Canadian Architect September 2021

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EDUCATIONAL SPACES

CANADIAN ARCHITECT

SEPTEMBER 2021 03

TOM ARBAN

4 VIEWPOINT

Returning to the office as the pandemic threat recedes.

6 NEWS

Ontario Place redesign; BC Wood Design Awards; remembering Peter Smith.

12 INSITES

Magdalena Milosz considers the troubling legacy of Canada’s modernist residential schools.

40 INSITES

George Baird’s contributions to architectural theory are the subject of a new book, reviewed

by Trevor Boddy.

17

17 MCEWEN GRADUATE STUDY & RESEARCH BUILDING

business school by Baird Sampson Neuert is a case study for environmentally A exceptional design. TEXT Alex Bozikovic

25 MARINE DRIVE ACADEMY

46 PRACTICE

Edmonton’s zoning revamp prioritizes inclusion and equity.

50 BACKPAGE

Farrow Partners Architects designs a school addition informed by neuroscientific research.

ommunity responsiveness is at the heart of a K-12 school in rural Nova Scotia C

by FBM. TEXT T. E. Smith-Lamothe

33 CANADA AT VENICE JULIAN PARKINSON

PBSI

Three Canadian exhibitions feature in the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale and its online counterparts. TEXTS Natalie Woldarsky and Lawrence Bird

McEwen Graduate Study & Research Building at York University, Toronto, Ontario. Photo by Tom Arban

COVER

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THE NATIONAL REVIEW OF DESIGN AND PRACTICE / THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE RAIC

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 09/21

04

VIEWPOINT

BACK TO THE OFFICE This summer, Canadian Architect’s owner made the decision to give up the magazine’s physical office space. It follows a precedent set by many other magazines and accelerated by the pandemic. Several of Canadian Architect’s staff worked partially from home pre-pandemic; with the complete transition to WFH over the past year and a half, the publication has continued to come out with few changes to how it’s produced.

The magazine business is a perfect candidate for a permanent remote-work model. Canadian Architect is produced with a tight team, using established cloud-based software tools— Adobe Suite, Office Suite, Dropbox. Production is digital from beginning to end: long gone are the days when we’d annotate physical photos with wax crayon crop marks, and courier packages to the printer’s for final typesetting. Each issue of the magazine is different, but also the same: it has consistent deliverables, a regular production timeline, and predictable interactions between team members.

Architecture is more complex—with larger teams, fluid team structures, and a complex mosaic of deadlines. Moreover, architects have an acute awareness of how shared space affects communications and working dynamics.

Many smaller offices have taken a flexible approach to returning to the office, based on individual staff needs and preferences. Christine Leu is a founder of LeuWebb Projects, a husband-and-wife practice. She and her partner have a home office and a young child in daycare. With their kid nowhere near getting a vaccine—leaving them still exposed to the virus—they are considering joining a shared workspace, which would allow for them to meet with an employee once or twice a week.

My husband’s firm, ten-person sustainable design practice The Architect Builders Collaborative, has already returned to working in a new, larger Toronto office equipped with HEPA air filters and sneeze guards at each desk. Some staff—including two who live in other cities—continue to work remotely part or all of the time. All staff and clients who come to the office are fully vaccinated.

Some firms are taking a wait-and-see approach, staying mostly virtual for the moment. One contact reports wanting to return to the office—she misses the proverbial watercooler chit-chat—but most of her colleagues have indicated that they would prefer continuing to work from home.

Many firms are favouring a combination

of remote and in-person work. “We are moving towards a hybrid model and thinking of downsizing our current office space,” says architect Tania Bortolotto. “We will mandate that employees come to the office whenever it is better to be at the office, rather than dialling in remotely, no matter the day of the week.”

“We’re hopefully phasing back to the office starting in October,” says Brian Rudy, partner at Moriyama & Teshima Architects. “Based on lots of input from staff, we will be adopting a hybrid strategy where we can work several days in office and several at home—to be managed at the project level.” He adds that the office is currently rethinking some studio areas to be more collaborative, but also virtual-meeting friendly.

Toronto-based BDP Quadrangle has made a deliberate decision to accommodate WFA— work-from-anywhere—as a strategy. “This aligns with our move to a new studio next year,” says principal Richard Witt. “We’re actively envisioning what our studio is ‘for’ and how it will function and support in-person, remote and hybrid interaction simultaneously. We are testing hybrid work protocols and technologies to enable this— and to provide answers to our clients with the same questions.” He adds: “In a time where human capital is our most valuable—and seemingly most challenged—asset, and with cost of living escalating in Toronto, the strategy seems to be resonating with the team.”

Some form of returning to the office will be especially valuable for teams that have taken on new members since the pandemic began.

One friend described the surreal experience of switching firms during the stay-at-home order: he packed up his old laptop, a new laptop arrived by courier, and he opened it to log in to different Zoom calls—all while remaining at the same desk and chair in his home office.

For junior team members, a return to in-person work will also allow for the kind of informal mentoring that comes with architecture work culture, says Gary McCluskie, principal at Diamond Schmitt. “The in-office portion is still critical to that.”

However you look at it, there is no one-sizefits-all answer to the return. “We’re still working on it,” says Betsy Williamson of Williamson Williamson. “It’s gotten no easier for leadership, even with the high vaccine uptake. We’re still working like crazy to keep it all together.”

Elsa Lam

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NEWS

COURTESY DIAMOND SCHMITT ARCHITECTS AND THERME

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PROJECTS Ontario Place redevelopment plans revealed, concerns raised

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has announced the selection of Live Nation Entertainment, Therme Group and Écorécréo Group to redevelop the Ontario Place site on Toronto’s waterfront. The site, with its megastructural Cinesphere and Pods, was designed by architect Eberhard Zeidler with landscape architect Michael Hough, and opened in 1971.

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Under the plan, Live Nation Entertainment, which currently operates the site’s Budweiser Stage, will redevelop the amphitheatre into a year-round venue with an expanded outdoor and indoor audience capacity. The Vienna-headquartered Therme Group will be building an all-season recreation and wellness destination with indoor and outdoor pools, waterslides, sports services, multiple dining venues, botanical gardens, and a publicly accessible bridge, trails and beaches. Montreal’s Écorécréo Group will build an adventure park with obstacle courses, ziplines, and rentals for canoes and kayaks.

The Province announced that it will be restoring and maintaining the Cinesphere and Pods, with Ontario Science Place operating these elements as a satellite location for its science-based exhibitions and programming.

The largest new component of the proposal is Therme Group’s facility, which will include four major elements spanning the West Island and mainland. Diamond Schmitt Architects is leading the design, with a team that includes landscape architecture firm STUDIOtla, Baird shoreline engineers, and civil engineers Arup.

“The design carries forward the original spirit of Ontario Place as a forward-looking and slightly utopian place,” says Gary McCluskie, principal at Diamond Schmitt. “It’s the next generation of applying that architecture-and-technology vision, and infusing it with optimism.”

“The future of Ontario Place will be defined by how successful it can be connecting people to the water,” says Robert Hanea, CEO of Therme Group. “Through our technology and by engaging the community, Therme and our partners will add a new architectural landmark that will play a role in bringing more people back to the waterfront, capturing the original spirit of Ontario Place from 50 years ago.”

The main Therme Canada | Ontario Place spa building is a multilevel structure inspired by botanical greenhouses and 19th-century exhibition halls. According to Diamond Schmitt, the glass greenhouse architecture supports the integration of landscape inside the building with indoor pools, and a transparent envelope allows for vistas of Lake Ontario and abundant daylight for the planted interior environment.

A series of landscaped roofs and seasonal rooftop pools is also planned.

Therme and Diamond Schmitt say that they are aiming for the facility to attain LEED Platinum environmental performance.

The plan for the West Island, a site under 20 acres in size, includes eight acres of public spaces, including a beach and enhanced pedestrian and cycling access around the perimeter. A new bridge will span from the mainland to the West Island.

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OPPOSITE AND ABOVE Diamond Schmitt’s design for the Therme Canada | Ontario Place recreational park includes a series of glass-enclosed pools and botanical gardens, and bridges between the mainland and the site’s West Island.

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Photo: Mendoza Photography

Therme Group has established partnerships with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, the Toronto International Film Festival, and The Black North Initiative. The company says that Therme Canada will create over 2,200 construction jobs, 800 full-time permanent positions, and the ability to accommodate up to three million visitors to Ontario Place every year. It estimates its current investment to be $350 million.

The Future of Ontario Place Project—a consortium that includes participation from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto, Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, and World Monuments Fund—has come out in opposition to the plan. “[The] plan was the culmination of a two-year bidding process initiated by the Provincial Government, and conducted behind closed doors: none of the bidders were identified publicly, neither were the parameters of the brief, nor the winner’s selection criteria,” write George Baird, Aziza Chaouni, Bill Greaves, and Javier Ors Ausin on behalf of the group.

“The public had no knowledge or input into what the future of the site was to become, nor how public funds were to be distributed to support the winning bid. Several journalists and groups [...] have called out the inadequacy of this process, citing the lack of public consultation.”

“The Provincial Government’s statement about the creation of a worldclass venue on the Toronto waterfront [...] does not compensate for an opaque process,” they continue, asserting that the site’s public accessibility and design ethos is compromised by a bid “that resulted from a top-down decision-making process that lacked commitment to preservation of the site’s heritage value and to community dialogue.”

Ontario Place is a modern architectural landmark recognized worldwide, and was included in the World Monument Watch 2020 because it was judged by international experts as being under threat.

The Future of Ontario Place says that any changes to the site must be guided by input from the full range of stakeholders from the start— not after a detailed project has been fully approved behind closed doors, which can lead to feedback that only serves to legitimize a proposal.

“Ontario Place deserves the same thoughtful treatment given to other heritage sites of its caliber across the globe: a proper conservation management plan to guide changes at the site and ensure that its heritage features are not irreversibly compromised,” says the group.

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NEWS

“While forward-thinking cities across the globe nurture and craft specific urban identities—often by preserving, highlighting and re-imagining their architectural landmarks following ecologically and socially responsible practices—the Provincial Government blatantly does the opposite for Toronto. It does so by proposing a massive, publicly subsidized private redevelopment that turns its back on social and environmental concerns, and most of all, eradicates a major 20th century Canadian architectural masterpiece,” they write. “We, as a group, demand accountability from the Provincial Government for Ontario Place.” www.dsai.ca / www.futureofontarioplace.org

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

Waterfront Toronto has shortlisted four teams to design Quayside, a 12-acre parcel on Toronto’s waterfront that was previously the site for a smart-city prototype district led by Google-affiliate Sidewalk Labs.

In May, ten compliant submissions for the Quayside Development Opportunity Request for Qualifications were received. “The number and quality of submissions is a clear indication that Toronto’s waterfront remains a desirable development destination, and that Quayside can and will contribute to the province’s post-pandemic recovery,” writes Waterfront Toronto.

Following the evaluation of the RFQ submissions, four proponent teams were selected to proceed to the Request for Proposals stage.

They are: Hines Canada Management II ULC (Foster + Partners and Hines Canada with Tridel Builders); KMT Q uayside Developments Inc. (MVRDV and Cobe with Kilmer, Mattamy and Tricon); Quayside Impact LP (Adjaye Associates, Alison Brooks Architects, and

TOM ARBAN

Waterfront Toronto announces shortlist of proponents for Quayside development

ABOVE An addition to Clearview Public Library’s Stayner branch, designed

by Lebel & Bouliane, has won an Ontario Library Association Architectural and Design Transformation Award.

Henning Larsen with Dream Unlimited Corp. and Great Gulf); and The Daniels Corporation and Hullmark Developments Ltd. (Diamond Schmitt Architects Inc. with The Daniels Corporation and Hullmark Developments).

Waterfront Toronto anticipates that the preferred proponent will be identified by the end of 2021. www.waterfrontoronto.ca

AWARDS Polygon Gallery wins RIBA International Award for Excellence

The Polygon Gallery by Patkau Architects has been recognized with an RIBA International Award for Excellence 2021. The project is the only one by a Canadian team among the 16 international recipients.

“The 2021 RIBA International Awards for Excellence are presented to an ambitious and diverse range of projects from a wide range of established and upcoming architects’ practices. It is particularly important to be considering excellence in architecture at this time—in this fast-changing world, where governments, clients and society need the skills and insight of architects,” said RIBA President Alan Jones.

The gallery is the new home for an independent photography and media institution that has served North Vancouver’s creative community for nearly 40 years. www.architecture.com

OLA Library Awards announced Connectivity to the natural environment.

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The Ontario Library Association (OLA) has announced three recipients of the 2021 Library Architectural and Design Transformation Award. The award encourages and showcases excellence in additions, renovations, restorations, conversion to library use, and interior redesign and refurnishing in the architectural design of libraries in Ontario.

Awards were given to the renovation of University of Toronto’s University College Library, by Kohn Shnier + ERA A rchitects in Associa-

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tion; the renovation of a historic fire hall into Windsor Public Library’s John Muir Branch, by studio g+G architecture; and an addition to Clearview Public Library’s Stayner Branch, by Lebel & Bouliane.

