Canadian Architect July 2016

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latform Architecture + Design 21 P

COLIN FAULKNER

EVAN SCHELLENBERG SCOTT NORSWORTHY

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ABBOTT BROWN ARCHITECTS

Nova Scotia and Prairie Design Award winners announced.

36 INSITES

Alternative practices take the stage at a Ryerson symposium.

33 Abbott Brown Architects

Walking tours in Winnipeg, Toronto and BC.

42 BACKPAGE

PARTISANS revamps Toronto’s Hearn Generating Plant to host the Luminato arts festival.

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31 A PPAREIL Architecture

13 NEWS

41 CALENDAR 32 P elletier de Fontenay

27 Architects Luc Bouliane

MATHIEU LAVERDIÈRE

TBA

29 Microclimat Architecture

28 A ngela Tsementzis Architect

PELLETIER DE FONTENAY / KUEHN MALVEZZI / ATELIER LE BALTO

26 UUfie

25 K ilogram Studio

ADRIEN WILLIAMS

24 Work/Shop

23 2Architecture

22 MoDa Architecture

SHENGLIANG SU

SCOTT NORSWORTHY

JACQUELINE YOUNG

20 M arianne Amodio Architecture Studio

MODA

ANDREW LATRAILLE

MAAS

EMERGING TALENT

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT

JULY 2016

COVER Ports 1961 Shanghai flagship store in China, by Toronto-based firm UUfie. Photo by Shengliang Su.

V.61 N.07 THE NATIONAL REVIEW OF DESIGN AND PRACTICE / THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE RAIC

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 07/16

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VIEWPOINT

ALPHABET SOUP At the recent Festival of Architecture in Nanaimo, BC, members of the RAIC voted on a proposal to change the organization’s designation structure (see CA, May 2016).

Under the proposal, the MRAIC designation used by members would be dropped, and only licensed architects would be able to use the post-nominals RAIC. Some variations would also enter into the picture—RAIC (retired) for professionals no longer practicing, and RAIC (intern) for licensing-track members.

The use of FRAIC by the organization’s Fellows would remain unchanged.

The motion appeared to have narrowly passed, after much heated discussion. But in a surprising turn of events, a subsequent recount of the votes showed the motion to have failed, coming short by 12 votes of the two-thirds majority needed for it to proceed.

While many in the room were supportive in principle of the proposed change, they felt that there was insufficient dialogue about it to warrant moving forward at this time. They sent a clear message: they wanted the RAIC to consult more broadly, and to find ways to make all existing members feel included in any future changes to the designations.

The original proposal stemmed in part from concerns by the provincial licensing bodies, who say they have seen the MRAIC term misused to imply architectural licensure. “A postnominal designation implies a credential, and creating ambiguity about who is an architect is not something the RAIC can be seen to be supporting,” says RAIC President Allan Teramura, FRAIC. The change to a single designation restricted to those with a provincial license—RAIC—appears to resolve this.

But what are the ramifications at a broader, symbolic level? As it was presented, the change would have primarily affected those members who have an architectural education (the minimum requisite for joining as a full member) but have not registered, some 464 RAIC members. It would also have impacted the RAIC’s 25 international associate members, and 23 faculty members who belong to the RAIC and are not licensed.

This represents about 10% of the RAIC’s current membership. I’m one of those affected—while I graduated from architecture school and hold a PhD in architectural history, I ultimately chose a career path that didn’t include becoming a registered architect. Indeed, many of Canada’s most

important advocates for architecture—including academics, curators and policy makers—have no need to be licensed. Other designers can legitimately practice without being registered, either because they work with a licensed architect or build smaller structures.

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Judging by the comments at the annual general meeting, many of these members felt sidelined by the proposal. They would still have the opportunity to continue belonging to the RAIC. However, those losing the post-nominals would lose an important symbol—the right to publicly display their support for architectural advocacy in Canada in the same manner as they had in the past.

In the long run, the RAIC asserts that their proposal would help the organization act more effectively, and lay the groundwork to broaden its membership. “Ultimately, we seek to recruit allied professionals and others in the design and building sector,” the organization states in its background material for the vote. The first step in this, it says, is consolidating and growing its membership of licensed architects to achieve a “a critical mass of architects, large enough to make the RAIC’s voice resonate with credibility and authority,” while distinguishing them clearly from non-licensed members.

“While some have argued that the RAIC is about architecture rather than architects, we have to acknowledge that the Institute’s authority to speak on matters of public policy comes from our collective expertise [as licensed architects],” says Teramura. “It is this competency that governments, the public, the media and the other Canadian civil society organizations hear when they listen to our voice.”

Affected members, however, believe that they are also part of the RAIC ’s collective expertise, and the proposal unfortunately left them feeling like they were being pushed out.

If the RAIC wishes to see the change through fairly, one member opined at the meeting, they may need to drop all post-nominals. Or at the risk of creating an alphabet soup, said another, the RAIC may need to find new designations to introduce: RAIC (advocate) and RAIC (faculty), for instance. Alternatively, introducing a non-licensed membership category with pared-down benefits—with no designation or access to professional documents, for instance, and with correspondingly reduced fees—could be a way to navigate the change.

On a positive note, the passion and concern displayed by attendees of the RAIC ’s annual general meeting demonstrates that the organization continues to be important to its members. Moreover, this issue could spur them into becoming more involved in the group’s efforts and invested in its decisions. The RAIC has before it a golden opportunity to open up new channels of communication, as it considers if, and how, to bring the designation issue back to the table.

Elsa Lam

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ANDREW LATREILLE

NEWS

ABOVE Completed by Perkins+Will in association with Group2 Architecture, the Chinook Regional Hospital addition in Lethbridge, Alberta, is the first project in Canada to use LEED for Healthcare, and is targeting Silver certification.

PROJECTS Chinook Regional Hospital addition opens in Lethbridge.

In June, Lethbridge celebrated the opening of a new addition to Chinook Regional Hospital, one of two major facilities servicing the communities of southern Alberta.

Perkins+Will in association with Group2 Architecture designed the new addition to respond to the vernacular and scale of the site, complementing the existing building while creating a fresh, modern element that defines a new main entry and takes advantage of technological and materials advancements.

The addition allows natural light into the majority of occupied spaces through light scoops along the central spine, clerestory windows, glass floors and glazing into the various departments.

The landscaped courtyard and roof terrace provide on-site respite gardens that promote healing and a connection to nature, supporting the circadian rhythm of patients and staff.

Lean strategies were integrated early in the design process to facilitate efficient and effective workf lows, with shorter distances for most tasks and better sightlines for improved supervision and safety. Many areas benefitted as a result, including one in which bed count was reduced by 30 percent by streamlining the design. The new addition also connects to all six f loors of the existing hospital, making access between the buildings seamless.

To accommodate the rapid cycle of innovation and change seen in healthcare environments, spaces were designed to be easily reconfigured to allow for changes in equipment, function or workf low.

