SEPTEMBER 2019

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The design evolves the masonry tradition of the original Brearley School with different sizes of windows and a playful geometry; the first two levels act as a community hub. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Transparency at the lower levels contributes to street animation; an outdoor playspace tops the building; view of the 600-seat flexible, multi-purpose auditorium; the vertical campus includes wide hallways and interconnecting stairs.

OPPOSITE, LEFT TO RIGHT

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

32 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

FOREST PAVILION Winnipeg, Manitoba Public City Architecture Inc. PHOTOS Lindsay Reid LOCATION

ARCHITECT

Forest Pavilion is a four-season structure constructed on Treaty One land in the floodway zone of the Red River, at Crescent Drive Park in southwest Winnipeg. Conceived as a multi-functional civic asset, it was designed and built on a very tight budget over six years.

In addition to providing three new public washrooms, Forest Pavilion includes three new types of outdoor rooms designed to address the impacts of a changing climate on urban parks. The Shade Room is a roofed hallway through the Pavilion, providing respite from increasing summer temperatures. Adjacent to it is an insulated room with passive ventilation, providing a tempered space for warming up in winter, and for sheltering from the driving rain or hot prairie wind in summer. Lastly, an open-tothe-sky gathering room centres on a freestanding fireplace. Framed by five-metre-tall screen walls, this room serves as an outdoor/indoor cultural and casual gathering area. Forest Pavilion embraces its own hearth.

The Pavilion is the first civic structure of its kind to apply FEMA f lood-protection design standards. This starts with its siting: Forest Pavilion nestles in an existing clearing atop the highest point in the park. All materials below the f loodline can be completely submerged without decay: stainless steel doors, frames, and fasteners are used below the f lood protection level. The concrete base is designed with upstands to raise framing sole plates, and concealed pressure relief strategies in the walls keep water moving. A reduced number of right

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angles in the plan also helps the structure to shed f lowing water.

To further eliminate obstructions, the project uses large swinging wall panels, and avoids f loor-mounted fixtures.

No trees were felled in the construction of Forest Pavilion. Adding to the Pavilion’s sustainability, the construction included hot-dipped galvanized steel chosen for its durability, and rough-sawn fir that was sourced and milled using sustainable harvest practices. The timber components of the structure are mechanically fastened, so that individual pieces can be easily replaced if necessary. The design also includes super-low-flow plumbing fixtures, LED lighting, occupancy sensors to reduce energy consumption, and native plantings.

Highly visible from throughout the park, the Pavilion dissolves day to night from a wooden form to a lantern-like void. Its vibrant chartreuse Venetian plaster interior offers a dramatic welcome to visitors at night— a porch light in the forest. The vertical fir screen that wraps interior and exterior rooms has a syncopated rhythm, referencing the way space, light, and forms appear through a forest. The design folds this phenomenon into a single form, then sculpts away portals for views and access.

Forest Pavilion serves as a hub that supports visitors of all kinds: caregivers and kids at the nearby playground, cyclists passing through, friends meeting to socialize, cultural groups gathering to mark a special event, and people playing sports all year long. Its program goes beyond

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established past uses and conventional ideas about park pavilions. Rather, as a multi-functional civic asset, it creates opportunities to respond to Winnipeg’s emerging cultural and climatic landscapes. :: Jury :: This pavilion is a space that redraws the forest. Its permeabil-

ity and playful forms create a contemporary palisade. An archetypal Canadian pavilion in the forest, it creates a microcosm in its interior courtyard. The jury also highlighted its relation to the forest and its spatial continuity.

CLIENT CITY OF WINNIPEG | ARCHITECT TEAM PETER SAMPSON (FRAIC), ANDREW LEWTHWAITE,

DIRK BLOUW, TIM HORTON, RUSSELL KREPART | LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE TEAM LIZ WREFORD, TAYLOR LAROCQUE | STRUCTURAL WOLFROM ENGINEERING | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL MCW CONSULTANTS LTD. | BUILDER MARRBECK CONSTRUCTION | BUDGET $1.2 M | OCCUPANCY JANUARY 2021

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2 PATH TO PLAYGROUND 3 MECHANICAL ROOM 4 WOMEN’S WASHROOM 5 UNIVERSAL WASHROOM 6 MEN’S WASHROOM 7 DRINKING FOUNTAIN 8 SHADE ROOM 9 WARMING/COOLING

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OPPOSITE Bridging over a trail, the pavilion creates a shaded space that welcomes park visitors from both sides. TOP A semi-enclosed gathering area includes a central fireplace, and is intended to allow for formal and informal gatherings. BOTTOM A vibrant chartreuse interior gives the pavilion a presence likened to a porch light or lantern in its forested setting.

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

34 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

THE IDEA EXCHANGE OLD POST OFFICE Galt, Ontario RDH Architects (RDHA) PHOTOS Tom Arban LOCATION

ARCHITECT

The Idea Exchange Old Post Office is situated upon the traditional territories of the Neutral, the Anishinaabeg, and the Haudenosaunee Peoples, at the edge of the Grand River in downtown Galt, Ontario.

The project goal was to transform a dilapidated heritage post office into Canada’s first “bookless” library, offering all age groups free access to an array of public spaces for learning, making, performance, and other creative endeavours. It also aimed to establish a new community hub, complete with a contiguous café for meeting and socializing.

Anchored along the bank of the Grand River, the project revitalizes a heritage-listed 1885 masonry post office that had fallen into disrepair. It adds an 835-square-metre transparent pavilion that wraps around the original building and stretches out over the water, revealing the public programs offered within. These programs include the café—which doubles as a reading room and public presentation area—a black box theatre, film and audio recording suites, gaming areas, a children’s learning level, and spaces for sewing, carpentry, and 3D printing.

The existing Neo-Gothic post office, designed by the architect of the Parliament Buildings, Thomas Fuller, carries municipal, provincial, and federal historic designations. Although an expression of its time, the building had virtually no connection with the river. Consequently, the designers embraced the idea that the project could restore this important remnant of settler heritage, while also repairing a lost opportunity to establish a strong human and environmental connection.

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The downtown site benefits from views across, up, and down the river, towards major cultural facilities such as the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, the main branch of the Idea Exchange, two large cathedrals, and a new performing arts facility. The glass addition to the post office is conceived as a transparent, glowing, contemporary pavilion floating atop the Grand. Its material vocabulary of transparency brings light into the various levels of studios and public gathering spaces.

Housed within a heritage structure in constant dialogue with its contemporary addition, the Idea Exchange Old Post Office projects the life and vitality of a progressive public library program to the street, the river, and the city beyond. :: Jury :: The architects integrated contemporary volumes into a historic building with boldness and attention to the fine detail of the junctions between the new and existing structures. This creates a continuity by contrast. Lightened views among common spaces over the water and the gesture of daylight washing the historic façades create an interesting and coherent program.

CLIENT CITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND THE IDEA EXCHANGE | ARCHITECT TEAM TYLER SHARP, BOB

GOYECHE, JUAN CABALLERO, SIMON ROUTH, SOO-JIN RIM, IVAN ILIC, GLADYS CHEUNG | STRUC-

TURAL WSP/HALSALL | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL JAIN ASSOCIATES LTD. | CIVIL VALDOR ENGINEER-

ING | ACOUSTICS AERCOUSTICS | CODE L.R.I. | COST AW HOOKER | CONTRACTOR COLLABORATIVE STRUCTURES LTD. | BUDGET $12.8 M | OCCUPANCY OCTOBER 2018

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OPPOSITE The Idea Exchange Old Post Office’s multipurpose gathering area cantilevers out over the Grand River. TOP The main floor space serves as a dining area for the adjacent café, lounge, reading room, and space for public presentations and gatherings. MIDDLE, LEFT TO RIGHT The former post office was adaptively reused into maker spaces; the second floor is a kids’ area for creative play; skylights connect the historic structure with the new addition. BOTTOM The meticulously restored heritage building has a strong presence in downtown Galt, Ontario.

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

36 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL HISTORY AND DIALOGUE CENTRE University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC Formline Architecture PHOTOS Andrew Latreille Photography LOCATION

ARCHITECT

In 1993 Alfred Waugh, a full status member of the Fond Du Lac Denesuline First Nation, became the first Indigenous graduate of UBC ’s architecture school. His mother carried the difficult experience of attending a Northern Alberta residential school. The Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre (IRSHDC)’s unprecedented program and its careful siting in a vital setting drew on this knowledge, and its forms were developed in consort with Elders and Indigenous representatives from across the country.

The IRSHDC is much smaller than the Brutalist and Collegiate Gothic campus buildings surrounding it; there was early agreement on its modesty of scale and the use of wood as its primary construction material.

Space planning required interior and exterior spaces to be equally conducive to large gatherings and solitary moments of reflection, with a design emphasis on serenity and directness. The integration of natural light, a selection of culturally resonant finishes and details, and a close link with natural surroundings were all thought central to the healing process, so the flanking decks and garden are essential components of its conception.

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Buildings promoting human rights tend towards being either monuments or library-archives. While it has elements of both of these, the IRSHDC aspires to something more—a site that facilitates the social act of reconciliation. A much-appreciated new oasis near the main libraries of a mega-university, the IRSHDC is a place of memory, repose and contemplation. The building’s lower level is largely devoted to a public gallery called the “Vault of Memories” with interactive wall displays where citizens—Indigenous and not—can call up photographs, videos and biographies of the students and the places they lived. The entire layout turns around the emotional process of confronting a difficult past, with a sunken garden and natural wetland adjacent, seen against the backdrop of a tiered landscape. Visitors can pass from displays to garden and back again as they wish. Upstairs are meeting rooms with support staff available for counselling and dialogue with visitors, and where programs to advance reconciliation are devised. IRSHDC ’s urban design provides a quiet park for pauses by harried students, while bringing its mission of memory to the core of a contemporary institution.