“Libraries are places for people to participate in programs, to study, learn and read. Now, more than ever, people need welcoming, inspiring and well-designed spaces,” said Shelagh Paterson, Executive Director of OLA .

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WHAT’S NEW RAIC signs UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People

The RAIC is pleased to report that the motion to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—proposed

by RAIC Truth and Reconciliation Task Force Co-Chairs Patrick Stewart, MRAIC and Alfred Waugh, MRAIC —passed with overwhelming support at the RAIC ’s Annual General Meeting on June 30.

This is a symbolic first step in the RAIC ’s journey towards justice and peace. The Declaration is a framework for reconciliation and will help build a better RAIC and architecture community for Indigenous peoples and all architects today and for future generations.

The Task Force will continue its work to identify actions and recommendations to inform an action plan, including strategies that the RAIC can take to achieve the goals of The Declaration and of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

“This is just the start of the work,” says Stewart. “It allows the RAIC to be able to more meaningfully commit to things like consultation, and bringing that opportunity to people who aren’t used to being asked their opinions about the built environment.”

“In essence, it’s about establishing respectful relationships in the work that we as architects do,” continues Stewart. “It’s also acknowledging the need for free, prior and informed consent. Architects need to recognize that when working with Indigenous people, either on- or off-reserve, the information the community provides to the architect is not the architect’s information. It’s not the architect’s knowledge; they can’t take it and run with it without acknowledging its Indigenous source.”

Waugh adds that the RAIC could play a role in facilitating consultations with Indigenous stakeholders. “Rather than everybody scrambling around looking for an Elder on a First Nation-focused project to be on their team, [we could] recommend such actions as having the owner appoint a Knowledge Keeper as a part of the client team, for example.”

“At universities, many times, there is a Knowledge Keeper or Elderin-Residence to provide education to students and so forth,” adds Waugh.

“Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if we had something like that in our organization, to inform or help facilitate ideas of working with Indigenous communities? As you know, with Indigenous communities, there’s the early stages of self-government and detaching from Indian and Northern Affairs, managing their own Authorities, and having jurisdiction. It’s wide-open territory. So, I think we—as a professional organization—could foster a dialogue, to maybe assist them in guiding how they manage land development and so forth.” raic.org

BC Wood Design Awards winners announced

Winners have been announced for the Canadian Wood Council’s Wood WORKS! BC program, which recognizes excellence in contemporary design and building with wood.

This year’s winners in the wood design categories include: SoLo in Soo Valley by Perkins&Will for residential wood design; Cubes

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NEWS

in Courtenay by Studio 531 Architects for multi-unit wood design; UBCO Skeena Residence in Kelowna by PUBLIC: Architecture + Communication for environmental performance; MEC Vancouver Retail Store by Proscenium Architecture and Interiors for commercial wood design; Skeetchestn Health Centre in Savona by dk Architecture for institutional wood design (small); Tsleil-Waututh Administration and Health Centre in North Vancouver by Lubor Trubka for institutional wood design (large); Lakehouse in Summerland by HDR A rchitecture Associates for use of Western Red Cedar; Pavilion at Great Northern Way in Vancouver by Perkins&Will for wood innovation; and the Catalyst Building in Spokane, Washington, by Michael Green Architecture for international wood design.

Two Jury’s Choice awards were also awarded. They went to Waymark Architecture for the Charter Telecom Headquarters in Victoria, and to Francl Architecture for the West Village District Energy Centre in Surrey.

COURTESY FAMILY OF PETER SMITH

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www.wood-works.ca

IN MEMORIAM Peter Smith, 1936-2021

The architectural profession has, we all know, a cast of characters behind the marquee star—those who contribute substantially to the core design itself, without fanfare, and who may be considered the true coauthors of major projects. Peter Smith, who died at age 85 in early July, was one such architect.

With his longtime colleague and close friend Bill Lett, he made his name with Lett/Smith Architects in Toronto. And before that, he was

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the under-recognized and invaluable architect who steered Ron Thom’s Shaw Festival Theatre into existence.

Peter Smith was born in Birmingham, England, and attended the University of Birmingham’s architecture school, an art-centric institution. Two years after his 1957 graduation, he met his future wife, Heather Hume, while visiting a friend in North Bay. That prompted his immigration to Canada soon afterwards, where he joined Ron Thom’s office on Colborne Street.

Ron Thom was at the time one of the most esteemed and sought-after architects in the country, and Smith revered his new boss. “Ron was the most intuitively skilled architect that I had ever run across,” he told this writer in a lengthy 2010 interview at Massey College. He shared Thom’s artisanal approach to architecture, and he benefited from the continuity that each architect at Thom’s office could have with their work—which, though commonplace now, was rare in the 1960s. In other Toronto offices, recalled Smith, “you put your drawing through a slot in the wall and there were a bunch of guys who took it and did the working drawings. If you were lucky, it would have some sort of similarity to what you designed.” But at the Thom Partnership, “we all played some design role and also did the working drawings, which I came to realize is pretty fundamental. You ended up understanding how the things went together and what happened on the construction site as well.”

Smith worked on a plethora of high-profile projects, including Trent University, Sir Sandford Fleming Community College, the Expo 67 activity areas, and the Metropolitan Toronto Zoo. “Peter was an excellent draftsman, in an era when all drawings were done by hand,” notes Lett, who was himself a key architect at Thom’s office in the 1960s. Both played important roles at the firm, with Smith serving as project architect for Trent’s Bata Library and Lett for Champlain College. “He was a kindred spirit,” says Lett; “low-key, quiet, someone who concentrated on getting the job done while ignoring the noise around him.”

“He was very irked seeing architects getting jobs based on their selfpromotion,” affirms his son Robin Smith. He was one of the people who believed your work should speak for itself—which I know is naïve in today’s world.”

When Lett left Ron Thom’s office in 1968, Smith stayed on and, within a few years, became a senior partner at what was now known

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as the Thom Partnership. He started on a path towards his eventual specialty in theatre design when Ron Thom selected him to take charge of one of the firm’s most significant projects: the Shaw Festival Theatre. After Thom did an initial conceptual design, Smith stickhandled his way through budget cuts, design revisions, site changes and logistical challenges to bring the widely admired and efficiently designed building to fruition in 1974.

Like many of his colleagues, Smith wrestled with the dilemma of how long he could stay at the firm as Thom’s alcoholism worsened.

In 1973, he departed to establish Lett/Smith Architects with his friend and former colleague. While Lett worked on an array of educational and residential projects, Smith focused on theatre design, quickly gaining a reputation as the go-to architect for this building typology. Among others, he designed the Isabel Bader Theatre at the University of Toronto; the Princess of Wales Theatre; the Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton; and Toronto’s Harbourfront Arts Centre, including the Power Plant Gallery and du Maurier Theatre Centre.

“It was a happy office,” recalls Lett, with employees allowed to take off whatever time they needed, as long as they met deadlines.

In 1993, for his exceptional contributions to Canadian theatre, the Canadian Theatre Critics Association bestowed the Drama Bench Award to Peter Smith. He was the first architect to receive it.

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-Adele Weder

MEMORANDA 2021 Canadian Architect Awards open for entries

Our annual program recognizing the country’s top future projects is open for submissions. Architects and graduates from Canadian architecture schools are invited to submit their design- and construction-phase projects for consideration. This year also includes our fourth annual architectural photography competition. Entries are due September 16, 2021. www.canadianarchitect.com/awards

2022 RAIC International Prize invites submissions

The biannual RAIC International Prize is open for submissions.

The Prize celebrates socially transformative architecture that embodies Canadian values of respect and inclusiveness. Submissions for the Prize are due December 3, 2021. internationalprize.raic.org

2022 RAIC International Prize Scholarships open for student essays

In conjunction with its International Prize, the RAIC offers three scholarships to Canadian architecture students, each worth $5,000.

The juried competition is based on student essays on the subject of architecture’s social impact. Submissions for the scholarships are due January 14, 2022.

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ERRATUM The photographer of the cover image for Canadian Architect’s August issue, showing the project Moving Dunes by NÓS, was mistakenly identified. The photographer’s name is Raphaël Thibodeau.

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SETTLER-COLONIAL MODERN TEXT

Magdalena Milosz

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN MAGDALENA MILOSZ CONSIDERS POSTWAR RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS AND THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS. Writing about modernism in colonial contexts, architectural historian Gwendolyn Wright proposes that “the physical environment became a strategy for enforcing common values while maintaining difference within a conjoint modern world.”1 In Canada, little else exemplifies this statement so strongly as the century-long experiment known as residential schools.

Recent confirmations of unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Residential School in unceded Secwépemc territory and several other former residential school sites ignited a national conversation about this history and its ongoing consequences. For Indigenous communities, it has been a time to grieve, as it should be for us all. For settlers, it has also been a wake-up call to take a more critical look at Canadian history, particularly the recent past and present of settler-Indigenous relations.

As a settler-colonial nation, Canada’s access to territory has always been predicated on the removal of its prior occupants. This took place through sequestering Indigenous peoples on reserves or congregating them in permanent settlements, as well as separating children from their families and communities through residential schools—a system the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada called “cultural genocide” in 2015.

The primary purpose of these institutions was to re-educate children for assimilation into settler society. Many suffered hunger, abuse, and neglect at the hands of keepers. Although much of the system was phased out in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the last institution did not close until 1997.

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Non-Indigenous Canadians are most likely familiar with residential schools through news stories featuring photographs of old-fashioned classrooms with children sitting in orderly rows, or of imposing brick buildings constructed a hundred years ago. Yet there is a more recent, lesser-known visual vocabulary of this system: architectural modernism, harbinger of progress and, in Wright’s words, of “brutal destruction” as well.

Modern residential schools reflected the government’s desired progressive image vis-à-vis Indigenous peoples after World War II, when it embraced a policy of “integration.” The atrocities of the war brought more widespread attention to human rights issues and the disparate treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Indigenous soldiers had made significant contributions during the war, and had been able to vote in federal elections while in service—a right extended to all status Indians only in 1960.

The Indian Act was amended in 1951 to remove some of its more restrictive provisions, such as those prohibiting cultural practices, political organizing, and retaining lawyers. The government also promoted home ownership, citizenship, and participation in the settler economy.

Despite sending more children to provincial public schools and fewer to segregated federal day and residential schools, the federal Department of Indian Affairs continued to build new residential schools and additions in the postwar period. Like public schools of the same era, these institutions promised to educate children for a prosperous future as productive citizens, on an equal footing with other Canadians. In contrast to the over-

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OPPOSITE: COURTESY NFB; LEFT: JRAIC, VOL.42, NO.9. COURTESY RAIC; RIGHT: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA/DEPARTMENT OF INDIAN AFFAIRS AND NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT FONDS, 3461-3486. © GOVERNMENT OF CANADA. REPRODUCED WITH THE PERMISSION OF LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA (2021)

bearing, historicist structures of the 1920s and 30s, residential schools designed and built after the war suggested that the government was leaving behind paternalism and oppression for equality and democracy.

But the seemingly progressive visual and spatial codes of residential schools in this era served to mask continuing power imbalances and oppression. The modernization of residential schools did not change the fact that Indigenous children were still separated from their communities and taught a primarily Eurocentric curriculum. The image of the modern residential school disrupts notions of postwar architectural optimism and complicates the sense of these institutions as part of a distant past.

In their adoption of modernism, these structures also sought to become invisible among quite disparate settler architectures.

A project for a new building at the Kainai Nation (Blood Tribe) in Treaty 7, Alberta, for example, would have been indistinguishable from any nonIndigenous school in a postwar suburb. Designed by the Department of Public Works around 1950, it was a low-rise block with a rhythmic grid of windows and spandrel panels on its front elevation and an off-centre, recessed entrance. The design was likely intended as an additional classroom building at one of the reserve’s two residential schools, but it was never built. At both the Anglican St. Paul’s and Roman Catholic St. Mary’s schools, the government ultimately opted for more utilitarian solutions, setting up a link trailer building and a disused military structure as classrooms.

Another school, built in 1954 in Treaty 5, Manitoba, shows how a modern exterior could be used almost like clothing to disguise an old plan. The Norway House Residential School had a central block flanked by symmetrical, two-storey wings, with classrooms on the ground floor and dormitories above, as well as a rear wing with a chapel, assembly room, and dining hall. The plan facilitated segregation of children by gender and age, often separating siblings who were in the same institution. It resembled the two dozen residential schools built by Indian Affairs in the 1920s and 30s—including in Kamloops—and made reference to an even earlier residential school, the Mohawk Institute in Six Nations territory (Brantford, Ontario), built in 1905.

The former MacKay Residential School in Treaty 2 (Dauphin, Manitoba) is one of only sixteen residential schools that are still fully or partially standing in Canada. It was designed by the Engineering and Construction Service of the Indian Affairs Branch in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration (a successor to the Department of Indian Affairs), and built in 1957. The main building was accompanied by outbuildings including a principal’s residence—built as a single-family house—as well as a married teachers’ residence and quarters for single staff in the form of small apartment buildings.

The substantial school structure has a horizontal profile, with strips of windows set in buff-coloured brick, and a two-storey portico at the entrance. With its rows of classrooms, gymnasium, and cafeteria, the building

resembled a conventional secondary school: with the exception of a conspicuous, four-storey dormitory block at the building’s west end, where the children lived. The site is currently used by a Christian charity, Parkland Crossing, to provide affordable housing and other services. Survivors periodically gather there to honour their time at the institution, and in recent years, the site has seen more commemoration with a monument and plaque.