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Chinook Regional Hospital is the first project in Canada to use LEED for Healthcare, and is targeting Silver certification. Balanced with the practical concerns of a healthcare building, the design incorporates local, sustainable and healthy material choices wherever possible, promoting environmental quality and social benefits while minimizing operational costs. www.perkinswill.ca

Design team for Moss Park consultation process announced.

The City of Toronto and non-profit organization The 519 have selected the design team for the More Moss Park public consultation process. MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (MJMA) will lead a team working with local residents and communities to develop a shared vision for recreational facilities and green space in downtown Moss Park as part of the current feasibility study.

“Moss Park represents a remarkable opportunity—a ‘once in a generation’ project that can redefine the limits on diversity and inclusion in the public realm, and that can create a civic hub for a truly unique and dynamic community,” says lead architect Robert Allen, MRAIC. The MJMA team is a cross-disciplinary collaboration that includes urban design and landscape architecture firm West 8, based in Rotterdam and New York, and locally known for its role in the Toronto Central Waterfront redevelopment, including the wave decks and recently reopened Queens Quay Boulevard.

The team also includes Public Studio (the collective art practice of Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatzky) and LGA Architectural Partners.

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Provencher_Roy reveals plans for Montreal terminal and pier.

VELUX

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 07/16

NEWS

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ABOVE Designed by superkül and built by Great Gulf, the Toronto Active House is a prototype energy-efficient home with strong connections between indoors and outdoors.

“It was important to partner with a team of designers that not only have the experience but the vision to utilize the feedback from the community and create a park space and facilities that are welcoming and accessible for everyone who uses Moss Park,” says Howie Dayton, the City of Toronto’s director of community recreation. www.moremosspark.ca

Yabu Pushelberg unveils design of Canada Olympic House.

George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg are working with the Canadian Olympic Committee pro bono to design the Canada Olympic House (COH) in Rio. “The Canada Olympic House design is conceptually powerful and aims to represent all things Canadian with respect to excellence,” says Pushelberg.

The home will feature a series of artworks created by Canadian art studio Moss and Lam. “We wanted to make art that would be uplifting and dynamic, that responded to the inherent energy of the Olympic Games,” says Deborah Moss. “We chose to work with traditional Canadian images in a fresh way: our glorious red and white f lag, canoes, paddles and maple leaves. We hope these familiar icons will express to our team our immense love and admiration so they know we’re behind them.”

COH serves as a haven for the Canadian Olympic Team as well as their family and friends, coaches, support staff, Mission Team members, partners and special guests.

More than 20,000 visitors are expected to access COH over the course of the Rio 2016 Games. www.yabupushelberg.com

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Superkül designs first certified Active House in the world.

The first certified Active House in the world has been unveiled in Toronto. The new label, created by the Belgium-based Active House Alliance, aims to recognize healthy, net-zero energy homes with a positive environmental impact. The concept was initiated in Denmark and evolved from the efforts of a European consortium comprised of partners from academia, scientists, architects, engineers and building manufacturers.

The prototype home was designed by superkül (which built an earlier Active House in Ontario before the certification process was introduced) and built by Great Gulf. Building Knowledge Canada, Brockport Home Systems, Danish Technical Institute and Velux also contributed to the project.

A light-filled, double-height C-shaped courtyard forms an architectural “anchor” for the home. When the windows are open, the home’s overall design facilitates cross-breezes to minimize the use of air conditioning. The ground-f loor living areas are laid out as an open-concept plan to maximize daylight.

Double-height spaces vertically connect to upstairs areas, such as the family room on the second f loor. This strategy of maintaining strong visual connections also ensures clear exterior views from almost every room in the house without sacrificing privacy.

The house is equipped with the Tesla Powerwall, a rechargeable lithium-ion battery manufactured by Tesla for home use. The battery allows for energy management and reduction of electricity consumption during peak times with the added benefit of emergency backup. www.activehouse.ca

The Montreal Port Authority (MPA) has unveiled its plans for the restoration of Alexandra Pier and the Iberville International Passenger Terminal, designed by Provencher_Roy. The renovated maritime terminal will be upgraded to meet the current operational needs of cruise lines, which are increasingly choosing Montreal as a tourist destination. The firm integrated the pier and the maritime terminal into the urban fabric of Old Montreal as a means of also facilitating greater access from the city to the waterfront.

“This is a structuring project for the tourism industry, as well as for residents and visitors of Old Montreal who will benefit from the revitalization of the Alexandra Pier facilities,” says architect Claude Provencher, FIRAC. In the early 20th century, Alexandra Pier integrated several port activities, including the reception of immigrants and travellers and the shipment of cargo, as well as facilities that made Montreal the world’s largest cereal port. Measuring 305 metres long by 91 metres wide, the pier originally housed four huge, two-storey hangars.

In 1967, the Iberville terminal was used exclusively for receiving cruise passengers, and circulation on the site was limited to taxis, buses and cars. Despite significant investments for their maintenance over the past decade, the terminal shows advanced signs of aging and operational obsolescence.

The new terminal will be moved to the entrance of Alexandra Pier, bringing passengers closer to the Old Port and its shops. It will welcome passengers at ground level in order to facilitate embarking and disembarking and the processing of luggage. Continuous-loop lanes for vehicles will improve traffic flow and simplify access. A reserved pedestrian pathway will be integrated, significantly improving access to the site.

The project will also include a tower that conveys Alexandra Pier’s maritime vocation.

Like a lighthouse, it will be visible from far into the water; for Montrealers, it will signal the location of the river.

“These improved facilities will meet client needs and give Montrealers renewed access to our majestic Saint Lawrence River to mark Montreal’s 375th anniversary in 2017,” says MPA president and CEO Sylvie Vachon. www.provencherroy.ca

AWARDS Winners of 2016 Prairie Design Awards announced.

The Alberta Association of Architects, Saskatchewan Association of Architects and

2016-07-06 7:53 AM

Manitoba Association of Architects have announced the winners of the 2016 Prairie Design Awards.

One hundred and one submissions were received in four categories: Recent Work, Small Projects, Landscape Architecture and Interior Design. Four projects received an Award of Excellence and six were recognized with an Award of Merit.

Awards of Excellence went to the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum by Stephen Teeple Architect and Architecture Tkalcic Bengert; and Commonwealth Community Recreation Centre by MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (MJMA) in joint venture with HIP Architects. The marc boutin architectural collaborative received awards for two projects: John Fry Sports Park Pavilion and Memorial Drive Landscape of Memory Pathway Remediation.

The following projects received an Award of Merit: Henry Downing Architects’ Court of Queen’s Bench Expansion and Renovations; gh3 architecture’s Borden Park Pavilion; the Mill Woods Park Pavilion by Dub Architects; youCUBE by 5468796 Architecture; the Edmonton Military Commemorative Monument by the marc boutin architectural collaborative; and David Penner Architect’s Little Red Library.

Presented biannually by the three provincial architectural associations, the Prairie Design

Awards celebrate excellence in design across the Prairie provinces, recognizing the talent, skill and commitment of architects and designers in realizing buildings, landscapes and interiors that surpass the expectations of their clients while elevating the standard of design and construction in Western Canada.

Lastly, Houdinidesign Architects won an honourable mention for their Furniture Design Table and Worktable.