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OPPOSITE The Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre sits near the university’s clock tower and Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, the repository of the university’s archives. LEFT The roof’s water is captured and falls down a glass channel between two copper clad columns, representing the tears of survivors from residential schools. RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM View from the outdoor learning plaza created on the roof of exhibition space, with seating steps overlooking the courtyard; a wall clad with woven Western Cedar flanks the main stair.

Because it was to serve all the diverse range of Canada’s First Nations, symbols and materials were selected to evoke a pride of culture for Indigenous peoples from many different cultural heritages. Walls and f loors are constructed from spruce-pine cross-laminated timber, while the wooden roof structure has an asymmetrical butterf ly wing shape, selected to provide clear spans, extensive overhangs, and a low roof profile at the highly visible campus core. Charred cedar planks double as markers of scarring, contrasting with a visually porous Douglas Fir glulam curtain wall that brings north light through the interior. Rainwater is collected from this roof, then descends down along a glass and copper-lined scupper to the garden pond. Copper was a high-status material for many Canadian First Nations and Canadian public buildings; the rainwater is an analogue for the tears shed in remembering. The main public stair features a garden view at one side and is brightened at the top by sparkling clusters of LED ring lights. Its inside wall, lined with woven Western Red Cedar strips, is an interpretation of traditional woven baskets.

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:: Jury :: This project deals with the difficult topic of reconciliation

and trauma and addresses it in an architecture that challenges the common aesthetic perception. The community-driven process brings symbolism and generates dialogue through its overall assembly of elements. The jury felt the project delicately balanced this complexity.

CLIENT UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA PROPERTIES TRUST | ARCHITECT TEAM ALFRED WAUGH,

MANNY TRINCA, VINCE KNUDSEN | STRUCTURAL BUSH BOHLMAN & PARTNERS | MECHANICAL SMITH + ANDERSEN | ELECTRICAL APPLIED ENGINEERING SOLUTIONS | LANDSCAPE PFS STUDIO | ENVELOPE JRS ENGINEERING | CODE LMDG | MASS TIMBER SPECIALIST STRUCTURLAM PRODUCTS LP | WOOD SPECIALIST NICOLA LOGWORKS | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER BIRD CONSTRUCTION | BUDGET $2.7 M | OCCUPANCY JULY 2017

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

38 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

JULIS ROMO RABINOWITZ BUILDING & LOUIS A. SIMPSON INTERNATIONAL BUILDING Princeton University, New Jersey KPMB Architects PHOTOS Adrien Williams LOCATION

ARCHITECT

Princeton University is simultaneously grounded in the past and continuously evolving to respond to future needs. The Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building & Louis A. Simpson International Building at 20 Washington Road represents the latest generation of campus development. It prioritizes the repurposing of an existing building to advance the university’s sustainability plan, while fulfilling the master plan vision to create a new social sciences and humanities neighbourhood.

The original Collegiate Gothic building (1929) housed the Department of Chemistry and was expanded with several additions over time, resulting in a labyrinthine arrangement of spaces including large laboratory classrooms and mechanical areas. The challenge was to balance the preservation and restoration of the heritage exterior with the complete transformation of the interior into a light-filled, interconnected environment for the Department of Economics and International Initiatives. The resulting place was envisaged as a focal point in the new academic neighbourhood.

The building is located on the seam where the historic west campus meets the contemporary east campus. The quads and pathways that weave Princeton’s campus together inspired the transformation of the interior into a microcosm of the campus. A network of generous circu-

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lation corridors with gently sloped ramps resolve transitions between different levels of the Collegiate Gothic building and a 1964 extension.

Porcelain tiles provide ease and safety of mobility and wayfinding, matching the bluestone of Princeton’s classic cobblestone pathways.

Indiana limestone, argillite, white oak, low-iron etched glass, and custom steel details complement the heritage fabric and character.

Each department required its own identity within the whole. Economics is housed in the 1929 building, with an entrance through the heritage vestibule on Washington Road. Two single-storey glass pavilions are discreetly set on the roof of the Washington Road elevation to provide desirable and much-needed meeting and event space. International Initiatives occupies the 1964 addition, which features a new stone entrance and atrium overlooking Scudder Plaza, the Fountain of Freedom, and Robertson Hall. A significant yet subtle intervention, it has had a huge impact on reactivating one of Princeton’s significant outdoor spaces. Along the building’s edges, the landscaping strategy harkens back to the Beatrix Farrand design that shaped the grounds in the first half of the 20th century.

Princeton was the first Ivy League university to develop and implement a bold sustainability plan. This project exemplifies adaptive

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reuse as an act of social and environmental sustainability, by repurposing 86% of the existing building and having all new additions occur within the existing footprint. The insulation of the heritage masonry walls, combined with high-efficiency mechanical and electrical systems, significantly reduces energy consumption. All the heritage windows were replaced with operable windows that preserve the original glazing’s proportions and character. While the pre-design target in 2011 was LEED Silver, the design has achieved LEED Gold standards.

The adaptive reuse and transformation of 20 Washington Road evolves Princeton’s legacy as one of the world’s most beautiful, enduring campuses. The tectonics and details, along with an emphasis on high-quality, low-maintenance materials, ref lect a tradition of long-term thinking while playing a role towards achieving a net-zero campus by 2047. :: Jury :: The careful design of this project promotes a respectful relation between historic building preservation and contemporary architecture. The building creates generous spaces, brings abundant light into an interior courtyard, and creates a truly livable space.

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

39

OPPOSITE A new entrance to the Louis A. Sampson International Building faces the Fountain of Freedom, in Scudder Plaza. TOP The International Atrium spans between the original 1929 building and a 1964 addition.

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT A translucent glass meeting room cantilevers out over the Forum Atrium; the main entrance to the Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building faces Washington Avenue.

CLIENT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY | ARCHITECT TEAM BRUCE KUWABARA, SHIRLEY BLUMBERG, DAVID

JESSON, MARK JAFFAR, DAVID SMYTHE, LYNN PILON, GABRIEL FAIN, ANNIE PELLETIER, YA’EL SANTOPINTO, ELIZABETH PADEN, VICTOR GARZON, CLEMENTINE CHANG, CAROLYN LEE (ASSOCIATE), DINA SARHANE, RACHEL CYR, KRISTINA STRECKER, SAMANTHA HART | STRUCTURAL/ENVELOPE THORNTON THOMASETTI | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL/PLUMBING/FIRE PROTECTION ALTIERISEBORWIEBER | CIVIL VAN NOTE-HARVEY AND ASSOCIATES | CODE/FIRE AND LIFE SAFETY PHIL R. SHERMAN, P.E. | COST VERMEULENS | SPECIFICATIONS BRIAN BALLANTYNE | ACOUSTICS/AV CERAMI & ASSOCIATES | ELEVATOR VAN DEUSEN | LIGHTING TILLOTSON DESIGN ASSOCIATES | SIGNAGE ENTRO COMMUNICATIONS | HERITAGE JABLONSKI BUILDING CONSERVATION | SUSTAINABILITY ATELIER TEN | LANDSCAPE MICHAEL VAN VALKENBURGH ASSOCIATES | PROJECT MANAGER LORINE MURRAYMECHINI | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER BARR & BARR | BUDGET WITHHELD | OCCUPANCY APRIL 2017

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XXXXXXX

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

40 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

LES ROCHERS Magdelen Islands, Quebec La Shed Architecture PHOTOS Maxime Brouillet LOCATION

ARCHITECT

Les Rochers is located on the west point of Havre Aubert Island, the southernmost of the Magdalen Islands, a site with the most beautiful sunsets. With their sculptural silhouettes, the house and guesthouse overlook the territory and offer a contemporary reinterpretation of the Magdalen Islands home. With its two simple volumes clad with cedar shingle façades, the project integrates respectfully with the landscape, echoing the materials and scale of regional vernacular buildings.

A starting point for the design is the traditional gable roof house.

Adjusting the geometry, La Shed breaks the proportions and creates asymmetric forms, a playful nod to the houses of the Islands, where the silhouette is thrown out of balance by the tambour—a covered structure often added to the front entrance of local houses. The tambour acts as a depressurizing airlock to protect houses from strong winds, a response to the Islands’ climatic conditions.

In Les Rochers, the two buildings embed the tambour within their volumes, each in their own way. The main house is more upfront about the inspiration of the tambour in its silhouette, whereas the guesthouse includes it completely beneath an extension of the roof. Even if their forms are distinct, the two houses are harmonious. With their variegated profiles, the two buildings echo the rugged cliffs surrounding the Islands.

The interior architecture of the two residences is steeped in the aesthetic of seaside houses. The guesthouse, with its exposed structure, recalls a rustic fishing cabin and has a casual atmosphere. The main house, which is slightly larger, is more refined, and stylish but restrained. Light tones

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are dominant; the lines are rich and delicate. True to their practice, La Shed is engaged in a dialogue that is intimate and sensitive to its context.

Adjacent the houses, terraces follow the topographic curves of the terrain. These sinuous forms bring to mind the meeting of cliffs and sand. Like the docks that welcome ships, the wood platforms tie together architecture and landscape. The boardwalks that lead to the houses recall those used to cross sand dunes to reach beaches.

Views, orientation, and the dynamics between the two houses guided the site plan. The residences have been placed so as to offer the most beautiful views of the surroundings, while taking care to not compromise the privacy of occupants. The fenestration hints at the breathtaking panoramas seen from within, and reinforces the impression that the buildings are like living paintings.