An interior space has also been set aside for the use of survivors.

In the postwar period, the federal government was also making efforts to teach English to adults in remote Indigenous communities. In the late 1950s, Indian Affairs and the National Film Board put together a filmstrip called “We Learn English” that presented everyday scenes in a simple, painted graphic style with short captions. The section on “The Community” featured images of a picturesque village, with houses, a church, and other peaked-roofed buildings arranged on a rolling hill. The one exception was the school, which featured a flat roof and ribbon window— the result of Indian Affairs’ request for the artist to render “a neat, newlypainted, modern school.” While this was a day school, not a residential school—the children who attended went home at night, but were still taught to see their own cultures as inferior—the image suggests the power of modern architecture to represent the government’s supposedly forward-looking attitude towards Indigenous education at this time. The filmstrip conspicuously omitted any discussion of residential schools.

Although residential schools may seem like marginal architectures, known only to the children who lived in them and the anonymous bureaucracy that kept them there, in the postwar period, they were very much products of mainstream architectural culture. In 1961, the Vancouver firm Gardiner Thornton Gathé & Associates, whose archives are held at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, built a new complex for St. Mary’s Residential School in the unceded territories of the Stó:lō and Coast Salish (Mission, British Columbia). The three-storey dormitory could hold nearly 250 children and was built alongside a one-storey school, refectory, chapel, and gymnasium. A large cross towered over the buildings atop a tall tripod base.

The St. Mary’s project was published in the September 1965 issue of the Journal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada ( JRAIC ) as one of the inaugural winners of the Department of Public Works Design Awards for Architecture. The awards recognized “distinguished accomplishment in federal government buildings” and “were judged on the basis of the solution of the problem presented to the architect.”

The buildings’ compositions of reinforced concrete, loadbearing masonry, and glued laminated timber clearly impressed the jury, which consisted of architects Raymond Affleck, Victor Prus, and Charles Elliott Trudeau (brother of the future prime minister).

Today, the former St. Mary’s residential school is situated within Pekw’ Xe:yles, a small reserve shared by twenty-one First Nations. Survivors give tours through what remains of the school, sharing their horrific

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A still from the Indian Affairs film “We Learn English” includes a modernist school building as a backdrop. ABOVE LEFT St. Mary’s Residential School (1961) by Thornton Gathé & Associates won a federal design award. ABOVE RIGHT The MacKay Residential School in Dauphin, Manitoba (1957) was accompanied by outbuildings in a similar style that remain standing today.

OPPOSITE

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A 1954 photograph of the Indian Residential School at Norway House, Manitoba shows its modernist styling. ABOVE RIGHT The second floor plan of the Indian Residential School at Norway House, Manitoba, reveals an institute that segregated children by gender and age.

experiences of being separated from their families for months or years at a time, and of physical and sexual abuse, in the hopes of raising awareness about this history. This is what Wright refers to as “the underside of modernism”: a celebrated image of progress overturned to reveal the difficult histories of which it is a part.

Four years later, another residential school project was recognized with the same design award: a gymnasium and chapel addition for the Assiniboia Residential School in Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg), by the federal Public Works design team for the Western Region. Assiniboia was a rare urban residential school, opened in 1958 and located in a repurposed school building from 1918. The new gym and chapel consisted of two austere blocks topped by clerestory windows, built of concrete masonry and connected by a vestibule and breezeway. These buildings, as well as the original repurposed school, still exist, but have been adapted to other uses.

Survivors of Assiniboia recently published their experiences in a book called Did You See Us? Reunion, Remembrance, and Reclamation at an Urban Indian Residential School, which assembles a complex portrait of the residential school experience.

In the late 1960s, Assiniboia—along with many other residential schools—was converted into a “hostel” or “residence” where children lived while they attended public schools in nearby settler communities.

While many of these “hostels” were simply repurposed residential schools, some were purpose-built. The Christie Residential School, in the unceded territory of the Nuu-chah-nulth (Vancouver Island), was condemned in the late 1960s and replaced by a new “Indian student hostel” in 1971.

An article published in the August 1969 issue of The Indian News, a government publication distributed to First Nations across the country, noted that “except for sports, there will be no teaching at the residence.”

Instead, the children, who would come from “100 miles of the Pacific coastline,” would attend the elementary school in the town of Tofino.

A perspective of the Christie project, designed by Indian Affairs architect J.W. Francis, shows the dormitories, administration building, and cafeteria as a series of buildings with asymmetrical roofs, all nestled against the sweeping backdrop of a mountain range. Francis was also the designer of the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67, which had become a complex site of negotiation as a committee of Indigenous representatives struggled to reclaim their nations’ representation on the world stage.

The hostel project was described in explicitly progressive terms and made some acknowledgment of the children’s cultural diversity. “To make the environment more formal and friendly,” noted the Indian News article, “an attempt will be made to capture an authentic Indian quality through the use of Haida carvings and totems, a Nootka welcoming figure and several murals done by well known west coast Indian artists.”

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The use of art had also been a strategy to “Indigenize” the Expo project two years earlier, bringing up questions of visual and architectural sovereignty in the midst of widespread Indigenous political activism.

Recently, Chris Clarke McQueen, my colleague at McGill University, shared with me his own experience with the obscurity of modern residential schools. Clarke McQueen is from the Treaty 8 Akaitcho Territory Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation, and is Chief Architect with the Department of Health and Social Services of the Government of Northwest Territories. He recently learned that the elementary school he attended as a child was originally built in 1958 as the Fort Smith Federal Day School. This institution was operated by the government as part of a larger complex that included a church-operated hostel, together recognized by the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement as the Breynat Hall residential school. Designed by Rensaa & Minsos Architects for the Department of Public Works, the Fort Smith Federal School bore the typical modernist idiom of postwar elementary schools.

“I think that’s why I never knew,” Clarke McQueen says of the history of the building. “Was it a disguise?” I was struck by that, because it conveyed so succinctly the invisibility of settler colonialism in the built environment. Modernism, in this case, seems to conceal its own underside, covering up its tracks so that architecture associated with the systematic cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples continues to be used—sometimes without much awareness of its history. Following the revelations at Kamloops, there have been renewed calls to demolish Breynat Hall, the Fort Smith Federal School’s hostel, which is now a residence at Aurora College. The building is associated with trauma for many survivors who still live in the community, and the college has found that the history of the residence deters potential students.

Knowledge of these histories and their location in the space we now know as Canada is uneven, and certainly their manifestations in the built environment are not yet widely known. Modern residential schools highlight how recent these histories are, and how easily they blend in with other institutional architectures of their time. They bear witness to the complexity of modernism, and its potential for envisioning a future that comfortably accommodated oppression while shielding it from scrutiny.

Looking more carefully at these architectures can reveal less positive, but ultimately more truthful, histories of the built environment.

Magdalena Milosz is a PhD candidate in the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University. Her research focuses on architecture as a site of encounter between Indigenous Peoples and the settler-colonial state from the 1920s to 1970s.

1 Gwendolyn Wright, “Building Global Modernisms,” Grey Room 07 (Spring 2002): 125.

TOP LEFT: ARCHIVES OF MANITOBA, REIFSCHNEIDER, JOHN 133, N25919; TOP RIGHT: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA/WERNER ERNST NOFFKE FONDS/997

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A NEW FACILITY FOR YORK UNIVERSITY’S SCHULICH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS MAKES THE COMPELLING ARGUMENT THAT GREAT ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE CAN GO HAND IN HAND WITH GREAT ARCHITECTURE. McEwen Graduate Study & Research Building, York University, Toronto, Ontario ARCHITECT Baird Sampson Neuert Architects TEXT Alex Bozikovic PHOTOS Tom Arban PROJECT

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A solar chimney facilitates natural ventilation and solar pre-heating of air used in the building, contributing to exceptionally low energy use.

The building curves around a landscaped courtyard. OPPOSITE TOP In the low-slung southeast wing, teaching spaces look out towards a woodlot.

OPPOSITE BOTTOM In the summer, the stack effect causes air to naturally rise through the atrium and vent out the solar chimney. In cooler weather, the chimney is used to collect and pre-heat fresh air for distribution to the rest of the building.

OPENING SPREAD ABOVE

“A great-performing piece of architecture can also be a great piece of architecture.” The architect Jon Neuert learned this principle from the late Barry Sampson, his partner at Toronto-based Baird Sampson Neuert Architects. He repeats it to me as we stand outside a project that embodies the ideal: The Rob and Cheryl McEwen Graduate Study & Research Building at York University’s Schulich School of Business.

Completed by Baird Sampson Neuert just before the pandemic, the structure delivers remarkable energy performance along with spaces conducive to socializing and collaborative work. “The fundamental idea of the building,” Neuert says, “was to intertwine sociability and environmental sustainability into an integrated whole.”

It delivers, through an architecture that is thoughtful and remarkably self-effacing. The 6,100-square-metre building is essentially V-shaped in plan, clad with Algonquin limestone at ground level and cement board above. One wing looks north to the York campus’s main street, and the other southeast to a woodlot; between is a courtyard. At the vertex stands a three-storey atrium, capped by the project’s visual centerpiece: a 16metre solar chimney, made from a slab of concrete encapsulated by a rectangular glass prism.

This has the visual presence of a Victorian chimney or a futurist smokestack—but rather than emit pollutants, it serves to eliminate them. It acts as the lungs for a natural-ventilation system which should keep the building’s energy use and carbon emissions very low. The McEwen Building is designed to use just 72.4 kWh per square metre— about one-fifth below the Canadian Energy Code—and generate about one-third of the carbon emissions of this standard, thanks to integration with York’s central plant system. The potential inclusion of a geothermal borefield and future rooftop photovoltaic panels would bring the building’s carbon emissions to net zero.

To achieve this result, the architects adopted a “whole building approach,” collaborating with German climate engineers Transsolar on the design of the architecture and building systems. They created an automated climate-control system that integrates natural ventilation with radiant heating and cooling. When natural ventilation is not possible, the building’s air

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handling system is used only to provide tempered fresh air rather than temperature control, enabling for smaller air-handling units, much less ductwork and increased energy efficiency compared to a conventional building.

The McEwen Building has a built-in weather station on its roof, which sends data to the building’s control system, including controls for the solar chimney and operable windows. This system enables enhanced rates of natural ventilation for much of the year.

In natural ventilation mode, the solar chimney opens using rack-andpinion systems adapted from greenhouses, which activate glazed dampers at the top and base of the chimney. Then the stack effect causes warm air to rise through the chimney, drawing out the air from the central social hub and adjoining corridors below. The negative pressure created by the chimney draws fresh outside air into the building through operable windows located in each occupied space. Air passively cascades into adjoining circulation areas through transfer ducts, and is ultimately expelled through the solar chimney.

In Toronto’s climate, simply opening the windows often doesn’t suffice because it is either too hot or too cold. The McEwen Building’s systems are more subtle. During suitable outdoor conditions, the building automation system opens the windows and solar chimney to carefully calibrated distances, to maximize fresh air and maintain comfortable interior conditions.

The chimney serves a second function in winter, when the building operates in mechanical ventilation mode. Then, a lower glass layer closes to create a solar pre-heat chamber within the chimney; exterior air passes through here, is warmed by the sun, and then circulated through the building.

In the summer, the structure’s thermal mass and green roofs help to keep the interior cool. Passive cooling through natural ventilation is able to meet much of the shoulder seasons’ cooling needs.

I visit on a rainy, 30-degree summer day, and the chimney and windows are closed against the rain and humid air. The building also has some of its mechanical systems shut down, as they had been for much of the year while students and staff were kept away by the pandemic (typically, in such conditions, the building’s active cooling system would be running). As I stand in the atrium with Neuert and project architect Jesse

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Dormody, a Baird Sampson Neuert associate, the air feels slightly close, but still fresh. The building allows for an unusually high rate of air exchange when it is in mechanical ventilation mode, modulating based on occupancy levels, and double that in natural ventilation mode.

Strikingly, the grand space of the atrium is utterly quiet. The hiss and buzz of fans and air-conditioners is ubiquitous in our daily lives. A room that is quiet—actually quiet—feels uncanny.

This is no accident. Aside from the skillfully deploying the magic of natural ventilation, the architects put considerable effort into the acoustics of the building. Acoustic radiant panels line several facets of the atrium and other rooms, their perforated steel surface absorbing sound while piping behind circulates a liquid for radiant heating and cooling.

The Schulich school is highly regarded for its specialization in the field of business and sustainability and, Neuert says, they brought a similar interest to the project. “They were committed to the idea that the building would embody the values of the school.”

Indeed, Schulich associate dean James McKellar, who served as the faculty’s client rep, notes that the facility’s energy performance is a real point

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of pride—as is the haptic and aural comfort of the place. “We believed that, through architecture, we could communicate things that could not be conveyed through writing and policy statements,” he says. Sustainability and sociability, he suggests, are in the air.

It’s hard to evaluate the truth of that claim while a building is empty.

