Canadian Architect October 2018

CANADIAN ARCHITECT oct/18

oct/18 v.63 n.10

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canadian architect

october 2018 03

Higher Education Adrien Williams

Andrew Latreille

4 Viewpoint

Adele Weder reflects back on her year as editor.

7 News

MOCA opens in Toronto, The Forks wins CSLA Legacy Project Award, Canadian mayors sign net-zero carbon buildings pledge.

13 REport

Stantec’s Wood Innovation Research Laboratory at the University of Northern British Columbia is the continent’s first Passive Housecertified higher education building.

35 Michael Elkan

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20 Webster Library

oncordia University’s main library is revamped by Menkès Shooner Dagenais C LeTourneux Architectes. TEXT Odile Hénault

26 Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre

Designed by Formline Architecture, a centre addressing historic wrongs opens at the University of British Columbia. TEXT Jim Taggart

35 Wilson School of Design

PMB Architects and Public Architecture + Communication craft Kwantlen Polytechnic K University’s fashion-focused design school. TEXT D’Arcy Jones

17 insites

An excerpt from Andrew Levitt’s new book, Listening to Design.

43 Books

Oliver Wainwright’s look inside the inscrutable city of Pyongyang, North Korea.

48 Calendar

Pop // Can // Crit in Vancouver, PD Day in Calgary, Anthropocene in Toronto and Ottawa, and more design-related events across Canada and abroad.

Andrew Latreille

50 backpage

Stefan Novakovic reports on a design charette for Indigenous youth on Manitoulin Island.

Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Photo by Andrew Latreille.

COVER

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The National Review of Design and Practice / The Official Magazine of the RAIC

2018-09-19 2:50 PM

Viewpoint Etienne Zack, Mirror Capture, 2018. Courtesy of Equinox Gallery, Vancouver

canadian architect 10/18

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A Year in Review

Editor elsa lam, fRAIC Art Director Roy Gaiot associate Editor Stefan novakovic Editorial Advisor Ian Chodikoff, OAA, FRAIC Contributing Editors Annmarie Adams, FRAIC Odile Hénault Douglas MacLeod, ncarb, MRAIC Regional Correspondents Halifax Christine Macy, OAA Regina Bernard Flaman, SAA Montreal David Theodore Calgary Graham Livesey, MRAIC Winnipeg Lisa Landrum, MAA, AIA, MRAIC vancouver adele weder, MRAIC (Hon) Vice president & Senior Publisher Steve Wilson 416-441-2085 x105 sales MANAGER Faria Ahmed 416-441-2085 x106

It has been a challenge and a privilege to edit Canadian Architect over the past year during Elsa Lam’s leave of absence. The temporary shift from my longstanding role as Corres­ pondent to Editor has brought with it a renew­ ed appreciation of the challenges of expressing what is largely inexpressible. Distilling a far­ rago of ideas, site visits, printed information and visual documentation into a cohesive journal every month is an overall joy mingled with many small frustrations. The design press can only reveal small portions of the ori­ ginal visions, theoretical underpinnings, ardent negotiations, tough compromises, admirable details and ultimate experience of the projects in its pages.

One of my experimental moves has been an attempt to resurrect the magazine’s midcentury tradition of including the allied arts in its pages. Truth be told, artist Etienne Zack’s oil painting on the cover on the March 2018 edi­ tion prompted an initially bewildered re­ sponse from more than one reader. But I still believe his imagery of interconnected printed forms is a powerful evocation of the relation­ ship between text and tectonics—so good, in fact, that I’m using another work from his series to illustrate this, my final editorial.

As an additional measure, I have expanded and illustrated our regular Calendar section to include a greater number of exhibitions, con­ ferences and other events across Canada and abroad that would be of particular interest to Canadian Architect readers.

One of the most rewarding experiences of the past 13 months has been producing the magazine’s annual Awards of Excellence issue.

Published in December 2017, it happened to be the 50th anniversary of the CA Awards—

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a perfect occasion to look back with pride (and horror) at the evolution of what we collectively decided was the “best” of Canadian architec­ ture-to-be. It was also great fun to publish a few youthful images of high-calibre jurors— Barton Myers, Eb Zeidler, John C. Parkin, Ray Moriyama, Ruth Cawker, et al—who have helped make these awards legendary. For the extra hours and effort required for that special retrospective of projects and people, I owe a debt of gratitude to associate editor Stefan Novakovic, art director Roy Gaiot and Univer­ sity of British Columbia architecture-studentsturned-researchers Jeremy Schipper, Sébastien Roy and Jérémie Dussault-Lefebvre.

The past year has also afforded the oppor­ tunity and motivation to talk to a variety of architects about issues in professional practice, and the manner in which the design press cov­ ers them. The perennial wish-list continues, with many architects calling for more bitingly critical commentary—as long as it’s not about their own work; and more candid reportage of architects’ unhappiness with public procure­ ment methods—as long as they’re not quoted.

Understandable and inevitable, albeit frustrat­ ing. It was ever thus, and the design press can only be one part of the conversation.

I thank all the architects, writers, designers and associates as well as the indefatigable staff of Canadian Architect for their patience, dili­ gence and creative spirit; and, not least, the readers and industry supporters that make these efforts worthwhile. As we welcome Elsa Lam back to the helm, let’s look forward to carrying on the conversation for the next six-plus decades.

Customer Service / production laura moffatt 416-441-2085 x104 Circulation circulation@canadianarchitect.com President of iq business media inc.

Alex Papanou Head Office 101 Duncan Mill Road, Suite 302 Toronto, ON M3B 1Z3 Telephone 416-441-2085 E-mail info@canadianarchitect.com Website www.canadianarchitect.com Canadian Architect is published monthly 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.

Subscription Rates Canada: $54.95 plus applicable taxes for one year; $87.95 plus applicable taxes for two years (HST – #80456 2965 RT0001).

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Postmaster: please forward forms 29B and 67B to 101 Duncan Mill Road, Suite 302 Toronto, ON M3B 1Z3. Printed in Canada. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be re­produced either in part or in full without the consent of the copyright owner.

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Adele Weder, MRAIC (Hon.)

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canadian architect 10/18

news PROJECTS

On September 22, the Museum of Contempor­ ary Art Toronto Canada (MOCA) moved into a new 5,110-square-metre home. The former industrial space, located at the heart of a new neighbourhood in the Lower Junction, was renovated by architectsAlliance.

Built in 1919, the Tower Automotive Building was originally designed by Winni­ peg architect John W. Woodman. Once the tallest building in Toronto, it was remarkable for its use of mushroom columns and re­ inforced concrete slabs. It was originally a fac­ tory that produced aluminium products for the two world wars, and later made items such as kitchen tools, bottle caps and car parts. www.museumofcontemporaryart.ca / www.architectsalliance.com

Sid Lee and Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux lead Place Ville Marie revitalization

Montrealers will soon enjoy a new food hall that is part of a $200-million revitalization of the Place Ville Marie Esplanade. Concep­ tualized by Sid Lee Architecture and A5 Hospitality, and executed by Sid Lee Archi­ tecture in consortium with Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes, Le Carth­ cart Restaurants et Biergarten will open at Place Ville Marie in late 2019.

The 3,252-square-metre space will come to life under a future glass pavilion on the Place Ville Marie Esplanade. It will offer seat­ ing for more than a thousand people with 15 unique restaurant concepts, including table service eateries, resto-bars, bistros and cafés.

Ben Rahn / A-Frame

architectsAlliance unveils Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada

ABOVE The Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada has moved into its new home, a former industrial space revamped by architectsAlliance.

Public Work and Gensler open new Strachan Gate at The Bentway

New federal funding bolsters Invizij Architects’ Ancaster Arts Centre

In late August, a day-long block party cele­ brated the opening of Strachan Gate at the west end of The Bentway, Toronto’s nascent linear park beneath the Gardiner Expressway.

Adding to an existing skate trail, Strachan Gate is a public space designed by Public Work and Gensler in consultation with Ken Greenberg (with the City of Toronto and Waterfront Toronto as developers). It in­ cludes a cascading wooden staircase and open-air amphitheatre that can accommo­ date up to 250 people.