As with all of La Shed’s projects, the custom design of the architectural elements and a precise and sensitive attention to detail help create a strong, coherent and beautiful project. Striking a balance between charm and simplicity, Les Rochers offers a warm and welcoming atmosphere and spectacular views that enrich the space and those who inhabit it. :: Jury :: This project underlines the importance of architecture in

everyday life; how simple gestures accentuate the many things a living space can have. The design of these two houses reveals the essence of the home in its simplest expression, using a contemporary language imbued with historical symbols.

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PE

LA

KE

PA TH

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

41

CA

EXISTING HOUSES GUESTHOUSE

WORKSHOP

MAIN HOUSE

SITE PLAN 0

30M

TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT The main house incorporates the form of the local vernacular entrance vestibule within its silhouette; the main house is seen with the guesthouse in the distance; large windows in both houses frame views to the ocean. RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM The interior of the main house has a refined look, while the guesthouse has an exposed structure that evokes a rustic fishing cabin.

CLIENT PRIVATE | ARCHITECT TEAM RENÉE MAILHOT, SÉBASTIEN PARENT, YANNICK LAURIN, DAHLIA

MARINIER-DOUCET, SAMUEL GUIMOND, ANTHONY BERGOIN, OLIVIER BÉRARD, CLÉMENT STOLL, KEVYN DUROCHER, ROMY BROSSEAU, PIERRE-ALEXANDRE LEMIEUX, CÉDRIC LANGEVIN, GUILLAUME FOURNIER | BUDGET WITHHELD | OCCUPANCY JUNE 2020

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ED BURTYNSKY

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

42 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

POINT WILLIAM COTTAGE Point William, Muskoka, Ontario Shim-Sutcliffe Architects PHOTOS Scott Norsworthy, except where indicated LOCATION

ARCHITECT

Point William Cottage is a laboratory for living, offering a rich spatial experience that moves fluidly between interior and exterior spaces, while demarcating a place in the Canadian landscape.

Located on the Canadian Shield, Point William is one of three slender peninsulas jutting into Lake Muskoka, and carries a rich geographic and cultural history. This project draws inspiration from the building culture of this part of Ontario: from sophisticated Muskoka boats and elaborate Victorian cottages, to underwater infrastructures made from heavy timber. The cottage replaces an existing 1960s building that occupied the tip of the peninsula, and is sited to reveal a large rock outcropping that was covered by the previous structure.

The modern house has always been linked to the remarkable experiments that define the modernist project. In a similar spirit, Point William Cottage begins with architecture, and then expands its territory to include landscape, furniture, lighting, hardware and fittings. Design invention, material exploration, and a sense of delight take place at multiple levels. The scale of a door handle and of an architectural section are explored simultaneously.

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The building’s exterior palette combines local granite, weathered atmospheric steel, untreated ipe wood, and bronze-clad windows—all choreographed to create four distinct elevations, which are syncopated to respond to each orientation and program. The material palette was selected to ensure longevity, gracious aging, and anticipation of weathering over time.

The building’s spatial sequence begins with an entry porch, framed by a series of deep weathering steel fins that straddle indoors and outdoors on one side, and weathering steel panels washed by natural light on the other. Canadian granite is pulled inside, defining the floor plane, while the skylit ceiling plane is shaped by natural light sweeping across Douglas fir panels. The cinematic space created by the deep weathering steel fins continually frames and reframes views of the landscape.

Light is manipulated and sculpted through the articulated sections in this project. The reflected ceiling plan is an important dimension of this building, contributing a rich spatial sequence of interrelated and overlapping spaces. Several J-shaped double-glazed windows create poignant moments of transition throughout the project. The living area is located

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

43

OPPOSITE The cottage wraps around a bedrock outcrop on the Canadian Shield landscape of Ontario’s Lake Muskoka. TOP A view of the cottage’s north elevation in winter. ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT The living space looks out towards the lake; an elongated entryway acts as an indoor-outdoor porch; meticulous attention to detailing within the cottage extends to the ceiling plane.

at the water’s edge and is designed to act as a light reflector, with high vertical clerestory windows contrasting with panoramic windows below.

Through its sculptural form and careful material selection, Point William Cottage fuses its built form with its land form, creating a special place on the Canadian Shield. :: Jury :: This cottage stood out for its attention to design details at

multiple scales. The creative fabrication and craft echoes characteristics of an organic Art Deco architecture. The building itself belongs to the natural context and is adjusted to the topography, giving it a naval quality-a sunken vessel on the shore.

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CLIENT PRIVATE | ARCHITECT TEAM BRIGITTE SHIM, HOWARD SUTCLIFFE, STEPHANE LEBLANC,

ZACHARIAH GLENNON | STRUCTURAL BLACKWELL STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS | MECHANICAL BK CONSULTING INC. | ELECTRICAL DYNAMIC DESIGNS AND ENGINEERING INC. | BUILDER JUDGES CONTRACTING | CONSTRUCTION CONSULTANT VMF STRUCTURES LTD. | INTERIORS SHIM-SUTCLIFFE ARCHITECTS INC., CHAPI CHAPO DESIGN INC., KAREN PETRACHENKO | HARDWARE UPPER CANADA SPECIALTY HARDWARE LTD. | CUSTOM MILLWORK MILLWORKS CUSTOM MANUFACTURING (2001) INC. | CUSTOM METALS FABRICATION JSW MANUFACTURING INC., NORSTAR ALUMINUM PRODUCTS LTD., MARIANI METAL FABRICATORS LTD., MILLWORKS CUSTOM MANUFACTURING (2001) INC. | CUSTOM STONEWORK CB MARBLE CRAFT LTD. | CUSTOM FURNITURE FABRICATION MILLWORKS CUSTOM MANUFACTURING (2001) INC., 2 DEGREES NORTH INC., KAI LEATHER PRODUCT DESIGN | CUSTOM HARDWARE ROCKY MOUNTAIN HARDWARE INC., CANADIAN BUILDERS HARDWARE MFG. INC. | CUSTOM 3D PRINTED HARDWARE SHIM-SUTCLIFFE ARCHITECTS INC. | CUSTOM WINDOWS AND DOORS TRADEWOOD WINDOWS + DOORS INC. | A/V ENTERTAINING INTERIORS | LIGHTING AND ELECTRICAL MORROW ELECTRIC LTD. | LANDSCAPING TED SMITH CONSTRUCTION OF BALA LTD., BRACKENRIG LANDSCAPING | BUDGET WITHHELD | OCCUPANCY MAY 2017

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OLIVIER BLOUIN

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

44 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

RECEPTION PAVILION OF THE QUEBEC NATIONAL ASSEMBLY LOCATION

Quebec City, Quebec Provencher_Roy | GLCRM Architectes

ARCHITECTS

Provencher_Roy and GLCRM Architects’ reception pavilion for the Parliament Building of the National Assembly of Quebec is a quiet, but transformative addition that revolutionizes how citizens engage, experience, and participate in their democracy. The original Parliament— a Second Empire stone edifice designed by Eugène-Étienne Taché—is an important civic icon, presenting stately beauty and an iconic facade.

But its monumental style and opaque materiality made the building forbidding, and its lack of public space made it inaccessible to citizens.

In these ways, the building undercut the democratic ideals it stood for: participation in government, openness, and transparency.

The team approached the pavilion as an opportunity for change, opening the building to the people of Quebec and granting them their rightful place at the National Assembly. With sweeping spaces for public gatherings and events and a new transparent entrance, the pavilion creates an open, inclusive, and lively hub that invites diverse communities to gather at the heart of their government. As an embodiment of Québécois civic ideals and as a community anchor, the pavilion has become a place of pride for citizens and a destination for international visitors.

To achieve this while deferring to the historic building, the team tucked the reception pavilion beneath the Parliament Gardens and added a transparent entrance nestled between two existing curved staircases. This maintains the original central axis and symmetry, and pre-

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serves sightlines to the facade and gardens. Building underground also offered simple, cost-effective ways to incorporate the robust security measures required in government buildings. The approach has become a precedent for similar buildings in Canada.

The heart of the building is the Agora: a forum that welcomes community members for public events and encourages participation in democracy. In form and function, the Agora references the ancient Athenian Pnyx, the assembly place where citizens of the world’s first democracy debated and voted. Since opening, the Agora has hosted events like the Financière des Professionnels Conference for women in finance, Université Laval symposia, and the Quebec City Film Festival—as well as being a setting for public gatherings such as a vigil for the victims of the École Polytechnique massacre.

A spiralling ramp connects the Agora to ground level. A mural along the ramp celebrates Quebec’s symbolic milestones, showcasing figures in modern Québécois history, including Indigenous and women leaders.

An oculus lets in natural light, making the space feel bright and welcoming. The oculus also frames a view of Parliament, incorporating the site’s heritage with the interior experience. White floors and ceilings further brighten the space and are accented with wood walls. This materiality makes for a contemporary environment in a universal design language that complements the historic Parliament.

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STEPHANE GROLEAU

OLIVIER BLOUIN

CHARLES O’HARA

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

45

OLIVIER BLOUIN

Building underground minimized the project’s environmental impact and allowed over 91% of construction waste to be recycled, while saving on construction and maintenance costs, and ensuring the longevity of the structures. :: Jury :: The jury noted that this project highlighted a capacity to add

value in a reserved way. The long promenade to access the building ends up in a large gathering space, creating a new agora that is illuminated with natural light coming from a contemporary oculus. This reconnects with traditional public building typologies. The quality of interior spaces and the integration of construction systems in perforated panels create seamless surfaces.