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 07/16

NEWS

www.nsaa.ns.ca

Hamilton’s Gage Park receives inaugural CSLA Legacy Project Award.

www.prairiedesignawards.com

NSAA announces winners of Lieutenant Governor Design Awards.

The Nova Scotia Association of Architects (NSAA) has announced the winners of the 2015 Lieutenant Governor Design Awards in Architecture, recognizing outstanding architectural design.

The following projects won an Award of Merit: 1592 Barrington Street by Lyndon Lynch Architects; Power Cottage - Exterior Restoration by G.F Duffus & Company; Byre House

by Abbott Brown Architects; Hope Blooms Greenhouse by Fowler Bauld & Mitchell; and Korkor’s Community Library in Ghana by Solterre Design.

Citations were awarded to: Mirror Point and Enough House by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects; Victoria Park Pavilion by Rayleen Hill Architecture + Design; and Dura House

by D.R. Coole Architecture.

The Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) has announced that Hamilton’s Gage Park is the recipient of the inaugural CSLA Legacy Project Award.

“To be the inaugural recipient of the CSLA Legacy Project Award is a great honour,” says City of Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger.

“Gage Park is a destination for cultural events that highlight the diversity in our community.

The restoration of the fountain along with numerous upgrades preserves the legacy of the park and of its original designers.”

Gage Park, built in a style reflective of the Canadian City Beautiful movement of the 1920s, is one of Hamilton’s most iconic cultural landscapes. It has retained forward-thinking concepts from when it was developed almost a century ago, and has continued to evolve to serve the needs of the community. Components of the park design that were critical to the grand vision include the Great Lawn, the broad meandering walkway system, the relationships

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TAMMY GABER

CANADIAN ARCHITECT 07/16

NEWS

16

ABOVE The Bergen International Wood Festival is a biennial global competition focusing on the use of wood for its tectonic, structural and tactile qualities. Students from Laurentian University took this year’s top prize for their tunnel-like installation, entitled Metamorphosis.

of formal and informal spaces, and the creation and preservation of dominant vistas to the Niagara Escarpment.

The CSLA Legacy Project Award recognizes distinguished landscape architecture projects that were forward-thinking for their time, contribute significantly to their communities, show leadership and innovation, and remain

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Canadian studentsB:9.75” claim top prizes at NorT:9.25” way’s Bergen International Wood Festival.

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relevant examples of excellence in the profession of landscape architecture.

Teams of Canadian architecture students

clinched the top prizes at this year’s Bergen International Wood Festival.

The biennial global competition, now in its sixth cycle, focuses on the use of wood for its tectonic, structural and tactile qualities. This year, 20 teams of designers, architects, artists and students from around the world competed by building installations in a park in Bergen, Norway, with the theme of “Green Transition.”

The installations will remain on display until next summer, to be enjoyed by the city.

The first place prize was awarded to Henry Dyck, Angela Perdue, and Derrick Pilon with Tammy Gaber from Laurentian University.

Second place went to Chris Szymberski, Vanessa Goldgrub and Heather Scott from the University of British Columbia; and third place to Lorenz Becker Tobias Dal and Dirk Borchers, independent architects and carpenters from Germany.

Canadian Business Media has announced the winners of the 62nd Awards in Memory of Kenneth R. Wilson, honouring excellence in business-to-business magazine publishing.

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More than 67 magazines entered the competition, which was adjudicated by 75 volunteer judges. A total of 36 Canadian publications were nominated for awards in written, visual and special categories.

Canadian Architect magazine was recognized in two categories. It garnered a Silver award in the Best Editorial category for Elsa Lam’s trio of pieces on the proposed Memorial to the Victims of Communism: “Misguided Monument,” “Fair Game?” and “Behind the Controversy.” The magazine also received an Honourable Mention in the Best Feature Article category for Trevor Boddy’s “Apostle of Wood” profile, focusing on the work of Michael Green Architecture.

The awards were presented in a gala event at the Grand Banking Hall at One King West in Toronto on June 7, 2016. www.krwawards.ca

Archaeology of the Digital: Complexity and Convention opens at the CCA.

Curated by Greg Lynn, Complexity and Convention is the third and final exhibition in the CCA’s Archaeology of the Digital series, in which 25 seminal projects have been collected, catalogued, preserved and made available for research. The project investigates

the relationship between architecture and digital technologies. As a whole, the series aims to increase understanding of the design process while addressing the challenges of preserving digital archives and ensuring their future accessibility.

The first two exhibitions—Archaeology of the Digital in 2013 and Media and Machines in 2014—featured projects for which entirely new technological tools were conceived and developed, such as Frank Gehry’s Lewis Residence, Peter Eisenman’s Biozentrum, Chuck Hoberman’s Expanding Sphere, Asymptote’s NYSE Virtual Trading Floor, and d ECOi Architects’ Hyposurface.

The current exhibition focuses on how a group of international firms active during the 1990s through 2000s adapted such new technologies and integrated them in architectural practice. This was the period during which digital technology moved from exception to norm. Showcased projects include Erasmus Bridge by Van Berkel & Bos Architects; Yokohama International Port Terminal by Foreign Office Architects; and Phaeno Science Centre

by Zaha Hadid Architects.

Archaeology of the Digital: Complexity and Convention is on view at the CCA until October 16, 2016. www.cca.qc.ca

Intégral Jean Beaudoin receives inaugural residency in Nantes, France.

Intégral Jean Beaudoin has been selected to participate in the first edition of the Résidences métropolitaines internationales d’architectes program, organized by the Maison de l’architecture du Québec (MAQ ) in collaboration with the Maison régionale de l’architecture des Pays de la Loire. Members of the Intégral Jean Beaudoin studio will be in residence in Nantes, France, over an 11week period this fall. Collaborative exchanges with local architects, academics, and the public will punctuate their stay, which is to culminate in the production of a gallery installation. The exhibition will be on display during several national events, including the 24 Heures d’Architecture festival. In turn, the MAQ will host a team from Nantes in October 2017. The residency is supported by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Intégral Jean Beaudoin will focus its residency on the zones joining private spaces and the public spaces of the city, comparing their various functions and modes of inhabitation.

The Nantes-based jury was impressed by the team’s capabilities to create an installation of public relevance during their stay.

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CANADIAN ARCHITECT 07/16

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2016-07-06 7:53 AM

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2016-07-06 7:53 AM

BYRE HOUSE BY ABBOTT BROWN ARCHITECTS / PHOTO BY JULIAN PARKINSON

EMERGING TALENT

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EVERY YEAR, A GROWING COHORT OF ARCHITECTS HANG OUT THEIR SHINGLE AND HEAD OUT TO FIND CLIENTS. SOME ARE RECENT GRADUATES. OTHERS HAVE WORKED UNDER ESTABLISHED STUDIOS FOR YEARS BEFORE GOING SOLO. FROM COAST TO COAST, HERE ARE SOME OF THE UP-AND-COMING DESIGNERS WE’RE KEEPING OUR EYE ON.