Building on a $3-million funding commit­ ment from the Ontario government in 2017, the Honourable Filomena Tassi, Minister of Seniors and Member of Parliament, announced federal funding of $1.5-million for the development of the Ancaster Arts Centre in Hamilton, Ontario. Designed by Hamil­ ton’s Invizij Architects, the Ancaster Arts Cen­ tre will be located at the former Ancaster Me­ morial School, recently purchased by the City of Hamilton. The project will provide afford­ able spaces for artists to work and collaborate.

www.publicwork.ca / www.gensler.com

www.ancasterartscentre.com / www.invizij.ca

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B+H Architects has been selected by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) as the Design Architect and Prime Consultant for the Toronto hospital’s groundbreaking new Patient Support Centre (PSC). The PSC is the first phase of the SickKids campus redevelopment plan. The centre will house education, simulation and core administrative services in a modern, technology-enabled and sustainable building. Planned at approxi­ mately 22 storeys, the tower will be de­ signed to create a state-of-the-art, inspiring workplace environment. www.bharchitects.com / www.sickkids.ca

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Kriss Communications

B+H Architects designing first phase of Toronto’s SickKids Hospital expansion

ABOVE Designed by Public Work and Gensler in consultation with Ken Greenberg, the newly opened Strachan Gate marks the western terminus of The Bentway park in Toronto.

2018-09-19 2:50 PM

Toronto’s Office Ou wins international competition to design Prague school

Toronto-based Office Ou has won an inter­ national architecture competition to design a new public school in the historic Smichov district of Prague. Organized by the Centre for Central European Architecture (CCEA MOBA) on behalf of the City of Prague, the competition drew 66 anonymous submis­ sions from around the world.

The winning submission comes on the heels of another Czech public school project awarded to a Canadian firm. Earlier this year, Montreal-based office Pelletier de Fon­ tenay was chosen by CCEA MOBA as the lead designer for a new public school in the Prague suburb of Lošbates, through an open anonymous competition. www.office-ou.com / www.pelletierdefontenay.com

2019 construction start planned for KPMB and Adamson’s Bay Adelaide North

Brookfield Property Partners has announced plans to commence development of the third and final office tower of Bay Adelaide Centre in downtown Toronto in spring 2019. Bay Adelaide Centre North will be designed by KPMB Architects in collaboration with Ad­ amson Associates Architects.

Located on the north side of Temperance Street, Bay Adelaide North will be a 32storey, 75,000-square-metre office building with best-in-class operational, environmental and life-safety systems. The tower will over­ look Arnell Plaza to the south, a half-acre open space, as well as Cloud Gardens Park to the east. The park will be revitalized as part of the development. www.kpmb.com / www.adamson-associates.com

CSLA

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ABOVE The Oodena Celebration Circle is one component of The Forks, a Winnipeg district that received the CSLA’s Project Legacy Award for landscape architecture.

Canada Council names J.B.C. Watkins and Ronald J. Thom award winners

www.csla-aapc.ca

The Canada Council for the Arts has an­ nounced this year’s winners for the Ronald J. Thom Award for Early Design Achieve­ment and the J.B.C. Watkins Award.

Montreal-based studio La SHED is the recipient of the Ronald J. Thom Award for Early Design Achievement. La SHED is known for its expertise in renovating and building new residential spaces in Montreal.

Tiffany Kaewen Dang is the winner of the J.B.C. Watkins Award, which is offered to an architect wishing to pursue postgraduate studies outside Canada. Her research focuses on the Canadian National Parks System as a colonial infrastructure of territorial conquest. www.canadacouncil.ca

AWARDS

George F. Dark wins Governor General’s Medal in Landscape Architecture

The Forks wins CSLA Project Legacy Award for landscape architecture

Landscape architect and urban designer George F. Dark is the 2018 recipient of the Governor General’s Medal in Landscape Architecture. The medal is the highest hon­ our bestowed by the CSLA, and recog­n izes exceptional landscape architects whose life­ time achievements have had a lasting impact on Canadian society.

Currently a Senior Design Partner at Urban Strategies, George F. Dark has over 40 years of professional practice experience in bringing the core thought processes of landscape architec­t ure to allied fields of endeavour.

His work focuses on creating quality urban environments by coordinating large groups of diverse profes­sionals, policy makers and

The Canadian Society of Landscape Archi­ tects (CSLA) has announced Winnipeg’s The Forks as the winner of the 2018 CSLA Legacy Project Award. The CSLA Legacy Project Award recog­­­nizes projects that have left—and continue to leave—a lasting impact on Canada’s landscape. Many firms have contributed to the devel­opment of The Forks, including Cynthia Cohlmeyer Landscape Architecture, Scatliff+Miller+Murray, HTFC Planning and Design, Public City Architecture, Stantec Architecture, and David Wagner Associates. www.csla-aapc.ca

implementers and guiding projects through complex approval and consultation processes.

NEWS Big three Mayors sign C40 Net Zero Carbon Buildings pledge

On August 23, the mayors of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver committed to signifi­ cantly cut greenhouse gas emissions from their cities by ensuring that new buildings operate at net zero carbon by 2030. The Canadian leaders join 16 mayors from around the world, representing 130 million urban citizens. The other mayors who have pledged to create a net zero carbon goal for buildings in their cities include the leaders of Copenhagen, Johannes­ burg, London, Los Angeles, New York City, Newburyport, Paris, Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Monica, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, Tshwane and Washington, D.C. “Vancouver’s Zero Emissions Building Plan will not only reduce GHG emissions from new buildings by over 60%, but is also driving our green economy with a 53% increase in green building jobs since 2010,” said Mayor of Vancouver Gregor Robertson. www.c40.org

MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple expands U.S. presence with Denver office

MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects has announced the opening of its office in Denver, Colorado to better serve its American clients. The Denver office is the first location outside Nova Scotia for the firm, which

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Diversity Matters Paul Bundy

A GUIDE TO BEST PRACTICE FAITH ROOM DESIGN ABOVE The Horizon neighbourhood on Summit Powder Mountain, Utah, is deslgned by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, which recently opened an office in Denver, Colorado.

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currently has studios in Halifax, Lunenburg and Kingsburg. This initia­ tive builds on MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects’ ongoing work on Summit Powder Mountain in Utah. The firm has a number of projects underway on Summit Powder Mountain, including the Horizon com­ munity, which, when complete, will include a private event centre and multi-season lodge, as well as 26 residential units. A first neighbourhood of interconnected cabins is slated for com­pletion this fall. www.mlsarchitects.ca

MEMORANDA RAIC accepting nominations for 2019 College of Fellows inductees

The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) is inviting nom­ inations for the College of Fellows. Nominations are due October 31. www.raic.org

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Winnipeg Architecture Foundation opens Where Architects Play exhibit

Running from October 4 to October 31, the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation’s new exhibit showcases cottages designed by Winnipeg architects for themselves. www.winnipegarchitecture.ca

RAIC launches comprehensive insurance program for architects

On October 1, the RAIC launched a new insurance program that pro­ vides comprehensive professional liability coverage and other products.

The program is an exclusive RAIC member benefit. www.raic.org

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October 31 submission deadline for CCA’s Postcolonial Perspectives research project

The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) is inviting proposals for participation in a research project on architecture’s complex developments in sub-Saharan African countries after independence. www.cca.qc.ca

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practice

Bringing Passive House into the Cold TEXT

Dr. Andrea Frisque (P.Eng) and Marc Trudeau (P.Eng, Architect AIBC) Michael Elkan

PHOTOS

At the University of Northern British Columbia, Stantec designs a wood research centre with airtight precision.

Located in the centre of Prince George, the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) has a public mandate to be a leader in highperforming buildings and innovative wood projects. Working with UNBC, our design team at Stantec conceived the new Wood Innovation Research Laboratory (WIRL) as a research, testing and development facility for these products. The building allows faculty and students in the Master of Engineering program to conduct unique experiments, test theories and explore creative uses for wood in sustainable design.