CLIENT ASSEMBLÉE NATIONALE DU QUÉBEC | ARCHITECT TEAM PROVENCHER_ROY—CLAUDE PROVENCHER (FIRAC); MATTHIEU GEOFFRION (MIRAC), NICOLAS DEMERS-STODDART (MIRAC), ÉMILIE BANVILLE, DANIEL LEGAULT, MAÏDA BEYLERIAN, SAMI BOUZOUITA, MARILINA CIANCI, MAXIME GIGUÈRE, FANETTE MONTMARTIN, ANDRES MORENO, NORMAND DESJARDINS, TRISTAN LEAHY, NEIL ASPINALL, ZOEY CAI, KARIM DURANCEAU, MAXIME DUVAL-STOJANOVIC, SUZANNE ESSIAMBRE, CHARLES-ALEXANDRE LEFEBVRE, PIERRE LUSSIER, FRANCK MURAT. GLCRM ARCHITECTS—MARC LETELLIER (FIRAC), FRANÇOIS BÉCOTTE, MAXIME TURGEON, SHIRLEY GAGNON, LOUIS-XAVIER GADOURY, JOCELYN MARTEL, RAPHAËL HAMELIN, RÉAL ST-PIERRE, VINCENT LAVOIE, SUZANNE CASTONGUAY | ELECTRICAL/MECHANICAL CIMA + | STRUCTURAL/CIVIL WSP CANADA | CONTRACTOR POMERLEAU | CODE GLT+ | ELEVATOR CPAI SOLUCORE | ACOUSTICS ACOUSTEC | MULTIMEDIA GOMULTIMÉDIA | SECURITY CSP INC. | BUDGET $43 M | OCCUPANCY MAY 2019

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OPPOSITE A spiralling ramp leads from the transparent entrance down to the Agora. The interplay of light and colour imparts a museumlike quality to the space, with blue and red referring to the National Assembly’s Salon bleu and Salon rouge. Deferring to the historic building, the reception pavilion is built beneath the Parliament Gardens, with a transparent entrance nestled between two existing curving staircases; the heart of the addition is the Agora, seen here at the building’s opening with political party leaders from Quebec. ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT A bird’s eye view of the site; a perforated wood mural along the ramp celebrates Quebec’s symbolic milestones and showcases figures in modern Québécois history.

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

46 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

STORMWATER FACILITY Toronto, Ontario gh3* PHOTOS Adrian Ozimek LOCATION

ARCHITECT

The Stormwater Facility (SWF) treats urban runoff from Toronto’s new West Don Lands and Quayside neighbourhoods. The clients, Waterfront Toronto and Toronto Water, wanted a landmark building that would signal a new and distinctive city precinct. Achieving this demanded a design of conceptual clarity and rigour to meet the strong character of the surrounding area, which includes railway yards to the north, the ramps and roadways of Lake Shore Boulevard and the Gardiner Expressway to the south, and the industrial Port Lands across the Keating Channel. The monolithic, cast-in-situ concrete form is both a complement and striking counterpoint to the infrastructural and aesthetic complexity all around.

Even at speed from the Gardiner and Lake Shore Expressways, the building registers as a poetic ellipsis amid the intensity of its surroundings.

A strategically placed opening in the façade reveals glimpses of the building’s inner workings, and a sky window on the south facet of the roof is a luminescent beacon to the city at night. These openings intentionally invite curiosity about the expanding city and its supporting infrastructure, specifically the work being done to keep urban water clean and safe. The building acts as an important catalyst for increased civic engagement and pride.

The project combines three major elements into an integrated urban, landscape and architectural statement. The first is the stormwater reservoir: a 20-metre-diameter shaft covered by a radial steel grate that acts as an inverted siphon to receive untreated stormwater from the surrounding development. Directly above is a working ground plane of asphalt and concrete, with a central channel and surrounding gutters to link the reservoir shaft to the treatment plant. Finally, the most prominent element of the facility is the 600-square-metre stormwater treatment plant itself, where the water is further processed for safe

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release back into Lake Ontario. The design for SWF takes these constituent parts and unifies them into a whole that renders their infrastructural functions legible, didactic and aesthetically compelling.

Programmatically, SWF tells a story of water. The design of the main enclosure references the architecture of a stone well, inverted to manifest as a sculptural form above ground. This modern interpretation of an ancient vernacular is further expressed by etchings in the concrete surface. A system of rain channels runs from roof to wall, to ground plane and into the shaft—a narrative of the larger system of urban hydrology in which the building is embedded.

Materially, both the building and landscape are constructed with exposed concrete, resulting in the abstraction of ground and wall, and environmentally mitigating solar heat gain and extending the service life of the facility. Low energy inputs are achieved with a highly insulated envelope, daylighting, and passive cooling and ventilation. The result is a building whose performance will match its contribution to the broader project of sustainable development in the West Don Lands.

Architecturally, SWF adds to a list of Toronto’s historic infrastructural works—such as the R.C. Harris Treatment Plant, the Bloor Viaduct, and the Hearn Power Station—whose architectural character has helped to both express and define Toronto’s identity at different moments in time. :: Jury :: The sculptural form of the facility and the negotiation

between scale and connection to the ground were noted by the jury.

They felt that these qualities reinforced the power of architecture to intervene in unsuspecting conditions to create beauty around us.

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CLIENT WATERFRONT TORONTO AND TORONTO WATER | ARCHITECT TEAM PAT HANSON, RAY-

MOND CHOW, JOEL DIGIACOMO, RICHARD FREEMAN, BERNARD JIN | PRIME CONSULTANT RV ANDERSON | STRUCTURAL / MECHANICAL / ELECTRICAL RV ANDERSON | LANDSCAPE GH3* | INTERIORS GH3* | CONTRACTOR GRAHAM CONSTRUCTION | WASTE WATER WSP | SOILS & ENVIRONMENTAL GHD | BUDGET WITHHELD | OCCUPANCY MAY 2021

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OPPOSITE A street-facing window offers a glimpse of the equipment inside the facility. TOP The roof is articulated with a minimalist gutter as well as a grid of snow guards. ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT The building is conceived as a sculptural object within its urban setting; inside, a skylight brings natural light into the stormwater facility.

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ANN BAGGLEY

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

48 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

TOM PATTERSON THEATRE LOCATION

Stratford, Ontario Hariri Pontarini Architects

ARCHITECT

Selected from an international competition of 92 entries, the design for the new Tom Patterson Theatre at the Stratford Festival is a striking presence along the banks of the Avon River. The theatre is located on the site of the former Tom Patterson Theatre, a converted curling rink.

The new building aspires to be a cultural beacon that defines the next 50 years of this significant cultural institution.

The new building aimed not only to provide what the previous one lacked, but to also pay homage to its memory. The new venue expands the technical capabilities of live theatre and wraps itself in amenity-rich spaces, establishing an immersive, social experience that revolves around and complements the magic of the performing arts.

A shimmering façade ebbs and flows in step with the river. This curvilinear form creates quiet folds and eddies of encounter across a sequence of spacious public rooms that course from one to the next. Panoramic garden and river views dissolve the line between indoors and out.

At the heart of the building, the horseshoe-shaped auditorium is enclosed in curving walls of light-coloured brick. Inside the wood-lined room, 600 custom-designed seats surround an elongated thrust stage inspired by the dimensions of the previous stage. The acoustics and sightlines create an experience of true intimacy and connection between audience and performer.

Craftsmanship and attention to detail serve to impart an emotional resonance that aligns with the festival’s ambition to engage its community. Education programs now have a permanent home in this theatre. For donor patrons, the members’ lounge features a contemporary fireplace in a dramatic space with wraparound glazing that tapers beneath a woodclad ceiling. The building has a complement of back-of-house amenities, which, like the public spaces and auditorium, are fully accessible.

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A 250-seat program space adds versatility: it can extend the lobby, or acoustically enclose a forum for concurrent performances and other events. Throughout the gathering areas, the breadth of the design creates multiple vantage points to heighten the relationship between the interior, the gardens and river. Elevating the building above a passing road allows for uninterrupted views to the natural setting.

Rare for performing arts buildings, this theatre is highly sustainable.

It targets LEED Gold certification through carefully integrated energy and water conservation programs within a high-performance building envelope. The double-glazed curtainwall with bird-friendly frit is north-facing, reducing solar heat gain. Durable building materials prioritize renewable and recycled content. To build the stage in the preferred material, a birch tree woodlot was purchased for sustainable harvest. Stage lighting is one of the first energy-efficient, all-LED systems in use. Landscaping of new civic gardens features indigenous and drought-resistant plant species, and new pathways and bike lanes connect with existing routes.

This theatre marks a milestone for the festival as it enters its 70th year. Earlier venues supported the festival’s emergence. Now, the new Tom Patterson Theatre is poised to play a leading role in the festival’s future. :: Jury :: The jury lauded this exceptional cultural building located by

the water. They noted an excellent integration with the site and promenade. The nature of materials, organic forms and textures promotes sensory perception and contributes to the appreciation of the arts.

The elegant assembly creates a calm and inspiring atmosphere inside and outside the enclosure.

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SCOTT NORSWORTHY

DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

49

CLIENT STRATFORD FESTIVAL | ARCHITECT TEAM SIAMAK HARIRI, LINDSAY HOCHMAN, DORON MEINHARD, ANNE MA, JEFF STRAUSS, STEFAN ABIDIN, MIREN ETXEZARRETA-ARANBURU, LEANDRO ABUNGIN, STEVE KANG, ANNA ANTROPOVA, JIMMY FARRINGTON | CONTRACTOR ELLISDON | LANDSCAPE HARIRI PONTARINI ARCHITECTS WITH HOLBROOK & ASSOCIATES WITH THE PLANNING PARTNERSHIP | STRUCTURAL THORNTON TOMASETTI | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL ARUP | THEATRE PLANNER FISHER DACHS ASSOCIATES | ACOUSTICS AERCOUSTICS ENGINEERING | A/V NOVITA TECHNE LIMITED | LIGHTING MARTIN CONBOY LIGHTING DESIGN | LEED RDH | BUDGET $70 M | OCCUPANCY MAY 2020

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The new theatre is a jewel-like presence along the Avon River.