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TEXTS

Sarah Fletcher, Paige Magarrey, Pamela Young

2016-07-06 7:53 AM

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Marianne Amodio Architecture Studio

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Located in Vancouver, the multi-generational MAD (house) accommodates three families.

2, 3 Colourful tiles add whimsical accents both inside and out.

4 Currently on the boards is a one-storey addition to an existing apartment building.

5, 6, 7 The firm completed renovations to a 12-storey tower that pairs tiny microunits with generous communal spaces.

7

“Architecture isn’t just for the elite,” Marianne Amodio says. “It can live in the mid-range zone.” In affordability-challenged Vancouver, these are fighting words, and her weapon of choice is “incremental increases in density.”

When she founded Marianne Amodio Architecture Studio in 2010, after working for firms including Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden (now DIALOG) in Vancouver and David Penner Architect in Winnipeg, the University of Manitoba grad designed retail outlets and restaurants whose immense wit and colour belied their modest size. Now, her fourperson studio focuses on housing: “multi-family residential buildings, micro co-housing, and custom multi-family homes” in particular.

Three sets of adults from the same family live together in MAD(house), a 268-square-metre Amodio-designed Vancouver residence that deftly

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combines shared open spaces and private suites. Her practice received the Architectural Institute of British Columbia’s Emerging Firm Award this spring, and is currently working on a modern infill addition to a century-old house to create five living units in total. Also in the works is the studio’s largest project to date: adding a floor to a 19-unit apartment building and transforming it into a 27-unit dwelling.

The firm’s founder describes her MAD(house) clients as “’yes’ people,”; their love of Spanish tile finds joyful expression in their shared home.

Amodio, who is 45, believes there is a sweet spot at the intersection of exuberance and control. “I don’t think we have to take ourselves so seriously,” she says, “but we have to be serious about not being serious.”

Pamela Young

PHOTOS: 1, 2, 3 JANIS NICOLAY; 5, 6, 7 EMA PETER

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2016-07-06 7:53 AM

Platform Architecture + Design

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JESSE GARLICK

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PHOTOS: 1 THE MORRISONS; 2, 3, 4 JESSE GARLICK; 5 ANDREW LATREILLE

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Cross-laminated timber panels give a warm interior finish to a 79-square-metre cabin in Washington State. 2 Structural and cladding panels were prefabricated off-site. 3, 4 The stage set for Vital Few used reflective mylar floor pieces in combination with lighting to complement the dynamic movement of the performance. 5 Garlick is currently renovating the 1939 Russian Hall music venue, opening up the bunkerlike structure to the Strathcona neighbourhood of Vancouver.

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“Ideas are cheap,” says Jesse Garlick, MRAIC, 40, of Vancouver’s Platform Architecture + Design. “Finding a way to make them happen is the key.” Since launching in 2014, the one-man-firm’s projects have exemplified an uber-collaborative style of getting things done. Skyhouse, for example, an off-the-grid cabin in the semi-arid foothills of northeastern Washington State—and one of the first cross-laminated timber residences in the region—was installed in just three days with a group of friends.

“It really captured the spirit of collaboration and building,” says Garlick.

“It represented a way of working and a way of approaching a project.”

This it-takes-a-village method was honed, in part, working on sitespecific theatrical installations; Garlick has been a member of Radix Theatre since a chance meeting with the artistic director on a chairlift a decade ago. His recent otherworldly set for 605 Collective’s production of Vital Few was developed with the dancers, choreographers and lighting designers. “It is almost impossible to define what the set is. It is really about light and movement. It’s like the architecture disappears.” Garlick was also heavily influenced by two years in Norway after his undergrad.

“There’s something about the Scandinavian embrace of both Modernism and nature that really resonates with me,” he says, praising simple aesthetics, a human-focused approach and, of course, wood. “I have this dream to build a solid wood hotel somewhere. I’ve become fascinated with the collective nature of a hotel and the way the building temporarily connects you to architecture. I think it could be really great. Maybe one day.”

Paige Magarrey

2016-07-06 7:53 AM

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MoDA BEN KLUMPER . DUSTIN COUZENS . CARA TRETIAK . PAUL MOWATT . LARISSA SCHULER . JOHN FERGUSON .

NICKY GRETZAN . RYAN COOK . MAX SENINI . ANTHONY SCHMIDT

Junction 9 yoga studio was given a fresh look with a shapely screen of vertical fins, made of 100-year-old fir reclaimed from an abandoned Alberta granary.

3 Located in the Bankview neighbourhood of Calgary, bv20 uses a site’s 20 foot grade change to create a terraced series of residential units.

4 TinBox fits in with Canmore’s stringent design guidelines while incorporating innovative touches, such as a façade with tiny ledges to catch falling snow.

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When Dustin Couzens, 42, and Ben Klumper, 43, aren’t making buildings, they’re making music—and they say their creative process is similar for both. Instead of cultivating a recognizable style, the two designers are more interested in working with limitations to produce innovative new creations. “We like to look at very banal circumstances and make something special,” Couzens says. The pair initially honed their architectural skills at Calgary design firm McKinley Burkart, where Klumper was appointed director of architecture. Today, both are sessional instructors at the University of Calgary.

Their firm, MoDA, was established in 2013. It made local headlines with a low-cost redesign of yoga and pilates studio Junction 9, housed in a forgettable concrete-faced building. The owners wanted an attention-getting revamp that would capture the high energy of the brand and make it a local landmark. The duo was tasked with reanimating the façade, with just a foot of wiggle room, budget challenges, and limitations on disturbing heritage elements. The surprising and wonderfully effective solution: an impressively poetic, undulating fir screen of vertical planks that reaches skyward.

Sarah Fletcher

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PHOTOS: 1, 2, 4 MHB PHOTO GRAF; 3 TURBULENT (RENDERING)

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16-07-14 1:48 PM

2Architecture

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CHRIS BURKE . JULIE KUSYK . EVAN SCHELLENBERG . TIFFANY LEONG . CHRIS GILMOUR . ANDRE SILVA

The five unit Building One was co-developed by its residents, and fits together differently sized and shaped units based on the preferences and budgets of each owner.

3, 4 Building Three, also built with a similar model of co-ownership, includes seven units as well as collective amenities such as a rooftop deck.

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PHOTOS: JACQUELINE YOUNG (PORTRAIT); 1, 3, 4 EVAN SCHELLENBERG; 2 JULIA KUSYK

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The name 2Architecture has a simple origin story: “Two motivated people, who wanted to inf luence the world of architecture,” explains Chris Gilmour, MRAIC, 41, who started the Winnipeg firm in 2013 with Andre Silva, 38, after the two met at school. “We are chipping away at the foundations of architecture, architectural practical and all the reasons we want to make spaces,” says Gilmour. “There are many reasons people decide to make buildings—economic, social, political, et cetera.

We are challenging the roots of these motivations—and reshaping them.”