But the McEwen project seems likely to deliver. McKellar (who trained in architecture) sought for the building to include qualities that are fundamental to human comfort, including natural light for every occupant and, presciently, exceptional air quality. In the several months that it was open before the pandemic, students and staff commented on how good it felt to be in the building. “This is home for the people who come here,” said McKellar. “We [couldn’t] get people out of the building. They [were] here sometimes until 2 o’clock in the morning.”

During our tour, Neuert and Dormody join me in a small breakout room. An oak-framed glass partition separates us from the adjacent daylit corridor. Once again, the room has not a hint of mechanical sound.

The trick here, again, is the strategic use of displacement ventilation.

Fresh air is entering, slowly and silently, at ground level. Up above us,

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1 SOLAR CHIMNEY RACK-AND-PINION AWNINGS FOR PREHEAT INTAKE AND NATURAL VENTILATION EXHAUST 2 SOLAR CHIMNEY RACK-AND-PINION SKYLIGHT DAMPER 3 SOLAR CHIMNEY MASS WALL WITH INTAKE DAMPERS TO DEDICATED OUTSIDE AIR SYSTEM (DOAS) SYSTEM 4 M ECHANICAL SPACE WITH DOAS AIR SYSTEM

behind an oak grille, the entire ceiling is lined with a set of broad U-shaped air ducts, each one padded with acoustic insulation. These noiselessly carry warm air out of the room.

On the second and third floors, looping corridors carry people and exhaust air from faculty offices and seminar rooms. These spaces have moderately sized windows—located based on detailed airflow calculations—with exterior horizontal sunshades above eye level. The envelope as a whole is just 39 percent glazed, meeting the 40 percent requirement of the Ontario Building Code’s prescriptive path for energy performance—yet light levels are comfortable throughout. This preponderance of well-insulated solid walls, along with triple-glazing throughout, also contributes to the building’s low energy footprint.

Ultimately (and correctly), individual perceptions of comfort prevail: in all spaces except for the circulation areas, atrium and lounges, occupants can override the building systems and open or close the windows to suit how they feel.

There is an interesting comparison point for the McEwen Building right next door: the Schulich School’s main building, designed by Siamak Hariri of Hariri Pontarini Architects, which won a Governor General’s Medal in 2006.

As we walk through a second-floor office of the McEwen Building, Dormody points out how its cladding echoes the beige colouring and syncopated-square articulation of the existing building’s façade. But The atrium is the largest in a series of social spaces throughout the facility. ABOVE Glazed breakout rooms for small groups look out towards the central courtyard.

5 R ADIANT ACOUSTICAL CEILING PANELS AND COOLING 6 ACTIVE SLAB RADIANT HEATING AND COOLING 7 CURTAIN WALL AND FIBREGLASS WINDOWS WITH TRIPLE-GLAZED INSULATED GLASS AND BUILDING AUTOMATION SYSTEM-CONTROLLED OPERABLE VENTS 8 SOUTH ELEVATION SOLAR SHADING DEVICES

HYBRID PASSIVE / ACTIVE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL SYSTEM WINTER PREHEAT MODE

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AIR HANDLING UNIT SUPPLY SEQUENCE: • FILTERS • PREHEAT COIL (ONLY IN USE FOR OUTDOOR AIR BELOW -15C) • HEAT RECOVERY WHEEL • FILTERS • HEATING COIL • HUMIDIFIER • WRAP AROUND HEAT PIPE • COOLING COIL • SUPPLY FAN

SOLAR GAIN PREHEAT WITHIN SOLAR CHIMNEY (AIR DRAWN DOWN

BY AHU FAN) SOLAR CHIMNEY PREHEAT INTAKE DAMPERS OPEN SKYLIGHT RACKAND-PINION DAMPER CLOSED SOLAR CHIMNEY RETURN AIR DAMPERS OPEN

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Alex Bozikovic is the architecture critic for The Globe and Mail.

8 CLIENT SCHULICH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, YORK UNIVERSITY | ARCHITECT TEAM BARRY SAMPSON (FRAIC), JON NEUERT (FRAIC), JESSE DORMODY (MRAIC), MAURO CARRENO (MRAIC), ANDREW ASHBURY, HUGH CLARK, KAT FORGET, ANDREA MACECEK, GUY MCLINTOCK, STEPHANIE MURRAY | STRUCTURAL BLACKWELL ENGINEERING | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL CROSSEY ENGINEERING | LANDSCAPE PLANT ARCHITECT | INTERIORS BAIRD SAMPSON NEUERT ARCHITECTS | CONTRACTOR ELLISDON | SUSTAINABILITY TRANSSOLAR KLIMAENGINEERING | CIVIL RV ANDERSON | GREEN ROOF ROB WRIGHT | ACOUSTICS SWALLOW ENGINEERING | AREA 6,165 M 2 | BUDGET $41 M | COMPLETION FALL 2019

25m

GROUND FLOOR 1 MAIN ENTRY 2 SOCIAL HUB (ATRIUM) 3 RESEARCH PRESENTATION / TEACHING SPACES 4 SEMINAR ROOMS 5 SMALL GROUP BREAKOUT ROOMS

rather than honed limestone, the McEwen Building employs lightweight fibre-reinforced cement-board panels.

This choice of a more economical and less glamorous material captures the spirit of the project. It’s clear that Neuert, Dormody and their colleagues focused squarely on the building’s social, programmatic and environmental qualities. Their sensibility here is deeply modest, even self-effacing.

This was exactly what the clients asked for. McKellar says the faculty consciously chose to make the new facility feel like a separate building, rather than an extension of the Hariri Pontarini project. And yet, the Baird Sampson Neuert team deliberately adopted select details and materials to create a sense of continuity. The principal circulation route on the main f loor is lined with the same limestone as next door; the wooden handrails on the principal stairs are patterned after those in the Siamak Hariri-designed building.

Baird Sampson Neuert’s own vocabulary of materials and details is quiet and competent. Quarter-sawn white oak lines doors, wall panels and air grilles. Concrete is exposed and polished wherever possible.

The few bits of drywall frequently bear a purple-blue paint.

Neuert points to a set of oval concrete columns that are both tapered and rounded—a trademark Barry Sampson detail. Dormody shows me a bridge-like concrete structure above the social hub, which houses a special events lounge. Here, the architects worked closely with the engineering team to shape the concrete into a crystalline form, just massive enough to provide the necessary structural support and achieve a sculptural effect.

But what is all that concrete doing in a building focused on sustainability? After all, concrete production is hugely carbon-intensive, and this building is only four storeys at its tallest section. Concrete was chosen as a practical option, in part because the complex was originally planned to include an eight-storey residence tower. When design began in 2011, mass timber was not an option at this height. The tower was cancelled during design development, but York wanted to retain the existing design concept.

This does not detract from the enormous import of designing for net zero operational carbon—a target often named, but less often attained, and even more rarely with this level of design assurance.

It will be another year before the McEwen Building’s performance can be fully assessed and measured; that will require the presence of people.

However, university staff report a high level of satisfaction with the building so far, and have made sure that engineering and maintenance staff understand the quirks of the building systems.

All this reflects the sensibility of the late Sampson, who was a highly influential studio professor at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design until his death in 2020.

Sampson was a committed environmentalist, and believed that energy efficiency and human comfort were worthy concerns for architects, just as much as any formal or material ones. “That’s a truly ambitious approach to design,” Neuert says. It is an approach that is sure to last.

6 CAFÉ 7 STUDENT ENGAGEMENT OFFICE 8 LOADING AND SERVICE 9 LINK TO EXISTING BUILDING 10 LANDSCAPED COURTYARD 11 COVERED COLONNADE

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 72.4KWH/M2/YR | TEDI 14.2 EKWH/M2 | WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 0.127M3/M2/YR

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MAKING THE GRADE

COMMUNITY NEEDS ARE AT THE HEART OF A NEW K-12 SCHOOL IN RURAL NOVA SCOTIA.

Marine Drive Academy, Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia FBM TEXT T. E. Smith-Lamothe PHOTOS Julian Parkinson PROJECT

ARCHITECT

In general, articles about new school designs concentrate on their aesthetic merits alone. A friend calls this “ogling the architecture.” But if form does, indeed, follow function, an educational building should manifest its end use: to be a well-designed place that enhances teaching and learning. The Marine Drive Academy, designed by Susan Fitzgerald of Halifax-based firm FBM, achieves both goals effortlessly. In this case, the designer and the school earn a solid “A” grade.

The town of Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia, is at the eastern extreme of Halifax Regional Municipality, about an hour-and-a-half drive from the city. The 800-person town is snuggled into the rugged Atlantic

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The L-shaped school sits near the Atlantic coastline, adjacent forested areas and a regional highway. OPPOSITE TOP The school’s heating plant is fuelled with locally made wood chips, and the associated silo and chimney are prominently displayed in the school’s massing.

OPPOSITE BOTTOM The façade’s fire-rated wood veneer details are a nod to the lumber industry, a local economic driver. ABOVE A raised platform doubles as an informal stage, connecting between the music room and a centrally located cafeteria.

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coastline and enclosed by dense forests. About 30 separate communities send children to Marine Drive Academy—some with bus rides up to an hour long—and 18 percent of its 275 students have Mi’kmaw roots. The school is also a regional resource. Once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted, community groups will have access to the field, gymnasium, shop, drama, nutrition, textile and music facilities. In a village, the school is, as one teacher put it, “a common thread. Everyone has a connection to the school, which brings people together.”

Fitzgerald attributes the success of the building to the intense interaction with students and staff in developing the concept. The standard process for K-12 design involves a School Steering Team (SST)—a stakeholder committee recruited by the school board, usually with only one or two keen student representatives. As Fitzgerald points out, “At the SST, one doesn’t hear from the students who are struggling or unhappy.”

Luckily, an end-of-semester school event coincided with schematic design. Fitzgerald and the FBM team seized the opportunity to meet one-on-one with many students and staff in a friendly atmosphere.

In congenial interviews, students of all ages shared their responses to questions like: “What makes a good learning space?” and “What should the perfect school be like?”

It was immediately clear that the students’ interests were not focussed on the “three R s.” Instead, the local outdoor lifestyle predicated an emphasis on the making aspects of education: shop technology, textiles,

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nutrition, art, music and drama. Fitzgerald says: “It’s phenomenally important to talk with the students. We turned the qualitative information we collected into quantitative notes, so, if a lot of students said the same thing, we added it to our research folio and watched as patterns appeared. For example, one pattern suggested a need to merge subjects and receive knowledge in different ways—to be much more open about how students can learn things.”

Another key strategy was to put making and creative spaces in a central location, instead of the usual approach which tucks them far away from the academic areas. As a result, shop technology is given a place of honour: large windows in the lobby look over the two-storey workshop and media lab below.

As school principal Ronnie Reynolds explains, “This building is all about options.” Teachers have flexibility to stay in the classroom while some of their students do projects in the adjacent widened corridor, dub­ bed a learning street. They maintain supervision through generous glazing, which can be shuttered with sliding whiteboard screens. The ability to move quickly from classroom to project space, says one teacher, “extends the teaching time: two minutes to set up, and they [the students] are learning in both places.”

An expanded version of this strategy is noteworthy in the aptly named da Vinci Space on the upper level. It’s a break-out area, where, as in Leonardo’s notebooks, science and art meet. At one end, a demonstration

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counter with sink is used by science and art teachers alike, creating opportunities for hybrid teaching. A designated art classroom opens completely to the da Vinci Space via a movable glazed partition.

High tables and stools enhance the functional f lexibility: students are free to move around the tables and seating to suit their projects.

Pull-down outlets provide convenient access to power for charging devices or running demonstration equipment. At the ends of this makerspace, as on the other f loors, the plan includes nooks for privacy or quiet conversations.

Overall, the school takes form as an L-shaped plan, with gym, music, and drama areas on the short side of the L and classrooms on the long side, both looking onto a south-facing courtyard. The main lobby forms a hinge-point with wide stairways up and down. The lobby will also feature, in the near future, a large mosaic mural with design input and participation by the students. The image is being developed in collaboration with FBM, and depicts an abstracted map of the Eastern Shore, with pictograms representing each of the three dozen communities served by the school. Adjacent to the lobby, stepped seating leads from the cafeteria to the raised music room, creating a natural stage and socializing space. The drama and music rooms interconnect, inviting

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shared activities. Designed with an acoustical engineer, these rooms can be adjusted with panels and thick curtains for theatre, choral or instrumental practice.

The classrooms are efficiently placed at either side of the learning streets: middle grades occupy the lower level, elementary is located on the main level, with easy access to the courtyard’s play structure, and high school students occupy the upper level, near labs for science, textiles and nutrition. On each level, there are administration and communal-use rooms at the elbow of the L, which narrows the hallway and gives a sense of passage between the neighbourhood-like groups of classrooms. “We used the grade and window placements to our advantage to create a sense of identity for each level,” says Fitzgerald.

Gender non-specific washrooms and gym changeroom compartments are popular with students, and have been successful in eliminating a major source of bullying opportunities. Each washroom cubicle has its own ventilation, light and sprinkler, along with a European-style floor-to-ceiling door. The sets of stalls are easily supervised from the hallways and, during Covid protocols, kept students safely separated. In a school that Fitzgerald is currently designing, each washroom cubicle will have its own sink, too.