At the core of the building, the theatre is structured around an extended thrust stage—a signature innovation in stagecraft developed at the Stratford Festival fifty years ago. BOTTOM Landscape-facing gathering spaces surround the theatre, allowing for an enhanced guest experience.

OPPOSITE TOP

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JAMES STEEVES

JAMES BRITTAIN PHOTOGRAPHY

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22

50 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE

VILLAGE AT THE END OF THE WORLD LOCATION

Upper Kingsburg, Nova Scotia Brian MacKay-Lyons, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Ltd.

ARCHITECT

Architecture begins with the land. The site for this project was a seasonal settlement for millennia for the Mi’kmaq First Nation (architect Brian MacKay-Lyon’s ancestors), a safe harbour for early French and Basque fishermen to dry their catch, an Acadian colony in the early 1600s, and a foreign Protestant settlement in the 1750s. The legacy of inhabitation of this place is one of diverse cultures and continuous evolution, with forests giving way to farmlands, then returning back again.

With the help of friends, neighbours and colleagues, the architect, over 25 years, has re-cleared the forest and cultivated the soil, revealing its historic ruins and uncovering its 500 years of agrarian history.

Many of the structures that occupy the Atlantic Nova Scotia coastline site are products of an international design/build program called Ghost, which started on the land in 1994. The spirit of collaboration and community engagement born from Ghost has given way to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Today, the village is the centre of a community and way of working that holds at its core the values gleaned from Ghost: working together, economy as ethic, spirit of place, and the critical study of vernacular building practice. Amongst the ruins of the site, a proto-urban village has emerged that serves as a school, farm, and community.

The first Ghost Lab started when, frustrated with the state of architectural education, MacKay-Lyons pulled his students out of school to participate in a two-week event, culminating in the erection a temporary installation on the property he had recently purchased. The glowing structure evoked an archetypal farmhouse, with a sparse wood frame

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draped in white fabric. At the end of the two weeks, the construction was lit from inside, and served as a venue for a community concert.

This tradition continued for twelve years, culminating in an international conference that brought together builders, architects, students, historians and the local community in the tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, or Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio.

Since that time, MacKay-Lyons has operated as the ‘village architect,’ building a collection of more than 40 structures on the site. The village has continued to evolve as the venue for community events, a living school, and an office research laboratory. Structures added over time include a relocated and restored 1830 schoolhouse, a minimalist dwelling for an architectural apprentice-in-residence, and a new community of dwellings. The resulting village is an expression of utopian architectural ambitions, an optimistic act of will, and a form of resistance in the face of the numbing cultural influence of globalization. It is an argument for landscape stewardship through agricultural and architectural cultivation. The village is a place that expresses the unity of life, integrating practice and teaching, family and community. :: Jury :: The jury applauded this lifetime architectural achievement,

showing the transformational power of architecture on a site. The quality of the individual buildings adds up to more than the sum of its parts and emphasizes the village quality of the 25-years-plus project. It was also the educational dimension of the project that drew the attention of the jury.

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ROBIN RAMCHARAN

MACKAY-LYONS SWEETAPPLE ARCHITECTS

WILLIAM GREEN

MATT MACKAY-LYONS

DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

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CLIENT MARILYN MACKAY-LYONS | ARCHITECT TEAM BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS, TALBOT SWEETAPPLE, SHANE ANDREWS, TYLER REYNOLDS, MIRANDA BAILEY, MATTHEW BISHOP, MATT MACKAY-LYONS, JONNY LEGER, PETER BROUGHTON, WILLIAM GREEN, MATT MALONE, TREVOR DAVIES, PETER BLACKIE, CHAD JAMIESON, JESSE HINDLE, SAVA ROSTKOWSKA, TONY PATTERSON, ROB MEYER, MARK CORMIER, BRUNO WEBER, WILL PERKINS, IZAK BRIDGMAN | GHOST ARCHITECTS BOB BENZ, FRANCIS KÉRÉ, RICK JOY, MARLON BLACKWELL, TED FLATO, PETER STUTCHBURY, DEBORAH BURKE, JUHANI PALLASMAA, WENDELL BURNETTE, DAVID MILLER | GHOST GUEST CRITICS KENNETH FRAMPTON, TOM FISHER, ROBERT MCCARTER, PETER BUCHANAN, TOM PETERS | GHOST PARTICIPANTS OVER 300 INDIVIDUALS | ENGINEERS MICHEL COMEAU, RENEE MACKAY-LYONS, BLACKWELL ENGINEERS, ANDREA DONCASTER | BUILDERS GORDON MACLEAN, PHIL CREASER, GARY KILGOUR, ROBERT SCHMEISSER, ART BAXTER | BUDGET WITHHELD | OCCUPANCY AUGUST 2021

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The 700-square-foot Enough House is a prototype for minimalist living; at Ghost 7, students developed and worked on the construction of a structure with four guest cabins. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Simple buildings are aggregated to recall a former fishing village on the site; the masterplan for the site groups buildings around courtyards; the Ghost 6 team built a pair of towers; the first Ghost exercise yielded a temporary structure atop remnants of a foundation; two historic buildings were moved to the site and faithfully restored.

OPPOSITE, LEFT TO RIGHT

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ROY GAIOT

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REVISITING ROARK TEXT

By Jake Nicholson

THE FICTIONAL PROTAGONIST OF AYN RAND’S NOVEL THE FOUNTAINHEAD IS A HERO FOR GENERATIONS OF ARCHITECTS. IS IT TIME FOR THAT TO CHANGE?

Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is the only novel that I ever tossed into the recycling after reading the last page. I still remember the THUNK of paperback against the side of the bin. I had read it out of a sense of professional obligation, having worked with and around architects for a long time. For several generations of architects, The Fountainhead ’s architect-protagonist Howard Roark is an inspiration. If you Google “famous fictional architect,” you’ll get a list with his name at the top. Roark was the top fictional architect chosen by Building. co.uk in 2009. He was the first mentioned on a similar list published

by The Guardian in 2012. He was number two on Architectural Record’s list from 2008, but only because they cheated, arguing the non-fictional life of Frank Lloyd Wright was dramatic enough to knock Roark out of the top spot.

The existence of a single “most famous fictional architect” is more than a little strange. It’s rare for one character to become the dominant representation of a profession: there are dozens of fictional doctors, cops, politicians, lawyers, scientists, journalists, and businesspeople.

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But Roark is to architects something like what Sherlock Holmes is to private detectives. He is the central depiction of a profession within fiction. But Roark is more than that. He is also the leading man in one of the literary touchstones of the political Right wing.

Decades after The Fountainhead ’s 1943 publication, Rand still has many prominent libertarian and Republican fans. They include former American President Donald Trump (reported in 2016 by USA Today to identify with Roark), former Chair of the Federal Reserve of the United States Alan Greenspan (who knew Rand personally), former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Paul Ryan (who has given Rand’s books as Christmas gifts), and former United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (who has named Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as his favourite book).

Referencing Rand’s name alone has become a shorthand for a certain brand of Right-wing politics. It would be inaccurate to call her a conservative. She developed her own capitalist libertarian-adjacent philosophy (Objectivism) and critiqued more collectivist ideas ferociously

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REVIEW

within her novels and other works. The Fountainhead is an intentional work of propaganda. As Rand writes in her 1968 introduction for the novel’s 25th anniversary, her goal was to show Howard Roark as an idealized man, who she saw as only able to exist under a laissez-faire capitalist system.

“She had a specific audience in mind, which was young people,” says Jennifer Burns, Associate Professor of History at Stanford University, and author of the biography Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. “She wanted people to get drunk on the novel; [for them to have] that experience of imagining your life without limits. She felt it’s much easier for an 18-year-old to have that feeling than a 48-year-old.”

Burns says each section of The Fountainhead had originally started with a headnote from Friedrich Nietzsche. This was taken out by Rand before publication. “It really was this kind of Nietzschean Übermensch against the world, and she wrote it to seduce the reader into identifying with the superman, as opposed to the mob.”

“The Fountainhead has a duality in that it’s celebrating individual creativity in a way that you can take without the politics. Or you can take the politics. There’s a little more flexibility to take it your way.

With her later work, it’s very interwoven.”

The Fountainhead ’s plot follows the dramatic highs and lows of Roark’s professional career, contrasting him against an array of characters who fall short of the individualist-creator ideal. Some of these characters are decried within the text as “parasites” or “second-handers,” people who are unable to create for themselves, often contemptuous or jealous of Roark’s talent. The book climaxes with Roark blowing up Cortlandt Homes, an under-construction housing project that he secretly designed for the much less-talented architect Peter Keating (one of his central foils throughout the novel). Roark’s motive is that his original design was betrayed by Keating, who fails on a promise to preserve the integrity of Roark’s design. Roark is put on trial. He represents himself, admitting he dynamited the building. He delivers a fiery courtroom speech on the importance of ego-driven individualist-creators. The speech is also a severe condemnation of altruism and

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the aforementioned second-handers: “The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence on men is evil.”