Recent projects range from restaurants and schools to research into new materials, but the firm’s most dynamic works to date are its multi-family projects. Unlike regular condos, which are top-down creations with a developer in the lead, 2Architecture’s co-op–like condos use a bottom-up model: the future unit owners pool resources and collectively act as the developer. That means everyone’s also involved in the design. Building One, designed with architect-of-record Allan Coppinger, MRAIC, features five units customized for its residents (nicknamed “the bachelor,” “the maestro,” “the jack-of-all-trades,” and so on by the designers); the units fit together “like a 3D puzzle” based on each user’s needs. Silva owns a unit in the newly completed, seven-unit Building Three. “With research and learning as a core component of all our projects, we believe there is a greater opportunity to become better architects,” says Gilmour. “We hope that through our efforts, we help the entire architectural community see new and exciting ways of engaging the built environment.”

Paige Magarrey

16-07-07 8:52 AM

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Work/Shop MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH . LIANE VENESS . KYLE WIRES-MUNRO

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Lunch Bell Bistro is located within Winnipeg’s Bell Hotel, which offers support for recovering addicts; the restaurant is run as a training facility for adults with disabilities. To counter the hard-edged stereotypes of the area, a warm, Baltic birch plywood ceiling casts a comforting blanket over the space. 3, 4 Extending an existing patio, Fiskaoist is built entirely of reclaimed wood. The assembly recalls traditional boatbuilding techniques used in the nearby harbour of Gimli, Manitoba.

Work/Shop came about from a simple desire: “I needed to get out from behind the computer,” says founder Liane Veness. “As architects, we cannot become master of our profession until we learn how to build what we draw.” The hybrid office/shop/research lab that Veness now runs with the assistance of Kyle Wires Munro (the pair, both under 40, met working on the same team at a previous office) is often populated by clients stopping by for a hands-on look at progress on a project—“the chance to touch, see and smell different species of wood, for example,” says Veness.

In fact, wood plays a starring role in many of Work/Shop’s projects.

Fiskaoist, a covered outdoor eating space in Gimli, Manitoba, was clad in reclaimed spruce and fir. The pint-sized shelter offers seating for 12 within a 12-square-metre space. The Lunch Bell Bistro in Winnipeg, for its part, features a dramatic ceiling made from Baltic birch plywood. “Architecture should strive to be a verb—as in ‘to build’ or ‘to make’—resituating the architect into the role of the builder or the maker,” says Veness.

“In a world that is drowned out by technology and digital renderings, our approach honestly reflects our fundamental belief that buildings should remain situated in the material world.” Though the firm is already carving out (pun intended) its niche, it’s also exploring new opportunities: future plans range from workshops for architecture students to pop-up galleries for local artisans. “We love the idea of inviting the public behind the scenes of various building processes,” she says.

Paige Magarrey

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PHOTOS: KIEX FOTOGRAPHY (PORTRAIT); 1, 2 MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH; 3 JACQUELINE YOUNG; 4 LIANE VENESS

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Kilogram Studio

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DEVIN GLOWINSKI . DAN BRIKER . KFIR GLUZBERG . JAMES SWAIN

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PHOTOS: NICK KOZAK (PORTRAIT); 1, 2, 3 SCOTT NORSWORTHY

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3-D neon logos in mirrored boxes create artful reflections in a Greenhouse Juice Co. location for an underground shopping concourse.

2 The logo adds a dash of green to a bustling stretch of Yonge Street in Toronto’s Sherwood Park neighbourhood. 3 An existing brick wall lends texture and character to a store for the cold-pressed juices in the upscale Forest Hill area.

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Kfir Gluzberg circled back to Toronto after a University of Waterloo undergraduate degree, two New York City years, studies at the roboticsfocused Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona, an M.Arch. at McGill University, and a Tel Aviv sojourn. Toronto was “sleepy” when he left in 2001, but no more: the city now has enough enterprise for the 31-year-old founder of four-person Kilogram Studio.

Most would say he’s showing precocious talent, but Gluzberg himself says with a laugh, “I feel rushed—there’s no time to waste.”

In Greenhouse Juice Co., he found a start-up retail client on the same wavelength. Nine Kilogram-designed Greenhouse outlets have opened throughout Toronto; several more are in the works. They’re all tiny—the first, less than two metres wide—and they’re all different. At the Commerce Court location, in the underground PATH network, neon renditions of the company’s house-icon logo are infinitely reflected in mirrored boxes, catching the eye of busy corporate commuters. Locations in residential areas translate the company’s branding into a mellower palette.

Larger-scale commissions, including Kilogram’s first office project, are now materializing. Naming the studio after a unit of measurement signals an interest in working across a range of scales, on real-world projects, Gluz­ berg says. “Architects really hone the skill of imagining spaces and being able to inhabit something conceptual. That’s great, but at the end of the day, the thing you’re bringing into the world has a weight and an implication.”

Pamela Young

2016-07-06 7:54 AM

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UUfie EIRI OTA . IRENE GARDPOIT

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Satin glass blocks embedded with LEDs are arrayed in a 3-D composition to create an icy façade for the Ports 1961 flagship store in Shanghai. 2, 3 Lake Cottage’s starting point is a standard A-frame, rendered in black steel and charred cedar.

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The architecture and design firm UUfie was founded by Eiri Ota and Irene Gardpoit in Japan in 2009; they then relocated to Toronto in 2013.

The firm’s portfolio has straddled between Canada and abroad since day one: its first two projects were an apartment renovation in Kanagawa, Japan, and a minimalist cabin in steel, cedar and birchwood in the Kawartha Lakes district of Ontario. More recently, the duo completed the Shanghai flagship for Canadian fashion label Ports 1961. “That exposure really allowed us a new way of bringing the two countries together,” says Gardpoit.

The duo is combining their experience in Asia and Europe with a distinct appreciation of what makes Canada—and specifically Toronto— unique. “We both consider ourselves outsiders,” says Gardpoit, who is a second-generation Canadian (Ota was born in Paris and raised in Japan). “So we bring another perspective, as well as an appreciation of what is already existing here.” While the duo settled in Toronto because of its cultural diversity, they see a distinct lack of diversity in the built environment. “There’s a mishmash of cultures and a strange mix of history that are sometimes being neutralized in the city,” she says. “To enliven that even more is something that we’d like to bring to Toronto.”

Paige Magarrey

PHOTOS: 1 SHENGLIANG SU; 2, 3 NAHO KUBOTA

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Architects Luc Bouliane

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STEPHEN ADDEO . NATASHA LEBEL . LUC BOULIANE . NATASHA SOMBORAC . WES WILSON . LAURA ZARNKE (MISSING)

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Upgraded exhibition spaces and a new event hall provide enhanced functionality for the Canadian Museum of Immigration in Halifax, completed with David J. Agro and Michael Grunsky.

3 The paired Relmar Houses maximize daylight on a Toronto lot formerly occupied by a single-family home.

4 The firm is currently creating a new Toronto office for ad agency Bensimon Byrne, in a 4,645-square-metre space once inhabited by two-storey-high CBC recording studios.