In keeping with a sustainability mandate, we designed the WIRL as North America’s first certified Passive House higher education building. Passive House principles were followed in all phases of the project—through design, engineering and construction. Building to Passive House standards is challenging in any climate, but exception­ ally so with the cold weather in Prince George.

With its rigorous criteria, Passive House sets a stringent standard for building energy efficiency and occupant comfort. It was initiated to achieve design quality assurance in Europe in the 1990s, with certifica­ tion pioneered through the Passive House Institute (PHI) in Darm­ stadt, Germany. The standard now has international attention, with Passive House criteria impacting Canadian building codes. For example, the City of Vancouver accepts Passive House certification as one way to demonstrate compliance with its new rezoning policy.

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ABOVE The Wood Innovation Research Laboratory in Prince George is the first North American university building to meet the Passive House standard.

Passive House and European energy codes (known there as direc­ tives) have been based on absolute energy metrics for decades. The same type of metrics—which relate to heating demand, energy use and airtightness—are now used in British Columbia’s step code. This is a change from traditional North American codes, such as ASHRAE 90.1 or NECB, which are based on percent savings.

The WIRL project started with research by the faculty well in advance of the RFQ , particularly by Guido Wimmers, chair of the Master of Engineering program at UNBC and an expert on Passive House construction. The project was officially launched when Wim­ mers, together with Shelley Rennick, director of facilities management at UNBC, received $1.88 million in federal funding from the Post-Sec­ ondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund. The project’s remaining $3.44 million construction cost was funded by the provincial govern­ ment of British Columbia’s Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills, and Training in partnership with the university.

As Passive House projects are still rather new in Canada, keeping track of project costs was a priority throughout design to control expenses and make effective economic decisions. The WIRL was delivered as a designbuild, with Passive House certification as a contractual requirement.

Achieving Passive House energy and building envelope performance levels required meticulous planning in wall assembly construction,

2018-09-19 2:50 PM

canadian architect 10/18

14 ABOVE In the cold climate of Prince George, the thermal performance of all assemblies needed to be significantly improved beyond typical practice. This includes, for example, triple-glazed windows with overall U-0.76 W/m2K (U-0.13 BTU/h ft 2F). It also includes roof, walls and floor with effective clear field thermal performance of U-value 0.057, U-0.079, and 0.166 U-0.76 W/m2K (R-value 100, 70, 34 h ft 2F/ BTU) respectively.

sealing of membranes, and consideration for air leakage at all inter­ faces—especially around openings such as the garage door. Our team sourced building components and systems both locally and from abroad. The overhead door was provided by Hörmann and delivered from Germany. Doors and windows from European manufacturers were selected for performance that meets Passive House requirements.

The 900-square-metre single-storey structure comprises a glulam post-and-beam superstructure over an insulated raft foundation.

Initially, our team considered using mass-timber wall and roof assem­ blies with outboard insulation, but found that this approach was not cost-effective. A more feasible solution was achieved with a wall assem­ bly that pairs standard residential roof trusses with sprayed mineralwool insulation. The wall and roof structures were made using conven­ tional building materials and fabricated in Prince George by Winton Global, a local residential truss manufacturer, although the wall-truss design was customized to meet Passive House requirements.

The wall trusses are 10 metres tall by 2.9 metres wide, designed based on 1.47-metre-wide sheathing modules. Prior to tendering the wall pan­

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els, the design team created drawings of all modular panel configura­ tions, both to communicate the design intent and to bring the price down from the trades by establishing a level of certainty and clarity.

The non-local materials in the envelope are the Intello air/vapour system, developed by Pro Clima in Germany, and the blown mineral wool insulation from Indiana. The whole wall structure was fabricated in a factory, transported to site, and craned into place, after which the insulation was installed in situ.

An integrated strong wall and strong f loor allow for simulated destructive structural testing, in which materials are stress-tested until they fail. The workshop’s high-bay fabrication area also includes ma­ chining equipment, wood cutting tools, and wood drying capability.

The considerable ceiling heights allow large sections of building ma­ terials to be assembled, moved by overhead crane, carried to the testing area, and loaded onto delivery vehicles.

Lofty ceilings and a garage-door entry present a particular challenge in a Passive House design, as there are significantly more surfaces that can lose heat and allow air to infiltrate. This challenge is somewhat mitigated by the lower air temperature needed in the workshop space. We took exceptional care to consider how specific project components worked together in order to achieve a feasible integrated Passive House design.

The south side of the building is a source of heat, views, and natural light for the office and seminar spaces. The south façade is also where the air intake for the building is located, strategically positioned to draw air from a future adjacent park.

The completed construction has set a high standard for airtightness, securing the best North American result of any building under the Passive House standard. Passive House sets limits on airtightness with a maximum allowable infiltration of 0.6 air changes per hour at a pressure of 50 Pa. The WIRL building achieved a result of 0.07 air changes per hour, surpassing the already stringent Passive House requirement by nearly a factor of ten. Typical Canadian building stock achieves in the range of 3 to 10 air changes per hour.

Students at UNBC now have a beautiful, sustainable and modern facility for conducting research on new uses for wood—which will ultimate­ly aid in developing new jobs and markets in the forestry industry and helping British Columbia to secure a sustainable future.

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Dr. Andrea Frisque is a Senior Building Performance Engineer and Associate based in Stantec’s Vancouver office and Adjunct Professor at the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia. Marc Trudeau is Building

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Performance Engineer and team lead for the Sustainable Buildings Studio in Stantec’s Vancouver office.

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Chaos Ball , 2017 © Fausta Facciponte

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THE ACT OF (DESIGN) CREATION TEXT

Andrew Levitt Fausta Facciponte, courtesy of Stephen Bulger Gallery

Artwork

In this excerpt from his new book, Andrew Levitt offers insights and advice for the creative process of architecture.

The creative impulse is what moves you and powers the design process.

It is an energy that causes you to say yes or no to a thought, feeling, image or pair of shoes. It may call you to go jogging or to play the har­ monica. It may come from running with dogs or working in the garden.

It may even come from choosing what clothes to wear.

Whatever is calling you—whether you hear, see, feel, sense or think it—you have been summoned. The great question is then whether you will respond to the call. Warning: you may not hear trumpets. There may be no twenty-one-gun salute.

You may hear only whispers or feel subtle tremors.

You may need to be really listening inwardly. What brings the creative impulse may be a book that speaks to you. It may be a feeling of delight in your belly. There is no single description of how each person experien­ ces the creative impulse. For me it is a force. I always feel good when I say yes to it and often feel unsettled when I ignore it. The beauty of this call is that over time you can learn to recognize it—to be receptive to your own particular inner call of creative communication. As you get more

and more practised at identifying the creative impulse, you can learn to trust it, act on it and share it. It is the subjective point of view that connects us to our personal needs and desires and ultimately to our cre­ ative instincts. When this connection is severed, vitality, the lifeblood, quickly drains from the system. No blood means no fire and no fire means no creative spirit. If you feel that you have lost your creative spirit, you might as well take a break. Indifference and creativity do not mix.

When we say, “I’ve got an idea,” what we actually mean is: “I’ve received an idea.” The truth is you cannot set about “getting” an idea. If you were able to, you could just schedule the time of your insights and ideas the way you can arrange to meet a friend for coffee. But it is impossible to sched­ ule a particular time to get a great idea. A creative idea has to be received in its own time because it arises from the unconscious. We have no way of knowing it before we “get” it. The part of you that uses the ego to get things done may be very developed, but this is not the part of you that is in play when it comes to creating. The creative impulse comes to you and the job of the ego is to receive it. Once you have received it, know

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Chaos Pile (Detail), 2016 © Fausta Facciponte

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that you have been blessed. If you could simply arrange to get it whenever you wanted, there would be no anxiety or stress associated with creative work. You could simply order it online like a new shirt. It is worth reflect­ ing that often the missing ingredient in the creative process is wisdom.

Wisdom cannot be taught; it comes through the intuitive function and is received in much the same way as creativity is received.