Because this is a novel with a point to get across, Roark’s jury renders a verdict of not guilty. He goes on to design a skyscraper in Hell’s Kitchen, and he marries the novel’s heroine, Dominique Francon, who he violently rapes earlier in the story. The complicated sadomasochistic dynamic between Roark and Dominique in The Fountainhead is important to mention. My focus in this article is the novel’s connection to architecture, but I would still ask: given that we are talking about a character meant to represent an ideal man, what type of behaviour is Rand ultimately condoning? What happens if people act like Howard Roark?

Throughout the entirety of the book, it’s clear that Rand wants readers on Roark’s side. Rand’s point is to celebrate and exonerate Roark as an idealized creator who lives for himself and doesn’t compromise principles. And like Roark, Rand wasn’t big on compromises. She closes her introduction in the anniversary edition with a paragraph that dismisses those who don’t agree with her as betraying their own souls.

I am paraphrasing slightly from a copy that I re-purchased in service of writing this article. (Beyond betraying my soul, I am out twentyseven Canadian dollars plus tax.) The new copy included an insert, much like a magazine subscription tearaway, directing readers to free information on Rand and her Objectivist philosophy, something I haven’t seen in a novel before or since.

To me, all of this: the novel’s plot, the Right-wing politics, even the little tearaway insert, raises the question: why is this the famous novel about architecture? I think part of that answer lies in Rand’s realworld inf luences.

There is a note from Rand at the outset of The Fountainhead, stating, in part: “No person or event in this story is intended as a reference to any real person or event.” But Rand was clearly writing with real people in mind. In researching Goddess of the Market, Burns

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gained access to Rand’s personal papers, providing detailed insights into her work, collaborators, and creative process when she was writing The Fountainhead. To cover only a few of the characters: Peter Keating was based on architect Thomas Hastings; Gail Wynand was based on William Randolph Hearst, Guy Francon was based on architect Ely Jacques Kahn (whose office Rand volunteered at for months while working on The Fountainhead).

Howard Roark—even down to a project he designs in the novel—is based on Frank Lloyd Wright, who Rand originally saw as an inspiring figure.

“She really idolized him,” says Burns. “She hated being told her ideas and books were unrealistic, so Frank Lloyd Wright became an example of Howard Roark come to life.”

According to Burns, Rand shared early portions of The Fountainhead with Wright, seeking out a meeting with him and buying an expensive dress for the occasion. They met several times, though calling them friends is a stretch. Burns says that Rand eventually became disillusioned with Wright, following a visit to Taliesin, where she was left unimpressed by a culture of followers imitating a master without question. But “I honestly think she subconsciously modelled herself on that,” says Burns. “This is the age of the entourage: when you get famous enough, you get a group of five to six people who follow you around and act like you. And I think [Wright] set a template of what success means, that she then followed as a novelist.”

For his part, Wright seems to have initially disliked Rand, then warmed to her enough to design her a house, then reverted to disliking her again. In Ada Louise Huxtable’s Frank Lloyd Wright: A Life, he is described as thinking little of being a model for Roark in The Fountainhead, quipping meanly: “I deny the paternity and refuse to marry the mother.” He apparently changed his tune slightly after the book became a hit. Huxtable describes that Wright “tolerated” Rand, “but she was as opinionated as he was, and her visits to Taliesin were a trial.” Wright is said to have become irritated with her smoking in their last meeting, tossing her cigarette in the fire and ordering her to go. Rand also never built the house that Wright

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designed for her. Instead, she bought an existing house designed by Richard Neutra: a choice that Huxtable notes as being both cheaper for Rand, and potentially offensive to Wright, given that he saw Neutra as “an archenemy.”

Revisiting the story of Rand’s life, this type of falling-out doesn’t seem out of place. She had severe breaks with many people she knew, even within her close circle.

“I think there’s a big tension in her life between wanting to be a champion of rationality, and being a person very much driven by emotion and passion. Nonetheless, she had rationality set up in the [Objectivist] system, and if anybody didn’t follow it, she would reject them in a state of high emotion,” says Burns. “It was a romantic view of rationalism. . . if that can be said. She wasn’t a robotic, low-affect person, who just wanted to be rational all the time. She was subject to these sweeps of passion. I think that’s why she was drawn to rationality, maybe, because of the bound-ness.”

As for what The Fountainhead means to architecture as a profession, it’s important to think about. Fiction is fiction, but it shapes people’s conception of the world. The Fountainhead is a book with lasting impact, political and otherwise. Almost 80 years after its first publication, I was able to go to my local bookstore and buy a stocked copy right off the shelf.

I do think it’s worth interrogating whether a single “most famous fictional architect” is a worthwhile thing to have, especially if the character in question arrives deeply tied to a political viewpoint. I clearly don’t like Rand’s politics much, but it would be equally bizarre to me if Howard Roark were being written as propaganda from any other point on the political spectrum. Architects are not any sort of political monolith; they are an increasingly diverse group of professionals who often believe disparate things for their own reasons. I’d rather have the books I read reflect this complexity. To me, it makes for a better story.

Jake Nicholson is a writer based in London, Ontario, with extensive experience working on proposals for architectural and engineering firms.

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REFORD GARDENS AT 60 TEXT

Elsa Lam Jean-Christophe Lemay, except where indicated

PHOTOS

REFORD GARDENS CELEBRATES ITS 60TH ANNIVERSARY WITH PLANS TO CONTINUE GROWING ITS LEGACY.

ABOVE Created by urban designer Eadeh Attarzadeh and architect Saroli Palumbo, Forteresses is a set of modular systems intended to protect trees from humans. BELOW Estevan Lodge and the formal gardens are nestled in a spruce forest alongside the Lower St. Lawrence River.

It’s a summer of anniversaries for Reford Gardens, located on the Lower St. Lawrence River, east of Quebec City. 2022 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Elsie Reford, who designed the gardens adjacent a salmon fishing lodge built by her uncle, CPR railway magnate Sir George Stephen. And it’s the 60th anniversary of the gardens being opened to the public, after they were acquired the Quebec government as a rural counterpart to the Montreal Botanical Gardens.

It’s also the 60 th birthday of another pivotal person in the story of Reford Gardens: Alexander Reford, the great grandson of Elsie Reford. In the 1990s, when the Quebec government was revisiting its portfolio of parks, the Reford family became involved in talks with the community about how to preserve the gardens as a public destination. Alexander Reford was ultimately responsible for creating the non-profit organization that purchased the property from the Quebec government in 1995. That year, he left his position as Dean of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto to become the director of Reford Gardens. “It’s a pretty unusual history of private-public-private,” says Alexander of the property’s history.

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Designed by product and space designer Marie-Pier Gauthier-Manes, ceramicist and graphic designer Chloé Isaac, and 3D artist Victor Roussel, Lichen sets blankets of handmade earthenware rings atop planted mounds. The rings help with drainage and water retention, protecting the plants against drought. ABOVE LEFT Les huit collines, designed by Paris-based architecture and design collection ONOMIAU, is conceived as eight landscaped puzzle pieces that can fit together in a variety of ways.

ABOVE LEFT

Alexander’s plans for the property were grounded by maintaining the historic gardens and buildings on the site. But they quickly extended much further, and contemporary architecture has been integral to realizing that vision. In 2000, the garden launched the International Garden Festival, one of the first contemporary garden design events in the world. Since then, architecture and landscape design luminaries including Claude Cormier, Michael van Valkenburgh, Hal Ingberg, and Atelier le balto have contributed gardens alongside student and emerging professional winners of the annual garden design competition. The 25 plots designated for the contemporary gardens, which rotate out periodically, follow a masterplan developed for the site by landscape architects VLAN paysages and architects Atelier in situ, chosen through a 1998 ideas competition. The accompanying visitor’s pavilion, designed by Atelier in situ, garnered a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture in 2006.

Like establishing deeply rooted plants, the process of developing the site has demanded a gradual cultivation of relationships and financing.

One piece of the VLAN and Atelier in situ entrance sequence designed 24 years ago—a series of panoramic images about the bioregion that will affix to a long entry wall—is just being completed this summer.

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Numerous other architectural partnerships have also added to the site over time, as well as to the broader reach of Reford Gardens. A few years ago, a group of McGill architecture students, led by professor Michael Jemtrud, built a demountable stage on the site, to a design developed jointly by the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Music. They intended to transport it to Montreal for use during McGill’s 200th anniversary celebrations in 2021. The university’s plans were waylaid by the pandemic, and the stage has now been gifted to the Gardens. Many other university groups and institutions have also partnered with the site, using it for design-build workshops, experimental performances, or as a testbed for landscape design and horticultural research.

Reford Gardens’ partnerships are also tied to the local community.

They are currently involved in a shoreline restoration project in the nearby town of Saint-Flavie, working with landscape architect and scholar Rosetta S. Elkin to identify edible native species with erosion control properties. The larger goal: to develop a landscaping prototype to protect the larger shoreline in the face of extreme weather, such as the unusually high tides in 2010 that ravaged the area’s landscape and devastated over 60 waterfront homes.

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT INVITES ARCHITECTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS TO ENTER THE 2022 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

OPEN FOR ENTRIES Deadline: September 12th, 2022

Architecture project entry fee: $195 *

Architectural photo entry fee: $75 *

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

Submissions will be accepted in PDF format, up to 12 pages with dimensions no greater than 11” x 17”. Total file size is not to exceed 25MB. There is also the option to submit a video up to two minutes in length.

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

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

For more details and to submit your entry, visit:

www.canadianarchitect.com/awards

IMAGE: THE BUTTERFLY AND FBC (FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH COMPLEX) VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA DESIGNED BY REVERY ARCHITECTURE INC. WINNER OF A 2021 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

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ABOVE Gravity Field is floating cloud of upside-down sunflowers, which will change over the summer months as the plants grow upwards towards the sun. The installation was designed by New York City landscape and public art studio Terrain Work. OPPOSITE TOP Just east of Reford Gardens, the Maison des stagières, designed by architect Pierre Thibault, hosts participants in the annual International Garden Festival. OPPOSITE MIDDLE Architectural interns Melaine Niget, Pierre-Olivier Demeule, and Antonin Boulanger Cartier designed forêt finie, espace infini? as a labyrinthine path in the woods.