PHOTOS: 1, 2 STEVEN EVANS; 3 BOB GUNDU; 4 ARCHITECTS LUC BOULIANE (RENDERING)

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Geology, geography and business plans inform the work of Toronto-based Architects Luc Bouliane. Raised in ruggedly rocky Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Luc Bouliane, MRAIC, 38, cites natural forms such as geodes and drumlins as sources of inspiration. The business expertise comes from his personal and professional partner, Natasha Lebel, 44, who possesses a B.Arch. and an MBA. The University of Waterloo grads founded their firm in 2010, after Bouliane had worked for a decade for Teeple Architects. A combination of spatial and fiscal savvy has enabled Architects Luc Bouliane to land some large projects, including the $7-million program-redefining renovation of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, in association with David J. Agro Architect and Michael Grunsky Architect.

They’ve also obtained a commission to re-make a former broadcasting studio space (in Toronto’s CBC Building, designed by Philip Johnson)

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into the headquarters for ad agency Bensimon Byrne. And they’ve completed some not-your-basic-minimalist-box residential commissions.

The semi-detached Relmar Houses in Toronto are what Bouliane describes as his “geode” project. The clients wanted a home for themselves and a resale dwelling, on a single-family lot. “Our strategy was to create a solid, rock-like form—hard on the outside, but cracked open across the top and the middle to fill spaces with light,” Bouliane explains.

The five-person (and growing) firm will continue to pursue a mix of commercial, institutional and residential projects. “We try to balance it because it allows us to be flexible,” Bouliane says. “When markets of private money are high, we have the houses and ad agency work. When that goes down, public projects get funded and we’ll have institutional work.”

Pamela Young

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Angela Tsementzis Architect

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The cantilevered structure of Concrete House responds to the zoning constraints of its ravineside site in Toronto.

2 The roadside elevation is understated, creating a sense of privacy for the family.

3,4 The middle volume extends outwards, placing the main living spaces in the treetops.

5 Board-formed concrete is used as a finish that connects indoor and outdoor spaces. A system of cast-in-place concrete sandwich panels allowed for entire wall assemblies to be completed in a single casting.

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“There were a number of constrictions on the site that turned into pretty fabulous opportunities,” Angela Tsementzis says of Concrete House, her first stand-alone new construction. In response to setback and parking requirements for the Toronto ravine lot, she conceived the house as three stacked, sliding volumes. The largest—containing the main living spaces—cantilevers 4.5 metres into the treetops.

Tsementzis, 42, studied at the University of Waterloo and worked with superkül before founding her eponymous firm in Toronto in 2010.

First came a commission to dismantle a post-and-beam barn, build new foundations on the same footprint, and reassemble the original materials into a year-round dwelling and workplace. That led to an opportunity to restore and sensitively renovate an Arthur Erickson house.

Concrete House reflects Tsementzis’s interest in the innovative use of building systems—cast concrete in this instance, which is normally used on fast-track industrial projects as a means of completing structure and cladding with a single material. Tsementzis, however, has a phenomenologist’s interest in how sensory perception affects our appreciation of spaces; in Concrete House, board-forming imparts a fine, woodgrained texture to the residence’s surfaces, inside and out.

For now, Tsementzis remains a sole practitioner, with a clearly defined sense of how her firm should expand: “Maintaining quality and detail in the design work while the practice grows is my absolute ideal.”

Pamela Young

PHOTOS: 1, 2, 3 BOB GUNDU; 4, 5 COLIN FAULKNER

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Microclimat Architecture

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OLIVIER LAJEUNESSE-TRAVERS . GUILLAUME MARCOUX

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In the Hôtel-de-Ville house in Montreal, a slender addition opens up existing floorplates while preserving a large backyard poplar tree. 2 La Taule, a new athletic training centre, borders a newly developing residential area in Waterloo, Quebec. 3 Glass patio doors open in the summer to extend a running track to the outdoors 4 Roof beams are sized to support the nine-metre-high aerial silks used by gymnasts; horizontal beams in the mezzanine’s structure double as parkour accessories.

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PHOTOS: ADRIEN WILLIAMS

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The office of Microclimat Architecture is cheerfully cluttered and buzzing with music as the team builds a temporary pavilion for Montreal’s Village Éphémère festival, one of several projects on the go. True to its name, Microclimat holds an interest in the tiny nuances of context and aims to maximize tight spaces in urban milieus. The firm was born in true Canadian fashion: founders Olivier Lajeunesse-Travers, 33, and Guillaume Marcoux, 34, met on the ice, playing hockey in Quebec City. They wield complementary skills. Lajeunesse-Travers has a background in residential design, while Marcoux specializes in commercial and institutional projects.

At just three years old, the firm has already garnered acclaim with a 2015 Quebec Grand Prix du Design for a fitness centre. La Taule

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(“The Slammer”), located in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, features interiors tall enough for the trapezes, silks and hoops that local circus performers use for training. The group worked with a modest budget and a warm palette of materials, including cherry wood and red cedar.

Cool steel envelops the exterior, and in the summer, half of the centre’s running track snakes its way outdoors in a conscious bid to draw in passers-by from the road. More recently, Microclimat won a competition for a condo on Sherbrooke Street—a resounding early-game goal for the founding duo, whose sights are set on larger developments that combine their core aptitudes.

Sarah Fletcher

2016-07-06 7:54 AM

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TBA JULIA MANAÇAS . MAXIME LEFEBVRE . JENNIFER THOROGOOD . TOM BALABAN

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Spa Saint Jude, which repurposes a Montreal church as a fitness centre, received a 2012 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence. 2, 3 An inventive section in the Holy Cross house creates a cascading series of terraces that brings light down to the basement level. 4 The L-shaped Curved Corner addition will double the size of an existing duplex on a narrow lot.

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Thomas Balaban laughs when I tell him he’s still an “emerging architect.” After working for Frank Gehry and Saucier + Perrotte, Balaban established his own small firm in 2009, with a similarly exploratory approach to design. “Finding the space to experiment within the fee structure is difficult,” Balaban acknowledges, though his four-person team is stubbornly uncompromising. They generate and test many options for every project, using a variety of speculative research methods.

They hope to eventually get a hold of one of Quebec’s coveted contracts for cultural projects, such as a library or theatre.

For the moment, the designers at T B A are focused on residential work, most of it in Montreal. “Even residential projects express a kind of ‘cultural will’ about how the city should be designed,” Balaban says. It’s not all about innovating cool houses and pining after something greater, though: a few years ago, the firm completed an unlikely commercial contract, transforming the former Saint Jude cathedral on bustling Saint-Denis Street into a high-end fitness centre. The new interior intentionally blurs the boundaries between the historic church walls and classy workout rooms with glass partitions and a spatial configuration designed to encourage chance encounters. The sleek design caught the eye of the head of exhibitions at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; now T B A is working on the design of an upcoming exhibition on Robert Mapplethorpe. It’s a step towards the cultural work they’re ultimately after.