With practice we can begin to learn that the ego is really good at investigating and asking questions. One of the conditions that most engenders creativity, however, is the creation of a receptive inner environment in which the ego asks a question and then gives space, silence and time to whatever arises in response. Allow the ego to abide in awareness. The skilful and deliberate practice of creative design work arises out of the relationship between the right questions and holding this space of becoming.

The felt experience of the question is very important and is often neg­ lected. It carries the all-important emotional attitude of the inquiry; too much desire will stop the process, while being too relaxed will equally prevent anything from happening. The role of the ego is to stand guard and ensure that the most promising inner environment is poised for action.

What should you do with the creative impulse when you do receive it? Play with it! Each person has his or her own way of playing with the creative impulse. For some people it is visualized: the idea or image is held in their mind’s eye, allowed to unfold and transform. Some prefer to watch what happens when they make suggestions, seeing how the many forms of the creative impulse feel as they are played out.

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To nourish an idea, the creative person needs to be with and to revel in it, to watch it with affection and curiosity and to investigate it.

The creative individual needs to treat the idea like a brand-new liv­ ing thing that is not yet able to stand up and walk on its own. If you are not sure where to go with a particular creative act, bring it into your heart and listen. Ask yourself, does this agree with my heart’s desire?

There are various things that can get in the way of this process: an intolerant attitude; anger; the internal voice that tells you to stop making a mess; the voice that berates you, telling you that you should have figured this out days ago; the voice that tells you it is too late and you are too stupid, that you should stop wasting your time; and the voice that says, “stop being a child.” Ignore all of these negative voices in spite of what you may hear, and tell yourself that this is your time.

The creative impulse needs your complete attention and support. Give yourself permission to play with the ideas. Proceed as though the gods above are inviting you to be at one with the divine spark.

Does this mean you will not fail? Absolutely not. But it allows you to store up the kind of experiences you can draw upon when things get difficult.

And... it also gives you something to refer to for when things are going well.

Excerpted from Listening to Design: A Guide to the Creative Process , Reaktion Books, 2018. Andrew Levitt is a trained psychotherapist and a lecturer at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture.

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Inner Transformation Concordia University’s Webster Library is redesigned from the inside out

R. H. Webster Library, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes TEXT Odile Hénault PHOTOS Adrien Williams, unless otherwise noted PROJECT

ARCHITECT

There is no denying the sheer joy one gets stepping into a traditional library with its old book stacks and its long tables. Yet pleasure can turn into pain as a library gets ever more crowded and noisy, eventually becoming almost impossible to work in. Five years ago, this was the situa­ tion at Concordia University’s Webster Library, as the student population had grown from 25,000 to 46,000 within two decades. Watching stu­ dents scramble for space, particularly at exam times, librarian Guylaine Beaudry embarked on a campaign that led to a total transformation.

When she tackled her “optimization” project, Beaudry—who is now Chief Librarian—was not just thinking of growth. She was also think­

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ing of an entirely new reality, that of the virtual library—in her words, the “library of the future.” Finally, she wanted Webster to be open to all: students, faculty and the general public.

Designed by Montreal firm Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes (MSDL), the newly renovated Webster Library is still largely a secret to outsiders. No one can guess its presence from the street since the architects had to work within an existing structure, the J. W. McConnell Building. Built in the early 1990s, the pavilion is a heavy postmodern building with opaque walls, a bulky structural grid and a brash colour scheme. Its only saving grace is the integration

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A woodframed portal on the ground level of the existing building invites students to the renovated library.

Above Fuschia-hued carpet inserts and millwork add visual punch to the secondfloor reference desk area. right The library is housed in the 1992 J. W. McConnell Building.

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PLAN D’IMPLANTATION I ÉCHELLE 1:2000

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ABOVE Used for graduate student presentations, the fifth-floor reading lounge extends into the atrium, enlivening the existing building.

Opposite The pleated geometry of the ceiling and library shelves, along with the dynamically shaped carpet inserts, are inspired by principles of anamorphic design.

of a beautiful 1913 white glazed terracotta façade on the Mackay Street side, the former Royal George Apartment Building.

The program was developed in a rigorous way, but left ample room for imagination. Inspired by the optical explorations of Swiss artist Felice Varini, the architects managed to respond to programmatic requirements while alluding to the concept of anamorphosis—a way of arranging visual components so that they appear dynamically dis­ torted, but resolve into a coherent image from a single vantage point.

The program called for the reorganization of the second, third, fourth and fifth floors of the library, and had to take into account the structural grid, the central atrium and the exterior envelope of the 1992 building. A formal portal was built on the ground floor to create a strong visual transition to the existing surroundings. The wood-lined gateway leads up a wide staircase with acoustically treated walls into the hushed environment of the reception area.

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The presence of the building’s atrium, despite the constraints it entail­ ed, provided the architects with the opportunity to generate very clear and efficient circulation patterns. The elongated void creates a physical separation between library-connected spaces and administrative servi­ ces. On the south side of the atrium, each floor is bookended by two large reading rooms filled with natural light, facilitating user orienta­ tion. The floorplate on the north side of the atrium includes work rooms, offices, cataloguing areas and a number of spaces where users can experiment with state-of-the-art techniques such as 3D printing, virtual reality or a Technology Sandbox. Although the Webster Library is destined to become much more virtual, books and journals still occupy significant stack space, particularly on the upper three floors, where they are grouped towards the centre of the plan.

Working with the clients, the architects increased seating capacity from 1,500 to 3,300 seats and planned 22 different kinds of study

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Opposite top A study “cube” on level 3 is one of a number of rooms designed for collaborative work. Opposite bottom The level 5 reading room includes minimalist desks designed specifically for this project.

ABOVE Floor-to-ceiling glazed partitions enclose a silent study zone on level 3; the design skillfully incorporates the glass block windows of the existing building.

environments, from zero-noise reading rooms to areas where conversa­ tions can occur freely. Particular emphasis was placed on customized workspaces created for the collaborative work fostered by Concordia University. Designed as oak boxes with black-aluminium-framed insu­ lated glazed units, these “cubes” were set as discrete objects throughout the library. They were at the heart of the design scheme, says architect Jean-Pierre LeTourneux, FIRAC, who explains how anamorphic pro­ jections from the cubes were transposed into the design of triangular wall and ceiling panels, suspended baffles and carpet inserts.

This type of geometry, explored by MSDL in previous projects, “challenges the occupants and energizes the space,” says LeTourneaux.

Further, it uses ordinary materials. LeTourneaux adds: “The threedimensional elements were adapted from standard exterior aluminium panels and developed by the manufacturer using 3D models. The linear baffles are suspended interlocking aluminium sections incorporating fixed linear lighting and accent lights.” Colourful wall and carpet pat­ terns complete the geometric tableau.

The use of colour is particularly effective, as subdued black stacks and white tables act as a counterpoint to the vibrant accent colours. Planted “green walls” also bring welcome visual relief to this secluded environment.

One of the scheme’s strongest gestures is the projection of the fifth floor’s reading lounge volume into the atrium. The room is used for

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final presentations at the end of graduate studies, and is fittingly placed for representing the students’ ultimate achievement.

Quite a number of well-designed libraries have sprung up in Quebec over the past two decades as a direct result of the province’s policy of tendering cultural-sector projects through design competitions.

Although each project has presented its own challenges, few of them can compare to Concordia University’s Webster Library in terms of size and complexity. Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Archi­ tectes’ deft and comprehensive transformation is especially remarkable given the fact that the library remained open throughout the entire construction process. The result is a wonderful new facility that may just lead the way towards the “library of the future.”

Odile Hénault, a Montreal-based critic and consultant, is currently an instructor at the McEwen School of Architecture at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario.