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OPPOSITE An upper-level collaboration space is equipped with retractable ceiling-mounted power outlets, utility sinks, and work counters to facilitate a wide range of activities. ABOVE LEFT Lightwells connect between the school’s levels, allowing for conversations between students in different grades.

ABOVE RIGHT The Academy’s makerspaces include woodworking areas, sewing machines, filmmaking tools, and areas for robotics and 3D printing.

Marine Drive Academy is one of the largest buildings in the area, and Fitzgerald, who is also a registered interior designer, purposefully exposed many of the building elements so that students and public can appreciate its construction. Intumescent paint and fire shutters allow for exposed joists, columns and cross-bracing. Ducts and light fixtures are revealed, rather than concealed in dropped ceilings.

On the exterior, a large silver silo takes a prominent place: it contains wood pellets, a by-product of the local forestry industry, that fuel the school’s heating system. As a LEED Gold-targeted building, the environmental aspects of the design add to its learning opportunities: toilets f lush with collected rainwater, natural daylighting is omnipresent, 100 percent outdoor air circulates throughout, and durable surfaces make maintenance easy. As many students will seek careers in the trades, teachers can use the building as an effective demonstration tool.

Fitzgerald conceived different colour schemes for each of the three levels, with bold accent hues applied to millwork and furniture selected in complementary colours. The exterior, too, is graphically satisfying: it’s a clever composition of white cementitious panels contrasted with woodveneer accents, reminiscent of the brown-and-white bark of the region’s

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paper birch trees. Super-graphics on the beacon-like chimney are visible from the highway, and are also used to mark the main entrance.

Darrell MacDonald, Director of Educational Facilities at the N.S. Department of Infrastructure and Housing, worked with FBM in matching the program to the design. This involved extensive collaboration with the school to assign space within the allotted footprint.

By aligning gym size with enrolment, it became possible to add a weighttraining room. The interdisciplinary learning streets were made viable by trading some normally enclosed spaces for widened corridors.

Similarly, the library is no longer a defined, lockable room, but extends into the learning streets at all levels, using portable bookshelves that can be rolled out of the way as needed. Teachers and students peruse the shelves at their leisure; searching for particular books encourages multi-level hunts and serendipitous finds.

The libraries are not the only link between levels. Interconnecting lightwells overlook the lower level, not only for light, but also enabling conversation between elementary and middle students (who are, often enough, siblings).

Each learning street terminates at f loor-to-ceiling windows, and views to the harbour are carefully framed from the cafeteria and lobby

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windows. From the inside, the school feels nestled in nature. This is a source of inspiration and calm for students. A teacher reports that one pupil, when stressed, would stand at the window and settle down watching his own “dancing tree.”

Students arrived in September 2020 amid pandemic restrictions, and after a very strange half-year of distance learning. Staff could sense the smiles under the masks. “Their eyes were lit! You could tell they were awe-struck, and still are,” reports one teacher. Marine Drive Academy had replaced four older schools. Leaving those claustrophobic and technology-poor buildings and entering this new, light-filled, invigorating school energized both teachers and students. This well-designed environment responds successfully to the hypothesis that capital-“A” Architecture can embrace and augment capital-“E” Education.

Halifax-based T. E. Smith-Lamothe, MRAIC was Senior Architect with the N.S. Department of Transportation and Housing, where he specialized in education, heritage and healthcare projects.

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LEVEL 1 1 MECHANICAL 2 WORKSHOP & MEDIA LAB 3 MAKERSPACE 4 LEARNING COMMUNITY / LIBRARY 5 CLASSROOMS

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CLIENT NOVA SCOTIA INFRASTRUCTURE AND HOUSING | ARCHITECT TEAM SUSAN FITZGERALD (FRAIC), NATALEAH HANLON (MRAIC), MATT DAVIS (MRAIC), KAITLYN LABRECQUE (MRAIC) | STRUCTURAL SNC LAVALIN | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL DUMAC ENERGY | LANDSCAPE GORDON RATCLIFFE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT | INTERIORS FBM | CONTRACTORS AVONDALE CONSTRUCTION LTD., BIRD CONSTRUCTION, LEADING EDGE EXCAVATION & TRUCKING | EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANT CS&P ARCHITECTS | LEED SOLTERRE DESIGN | CODE RICAS ENGINEERING LTD. | ACOUSTICS SWALLOW ACOUSTIC CONSULTANTS LTD. | CONSTRUCTABILITY GREY CARDINAL MANAGEMENT INC. | COST HANSCOMB LTD. | FOOD SERVICES JOE GEORGE & ASSOCIATES | AREA 6,000 M 2 | BUDGET WITHHELD | COMPLETION SEPTEMBER 2020 ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 99 KWH/M2/YR (SUPPLIED FROM RENEWABLE WOOD PEL-

LETS FOR BUILDING HEAT, OUTSIDE AIR TEMPERING, AND DOMESTIC WATER HEATING) | WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 0.137M3/M2/YR FROM STORMWATER AND 0.027M3/M2/YR

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CANADA IN VENICE TEXT

CANADIAN ARCHITECTS LEAD THREE EXHIBITIONS AT THE VENICE BIENNALE, TACKLING THE THEME: HOW WILL WE LIVE TOGETHER? Grove, by Philip Beesley and Living Architecture Systems Group, is an immersive installation that includes a cloud of liquid-filled glass vessels hovering above a pool-like projection of a film by Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones.

ABOVE

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Natalia Woldarsky Meneses

A year late and amid pandemic restrictions, the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia opened this summer. The opening brought a muted version of the regular fanfare, and the exhibition’s theme—“How Will We Live Together?”—tackles a correspondingly serious set of questions.

Canadian architects and designers have taken up the enormous task of responding to this prompt, in several different ways. Canada’s official entry to the Biennale, Imposter Cities, was commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts and co-curated by McGill professor David Theodore and Montreal-based firm T B A / Thomas Balaban Architect.

In addition, Canada also has a presence in the Central Pavilion, with the

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FILM STILL FROM GROVE CRADLE, DIRECTED BY WARREN DU PREEZ & NICK THORNTON JONES IN COLLABORATION WITH PHILIP BEESLEY, MUSIC BY SALVADOR BREED, 2021

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project Contested Circumpolar: Domestic Territories, developed by Torontobased Lateral Office with Arctic Design Group. The Arsenale is graced with Grove, a large-scale installation by Toronto’s Philip Beesley with Living Architecture Systems Group.

This year’s selections did not go unscathed by the effects of the pandemic, and many exhibitors found ways to rethink and reformulate their exhibitions. Impostor Cities developed a hybrid exhibition that offers an outdoors-only experience in Venice, paired with a content-

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rich online site. Both versions describe Canadian cities that stand in for well-known international destinations in film and television.

It exposes a quirky aspect of the country’s architectural identity— Canadian structures are remarkably good at “faking it,” representing places other than themselves.

While travel restriction have made it difficult for visitors to attend the Biennale, those that make it here will immediately spot the iconic Canadian pavilion. It’s usually hidden between trees and dwarfed by its

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The undulating canopy of Grove is formed by luminous, lace-like elements. OPPOSITE BOTTOM In the accompanying film, Grove Candle, a child-like being emerges from a series of intricate geometries inspired by Beesley’s forms. ABOVE As part of the Central Pavilion, an exhibition by Lateral Office and Arctic Design Group explores domestic life in the world’s eight nations that have land claims in the Arctic. RIGHT A maquette representing each nation sits atop an information-rich podium, supplemented by wall graphics that further explore the complications of life in the far North.

neoclassical neighbours at the Giardini grounds, but this year, the building has been partially wrapped in a lively shade of green, emphasizing its unique form.

The green fabric allows for the use of chroma technology to create an augmented reality experience. A smartphone aimed at the building activates an Instagram filter, which transforms the building into a range of Canadian landmarks from the curatorial team’s film library. With Venice as its backdrop, the visitor can catch a glimpse of Arthur Erickson’s Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, or Louise Bourgeois’ Maman, a looming sculpture of a giant spider that sits outside Moshe Safdie’s National Art Gallery in Ottawa. The building itself becomes an impostor—an experience that is singular to each visitor in Venice, but also global once it is shared on social media platforms.

The Giardini’s main building, the Central Pavilion, houses installations directly chosen by the Biennale’s guest curator; this year, Lebanese architect Hashim Sarkis. By focusing on the global commons, Sarkis critically examines the political boundaries and economic interests that shape architecture.

As part of the Central Pavilion, Sarkis invited Lateral Office to build upon their research on Nunavut, originally presented at the 14th Architecture Biennale in 2014. Created with Arctic Design Group, the exhibition Contested Circumpolar: Domestic Territories expands Lateral Office’s earlier research to encompass the global Arctic. The installation presents maquettes of domestic life representing the eight nations that have land

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GIORGIO LAZZARO

OPPOSITE TOP

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claims in the Arctic: Canada, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. While the Arctic is home to many Indigenous groups, the region is shaped by territorial claims, resource extraction, climate change and political interests that have strongly influenced the way in which people live, including their domestic spaces.

Arranged in a circular manner, eight plinths are wrapped in maps that reveal geographical data and local f lora and fauna, alongside particularities of northern life such as open dumps, refineries, and geopolitical markers like DEW radar stations. The plinths are each topped with a detailed house model, exposing the intimacies of domestic life: from slippers on the floor to freshly slaughtered meat on the kitchen table. The housing samples vary in size and form, with mechanical systems on view in some, and others purposefully modelled to reflect the level of disrepair of local housing stock.

Alongside the models, the walls of the exhibition space are lined with further explanatory graphics. These describe specific aspects of Arctic life, such as communication limitations in the north, which is largely reliant on dial-up or weak satellite connections at extremely high costs. Residents of the Arctic must also contend with pollution from mineral extraction sites and refineries, challenges with waste management, an array of transportation systems adapted to seasonal change, and the tradeoffs between sometimes-hazardous local food practices and costly imported food.

The nations of the circumpolar Arctic share a common territory, but the exhibition makes it clear that each is also distinct, having been molded from specific political and economic influences.

Turning to the Arsenale space, Grove, an installation by Philip Beesley and Living Architecture Systems Group, offers a much larger narrative frame of reference—examining metaphysical questions of how we live, dwell, and die.

Nestled next to exhibitions on molecular and bee architecture, Grove hovers over visitors as an interlaced canopy of intricate, lightweight meshwork and droplet spires. It’s a multi-sensory island, with an entanglement of air, water and light coupled with sound totems that breathe life into the surroundings. At the centre of this delicate space, the film Grove Cradle, by Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones, is projected onto the floor. Images of water, ice formations, snow, and a child-like being appear, moving through cycles of light and darkness. The sound—both from the film and the pillar speakers—draws visitors further into the space.

The installation suggests a new world where architecture collaborates with plants and animals, has no national boundaries, and is constantly shared and inclusive. The form of this new world takes inspiration from natural structures—cloudscapes and snowflakes, water and plants— to create buildings that are both rigid and sensitive to their environment, as evoked by Grove’s lace-like canopy.

At varying scales, responding to the question of how we will live together is a task that involves study and reflection on how we live now.

It’s a daunting endeavour—not only for curators presenting work in Venice, but for all architects, designers and builders. How do we live, apart and together? How should we live? How can we remedy the errors of our architectural pasts, and envision something new together?

Natalia Woldarsky Meneses is a Canadian architect based in Bologna, Italy.

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FICTION ALL THE WAY DOWN Impostor Cities, Canada’s pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale Architettura, exists (as do a number of other pavilions this year) as much on screen as on the ground. Its interior shuttered, the physical pavilion can only be enjoyed from outside, mediated through augmented reality (AR).

A more complete presentation of its content resides online at impostorcities.com. It’s a form of presentation that suits its subject: how Canadian cities stand in for other places onscreen.

Canadian cities that “imposture” in this way are taking part in what has been called the “Frankenstein space” of cinema. In one of the video interviews f litting around the Impostor Cities website, production designer Paul Austerberry describes one such space he created for The Shape of Water. The story’s Orpheum Theatre is named for a historic Baltimore venue, and cobbled together from the exterior of Toronto’s Massey Hall, a temporary cinema marquee, the interior of the Elgin Theatre, and another interior constructed on a sound stage. Every two years, Venice itself might be seen as a Frankenstein space too, as installations representing architectural cultures from around the world coalesce to form the Biennale.

The theme of the Biennale this year is “How Will We Live Together?” Impostor Cities references that question in its own terms:

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“The world we live in together is the global generic city we experience together onscreen,” says co-curator David Theodore. It’s a provocative statement, and one that matters for architecture. As actor and filmmaker Sook Yin Lee points out in her own interview on the website: “Architects like to think that buildings are highly specific to their site and use. Not true!” Ouch. We have to admit our job often involves assembling off-the-shelf components, following universal codes and standards. Are we really creating generic, fake spaces that could just as well be somewhere else? Artist and writer Douglas Coupland offers one answer: “In Canada, you could almost say that the measure of success of any piece of architecture is how badly movies want to make it look like the States. It’s pretty much that simple, I think.”