OPPOSITE BOTTOM, LEFT TO RIGHT Architect Kim Pariseau was commissioned to design the Elsie Chair to celebrate Elsie Reford’s 150th anniversary; Atelier Pierre Thibault’s Great Hall, a multi-purpose event space, is nearing completion.

The International Garden Festival has helped bring both global and local talent to the broader work in the Gardens. Montreal architect Kim Pariseau’s firm APPAREIL designed a garden for the Festival in 2019; this summer, the foyer of Estevan Lodge—the building now hosts exhibits and a farm-to-table restaurant—is graced with Pariseau’s solid red oak Elsie chairs, commissioned by the Garden for Elsie Reford’s anniversary.

One of Reford Gardens’ longstanding collaborators is Quebec architect Pierre Thibault, who first contributed a garden to the International Garden Festival in 2001. He’s since designed two more gardens for the festival, along with an open-air stage for performances nestled in the spruce forest and a guesthouse for festival participants.

Thibault’s most significant contribution to the site is now nearing completion: the conversion of a 1970s workshop into an event space called the Great Hall. The building will be flanked by a new carpentry workshop, an improved gardener’s workshop, and a new greenhouse.

It’s part of a strategy to open the garden’s back-of-house spaces to visitors, and to enable year-round activities on the site. “We’re transforming the entire workshop area so that it will be available and amenable to the

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public,” says Alexander Reford. “People have increasing interest in the back end as well as the front end.”

The inaugural event for the space will be an exhibition of Geoffrey James’ photography of Frederick Olmsted’s parks. That marks another duo of anniversaries: James’ 80 th birthday, and the 200 th anniversary of Olmsted’s birth.

It’s also yet one more instance of how contemporary and historic mix in every aspect of Reford Gardens—a hard-won pairing in this rural location. Alexander recalls how some of the first visitors to Claude Cormier’s Blue Stick Garden, a playful take on the historic garden’s signature Himalayan Blue Poppies, were outraged, demanding their admission fee back.

Now, contemporary sculptures dot the historic gardens, and visitors are on the whole delighted by the Festival’s offerings. Says Alexander: “We’ve taken the attitude that historic and contemporary can fit together.”

Reford Gardens, including the 23 rd edition of the International Garden Festival, is open until October 2, 2022. It is closed for the winter season and reopens in early June 2023.

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COURTESY ATELIER PIERRE THIBAULT

FÉLIX MICHAUD MAXIME BROUILLET

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BOOKS

GROWING UP MODERN

By Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster (Birkhäuser, 2021) REVIEW Javier Zeller PHOTOS Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster

Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster’s Growing up Modern is among the more original and unexpected accounts of architectural modernism written in recent years. Architectural histories are typically stubbornly resistant to personal narratives from inhabitants and clients—let alone from children, whose experience of architecture is rarely recounted.

This elegant book challenges academic convention, re-examining four iconic projects through the memories of the people who spent their childhoods living in them.

The four homes of Growing up Modern are so self-consciously avantgarde, so much associated with the rhetoric of modernism, that one expects the book to stridently argue for architecture’s ability to effect moral or aesthetic transformation. Instead, Jamrozik and Kempster’s deliberate focus on the childhood experiences of their four narrators delivers unexpected and delightful insights into these familiar projects.

It ultimately offers lessons about the experience of architecture, and the enduring capacity of spaces and materials to act as vessels for memory.

The four dwellings that the book chronicles span 25 years of early European modernism, bracketing either side of the Second World War. They include Mies van der Rohe’s Tugendhat House, J.J.P. Oud’s rowhouse for the for the Weissenhof Seidlung exhibition, Hans Sharoun’s Schminke House, and Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille.

Together, they present a cross-section of typologies, while the narrators who recall the projects reflect a range of social circumstances.

Each home is introduced through a short historical overview, accompanied by reproductions from the original architectural drawings—a welcome touch. This is followed up with the interviews at the core of the book.

Interspersed throughout the interviews are photographs of each

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of the narrators, both as children and from the present day. Key fragments from the interviews are underlined within the body of the text; some become the captions to the photographs. Graphic circles of varying diameters are also applied over plan diagrams of each home, highlighting the locations referred to in the interviews—an unusual, but ultimately very effective, means of guiding our spatial understanding of childhood memory. The account of each home is rounded out with contemporary photographs of the spaces by Jamrozik and Kempster, captioned with the children’s recollections.

The plan diagrams and photo captions combine to create a geography of memory, where certain places in each house assume greater importance in concert with the intensity of memories they evoke. So, the projecting balcony on the second floor of Oud’s townhouse, where Rolf Fassbaender pulled his mattress on warm summer nights to “sleep under the sky, under the stars” becomes the largest of the dots on that second-floor plan. Some surprising elements that often go unremarked in architectural histories are revealed through the interviews. For example, the boys’ and girls’ nurseries and servant spaces at the Tugendhat house, along with the passage connecting them to the mother’s room, are largely absent in descriptions of Mies’s early masterwork. In contrast, they take on a central role in the memories of the young Ernst Tugendhat. Similarly, a small shower for children‚ complete with a submarine door, is remembered by Gisèle Moreau as an exceptional amenity of the Marseille Block.

The quality of the recollections in each section varies with each interviewee’s time spent in the homes. While Gisèle Moreau lived in the Marseille block almost uninterrupted from birth to the present day (albeit in different apartments), Ernst Tugendhat lived in the

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CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE Gisèle Moreau grew up in Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille; Ernest Tugendhat recounts his memories of his family’s Mies van der Rohe-designed villa; for Helga Zumpfe, coloured glass portholes were a memorable feature of Hans Sharoun’s Schminke House; a view of J.J.P. Oud’s rowhouse for the Weissenhof Siedlung exhibition, which the authors studied through the eyes of Rolf Fassbaender.

Tugendhat house only until the age of eight, when his parents fled from the impending Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.

Not surprisingly, the book’s three pre-war examples, in particular, are freighted with their contexts of enormous social and political upheaval. The difficult thing that comes clear—even in the almost entirely apolitical context of this book—is the muddy mess of aesthetics and politics from this time.

Focusing as the book does on childhood recollections, the spectre of war mostly recedes in favour of a child’s-eye view of the world. The dissonance between the formal progressivism of Scharoun’s organic modernism and his client’s role as a pilot for the Luftwaffe—or even the import of the swastika that Fritz Schminke hung in his children’s playroom—lay outside of a child’s understanding of their home. But the coloured glass portholes of the house, positioned just at the height of Helga Zumpfe’s childhood gaze, along with the lovingly assembled photo book gifted by the architect to the Schminke children, give as much insight into Scharoun’s playful humanism as the iconic house’s sinuous nautical balconies.

This is where the value of the approach taken by Growing up Modern becomes most apparent. By allowing the narrators’ recollections to guide the documentation, we see these projects anew, as they were remembered and understood through lived experience. Jamrozik and Kempster manage a remarkable feat with their gentle but radical book, opening new territories for integrating personal narrative into architectural history, and gently teasing out connections between memory and the experience of place that are nothing less than foundational to architecture.

Javier Zeller is an architect working in Toronto with Diamond Schmitt Architects.

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PRACTICE

HOW DOES YOUR FIRM MEASURE UP? IN A COMPACT NEW BOOK, FORMER SMITH CARTER PRINCIPAL AND C.O.O. RICK LINLEY DESCRIBES A SIMPLE METHOD FOR UNDERSTANDING THE FINANCIALS OF ANY ARCHITECTURE FIRM—AND WHAT THOSE FINANCIALS MEAN FOR MANAGING A PRACTICE. HERE’S AN EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK, EXPLAINING HOW TO BENCHMARK A FIRM’S PERFORMANCE USING SEVEN KEY FIGURES.

It’s critical to understand how the Scoreboard numbers relate both internally to each other and externally to the broader industry. All the numbers used in the Strong Practice Scoreboard relate internally back to net fee. For external benchmarking to the industry, this book uses the 2021 Deltek Clarity A&E Industry Survey data set. The Deltek data is segmented in three basic ways: all firms, upper quartile firms only, and all firms excluding upper quartile firms. For a more detailed look by firm size and geography, you’ll need to delve more deeply into the Deltek data and also look at other surveys.

1. FULL TIME EQUIVALENT

The number of FTEs is a measure of firm size, but isn’t a good indicator of firm strength. FTEs include all personnel—principals, leadership, project people, marketing, financial, and administrative folks—all employees of the firm. There is no benchmark for FTEs because there is no optimal number. The size of your firm as measured by FTEs should be a function of your goals, aspirations, and how effectively you’re deploying your people.

2. NET FEES

Net fees are also a measure of firm size, but practitioners are usually tight-lipped about this number. Like FTEs, there is no benchmark for

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net fees, but this single number is pivotal in making sense of your firm’s other metrics.

The Ratio—Net Fee per Full Time Equivalent Dividing net fee by FTEs produces a very useful benchmark. In addition to the 7 numbers in the Scoreboard, this one ratio provides the best shorthand gauge of your firm’s strength. Upper-quartile firms in the 2021 Deltek survey achieved an average of about $174,000 NF/FTE .

All other firms (excluding upper-quartile firms) averaged about $140,000 NF/FTE . This ratio is inf luenced by a range of factors, from how you price your work to how efficient your team is.