CLIENT Concordia University | ARCHITECT TEAM Yves Dagenais, FIRAC; Jean-Pierre

LeTourneux, FIRAC; Paolo Zasso, Audrey Archambault, Luc Doucet, Marie-Ève ÉthierChiasson, Marco Goyette, Francis Huneault, Claudio Nunez, Nils Rabota, Guy Rousseau. | STRUCTURAL Groupe EGP | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Bouthillette Parizeau et Associés | CONTRACTOR Pomerleau | SIGNAGE Atelier Intégral Jean Beaudoin | ACOUSTICS Davidson et associés | AREA 16,550 m2 | BUDGET $30.4 M | COMPLETION Fall 2017

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Architectural

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Reconciliation

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A research and dialogue centre for a national travesty opens in Vancouver

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site plan 1 MAIN ENTRANCE FOYER 2 STAIRS to lower level 3 MEETING ROOM 4 SERVICE SPACE 5 OFFICE 6 RECEPTION 7 CUSTODIAL 8 KITCHENETTE 9 STORM WATER WETLAND 10 CEREMONIAL PLAZA 11 OUTDOOR LEARNING

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The Indian Residential Schools History and Dialogue Centre sits near to the university’s clock tower and Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, the repository for the university’s archives.

Opposite top Architect Alfred Waugh and landscape design firm PFS Studio collaborated to tightly integrate the centre with its landscape.

Opposite Bottom A wood-soffited canopy welcomes students at the centre’s main entrance adjacent Learners’ Walk.

Previous Spread

Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia ARCHITECT Formline Architecture TEXT Jim Taggart PHOTOS Andrew Latreille PROJECT

In June 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stood before Parliament to make a formal apology on behalf of the federal government to surviv­ ors of Indian residential schools. In his response, Phil Fontaine, nation­al chief of the Assembly of First Nations, stated: “Emboldened by this spectacle of history, it is possible to end our racial nightmare together.

The memories of residential schools sometimes cut like merciless knives at our souls. This day will help us to put that pain behind us.”

This formal apology gave impetus to the work of the Truth and Rec­ onciliation Commission (TRC), established earlier that month, which began to gather testimony from residential school survivors in a series of private and public meetings held across the country. Many of the rev­ elations that emerged from these meetings were both new and shocking to non-Indigenous Canadians, confirming the critical gaps that persisted throughout the country’s public education system.

Then, in the fall of 2013, a visit by the TRC to the University of Brit­ ish Columbia prompted an announcement by UBC President Stephen Toope: “Post-secondary institutes must play the particular role of fur­ thering a deeper understanding through research and an advanced level of intercultural discourse,” he proclaimed. “Through ongoing educa­

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tion, Canadians must come to a shared understanding of the circum­ stances that have shaped Aboriginal experience, so that we may all begin to know and to value one another.”

At this meeting, Toope also announced UBC ’s commitment to the creation of the Indian Residential Schools History and Dialogue Centre (IRSHDC), designed by Alfred Waugh, MRAIC, of Formline Architecture and opened in April 2018.

The mandate of the IRSHDC is to acknowledge the suffering of the 150,000 Indigenous students who attended residential schools across Canada, to honour the memory of the more than 6,000 children believed to have died in these institutions, and to promote dialogue that connects past injustices to today’s human rights movements.

Waugh is a member of the Fond du Lac Nation of northern Saskatch­ ewan, and his mother attended a residential school; he brought his own lived experience to the resolution of a building program that is modest in scale, but rich in symbolism.

The chosen site was a large sunken courtyard between the Koerner Library and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, the locus of memory and record-keeping for the university and the public it serves. As an urban design exercise, the challenge was to give the 620-square-metre building a strong presence amid its much larger neighbours while respecting an existing view corridor that runs diagonally across the site. (The view corridor runs from the Millennial Time Machine, a public art installation

by Rodney Graham, to the large sequoia tree on which the artwork’s camera obscura is focused.)

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Ample glazing allows natural light to pour into the centre, countering the feeling of confinement that characterized the residential schools.

Along the walkway, the building’s massing introduces a subtle sense of compression and counters it with a release towards the landscaped courtyard, with its outdoor gathering spaces.

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The initial site analysis concluded that the program could best be ac­ commodated in a vertical structure built at the southwest corner, on the roof of the subterranean Sedgewick Library. However, detailed struc­tural investigations determined that this approach was not economically feas­ ible, so a low rectangular solution was proposed instead, to be built at courtyard level and extending along the south boundary of the site.

This configuration, while compromising the connection to the adja­ cent streets, offered the opportunity to establish a much stronger rela­ tionship with the courtyard. Waugh worked closely with the landscape architects at PFS Studio to ensure that the courtyard would become an oasis for quiet conversation and contemplation, a respite from the busy­ ness of the surrounding campus and an outdoor room for the IRSHDC. Waugh’s design reflects the desire of Linc Kessler, director of the UBC First Nations House of Learning, for the architectural expression

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to communicate the diversity of the Indigenous peoples of Canada, rather than being identifiably associated with any particular culture group.

Waugh also sought input from Elders of the local Musqueam First Nation, some of whom were residential school survivors. They spoke of their feelings of confinement and disconnection in those buildings, which afforded them only the occasional glimpse of the outside world through small, high windows. With the participation of survivors being a key to the Centre’s success, Waugh made openness and trans­ parency a primary focus of his design.

The program is arranged on two levels, with the main entry, admin­ istrative offices and meeting rooms on the upper level, and the exhib­ ition area—known as the Vault of Memories—and communications and electrical service rooms on the courtyard level below. From the eastfacing main entry, approached down a curving ramp, visitors descend

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ABOVE An exhibition space called the Vault of Memories includes a map of Canada’s 132 residential schools, with linked videos, photos and survivor testimonials. Sliding glass doors open the room up to a ceremonial plaza bordered by a storm water wetland.

a generous staircase with panoramic views to the courtyard through a glulam-framed glazed curtain wall to the right, and woven cedar paneling lining the wall to the left. The curtain wall offers light, views to nature and the sense of openness requested by the Elders, while the woven cedar paneling recalls the basketwork that is common among Indigenous cultures across the country.

At the bottom of the stairs, a cedar-clad reception desk and portal mark the entrance to the Vault of Memories. This space is large, open and unadorned, with continuous glass doors providing visual connection and physical access to the paved portion of the courtyard. The canti­ levered meeting rooms on the upper floor offer weather protection when the sliding doors are open. The roof of the Vault is accessible from the street above, with seating steps overlooking the courtyard. Gatherings in this area can be catered from a small kitchen located in the adminis­ tration area on the upper level.

In a building of this size, the architectural gestures must be carefully chosen and carried through with a combination of confidence and restraint. Waugh, with modernist sensibilities developed while working with Peter Busby, FRAIC on projects like the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, nonetheless compares his design approach to that of Haida artist Robert Davidson, who re-interprets his own Indigenous roots and traditions through an unmistakably contemporary lens.

Thus, regional modernism is mixed with cultural metaphor. The exterior wall that f lanks the entrance is clad in charred cedar planks, a traditional Indigenous material made more resilient through a process of scorching. The simple, asymmetric butterfly roof collects rainwater and channels it to a sculptural copper and glass scupper before discharging

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it to the courtyard pond. The copper, a material generally reserved for chiefs, connotes status in Indigenous cultures, and is also associated with prestigious public buildings in the Western world. The running water, sparkling in the sunlight, also symbolizes tears.

Inside, the east wall of the Vault of Memories includes three large interactive screens that work together to project a single image for a large audience, or divide to enable six people to explore the content indivi­ dually. A map of Canada identifies all 132 residential schools, and each location can be opened up to access videos, still photography, survivor testimonials and other documentation.

Viewing these records of past wrongs is at once painful and poignant: not simply an uncomfortable journey into history, but also a call to action in today’s turbulent times. As Ry Moran, director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, observes: “It’s essential … not only that we celebrate who we are when we’re at our best, but also that we never forget who we have been when we’ve been at our worst.”

The Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre helps us do both.

Jim Taggart is a Vancouver-based architectural journalist and educator.

CLIENT UBC Properties Trust | ARCHITECT TEAM Alfred Waugh, Manny Trinca, Vince

Knudsen | STRUCTURAL Bush Bohlman & Partners | MECHANICAL Smith + Anderson |

ELECTRICAL Applied Engineering Solutions | LANDSCAPE PFS Studio | INTERIORS Formline

Architecture | EXHIBIT DESIGN Logic and Form + PUBLIC Design | CODE LMDG Code Consultants | ENVELOPE JRS Engineering | CONTRACTOR Bird Construction | AREA 620 m2 | BUDGET Building: $2.9M; Landscape: $2.7M | COMPLETION Spring 2018

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Photographer: Jesus Martin Ruiz Diamond Schmitt Architects Wilfrid Laurier University

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A fashion-focused design school in British Columbia is modernist-cool outside, and casual-chic inside

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A slick glass skin encloses the new school, while a glulam wood structure gives it the informal feel of a repurposed warehouse.