Or maybe not. As we explore impostorcities.com, we thankfully encounter a number of other “takes” on the relationship between film and architecture. The site includes dozens of interviews with prominent filmmakers from across the country—writers, directors, producers, location scouts, art directors, and production designers. The voices of this chorus are interspersed with film and television clips shot in Canada, as it stands in for other places. As we click through, the scenes disappear and reappear, at times aligning so that we see, for example, Simon Fraser University or Roy Thompson Hall as it appears in four different films. Other sequences show us a Venice visitor using the AR app to watch film clips “on” the outside of the pavilion’s green-screen shroud, designed by co-curators Thomas Balaban and Jennifer Thorogood of T B A. Yet others take us virtually inside the closed pavilion; on its facsimile walls, we can see “projected” film excerpts. If fundraising is successful (the site includes

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a merch page to this end), the scaffolding and green screen may go on a cross-Canada tour—a kind of mobile impostor of the Venice pavilion.

That would also be an opportunity to see several supercuts of film sequences which will never be seen in public otherwise.

For now, all we have is the array of shifting images that fill the website’s nine-square grid (which happens to be the pattern underlying several historical and mythical cities). Inspired sound design by Randolph Jordan and Florian Grond overlays audio from the films and ambient sound from key real-world architectural sites. Rather than cut from its surroundings like the moving images, the audio creates a context: disrupting, connecting, and punctuating the film clips, not unlike the role sound plays in film. The website’s matrix becomes a non-linear, recombinant labyrinth of ever-changing images and sounds. (As a result of all these shenanigans, the site consumes a huge amount of bandwidth, so watch at your own risk if your adult child is playing Path of Exile 2 on the same internet connection.)

It all seems designed to stop us just short of reaching a conclusion.

What is an “impostor,” really? Quebecois film-maker Luc Bourdon points out, poignantly, the weakness inherent in this role: “How can we have a strong identity when we are always looking at the identity of another as our own?” Director David Cronenberg, on the other hand, speaks proudly of Toronto’s ability to “imposture itself ”—posing as not just another city, but as other versions of Toronto. X-Men Art Director Tamara Deverall tells us how Toronto’s laneways, playing the role of the back streets of New York, have distorted the way the world sees Manhattan—which is not, in fact, a city of alleys. Indeed, filmmaker

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The rich content of the exhibition—including a chorus of interviews, film clips, and on-site segments—is accessible through its interactive website, at impostercities.com.

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and writer Marcel Jean describes film as “un très beau mensonge”— “a very beautiful lie.” Perhaps a lie that tells the truth? Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (director of The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open) observes that many young filmmakers today—she makes the case that they tend to be women—present spaces that are in no way generic, or clean, or geared toward a market.

At first glance, the exhibition seems to prioritize filming locations in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal. But significant, if smaller, film industries elsewhere also make an appearance, making use of equally significant architectural and landscape heritages. One representative from these small centres is Guy Maddin, who, it has to be said, has never made a film in which Winnipeg stood in for anything other than, as Maddin puts it, a “mythologized” version of itself. (At times, I had to feel sorry for cities like Vancouver for the paucity of films in which they get to play themselves.) Echoing Marcel Jean, Maddin points out that the curation of the lies you tell about yourself is more revealing than any confession would be.

These contradictory takes on imposture and authenticity suggest a common ground between film and architecture. As project co-curator David Theodore has put it: “One of the powers of architecture is its power as fiction. It’s not like the architecture that we live in doesn’t also participate in storytelling and making imaginative worlds. It does.

You’re using a fictional world to talk about another fictional story.

That’s where it really gets interesting. It’s about imagining what the imagination can imagine. It’s fiction all the way down.”

If architecture, like the X-Men (a favourite of the exhibition) has “powers,” Impostor Cities exhibits an underlying respect for them. Evan

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Webber, art director of The Handmaid’s Tale, underlines this in his interview: “The greatest architecture has the greatest power to mutate and to reinforce its idea on you, without you really being that aware of it.” So filmmakers come under the thrall of architecture, even as they play with it. Webber actually studied architecture, at Waterloo, before starting his career at KPMB, on the Governor General’s award-winning Kitchener City Hall. He maintained his licence until recently, and in an interview for this review, underlined what film and architecture share: “They both take enormous and arduous planning and require immense efforts toward collaboration. Conjuring their final result is always an enormous leap of faith as well as a huge personal expenditure of one’s creative energy.” And Austerberry, who won an Academy Award for his production design of The Shape of Water, credits his architectural training at Carleton for encouraging him “to think outside the norms of what architecture was … [it] certainly helps with what I do now in film design.”

In the end, Impostor Cities refuses to answer the question of how we will live together. Who could? Its strength is in its openness to diverse interpretations. Unlike many pavilions, this one does not give us an ideology.

Instead, it presents an emergent phenomenon, and encourages us to be intrigued—not just as we view these shifting images, but as we move into the future. It’s a conversation, and a way of conversing, appropriate to a Frankenstein space. And a tribute to the intelligence, inventiveness, and rhetorical skill of the curatorial and design team.

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Lawrence Bird (MRAIC) is an architect, urban designer and visual artist. He works in Winnipeg at Sputnik Architecture Inc.

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2021-08-18 3:13 PM

INSITES

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COURTESY OF GEORGE BAIRD FONDS, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

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PUNDIT OF THE PUBLIC REVIEW

Trevor Boddy

A NEW BOOK OF ESSAYS CELEBRATING THE WORK OF GEORGE BAIRD DOUBLES AS AN ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE OF ARCHITECTURAL IDEAS IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA FROM THE 1960S TO THE PRESENT. When academic stallions are sent out to pasture, the last thing some are saddled with is a festschrift. These are collections of laudatory essays from colleagues and former students. While appreciated by their subjects, these books are often of limited impact and import, and—like most end-of-career gifts—wind up on display on office shelves.

What University of Toronto Daniels School professor Roberto Damiani has created is not a token festschrift in honour of his colleague George Baird, but something much more interesting, original and enduring.

The Architect and the Public: On George Baird’s Contribution to Architecture is nothing less than a comprehensive account of the climate of architectural ideas at all stages of Baird’s career, from when he obtained his B. Arch. from the University of Toronto in 1962 right up to the present.

Contributing essays and interviews to the book are international beacons like Kenneth Frampton, Joan Ockman, Michael Hays, Mark Baraness and Peter Eisenman, plus such leading lights of Canadian architectural culture as Bruce Kuwabara, Louis Martin, John van Nostrand, Hans Ibelings and Adrian Blackwell. Because of the range of these contributors and the depth of their ideas, this book is essential to understanding the life and work of the most important architectural thinker Canada has ever produced.

Since most of his career was devoted to writing and teaching architecture, and less to the design of buildings, it is a sign of just how inclusive Canada’s architectural culture has become that George Baird was awarded the RAIC’s Gold Medal in 2010. In similar fashion, the RIBA

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awarded its 2014 Royal Gold Medal to scholar-critic Joseph Rykwert, although it is impossible to imagine the AIA ever awarding its own Gold Medal to Peter Eisenman or Michael Sorkin. Many of Damiani’s contributors note that Rykwert is actually one of Baird’s key mentors, despite never having formally been his teacher or editor.

London Versus New York As a Toronto architecture undergraduate, Baird travelled to Finland on a 1959 exchange, sparking an interest in Alvar Aalto that led to a book on his work eleven years later. Baird met Rykwert after he moved to London in 1964 to pursue doctoral studies under Robert Maxwell at the Bartlett School, his intended subject being “The use of semiological concepts in architectural theory.” With not just semiology but the first waves of other French and Frankfurt School cultural theories in the air, Beatles-era London was a much richer milieu than Toronto or Helsinki, so Baird’s interests in art, literature, film, cuisine and music expanded while there. Frequent sparring partner Reyner Banham was down the hall at the Bartlett, and nearly all the other critics and theorists who would dominate English-language architectural writing for decades were publishing or teaching in London at that time: Charles Jencks, Colin Rowe, Alan Colquhoun, Kenneth Frampton and others. With the decline of the British economy and support for academe, within a decade, every one of them was teaching in the United States.

Baird sat in on some of Rykwert’s Essex seminars (where Daniel Libeskind and Alberto Pérez-Gómez were students somewhat later); Rykwert forged links for the Canadian to start teaching and publishing in London. As one of the first architectural theorists to dabble in semiotic theory, a major legacy for Baird was his 1967 Roland Barthes-inspired essay “‘La Dimension Amoureuse’ in Architecture,” which was revised to become an anchor essay in the ambitious anthology he and Charles Jencks edited in 1969, entitled Meaning in Architecture.

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George Baird (front), his friend and classmate Ted Teshima (centre), and architect Alan Sherriff (back), during summer employment at the office of Pentland & Baker in Toronto, 1959.

Courtesy of George Baird fonds, University of Calgary; George Baird (centre) en route to Finland in summer 1959; Front and back cover of the first edition of Meaning in Architecture, edited

by Charles Jencks and George Baird, 1969.

LEFT TO RIGHT

Louis Martin provides a lucid and highly readable exposition of the provenance and ideas of each of the essays in Meaning in Architecture, which included all the critics mentioned above, plus Aldo van Eyck and Christian Norberg-Schultz. (Damiani’s introduction to The Architect and the Public, plus the essays by Martin, Joseph Bedford, Joan Ockman and Adrian Blackwell, are all superb examples of critical scholarship, providing a foundation for the book’s other chapters, and doing much to clarify the complex theory debates of the 1960s and 70s.) In a simple but breakthrough move for presenting architectural commentary, Jencks and Baird’s Meaning in Architecture reserved space on its pages for contributors to publish comments along the margins of their peers’ essays—shells within shells of ideas, at a time when new theories churned and recombined. Damiani employs a version of this editorial device in his own book, cross-referencing the convergence and divergence of ideas from different writers by tagging links, using little arrows followed by suggestions: “see Blackwell, Frampton, Kuwabara,” for example.

Meaning in Architecture had an immediate impact on both sides of the Atlantic. Peter Eisenman recounts in his sometimes evasive 2017 interview with Damiani that “It was an important book, one of the most important at that time […] a knockout.” Prior to the London debates and their expansion to New York’s Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (founded by Peter Eisenman in 1967 after he completed his own studies at Cambridge), architectural theory had been dominated by the shallow appropriation of ideas imported from the physical or social sciences—what Denise Scott Brown skewers as “Physics Envy.”

But semiotics would not come to dominate architectural thought, and Baird abandoned most of its analytic techniques almost immediately; Jencks followed suit a decade or so later.

A key turning point was Peter Eisenman’s tough review of the book in Architectural Forum in 1970, where he proposed that Baird and Jencks confused semiotics with semantics. Louis Martin’s summary

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of Meaning in Architecture from today’s perspective is that it consists of “Theoretical fragments from structural anthropology, semiology, semiotics, and English literary criticism […] an unfocused chorus of voices, which postponed the promised theoretical synthesis.” With this, Martin implies that “theoretical synthesis” is a desired or inevitable goal, but Baird’s subsequent career shows his diminished interest in the abstract construction of thought systems. He decided not to seek a “theoretical synthesis,” but instead immersed himself in teaching, practice, urban advocacy, and the focused criticism of buildings. This may have been the best decision Baird ever made.

When I was an undergrad studying film history and production in the early 70s, Meaning in Architecture was my own introduction to architectural theory—semiotics had become the intellectual fad of the moment for film theorists, and I wondered how it all applied to design. Later, when I was an architecture student working for Edmonton firms, some Toronto colleagues introduced me to Baird. He went on to become an editorial and academic mentor to me. As a student, I wrote essays on John Lyle, as well as on the Edmonton City Hall Competition (to which Baird had submitted a conceptually seductive design), for two of the only three issues ever produced of the Toronto journal Trace, which Baird co-founded.

Toronto, GSD, Toronto Despite his early success teaching and writing in London, Baird returned to Toronto at the end of the 1960s. He had been offered an appointment at the University of Toronto, and also judged that practice would be more of a possibility in Canada than in an England in decline. Given the ever-shifting landscape of architectural theory then, Damiani proposes that there were also intellectual reasons why Baird returned: “In Toronto, he could take advantage of a certain distance from both the European and American urban crises, and nurture an optimistic vision of the future of public space.” Baird’s innate optimism is noted by nearly half of the contributors to the book.

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BRUCE KUWABARA

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LEFT Joost Bakker, George Baird, Barry Sampson, and John van Nostrand, photographed in Toronto in June 1972. RIGHT Cover of the report On Building Downtown, prepared for the City of Toronto Planning Board in 1974.

Coupled with this was a new interest in phenomenology sparked

by Rykwert, and an increasing immersion in the ideas of political philosopher Hannah Arendt—in particular, her 1958 book The Human Condition. Baird was one of the first writers to apply her ideas to architecture, and especially urbanism. Within several years of arriving back in Toronto, Baird appeared on stage with Arendt at a symposium about her philosophy at York University. Although he commenced writing at that time about how Arendt’s political philosophy could inform conceptions of public space and community, the book consolidating his interpretations—The Space of Appearance—would not appear for nearly two decades.