Sarah Fletcher

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PHOTOS: 1 T B A; 2, 3 ADRIEN WILLIAMS; 4 T B A (RENDERING)

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APPAREIL Architecture

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KIM PARISEAU

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PHOTOS: 1 ALISON SLATTERY; 2 ADRIEN SORIN; 3 FRANÇOIS BODLET; 4,5 MATHIEU LAVERDIÈRE

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As an exchange student at the University of Copenhagen, Kim Pariseau, 35, was smitten with the sunshine pouring into houses. “The light is precious there,” she says. “It makes no sense for architects to build in Denmark without thinking of how light will enter.” She came back to Montreal with an unshakable love of Nordic design and an appreciation for the importance of place. In 2010, Pariseau won a municipal ideas competition to rethink Montreal’s Champ-de-Mars, but needed a formal company to claim the award money. APPAREIL Architecture was born.

Skylights and a surfeit of south-facing windows characterize APPAREIL’s residential projects. The eight-person firm also specializes in restaurant renovations, most recently Montreal’s acclaimed Hoogan et Beaufort. There, custom furniture (conceived with restauranteur Alexandre Baldwin) sets the tone and a Scandinavian influence continues to be felt. The team literally worked outward from the design of the plates to the design of the restaurant. “In Denmark, I enjoyed how architects are often involved in a project from A to Z,” Pariseau says. “A decade back, to have an architect design both the interior and the furniture for a space was uncommon in Canada. To me, these things are intrinsically linked.”

Sarah Fletcher

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Custom, retro-chic furniture and fixtures complement the industrial finishes of Hoogan et Beaufort, located in a former train repair shed in Montreal. 2, 3 Completed with La Firme in 2014, a no-frills renovation for an artist couple included a new kitchen and mezzanine addition.

4, 5 Located in Quebec’s Laurentides, Arbalète house contrasts a pure white palette with the rough texture of a refurbished wood ceiling.

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2016-07-06 7:54 AM

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Pelletier de Fontenay HUBERT PELLETIER . YVES DE FONTENAY

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The winning entry for the Montreal insectarium, developed with Kuehn Malvezzi and Jodoin Lamarre Pratte (JLP), proposes to engage all of the senses.

3 In response to an ideas competition, the firm proposed a propeller-shaped lighthouse to mark the spot of a shipwreck.

4 A finalist entry to the Montreal Botanical garden competition, with Kuehn Malvezzi and JLP.

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To hear them tell it, the business relationship between the partners of Pelletier de Fontenay was almost inevitable. When they were students, Hubert Pelletier, 39, and Yves de Fontenay, 33, shared a rampaging intellectual hunger and an insatiable curiosity about architectural history.

Over a decade later, they’re running Pelletier de Fontenay in an office adjacent to Montreal’s trendy Mile Ex neighbourhood. The firm has grown to six people since 2010 and has been serving the Montreal area with striking residential projects and a smattering of public commissions. This year, Pelletier de Fontenay was awarded a prestigious 2016 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers.

Recently, the black t-shirted pair won an international competition to revamp the Insectarium of Montreal, in partnership with German

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design firm Kuehn Malvezzi and Quebec’s Jodoin Lamarre Pratte.

The team started with the question: how can architecture be designed to contain nature? They explored the history of natural science museums, and how they related to the scientific view of nature in the era they were built. To design an insectarium appropriate to the present day and age, “it was about creating a real symbiosis between the inside and the outside,” de Fontenay explains. Instead of a purely didactic approach in which visitors are presented with information, the team developed an immersive design that will connect visitors to nature in a multisensory way.

Sarah Fletcher

RENDERINGS: 1, 2, 4 PELLETIER DE FONTENAY / KUEHN MALVEZZI / ATELIER LE BALTO; 3 PELLETIER DE FONTENAY

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Abbott Brown Architects

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ALEC BROWN . JANE ABBOTT

Bump House reinterprets a vernacular form while incorporating contemporary features such as a generous skylight.

3 A Dalhousie University office renovation uses free-standing walls with frameless glass to create openness and movement within a rigid existing plan.

4 The Byre House addition is a counterpoint to a gothic revival cottage in Kingsburg, Nova Scotia.

5 For a renovated entrance to the Dartmouth Ferry, the firm expanded the initial utilitarian brief to create an urban-scaled portal for commuters.

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PHOTOS: 1, 2, 3, 5 ABBOTT BROWN ARCHITECTS; 4 JULIAN PARKINSON

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“Life’s a little slower here, and that means we can allow ourselves more time to think about process,” Jane Abbott says, explaining why she and her partner Alec Brown have based Abbott Brown Architects in Halifax. “You’ve heard of the slow food movement; we’ve got the slow architecture movement.” Which is not to say that work or recognition has been slow in coming to Abbott Brown: founded in 2013, the firm has completed a high-profile addition to the Dartmouth Ferry Terminal, renovated Dalhousie University’s Human Resources offices, and received three Lieutenant Governor’s Awards.

Brown, 48, attained his architecture degree in Halifax in the 1990s; Abbott, also 48, came to the profession by the more roundabout route of working as a costume designer in Copenhagen and Toronto before completing her M.Arch. at Dalhousie in 2006.

Abbott Brown’s residential work is striking for being unmistakably modern, yet just as unmistakably infused with the plain grace of traditional Nova Scotia architecture. Bump House, which received a Lieutenant Governor’s Design Award in 2015, occupies a site in Old Town Lunenburg, a UNESCO Heritage District. Visible skylights aren’t permitted in this historic area; so in addition to enhancing stack ventilation, Bump House’s oblong solar chimney conceals skylights that flood the interior with light. “What’s interesting to us,” Abbott says, “is using the past to inform new buildings—without duplicating it.”

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2016 AWARDS OF EXCELLLENCE

CANADIAN ARCHITECT INVITES ARCHITECTS REGISTERED IN CANADA AND ARCHITECTURAL GRADUATES TO ENTER THE MAGAZINE’S 2016 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE. Early-Bird Deadline: September 2, 2016 ($115 entry fee) Regular Deadline: September 23, 2016 ($150 entry fee) Projects must be in the design stage, scheduled for construction or under construction but not substantially complete by September 23, 2016. All projects must be commissioned by a client with the intention to build the submitted proposal. All building types and concisely presented urban design schemes are eligible.

Awards are given for architectural design excellence. Jurors will consider the project’s physical organization and form, response to context, innovation, and demonstration of exemplary environmental or social awareness.

RENDERING COURTESY OF BJARKE INGELS GROUP

Winners will be published in a special issue of Canadian Architect in December 2016.

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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.

For more details and to submit your entry starting August 2nd, visit: www.canadianarchitect.com/awards/

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INSITES

MARC CRAMER

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LATERAL OFFICE

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RE:PRACTICE TEXT

Sajith Sabanadesan and Ashleigh Crofts

A STUDENT-ORGANIZED SYMPOSIUM AT RYERSON UNIVERSITY EXPLORES ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO PRACTICE ARCHITECTURE.

“What do architects do?” moderator Michael McClelland of ERA Architects asked at the opening of Re:Practice, a symposium recently hosted by Ryerson University’s Master of Architecture class. “It’s not so much a question of what they are doing, it’s what they can do, what they could do, what they should do.”

His question was seized upon by practitioners in some of the most prominent firms in the country—fellow speakers included Lola Sheppard, Helena Grdadolnik and Tudor Radulescu, MRAIC —who are developing alternative approaches to architecture.