On the main façade, a cantilevered box houses an outdoor patio and doubles as an entrance canopy. Opposite Top Transparent and translucent interior partitions are used throughout the building, underscoring the intersection of interests between the school’s various faculties.

Opposite bottom The atrium includes views to a student lounge and studios on the second level.

Opening page ABOVE

Wilson School of Design, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Richmond, British Columbia ARCHITECTS KPMB Architects + Public: Architecture + Communication TEXT D’Arcy Jones PHOTOS Adrien Williams, unless otherwise noted PROJECT

site plan Wilson School of Design

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John Coltrane said his saxophone playing was like jumping into the middle of a sentence. Similarly, Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s new Wilson School of Design in Richmond is pleasingly jarring inside.

Beyond the precise and planar entrance, the interior is a bare compos­ ition of glass, concrete, wood and white drywall.

Designed by KPMB A rchitects and Public Architecture + Communi­ cation, the new school slots into an L-shaped void between two arms of a brick collegiate building from the 1990s, infilling a former parking lot. Its footprint is close enough to its neighbour to highlight how the two buildings aren’t on speaking terms materially, but is far enough away to create a well-proportioned green courtyard between them. Projecting an urban attitude in a mostly suburban neighbourhood, the school is already a campus gatehouse. It welcomes students from the nearby (and also recently opened) Lansdowne Skytrain station, enticing them away from the campus’s formal entry around the corner. While the building’s dominant façade currently stares down acres of shopping mall parking, an urban-village-style development is coming soon, which will give the school a real sparring partner.

Richmond is a comfortably flat landscape of malls, mega-houses and Maseratis. Once called Lulu Island, the triangular municipality started as sprawling wetlands. The new school’s construction could not start until the site was densified and pre-loaded with gravel to solidify its delta silt, for over $1 million. To control that cost, building lightly was important.

The result is a post-and-beam wood structure with steel decking on a con­ crete raft slab, compared to a ship by the architects. To me, it is maybe more like a plaid tent with a classical tripartite silhouette. The building

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is like a tailored suit on the outside, but feels like Jeans Friday inside.

The building’s mass timber legs poke out from under its taut skirt, so they were finished with a Sikkens stain to prevent rotting or fading.

The wood looks pencil-yellow—fitting for a school focused on process and potential. The tinted wood highlights the structure’s syncopated rhythm, which figuratively glues the school together by exposing some wood struc­ ture in almost every space. The timber is secretive about its detailing, with connections that appear boltless, hidden by a click-together assembly.

Surprisingly, the structure is not made from locally grown timber.

It is glue-laminated spruce from somewhere in Europe, via Austria.

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The cheapest bidder with the shortest lead time is chosen on projects that spend any public dollars. This feels good to taxpayers, but in this case the lost opportunity should be a nudge to British Columbia’s value-added wood industries to stay sharp. A country of forests ought to be an international leader when it comes to anything to do with wood.

The $36-million building for 500 students was paid for by a trio of funders. A third of the cost came from the British Columbia Govern­ ment and another third was chipped in by Kwantlen Polytechnic Univer­ sity. Shannon and Chip Wilson of the Lululemon Athletica and Kit + Ace empires donated most of the last third. As local technical apparel

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pioneers, the Wilsons wanted to support the university that trains their best hires. Having a 5,600-square-metre building and a design school named in your honour has a certain cachet—although the design students are the real winners. They have moved from the school’s previous cramped quarters to a new headquarters that could just as easily host a tech star­ tup, a casual-yet-serious design firm, or a future School of Thought.

The building’s stern but attractive form fits six faculties—graphic design, fashion design, product design, technical apparel design, fashion marketing, and interior design—under a single roof. The program is all about overlap. A product designer melting plastic can see a fashion

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Connection details between columns and beams are concealed by a click-together assembly of the school’s engineered wood structure. ABOVE right Cascading stairs invite students up into the heart of the school, and across a link bridging to the campus’s main buidling.

Adjacent seating provides a place to pause in the midst of the bustle.

ABOVE left

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Andrew Latreille

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Full-height windows allow for plentiful natural light in an upper-floor sewing lab. Workshops, computer labs, design studios and crit spaces are all located in daylit areas with operable windows.

ABOVE

designer toiling on a sewing machine. An interior designer could help the technical apparel designer fix the jammed laser cutter. Graphic designers might print posters beside a professor testing fabric dyes, while both of them hear someone sawing wood in the shop. This con­ trolled chaos is visible to the greater campus and community. The interior is furnished with white rolling work desks, white smart boards and moveable seating—a spare backdrop that highlights students and their projects. The new school is intended to be a busy beehive.

As an architect who started out in house design, I am biased, but I believe that whether a building is for a family, a group or a broader community to share, it should be influenced by history’s oldest residen­ tial traditions. Often, these traditions get distorted or abandoned as projects grow, creating big architecture that can be insensitive because it does not resemble any kind of familiar space. If an environ­ ment is unrelatable, it kills any feelings of well-being.

The Wilson School of Design taps into design principles that predate modernism. It feels like a transformed manor house, with a secure sense of prospect and refuge, protected entries that spatially squeeze, free and controlled movement, well-tempered light and air, a clear and diverse hierarchy of spaces, and a central gathering space that nurtures the smaller spaces. These essentially domestic qualities are universal.

Expressed within this new school, they allow students to comfortably inhabit the fluid interior spaces in a very non-institutional way.

During recent visits, a few finicky things jumped out at me. The top floor’s public exhibition space that scoots a few feet past the main build­

CA Oct.indd 40

ing appears slightly tentative. It was bolder and more confident in an ear­ lier rendered iteration, before value engineering scaled it back. The use of black on the exterior at the base and top adds another tone to a palette that already seems complete without it. Inside, wood ceiling slats hide piping that, if left visible, would not have detracted from the whole.

The Wilson School of Design has a smoothly ambiguous personality.

Robert Venturi’s concept of Both-And feels freshly applicable to the building and its architects’ design process. This is subtly so when a cantilevered wood-lined volume functions as a coffee shop patio and an entrance canopy. It is unmistakably so when the school’s f lush glass box, scientifically tuned for solar gain, wraps around its preindustrial-looking timber frame. The school’s even-handed architecture does not feel traditional, but also does not feel uncompromisingly modern. Rigour has produced a handsome hybrid.

D’Arcy Jones is the principal of Vancouver-based firm D’Arcy Jones Architecture.

CLIENT Kwantlen Polytechnic University | ARCHITECT TEAM KPMB: Bruce Kuwabara, Glenn MacMullin, Carolyn Lee, Luigi LaRocca, Geoffrey Turnbull, Lukas Bergmark, Lucy Timbers, Rob McKaye, Marcus Colonna, Danielle Whitely, Dina Sarhane. Public: John Wall, Brian Wakelin, Chris Forrest, Laura Killam, Christopher Sklar, Michael Thicke, Sabrina Hoeck. | PROJECT MANAGER Mark Bullen (Capex) | STRUCTURAL Fast + Epp | MECHANICAL AME Group | ELECTRICAL/SECURITY/LIGHTING AES | CIVIL Core Group | LANDSCAPE PFS Studio | Interiors Procenium | ENERGY ENGINEER Transsolar | ENVELOPE Morrison Hershfield | ACOUSTICS Daniel Lyzun & Associates | AV/TECH MC2 | CONTRACTOR DGS Construction | AREA 5,600 m2 | BUDGET $22 M | COMPLETION January 2018

2018-09-19 2:51 PM

High-quality installations for higher education Singhmar Centre for Learning – NorQuest College Edmonton, AB

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canadian architect 10/18

books

Pastel Pyongyang Inside North Korea

By Oliver Wainwright, Taschen Books, 2018 Review YouBeen Kim

One might expect North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, to be a monoton­ ous grey world. The reality is far from what we might imagine. I found that out as a architectural graduate student at the University of Toron­ to, where I researched the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the bor­ der between North and South Korea. As a Korean-Canadian, ever since I moved to Canada from South Korea at the age of 15, I’ve been frequently asked about North Korea. For most of the world, the coun­ try remains largely inscrutable, unknowable, invisible.