Settling in at 230 College Street, Baird at first became a close associate of architecture school director Peter Pragnell, also newly arrived from Britain. By the mid-1970s, the two had split, raising tensions all around, but the ensuing debates and clashes over curriculum and ideas ultimately enriched the education of their students. In 1972, Baird engaged four of those students to renovate the premises on Britain Street that he shared with publisher James Lorimer. Thus is born one of the mythic hinge points of Canadian architectural culture—Bruce Kuwabara, John van Nostrand, Barry Sampson and Joost Bakker, all at the business ends of paint rollers, renovating the building.

Along with helping on modest design commissions for house additions and a church renovation, soon they and others became collaborators on two of Baird’s most widely respected and influential works.

The ground-breaking studies commissioned by the City of Toronto— On Building Downtown and Built-Form Analysis—were the most creative and intellectually rich urban design publications Canada had seen.

This is a key theme of the lively and gracious interview Damiani conducts with Bruce Kuwabara, who argues that “Our studies, especially Built-Form Analysis, [showed] that property values could be maintained and that a mixed-use core did not imply less density. Considering that these fundamental objectives have shaped Toronto’s growth over the last forty years, I feel that our studies had an important impact.”

John van Nostrand and Marc Baraness make much the same point in their contributions to The Architect and the Public. Hans Ibelings and Andrew Choptiany assert that “On Building Downtown was a direct

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and practical application of phenomenological and structuralist concepts in the form of guidelines for densifying Toronto’s downtown core.” Comparing Baird’s work to that of Rem Koolhaas, with whom Baird sparred after The Space of Appearance appeared, they state: “[Baird’s] work is essentially Torontonian […] He has made significant contributions to the field of architectural theory, but it is in his role as a disseminator that he has had the most influence.”

Indeed, the essays and interviews contributed by Baird’s Toronto cohort are the spiritual core of the book, linking Baird’s theoretical interests with his commitment to practice, along with a fascination with urban fabric and the social success of Toronto. Adrian Blackwell offers a finely written survey of Baird’s evolving intellectual passions, from semiotics to post-structuralist theory, plus his reactions to the writings of Robert Venturi and Hannah Arendt. He highlights the importance of Baird’s studies of urban housing typologies and the morphology of the city, as Baird focused ever more on the urban lot as the key unit of understanding how neighbourhoods agglomerate and cities grow. Blackwell proposes that “Baird’s most powerful discovery has been [recognizing the importance of the] intertwined apparatus of public space and private property to architectural and urban theory.”

Having set things in motion, but frustrated by the climate in practice—in the architecture school, and in post urban-reform movement Toronto generally—by the mid-80s Baird took up visiting appointments at American Ivy League schools. He moved to Harvard to teach fulltime from 1993 to 1996, consolidating his global reputation as a teacher and critic of architecture. Happily for Canadian architectural culture, he subsequently retuned to become Dean at what later become known as the Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

The 25 years since Baird returned to Toronto are ones when he perhaps most enjoyed the fruits of his labours. His book on Arendt was well-received, if thought by some to have missed its moment (Eisenman opined to me that it was two decades too late for the inf luence it deserved); it was followed by books on street photography and the collection Writings on Architecture and the City. In 2012, the Daniels School convened a symposium on Baird and his work, and most of the essays collected in Damiani’s The Architect and the Public began as presentations there.

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Savings by Design | Commercial & Multi-Residential

“I love the collaborative aspect of the program”

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Free expertise and incentives, value up to $60,000* The Enbridge Gas Savings by Design program provides free building science consulting offered over a full-day integrated design process workshop** to help build high-performance and sustainable buildings. BDP Quadrangle’s Director of Innovation, Michelle Xuereb, shares why she’s a longtime participant.

Q

As an architect, what’s the value of participating in Savings by Design?

A: The real value comes from the integrated discussions. The program brings together a diverse group of stakeholders including the client, their design team, subject-matter experts and energy modellers provided

by Enbridge Gas. We spend the day together outside our day-to-day environment, which allows us to focus our attention on solving complex design issues informed by real-time energy modelling.

Q

How is the program different from simply bringing in consultants?

A: I think the difference is that the workshop is peer to peer. For example, a mechanical engineer with sustainability expertise may present new technologies and ideas to the project mechanical engineer in the room. It may be a technology that is new to the team or it may be something they were already considering and now have the support to bring forward. I love the collaborative aspect of the program.

Rewards for building above code After completing the workshop you’re eligible for additional incentives based on the performance of your building.

Energy simulation modelling incentive:

15,000

$

Earn incentives when you complete a pre-construction certified energy model that shows your building will be 15 percent above current code.

Commissioning incentive:

15,000

$ To get the most out of your next project, contact Mary Sye, Energy Solutions Advisor.

enbridgegas.com/savingsbydesign 416-420-9281 mary.sye@enbridge.com

Earn additional incentives by confirming your building is 15 percent above code with a post-construction certified energy model, performed by a professional modeller.

* Projected savings based on energy modelling simulations from the Savings by Design Integrated Design Process workshop. ** This has no cash value. HST is not applicable and will not be added to incentive payments. Visit enbridgegas.com/savingsbydesign for details. To qualify for the program your project must be located in the Enbridge Gas Inc. service area. If a participant doesn’t complete construction of a new commercial property in the Enbridge Gas service area that exceeds 15 percent of the OBC’s energy performance requirement within five years of completing the integrated design process workshop, they’re ineligible for performance incentives. During that time, builders are expected to design and construct at least one new construction building based on resulting recommendations. In order to receive incentive payments you must agree to all program terms and conditions, fully participate in all stages of the program and meet all program requirements. © 2021 Enbridge Gas Inc. All rights reserved. ENB 419 09/2021

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2021-08-18 3:13 PM

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INSITES

ABOVE

Cover of George Baird’s The Space of Appearance, 1995.

Conclusion: Theory, Practice and Criticism Because it spans both sides of the Atlantic through a half-century of architectural culture, it might be anticipated that a book like The Architect and the Public would reveal some unexpected larger patterns. A sentiment shared by many of its contributors is that there has been a rise and fall in the estimation of theory by architects, and that things are now at a low ebb, with some referring to a “Theory Age” in the past tense.

In his conversation with Daniels ex-Dean Richard Sommer, Baird agrees that it is almost impossible to combine practice with scholarship in architecture schools today. “Theory fatigue had set in,” Baird proposes, and recent years have seen “the gradual displacement of theory from engagement with buildings.”

Harvard GSD’s Michael Hays describes himself as being part of “The Theory Generation.” The same would apply to most of The Architect and the Public’s contributors. In his interview with Damiani, Hays notes how current students “who previously would have studied advanced theory, now spend their time with tech. As a result, a few generations of design students have passed through school with very little teaching or support with regard to critical theory.” Good news for the writers in the book, he notes there is increasing interest in the history of theory, if not its contemporary creation. Consequently, this collection may quickly become one of the best books available summarizing the arguments of the last half century, showing how architectural theories evolved, grew and died—all focused through the lens of Baird’s career. Like many others in the book, Hays thinks Baird’s continuing connection to practice and urbanism has vitalized his theory: “The influence of theory pervades architectural education, even where theory itself is denied. George Baird can claim to have been one of the few to usher in this new imbrication of design research and a kind of ‘theory-in-the-making.’” Hays concludes that “Baird is more aptly described as a highly literary and philosophical architecture critic and commentator, rather than a theorist.”

The Architect and the Public is the product of meticulous scholarship

by Damiani and his academic colleagues. The book includes a timeline, detailed bibliography and footnotes plenteous enough in length and link-

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ages to inform a full doctoral seminar. Baird is also more the packrat than I ever knew. Seemingly every piece of paper that ever sat on his desk now has a permanent home for scholars to peruse at Calgary’s Canadian Architectural Archive. Taking advantage of this hoard, Damiani’s book is illustrated with dozens of pages reproducing Baird’s studio and seminar outline handouts, posters for talks at prestigious universities, and a colour folio featuring book covers and snapshots of the Toronto architect with students and colleagues, even steaming across the Atlantic to Helsinki in 1959. The book covers the range and substance of Baird’s professional life, ideas, and achievements in stunning detail.

This makes the book’s one gap all the more obvious, and baffling.

The Architect and the Public contains no illustration—and almost no mention—of any completed building produced by Baird’s architectural practice, be it his original sole proprietorship, his partnership with Barry Sampson, or its most recent version when they were joined by Jon Neuert.

Why? Baird was always frank that he was never the hottest pencil in the firm, but his name was on the door for a half century. Sampson often spoke to me of Baird’s importance as an in-house critic and sounding board as designs evolved at their firm. As this book was in the works for nearly a decade, I am disappointed that there was no essay commissioned from Sampson while he lived, and barely a mention of his passing. One of the essential architectural arts is criticism, which is equally crucial for design studio reviews, the give-and-take of producing buildings, and writing for books and journals. Do theorists underestimate criticism, after belittling it as mere application, shifting into a critical mode of their own?

I am quite proud to claim George Baird as an architecture critic who applied his judgment and intellect to understanding buildings, and who catalyzed public spaces of equity and consequence. I would go on to propose that criticism remains much more important to architects than theory, from which it so obviously draws. Baird’s role in practice, in devising urban design rules for Toronto, in his studio and in classroom teaching, and especially in his writing (where nearly every essay links to a specific constructed building or public space, the kind of connection rarely made by theorists of his era) is much more that of the critic than the theorist. Even lining up the contributors to Meaning in Architecture was more the act of a critic-curator than a systems-spawning theorist, and ditto for the unusually inclusive lecture series and academic conferences Baird organized—not to mention the salon-like dinners he and his food writer wife Elizabeth have often hosted. He is responsible for more friendships and convergences of ideas than any architect ever to call Canada home. There is an art to such linkages, and George Baird is a maestro.

I have to disagree with Peter Eisenman. Baird’s magnum opus, The Space of Appearance, was not too late when it was published in 1995. Given the intense current needs of cities and citizens, it may have actually arrived too early. More so than any time in the past few decades, architecture is overdue for an engagement with politics. Baird’s application of Arendt’s ideas on equity and public space is an ever-optimistic way forward, his real contribution to architecture. With many of us losing access to all that is public during pandemic lockdowns, there has never been a stronger market for focused thinking on how to shape a new urban sensibility. After a half century hovering in the wings of world architecture, and true to his on-the-stage and off-thestage career, George Baird may be about to make a re-Appearance.

The Architect and the Public: On George Baird’s Contribution to Architecture is published by Quodlibet, Rome (2019).

Vancouver-based architecture critic Trevor Boddy contributes the anchor essay “Enclaves of Invention” to the monograph D’Arcy Jones Architects, forthcoming from Dalhousie Architectural Press. He was co-curator of the 2014 “Critical Junctures” global gathering of architecture critics at London’s V&A Museum, which included George Baird.

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NOW OPEN FOR ENTRIES Deadline: September 16th, 2021

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT INVITES ARCHITECTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS TO ENTER THE 2021 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE Architecture project entry fee: $175 *

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 2021.

For more details and to submit your entry, visit: www.canadianarchitect.com/awards

IMAGE: TAZA WATER RESERVOIR AT TAZA PARK, PHASE 1, TSUUT’INA NATION. DESIGN BY ZEIDLER ARCHITECTURE. WINNER OF A 2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

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PRACTICE

BLATCHFORD, CITY OF EDMONTON

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“IT STARTS WITH US” TEXT

Kim Petrin, Livia Balone, and Lyla Peter

CONFRONTING EDMONTON’S PAST, FOR A MORE EQUITABLE FUTURE. This past year and a half, the pandemic revealed racial and social equity shortcomings in our cities. Anxieties and fears around virus transmission were expressed as racial stigmas, with negative perceptions of people of colour, and the avoidance of ethnic enclaves like Chinatowns. Public health orders to physically distance or isolate at home were difficult for many to follow—especially for those living in precarious housing conditions, working on the frontlines to stock our grocery shelves, or caring for our loved ones in hospitals and seniors’ homes. Already overcrowded homeless shelters quickly became more taxed, with many of their clients unable to safely space themselves. Depending on where they lived, many individuals found it challenging to access basic amenities like groceries and healthcare.

Insurgence seeped into our city streets, homes, hearts, and minds, with protests and social movements calling for rapid action and solidarity.

In the AED and planning sphere, we saw new conversations emerge on the role of public policy in shaping cities. How do the practices of planners, engineers, architects, and other designers contribute to exacerbating—or reducing—inequality? How have the biases of designers led to uneven outcomes for marginalized and disadvantaged communities?

The lived experiences of both the “haves” and “have nots” came into sharp focus across our civic landscape.

“It starts with us.”

Throughout this past year, conversations on these topics with City of Edmonton staffers led us to ref lect on how we might hear and heed the voices of underrepresented people in the planning of our city.

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How might our policies, programs, and services adapt and evolve to support greater equity outcomes? Colleagues across city departments shared a desire to place themselves in the “shoes of others”; to educate themselves; and to acknowledge how their work can unfairly impact others.

One individual noted: “Equity is a fundamental part of our jobs. We can’t select out of this work.” They saw the path towards city-wide equity as long and winding—yet the destination within reach. The work would be challenging, though not impossible.

Towards inclusion and compassion In the City’s Urban Planning and Economy department, our attention focused first on Edmonton’s City Plan, a municipal development plan that articulates land use, growth patterns, and transportation and mobility systems. We asked: “How will we create a healthy, urban, and climate-resilient city of two million people?” Municipal documents like Edmonton’s City Plan invite big-picture thinking on questions like: How do we welcome more homes and people into our neighbourhoods?