To help gauge where your firm is positioned relative to the broader industry, the 2021 Deltek data is used to create three performance bands based on the NF/FTE ratio. The performance bands also provide a reference point to track your firm’s performance over time.

• Struggling firms: less than $120,000 NF/FTE • Strong firms: $120,000 to $170,000 NF/FTE • Super firms: more than $170,000 NF/FTE The dividing line between these ranges is somewhat arbitrary, but useful for comparison purposes. You may need to use more detailed bench-

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marking data to adjust the performance bands so they suit your discipline, firm size, type of firm, the geography you operate in, and other considerations. Adjustments will also be required over time as market conditions fluctuate and for inflation impacts. With a little benchmarking at budget time, you can establish performance bands to help determine targets appropriate for your firm.

3. ADJUSTED PAYROLL AS PERCENTAGE OF NET FEE

In a strong firm, adjusted payroll should be approximately 45% to 55% of net fee. This means that a strong firm should be spending about half its net fee on payroll for staff and principals—excluding fringe benefits.

Payroll includes principal salary, but an adjustment may be required if principal salary is not aligned with the market. If principals are paid in salary supplemented by other forms of compensation such as bonuses and/or profit distributions, then a market-based salary needs to be assigned to principals as part of the payroll adjustment.

As an example, if the going market salary for the principal of a firm like yours is $140,000, but you are only paying yourself $100,000, then you need to increase the payroll number used in the Scoreboard by $40,000. It doesn’t mean you need to give yourself a raise, although you may want to consider that. It just means you need to make the adjustment when using the Scoreboard, otherwise your operating profits will be overstated.

4. OPERATING EXPENSES AS PERCENTAGE OF NET FEE In a strong firm, operating expenses should be approximately 25% of net fee. Some firms run lean, employing strategies to keep costs low such as offshoring, minimal fringe benefits, and other strategies.

For firms that commonly invest heavily in administration, marketing, professional development, benefits, etc., operating expenses may exceed 25%. Either approach is valid, depending on how your practice is positioned in the marketplace. The secret is to consider each expense as an investment in the future of your practice and to keep the overall operating expenses within your target.

5. OPERATING PROFIT AS PERCENTAGE OF NET FEE

For a strong firm, a reasonable target for operating profit should be between 20% and 25% of net fee. In the 2021 Deltek survey, the median profitability for upper quartile firms was about 27%. For all firms (excluding upper-quartile firms) the median profitability was about 11%. Think about that. If the median profitability for non-upper quartile firms was 11%, that means a large number of those firms had operating profits in the single digits. For small and midsized practices, single-digit profitability over the long term usually spells trouble.

6. PIPELINE AS PERCENTAGE OF NET FEE

A strong and reliable pipeline is critical. No one can predict the future with certainty, but a well-built pipeline will allow you to predict your future workload with a pretty high degree of certainty.

The median backlog reported for all firms in the 2021 Deltek survey is six months. That means the total of all contracted but unbilled future work, if added together, represents six months of annual net fees.

This doesn’t include prospect projects, just work that is already under contract. The problem with using backlog only is that it represents work that’s spread over many months or years in the future. The Scoreboard pipeline number is a rolling, twelve-month metric, and includes your estimation of both backlog and prospects. The twelve-month horizon makes for a more transparent crystal ball.

The pipeline of a strong firm should be slightly more than annual net fees in order to facilitate choice. Aiming for 125% of annual net fee for your twelve-month pipeline is a stretch for many firms, but well worth

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the investment of time and effort. That’s equivalent to approximately fifteen months of net fees. If your firm is growing, the pipeline may need to be larger to support your growth strategy.

7. CASH ON HAND AS PERCENTAGE OF NET FEE

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In a strong firm, the amount of cash you should have immediately available will depend on a number of factors. They include, but are not limited to, your tolerance for risk, the health of your pipeline, how predictable your profitability is, your work in progress ( WIP) and accounts receivable (A/R) status, as well as the presence of any gorilla clients.

If growth is part of your strategy moving forward, you’ll have to decide to what degree growth will be financed by your own cash flow or financed by taking on debt. Again, it’s about your tolerance for risk.

Industry surveys of WIP and A/R s over the years have consistently shown the median time from start of task to payment is about eighty-one days. Total WIP should be something less than one-twelfth (less than 30 days) of your annual gross fee. Total A/R amounts owing should be no more than approximately two-twelfths (60 days) of your annual gross fee. If you’re able to hit or beat those benchmarks, and if you’re generating healthy profits, you’ll have your cash flow under control.

Be cautious! Having more cash than you should inside the firm can also be a red f lag. Cash provides a safety net. If the net is too large, it can encourage you to become complacent, deferring business decisions that need to be made in a timely fashion. Relying on a line of credit can promote the same ill-advised behaviour.

Ten to fifteen percent of annual net fee is a good guideline for cash on hand for a firm that is not experiencing significant growth. That’s equivalent to about two months of payroll and operating expenses.

Cash on hand allows the firm to ride out small bumps in the economy or lulls between projects. That way firms can avoid dipping into a line of credit, taking out a loan, or relying on cash-calls.

To allow for major business disruptions, most principals hold funds outside the firm in their personal bank accounts and investments.

With this approach, principals need to realize that if hard times befall the firm, they may be called upon to lend cash back to the business.

Since a cash-call using after-tax dollars is painful, it acts as one more reason for leadership to keep the firm on solid ground.

Taking all the Scoreboard metrics into consideration will give you a quick overview of how well your firm is performing. You’ll be able to compare performance against previous reporting periods, as well as in comparison to the overall industry.

REMEMBER THIS: There are too many Key Performance Indicators in typical benchmarking studies and they’re too confusing. Staying focussed on the 7 Scoreboard benchmarks will keep the essential financials of your firm in context with the rest of the industry. For the latest Deltek benchmarks you can do an internet search for “Deltek Clarity A&E Industry Study” or go to www.strongpracticestrategies.com for a historical record of relevant Deltek benchmarks along with a current update.

Rick J. Linley, FRAIC, LEED AP leads Strong Practice Strategies, a consultancy helping leaders of emerging and evolving design firms who are focussed on building stronger practices. His work is informed by over thirty years of practice and business experience, culminating in his role as Principal/COO of Smith Carter Architects and Engineers Inc, a 200-person, multidisciplinary design firm (now part of Architecture49). Score-

board Your Practice: 7 Numbers to Understand Your Design Firm’s Financials is available in eBook, paperback and hardcover versions at online booksellers including Amazon, Chapters Indigo, Apple Books, Google Play, and Kobo Store.

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ALANNA JOANNE SMITH

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IN THE WAKE OF PROGRESS TEXT

Elsa Lam

PHOTOGRAPHER ED BURTYNSKY’S IMMERSIVE INSTALLATION TAKES OVER THE SCREENS OF TORONTO’S YONGE-DUNDAS SQUARE. Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square is usually a canyon of advertising. But in a commission for this June’s Luminato festival, photographer Ed Burtynsky transformed the 22 screens in the square into a canvas for an immersive media piece entitled In the Wake of Progress.

Drawing on footage from his 40 years of photography and film projects, the 20-minute wordless piece traces humanity’s fall from Eden: moving from old growth forests to lands swept barren by clear cuts, and thence to suburbs, skyscrapers, and slums.

Burtynsky’s iconic images of mountain-deep Carrera marble quarries, post-industrial shipbreakers, and blood-red copper tailing pools make an appearance, the latter set to an especially ominous passage of chanting in the cinematic soundtrack by Phil Strong.

“The whole idea was born out of wanting to create a feedback loop for Yonge-Dundas Square as the epicentre of consumer capitalism in Canada,” says Burtynsky. “We’re familiar with shopping for high-end fashion and with glass, concrete, and steel, but we don’t know where that glass comes from, or where

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the clothes are made, or where the waste goes.

To make the world we know, there’s a whole other world needed—and it’s the scary one that can come from behind and get us.”

That shadow world is most poignant in the human images that opened the film Manufactured Landscapes, which also appear around the square: warehouses packed with Chinese factory workers, one group staring like living ghosts at the cameras. Trash pickers, sorting through mountains of discarded plastics, give a human face to first world wastefulness, pointing to how even environmentalist efforts such as recycling amount to virtue-signalling.

Just as the film starts with images of redwoods, it ends with waterfalls, suggesting a return to nature, or a flood that overtakes civilization—maybe both. “The piece is buttressed by nature on both sides,” says Burtynsky. “We’re part of the natural world, and if we lose sight of that, what’s at risk is ecological collapse.”

At a dusk screening, images of Hong Kong skyscrapers were reflected by the glass of surrounding buildings, multiplying and blending them into the Toronto setting; as darkness

ABOVE For two nights, the installation juxtaposed images of resource exploitation and mass production with the stores and highrises of downtown Toronto.

descended, an image with dozens of strip mall signs off a highway interchange merged with the neon backdrop of Yonge Dundas Square.

The setting also brought about some sly juxtapositions: an image of garment factory workers took the place usually occupied by advertisements for a global fast fashion brand; photos of discarded rotary phones loomed over a cell phone store. The nighttime activity of Yonge Street participated in the drama, too: at one moment, real-world sirens competed with the soundtrack, a fire truck whizzing by beneath images of gas flares from an industrial plant.

A digital takeover of Yonge-Dundas Square involves an intense production effort to sync up footage across screens owned by eight different companies, each with their own systems and servers, and a need to adjust the lighting balance as the evening progresses. Two nights of screenings displaces some $1-million worth of advertising. “It’s the biggest public artwork I’ve ever worked on,” says Burtynsky.

“To take over a whole square of the city—it’s not a small task.”

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