Countering this paucity of information, journalist Oliver Wainwright takes us on an extraordinary journey in his newly published book Inside North Korea. His introductory text and approximately 300 photographs with descriptive captions offer, in his words, “a glimpse behind the closed doors of the Hermit Kingdom,” into a pastel-coloured cityscape that elicits “the surreal feeling of walking into a Wes Anderson movie or a life-sized Polly Pocket toy.” The broad range of high-res, full-

ABOVE A view from the top of the Tower of the Juche Idea, looking northeast over symmetrically planned tower blocks. Showcase buildings include stepped ziggurats and curved serpentine blocks.

sized photos in Inside North Korea offer an intriguing opportunity to experience the atmosphere of dazzling colour palettes. “The architec­ ture continues the retro-futuristic style from previous years, with heav­ ily sculpted concrete towers clad in gleaming white tiles with brightly coloured accents of minty green and orange,” Wainwright writes.

The book is based on the author’s visit to Pyongyang in 2015, and observes this secretive country from an informed architectural per­ spective. Wainwright’s photographs powerfully reveal the current state and atmosphere of the city at multiple scales, from urban district to interior space.

Colour is one of the most dominant components of Pyongyang— an architectural aesthetic that Kim Jong Un has aggressively promot­ ed in recent years. The Korean leader’s uncompromising manifesto promised “to raise a hot wind of construction across all the provinces, cities and counties” and “to remodel them in a beautiful fashion

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The metal-vaulted May Day Stadium, completed in 1989 and renovated in 2015, is designed to resemble a magnolia flower in bloom. The curved red roofs of the Central Youth Hall are seen in the foreground. Below The 600-room Grand People’s Study House was planned in the mid-1970s and completed in 1982 as a city centrepiece with the capacity to store 30 million books.

Left

as suited to their characteristic features,” aiming to turn the country into a “socialist fairyland.” As Wainwright describes, the result is “a rolling field of tower blocks painted in terracotta and yellow ochre, turquoise and baby blue, punctuated by the novel silhouettes of landmark buildings designed with a distinctly sci-fi air.”

Pyongyang was largely destroyed by bombing during the Korean War in the early 1950s. This tragedy turned into an opportunity for the coun­ try’s first leader, Kim Il Sung, to rebuild it as a new ideal socialist city. Despite an official policy of “Juche Ideology,” which stipulates that there should be no external influence on any aspect of life in postwar North Korea, the city plan was shaped by Moscow-trained architect Kim Jong Hui and demonstrates classic Soviet planning principles.

In the plan, as Wainwright writes, “Imposing squares are linked by vast axial boulevards, setting up long vistas that terminate in monu­ mental structures.” Monuments honouring the Kim dynasty leaders are deliberately spaced along the city plan’s central axis. The layout sug­ gests the omnipresence of the leaders—a spatial analog to the country’s uniform political ideology. “The importance of the leaders in the for­ mation of the city, from the scale of the room to the street, is hard to overstate,” Wainwright writes. Not only is the concept of space in Pyongyang controlled by the Kim leaders, but even the deadlines of the country’s major construction projects fall on their birthdays.

Wainwright’s travel was carefully controlled by a tour guide, and thus, it seems appopriate that he describes the city as theatrical: “Walking the streets of Pyongyang feels like moving through a series of stage sets taken from one of the country’s socialist-realist operas.” But there is a severed relationship between the façades that proudly showcase selected aspects of the city and the reality behind them.

Inside North Korea ultimately reveals the irreconcilable divide between the life of North Korean citizens and the artificial built environment that

they appear to inhabit. At the end of Wainwright’s journey, he glimpses the dark side of the pastel-coloured city: a place of abandoned factories, collapsing apartment towers, and ragged children.

With its spatial approach to describing this enigmatic country, Inside North Korea serves as a powerful archival record and expands the discus­ sion of Pyongyang’s past, present and future. This book provides a win­ dow into the architectural aspirations of this veiled world, allowing read­ ers to question what may emerge in the years to come.

YouBeen Kim received her Master of Architecture from the University of Toronto.

She is a founder and a principal designer at FREESPACE studio in Seoul and New York, a project architect at COREARCHISM Architects and an adjunct professor at Hanyang University and KyungHee University, both in Seoul.

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calendar

ACROSS CANADA Vancouver 10/19

Pop // Can // Crit: The Business of Architecture Now in its third edition, this na­ tional, panel-based symposium brings together leading voices in architecture practice and aca­ demia. Its candid conversations address the profession’s changing dynamics. www.spacing.ca/popcancrit

11/01—11/17

Project Management for Architects In early November, the RAIC ’s newly launched project manage­ ment courses for architects, in­ terns and project managers come to Vancouver. www.raic.org

11/06

Wood Solutions Conference The Wood Solutions Conference is tailored for architects, engin­ eers, builders, contractors, build­ ing officials, technologists, plan­ ners and developers. More than 800 design and building profes­ sionals will come together to lis­ ten, learn, connect and collaborate. www.wood-works.ca/bc/wsc

11/07—11/08

Passive House Canada Conference 2018 The Passive House Conference takes place in conjunction with the Canadian Wood Council’s Wood Solutions Conference and the UNECE’s Committee on Forests and Forest Industry. By partnering with these organiza­ tions, B.C. has the opportunity to move its Climate Leadership Plan forward and Vancouver to advance in supporting Zero Emissions Buildings.

www.conference.passivehousecanada. com

Calgary 10/30

October PD Day October PD Day is an annual

CA Oct.indd 48

event organized by the Alberta Association of Architects (AAA) to inspire and educate AAA members through professional development sessions and a key­ note speaker. This year’s theme is Building Business. www.aaa.ab.ca

is presented by the Professional Interior Designers Institute of Manitoba (PIDIM). The event provides an informal and in­ formative atmosphere designed to offer a snapshot of the latest products and services. www.pidim.ca

new experiential technologies. www.ago.ca

10/24—10/25

RGD DesignThinkers Toronto 2018 RGD’s Conference offers indepth analyses of trends and best

11/07—11/08

Courtesy Winnipeg Architecture Foundation

canadian architect 10/18

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BUILDEX Calgary 2018 BUILDEX Calgary is Alberta’s largest trade show and confer­ ence for the construction, archi­ tecture, interior design and prop­ erty management industries. www.buildingscanada.com

12/11

Wood Solutions Conference The Wood Solutions Confer­ ence is dedicated to design and construction with wood products and systems, including mass tim­ ber. This one-day educational event will feature seminar streams as well as an inter­ active trade show. www.wood-works.ca/alberta/wsf

Edmonton 11/01—11/04

Passive House Design and Construction Passive House Canada is offering a four-day course that covers the technical, economic and policy elements of Passive House build­ ings. Participants will learn how to apply Passive House principles in the context of building physics, windows and mechanical systems. www.passivehouse.silkstart.com

11/29—12/08

Project Management for Architects In late November and early December, the RAIC’s project management courses for archi­ tects, interns and project man­ agers come to Edmonton. www.raic.org

Winnipeg 10/11

Manitoba Design Exposition The one-day trade show for the design community of Manitoba

ABOVE Snapshots of architects’ own cottages from the exhibition Where Architects Play at Winnipeg’s Make Coffee + Stuff.