How do we make our spaces and places accessible to people of all backgrounds, races, ages, and abilities?

Updating the document with an equity lens has resulted in a plan that envisions 50 percent of new housing added through infill city-wide; two million new urban trees; the elimination of chronic and episodic homelessness; walkable and bikeable mixed-use communities, and more. We aspire to create an Edmonton that can serve those here today, and support and nurture those who come after us.

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OPPOSITE The Blatchford West District Community Hub envisions an open, inclusive, and accessible town square filled with amenities, services, restaurants and cafés—the kind of vibrancy that a revised zoning bylaw hopes to further encourage. ABOVE The City also hopes to encourage adaptive reuse projects, such as Hodgson Schilf Evans Architects’ recent renovation of the historic Brighton Block into a mixed-use office and retail development.

Edmonton’s City Plan imagines a greener, efficient, connected, competitive, coordinated city. Its overarching priorities are to improve equity, end poverty, eliminate racism, and make clear progress towards Truth and Reconciliation. Throughout its pages, the City Plan makes the case for equity.

Considering equity can help to ensure that spaces and places are accessible and open for everyone; to provide housing that is diverse and affordable; to connect people with meaningful services and amenities; to welcome and embrace multiple people and perspectives; and to foster a spirit of collaboration and co-creation. Considering equity can help to support those who are isolated or marginalized; to ensure everyone feels safe, secure, and welcome; to support movement and mobility; and to ensure we thoughtfully respond to the impacts of climate change.

The City Plan and the Zoning Bylaw Moving beyond the aspirational City Plan, there are multiple tools that need to be leveraged to confront inequity. One of the more impactful tools is our city’s Zoning Bylaw. This is because zoning is everywhere—from our parks and playgrounds, to garden suites and the downtown core. The purpose of zoning is to determine what can be built where. It sets the rules for where new buildings should go, what types of buildings they can be, and what types of businesses and activities can happen on a property.

Confronting our past Since the early 20th century, communities have used zoning to organize land use and minimize conf licts between different activities, in order

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to protect public health, safety, and the welfare of citizens and the environment. But zoning has sometimes been used to separate more than just land uses—it has also been used to segregate people and disconnect them from places, practices, and production. Whether intentionally or not, zoning rules have led to disproportionate impacts for some segments of the population. For this reason, zoning has a dual legacy: of both promoting the public good and of causing exclusion.

Edmonton’s first set of land use regulations were introduced in 1933.

Premised on a western view of land management, Zoning Bylaw 26 resulted in the displacement of many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people, including the Enoch and the Papaschase. The most recognizable content from Zoning Bylaw 26 that is still present today is the city’s “Zone A” Metropolitan Recreation Zone, which encompasses the North Saskatchewan River valley and tributaries. Retaining “Zone A” is symbolic of what was—and still is—important to the city, to its identity, and to its people. But there remain many other relic regulations that do not ref lect the Edmonton of today or tomorrow.

Adapting our present Since 2016, Edmonton has been undertaking a comprehensive reappraisal of its Zoning Bylaw, focusing on whether regulations were creating avoidable, but disproportionate negative impacts. A series of amendments were undertaken. Sometimes these were shaped by precedents in other cities, but in several cases, Edmonton was shaping practice, too. Many of our changes are firsts in Canada.

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JAMES DOW

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ABOVE Designed by Patkau Architects with Group2 Architecture, the Capilano Library exemplifies the City’s active support of award-winning architecture that contributes to community life. OPPOSITE The City is seeking to prompt discussion and reflection on Indigenous peoples through projects such as (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞ Edmonton’s Indigenous Art Park, which features permanent artworks by Canadian Indigenous artists.

For example, in 2018, an amendment to the bylaw made semi-detached and duplex housing permissible in Single Detached Residential Zones (RF1), as well as allowing basement and garden suites to coexist as additional dwellings in the same lot. Across North America, restrictive Single Detached Residential Zones have acted as deterrents to housing diversity, choice, and affordability, by only allowing stand-alone homes in large sections of cities. This has meant that low- to mediumdensity housing forms—which often fit in well in these neighbourhoods and allow for people of different social-economic groups to share amenities—have been uncommon in these zones. This has led to a concentration of affordable and supportive housing in other sections of the city— resulting, over time, in a spatial segregation of people based on income, age, gender, race, and ability.

Through a simple yet powerful zoning change, many types of housing are now an as-of right in Edmonton. The importance of diverse housing to welcome a diverse demographic of people was emphasized by this change—which was unanimously approved by Edmonton’s City Council.

In 2020, Edmonton removed parking minimums city-wide. The requirement that all buildings come with a certain number of parking spaces was introduced decades ago, when car ownership was considered a norm.

But parking supply had often become a financial constraint for developers, inadvertently leading to unaffordable housing for the end user. An overabundance of parking can also lead to an unwalkable built environment.

The new change allows homeowners, businesses and the development industry to decide how much on-site parking to provide on their properties, based on the particular lifestyle of residents, their activities, and the building’s operations.

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That same year, the City of Edmonton’s administration brought forward an amendment to increase Edmonton’s current supply of supportive housing options, in order to allow for more supportive living across the city.

Previously, shelter operations and supportive housing were permitted in very few zones across the city, preventing entire segments of the population from accessing housing in more established neighbourhoods. Introducing a new definition of “supportive housing” in the Bylaw creates the opportunity to locate supportive housing more widely across the city.

The urgency and rationale for these changes was strengthened through the contributions of architects, politicians, residents, builders, and community organizations, who enlivened the debate and called for change.

Their inspired ideas have given us a preview of how the city will be improved with medium-density housing, carbon-neutral design, culturally sensitive supportive housing, the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings, and mixed-use developments. Edmontonians have stretched our imaginations of what is possible, demonstrating what can be done to make our cities more vibrant, healthy, connected, and inclusive.

Imagining our future Renewing Edmonton’s Zoning Bylaw provides an opportunity to re-draft the substance of regulations. But it also presents an opportunity to draft regulations in ways that are easier to understand and interpret, enabling more people to engage with zoning and use it to the benefit of their communities.

To support this work, the City has created a Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA+) and Equity Toolkit. This has been helping the Zoning Bylaw team in considering the social impacts of policies and regulations, and in taking thoughtful action to create inclusive, welcoming urban spaces and

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their lived experiences, their aspirations for their communities, and their perspectives on how to address equity in our natural and built environments. Explicit attention was given to ensuring that people from Black, Indigenous, racialized, underrepresented, and marginalized communities were invited to participate—those who have been historically left out of zoning considerations, and are disproportionately impacted by them.

These residents emphasized how our built environments, our planning processes, and our communication and engagement methods must be inclusive, diverse, and support belonging. They identified how vulnerable and marginalized people are negatively impacted by a lack of accessibility; a limited supply of affordable and diverse housing; and few resources for community economic development. They spoke about how greater priority needed to be placed on safety, amenities, and services.

They shared how they wanted their communities to be walkable, bikeable, and have better transit, along with wider sidewalks and lower traffic speeds. Here are some of the comments and questions they shared with us:

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“There is a perception that poor people live in duplexes, and that they will bring down property values. This works against intergenerational or multigenerational families.”

CITY OF EDMONTON

“If a newcomer was looking to start a small business, what should the Zoning Bylaw tell them?”

“Communities shouldn’t be allowed to voice who they don’t want in their community.”

“Why do we have to prove that we’re good neighbours?”

“How can you accomplish your daily needs if they are far from where you live?”

So how do we move forward—together?

places. The barriers and inequities connected to zoning are cumulative and wide-sweeping, and the team recognizes that institutional change takes time. The GBA+ and Equity Toolkit provides a place to start, in beginning to identify how individual actions can have an impact.

As University of Alberta planning professor Dr. Sandeep Agrawal notes, “humanely developing inclusive cities depends on legal guarantees and on their judicial enforcement, and [on] planners’ commitment to incorporating them into their practice.” This work has begun to reshape our thinking, and has enhanced our ability to write regulations that support more equitable outcomes. It is also being embraced throughout many other areas within the City of Edmonton.

The City is also advancing equity through District Planning, a multiyear project to establish communities throughout the city that can access their daily needs locally. Edmontonians are expressing a strong desire for a greater mix of local housing options, schools, recreation opportunities, amenities and transportation options. District Planning envisions communities that are as diverse as the people who live in them, and which foster a sense of belonging for all those who call Edmonton home.

“Advancing equity will be challenging, but not impossible.”

Shaping an inclusive, compassionate and equitable city is a collaborative effort. Yet, some voices in city-building processes have traditionally been heard more loudly than others. Many individuals have felt excluded from these discussions; participating in them has felt like a privilege afforded to those with more resources, time, ability, and income.

Inspired by the phrase “nothing about us, without us,” we actively sought the voices of community members throughout 2020. They shared

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As Kamala Todd, a Métis-Cree mother, community planner, and the City of Vancouver’s first Indigenous Arts and Culture Planner, eloquently wrote in Plan Canada: Who gets to be the author of the city?

Dreaming the city, upholding the charter, inscribing the stories.

Who claims to be the founder, builder, caretaker?

We need to help people see themselves in our city—throughout the pages of our plans, policies, and programs. We need to hear their stories, we need to amplify their voices, and we need to make our planning efforts more accessible and approachable. This work will be challenging, uncomfortable, and ambiguous—all the more important for us to be relentless in the pursuit of equity.

Kim Petrin is the Branch Manager for Development Services at the City of Edmonton, which steers strategic growth and private sector investment through zoning, subdivision, servicing agreements, permitting, licensing, inspections and compliance.

Livia Balone is the Director of the Zoning Bylaw Renewal Initiative. Livia joined the City of Edmonton in 2008, previously working for the City of Saskatoon, planning consultants and various non-profit organizations, such as Community Futures, which provides small-business services to people living in rural communities.

Lyla Peter is the Director of Development and Zoning Services at the City of Edmonton.

She is fascinated by how people, geographies, politics and culture shape our communities, which has led her to work in small and big cities across Canada, the United States, and the UK.

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TOM ARBAN

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FOREST OF THE MIND TEXT

Elsa Lam

FARROW PARTNERS ARCHITECTS DESIGNS A CANOPY-LIKE SCHOOL ATRIUM THAT TAPS INTO INSIGHTS GAINED FROM NEUROSCIENCE. “When children come into contact with nature, they reveal their strength,” wrote Maria Montessori in her treatise on children’s education, The Discovery of the Child. That guiding idea is at work in architect Tye Farrow’s new addition for the Toronto Montessori School, an independent school in Richmond Hill, north of downtown.

Farrow added a bow-shaped building to the front of the campus for preschool-to-grade-six students, framing a new courtyard learning garden studded with birch trees. Facing the parking lot, there’s a second garden, generously sized for caregivers and families to socialize after drop-off and pick-up. He worked with landscape architect John Quinn, who designed the gardens with native perennials, and used mounded forms that create a sense of shelter and enclosure.

But it’s inside, rather than outside, that Farrow’s interest in nature truly takes form. How can architecture go beyond the biophilic approach of using single elements like living walls, he asks, to engage the “experience and memory of mood, natural shapes, forms, and light?”

It’s a question that he’s been pursuing intuitively through architecture for decades, and

more recently, through academic research.

Last year, Farrow completed a Master of Neuroscience Applied to Architecture Design from the University of Venice IUAV, making him the first Canadian to obtain this degree.

“We are living in what has been described as the ‘golden age’ of neuroscience research,” says Farrow, “which is leading to innovative ideas about how to live a fulfilling and healthful life, and the role our built environments play in this equation.”

Some of the insights he’s garnered are about why young brains thrive when kids are in natural environments. It turns out that neurons light up when we encounter the fractal patterns that are abundant in the natural world. Our brains are also stimulated in situations of “positive ambiguity”— places that are visually coherent, but that also have sufficient variety that we need to make sense of things.

In the showcase atrium of the school, Farrow put these principles to the test.

The fractal-inspired structure alludes to the branches of a tree, with a purposefully complex combination of circular arches and tri-

ABOVE An intricate structure, based on fractal patterns, is designed to appeal to the human brain’s attunement to complexity.

angular brise-soleil elements. The building’s radial plan gives the wood-beamed roof a slight asymmetry as it moves through the curve.

Similarly, you enter the atrium under a line of skylights, set off from the central axis.

Mirrors are placed above the fireplace and doors leading to administrative areas, bending the space further. “It’s about playing with perception in subtle ways that you may not perceive consciously,” says Farrow.

The intent of these manoeuvres is to create a space that intuitively feels good—a kind of interior counterpart to the Japanese practice of shirin-yoku, or forest bathing. Under the atrium’s canopy, students test the aerodynamics of paper airplanes, parents share news over morning coffee, and the community convenes in all-school assemblies.

All of the atrium’s structural elements are in wood, with steel connections concealed.

Large green triangles, set above the courtyard-side openings, also allude to trees—and to the geometric shapes favoured in Montessori toys—but the space doesn’t pander to children. It has a sophisticated, peaceful feel that is a balm to brains of all ages.

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