—10/31

Where Architects Play The Winnipeg Architecture Foundation’s new exhibit show­ cases cottages designed by Win­ nipeg architects for themselves, from the 1960s to the present day. The exhibit is hosted at Winnipeg’s Make Coffee + Stuff, at 751 Corydon Avenue. www.winnipegarchitecture.ca

11/28

RAMS Screening The Winnipeg Architecture Foundation presents the Mani­ toba premiere of RAMS, a docu­ mentary portrait of industrial designer Dieter Rams, directed

by Gary Hustwit. The screening will take place at the Park The­ atre at 698 Osborne Street. www.winnipegarchitecture.ca

Toronto —01/06/19

Edward Burtynsky: Anthropocene This fall, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Canadian Photography Institute of the National Gallery of Canada copresent Anthropocene, an exhib­ ition that tells the story of the human impact on the Earth through film, photography and

practices in branding, design thinking, design management, communications technologies and user experience.

www.designthinkers.com

10/28—10/30

The Buildings Show The Buildings Show is the leader in sourcing, networking and edu­ cation for the North American design, architecture, construction and real estate communities. It’s home to Construct Canada, HomeBuilder & Renovator Expo, PM Expo and World of Concrete. www.thebuildingsshow.com

10/28

International Architectural Roundtable Held as the kick-off event to Construct Canada, this year’s roundtable brings together lead­ ing designers Mels Crouwel, Dominique Jakob, Mathias Klotz and Eric Owen Moss to discuss the future of architectural de­ sign. Canadian Architect editor Elsa Lam moderates the panel. www.thebuildingsshow.com/iart

01/17—01/20/19

IDS Toronto During one three-day weekend each January, the Interior Design Show shapes the industry for the

2018-09-19 2:51 PM

year to come. IDS Toronto is now in its 21st year.

member Alessandro Poli.

www.cca.qc.ca

www.toronto.interiordesignshow.com

—02/17

Project Management for Architects In early 2019, the RAIC’s project management courses for architects, interns and project managers come to Toronto for the second time.

Milton-Parc: How we did it Through a rich and vivid selec­ tion from the CCA archives, Milton-Parc: How we did it retraces the dramatic 1960s struggle to preserve an inner-city commun­ ity against redevelopment.

Ottawa

Halifax

10/11—02/10

12/05

01/24—02/09/19

www.raic.org

Karim Rashid: Cultural Shaping The Ottawa Art Gallery pre­ sents the first large-scale presenta­ tion of Rashid’s work in Canada to date. The exhibition features in­ dustrial designs imbued with the sense of environmental responsibil­ ity and sustainability that is at the heart of Rashid’s current practice. www.oaaggao.ca

—02/24

Anthropocene A sister exhibition to the presen­ tation in Toronto, The National Gallery of Canada’s Anthropocene features new works from the collective of Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. www.gallery.ca

Montreal 11/06—04/07

Architecture Itself and Other Postmodern Myths Architecture Itself and Other Postmodern Myths brings together an array of building fragments, drawings, models and primary source documents, all of which present canonic projects from un­ expected points of view. www.cca.qc.ca

—01/20

Scripts for a New World: Film toryboards by Alessandro Poli This exhibition explores how dif­ ferent elements of film—images, storyboards, scripts and audio— generate a new language for architecture in the work of Ital­ ian architect and Superstudio

CA Oct.indd 49

www.cca.qc.ca

Atlantic Wood Design Awards The 2018 Atlantic Wood Design Awards Event will be held in Halifax on December 5, with a submission deadline of Septem­ ber 30, 2018. www.atlanticwoodworks.ca

INTERNATIONAL Venice —11/25

La Biennale di Venezia Yvonne Farrell and Shelley Mc­ Namara curate the 16th edition of the mammoth architecture exhibition held on the grounds of Venice’s Giardini.

This year, the Canadian entry to the biennale is UNCEDED. Led

by Douglas Cardinal, the exhibit celebrates the work of Indigenous architects and designers through­ out Turtle Island. It is grounded in the legacy of the Calls to Ac­ tion of the Truth and Reconcilia­ tion Commission Report. www.unceded.ca

—01/13/19

www.royalacademy.org.uk

London

Istanbul

—01/20/19

—11/04

www.moma.org

Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings Presenting rarely seen drawings, models and signature full-scale maquettes, this illuminating ex­ hibition explores how the Renzo Piano Building Workshop de­ signs buildings piece by piece, making deft use of form, material and engineering to achieve

Tokyo —10/28

DesignArt Tokyo DesignArt Tokyo bridges the worlds of design, art and tech­ nology, putting a spotlight on high-quality traditional indus­ tries and contemporary crafts­ manship. www.designart.jp

Istanbul Design Biennial Titled A School of Schools, the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial stretch­ es both the space and time of the annual design event, manifesting as a multi-site year-long program that explores alternative method­ ologies, outputs and forms of de­ sign and education. www.aschoolofschools.iksv.org

answers@hgcengineering.com www.hgcengineering.com

New York

THEAKSTON ENVIRONMENTAL

—10/21

Architecture & Design Film Festival The Architecture & Design Film Festival—North America’s largest film festival devoted to the creative spirit of architecture and design—has a robust lineup for its 10th season. Centered on an anchor festival in New York, the festival also visits other cities in the United States and beyond.

a precise and yet poetic elegance.

Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980 Situated between the capitalist West and the socialist East, Yugoslavia’s architects responded to contradictory demands and in­ fluences, developing a postwar architecture both in line with and distinct from the design ap­ proaches seen elsewhere in Eur­ ope and beyond.

canadian architect 10/18

49

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backpage

No.9

canadian architect 10/18

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Facilitating Change TEXT

Stefan Novakovic

On Manitoulin Island, a design camp engages First Nations youth in designing their own future.

It started with a map. Then came the sticky notes, and a web of ideas spun across the wall; a design charette was underway. A familiar process, but in a new context—on Manitoulin Island, with Indigenous youth as the partici­ pants instead of architects or urban planners.

It was early August in the Unceded Territory of the Wiikwemikoong First Nation, and a group of high school students was envision­ ing a more sustainable and socially harmonious future for their school. As their multi-coloured stickies spread across the wall, an image of the existing school gradually came to be usurped by notions of what could be.

Sculptures. Murals. Outdoor Seating Area.

Totem Poles. Lodges for Cultural Practices.

Water Fill Station. Outdoor Volleyball Court.

Study Room. Lots of Swings. Rock Climbing.

A Place to Cry. The charrette was part of a week-long digital design camp organized by Toronto-based edu­ cational charity No.9 in partnership with nonprofit Focus Forward for Indigenous Youth.

Over the course of five days, students were

CA Oct.indd 50

guided from design conceptualization through to SketchUp models, culminating in presenta­ tions to the wider Wiikwemikoong community.

Led by executive director Andrew Davies, No.9 takes a holistic approach to design, highlighting the intersections of art and architecture with placemaking and ecology.

“People aren’t used to thinking of art and the built environment as politically vital,” says Davies. It’s a shame, he continues, considering the strong activist tradition in public art, and the serious effects of architecture on social relations. The organization’s youth camps aim to teach kids basic design skills—but also help them to see the political and cultural implica­ tions of design.

No.9’s camps provide technical and procedur­ al guidance, but are conceived with plenty of room for students’ own priorities to shape their creations. In Indigenous communities, the openness of this approach is crucial. Davies and the other facilitators don’t intimately understand the culturally complexities of Wiikwemikoong First Nation—and they don’t pretend to. In both

ABOVE Stickies cover an aerial image of an existing high school in a design charette aiming to empower Indigenous youth.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, says Davies, “youth recognize ecological and social problems, but they need to be given the agency to provide solutions.”

Beyond their summer programs, the organ­ ization is starting to make real-world impact.

This fall, they are opening a rural education hub called No.9 Gardens near Kingston, developed in collaboration with Torontobased Office OU. And in Hamilton, Ontario, they partnered with Bennetto Elementary School to create a suite of new outdoor public spaces, including a soccer field, celebration tree, outdoor classroom and custom-designed bench. Naturally, the students participated in the design. “In Hamilton, what we achiev­ ed wouldn’t be what it is without the stu­ dents,” says Davies.

For the designers leading the programs, the lessons they learn may be just as vital as the ones imparted. While students come to grasp the social importance of design, the facilita­ tors learn the art of listening: which ought to be the first step in any design.

2018-09-19 2:51 PM

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