Lola Sheppard, co-founder of Lateral Office, reflected on what architects could do: “We have incredible capacities for synthetic thinking, and if we actually came in much earlier, our agency as a profession would expand.” Inspired by the role of the detective, Lateral Office delves into design research as a form of investigation, and often uncovers unexpected entry points into a project.

Lateral Office’s speculative approach is evident in its recent work in Northern Canada—a context where there are no real rules yet on how to think about design—including in its forthcoming book, Many Norths:

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OPPOSITE KANVA took a multi-disciplinary role in designing the Edison Residence at McGill University, which includes photo-engraved concrete panels that refer to a historic fire at the site. ABOVE A spread from Lateral Office’s forthcoming book Many Norths.

Spatial Practice in a Polar Territory. “In a way, we’ve always worked backwards,” said Sheppard. “We’re interested in the places that architects don’t seem to be looking, trying to see if there are opportunities for new ways of thinking about environments that we take for granted. Then we imagine new possibilities, and go out and find partners that are willing to engage in these projects.” Being able to initiate their own work allows Sheppard and her team to contribute to environmental discussions and engage with communities.

This sentiment was echoed by Helena Grdadolnik, director of Workshop Architecture. Grdadolnik initiates projects that help identify problems in the urban context. Her involvement in FrontierSpace, an urban installation to get people to rethink the alleys in Vancouver’s historic Gastown, as well as Toronto’s ongoing Green Line vision, reaffirms that working in what she calls “an active or activist form of practice” can have a larger impact. According to Grdadolnik, the balance between providing conventional architectural services and an activist approach creates “a firm which we hope has a strong theoretical underpinning grounded in the social, as well as grounded in practice.”

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INSITES

WORKSHOP ARCHITECTURE

WORKSHOP ARCHITECTURE

SHANE H. O’NEILL

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ABOVE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP William McIvor applies architectural problem-solving skills in his product design work at Loblaw Digital; an international ideas competition initiated by Workshop Architecture resulted in a new vision for a linear park along a Toronto hydro corridor; a strawbale eco-portable classroom proposal developed by Workshop Architecture in collaboration with Evolve Builders.

Tudor Radulescu, founding partner of Montreal firm KANVA, emphasized that any project starts with an opportunity. “How do we create this mandate ourselves?” he asked. Once an opportunity is established, KANVA takes a “total architecture” approach that revisits the architect as a master builder. The firm’s recent Edison Residence project, for instance, included advising on acquiring the land, the design and fabrication of installations and prototypes, and multidisciplinary involvement as architect, developer and building manager.

Having taken an “off-ramp” from his career in architecture, William MacIvor now leads a product design team at Loblaw Digital. MacIvor highlighted the usefulness of his experience on the architectural team for projects including the Maple Leaf Gardens conversion. He learned to see value in “questioning the framework, or the challenge, or the problem [...] and identifying opportunities.” He also learned to empathize with the people that were to inhabit and use the resulting spaces.

“Building that connection is not something which many other disciplines, professions, or people necessarily have much exposure to.” This experience has proved critical in his new role. “These values are the

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lens,” he said. “The object we look at through that lens can change.”

Comparing the two professions, McIvor emphasized that architectural design decisions have enduring impact: a building will last generations, yet a digital product could last a mere three or four years before new technology emerges.

The takeaway for students and emerging architects is that we should constantly be questioning and reinventing the idea of what we do.

Whether we personify the role of detective or problem-identifier, we can uncover and initiate projects through community involvement, careful investigation, installations, prototyping and built work. As a profession, we have the ability to identify areas of need and provide solutions, constantly “re:practicing” what we do. The firms that take this approach are addressing society’s emerging needs—and are also furthering the profession.

Re:Practice was held on February 3rd, 2016, at the Berkeley Church in Toronto.

Sajith Sabanadesan and Ashleigh Crofts are Master of Architecture students in Ryerson University’s Department of Architectural Science.

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PRODUCT SHOWCASE

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Mitsubishi Electric – your Canadian HVAC partner

The new Acousti-Clear® family of products by Modernfold, Inc. offers highly desired contemporary acoustically rated glass wall systems in three variations: Acousti-Clear® Motorized, Acousti-Clear® Automatic, and Acousti-Clear® Demountable.

The world’s only 2-pipe simultane­ous heating & cooling VRF system, City Multi helps maximize your building’s revenue-generating space, offers better comfort control and improves energy efficiency. Its flexible design makes it easier to design and install than traditional HVAC and other VRF systems. Developed specifically for Canada, City Multi air-source & watersource VRF systems are available in all voltage options, including 575 volts. www.ExploreVRF.ca

noraplan® valua: inspired by nature and designed by customers noraplan® valua from nora systems, Inc. features a tranquil color palette of 32 nature-inspired hues in two design options that offer varying degrees of contrast and a seamless natural texture. Available in sheets and planks, the floor covering meets the values of ultra-durable performance and well-being for today’s public spaces.

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THE ELEGANCE OF NATURAL WOOD At Prodema we specialize in creating natural wood products of the highest quality for the world of architecture and design. Following years of research and development we are proud to offer a unique, innovative and high-tech product with no need for the regular maintenance usually required by other wood exteriors.

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TO DO Designer Drinks July 5, 2016 TO DO Designer Drinks is an

informal networking event taking place once a month. Each edition is hosted by a member of Toronto’s design community; the July edition will be held at MSDS Studio. www.msds-studio.ca

55th Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition

Theaster Gates: How to Build a House Museum

Melvin Charney Architect/e Photographe/r

July 8-10, 2016

July 21-October 30, 2016

To August 20, 2016

www.torontooutdoorart.org

www.ago.net

Over 300 visual artists will showcase their work at the largest and longest-running juried outdoor art exhibition in Canada, held in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square.

Ward 18 Talks: Pavilion Project

Toronto Building Tours

July 7, 2016

July 13, 2016

This lecture at Toronto’s Junction Gallery introduces the Pavilion Project, an annual architectural program launching in 2017 that will commission an emerging talent to build a temporary structure that tests the limits of design. www.pavilionproject.ca

TSA members are invited to a tour of the Goldring Student Centre led by Carol Phillips, FRAIC, and Phil Silverstein of Moriyama & Teshima Architects. www.torontosocietyofarchitects.ca

Lo-Fab

Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates arrives at the Art Gallery of Ontario this July with an exhibition investigating the transformative powers of art.

Seventy photos from Charney’s personal archive are on display at the Maison de la culture MarieUguay in Montreal.

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CALENDAR

www.maisondelarchitecture.ca

Vancouver and Victoria Architectural Walking Tours

Álvaro Siza: Gateway to the Alhambra

To August 31, 2016

This exhibition features models, sketches, renderings, large-scale photographs, architectural objects and videos that reveal Siza’s design process for the Alhambra’s new entrance and visitor’s centre.

Organized by The Architectural Institute of British Columbia, this series of walking tours includes ambles through Vancouver’s Gastown and Yaletown, Fort Victoria, and James Bay—the childhood home of artist Emily Carr.

Broadway Modern Architectural Tour

Archaeology of the Digital: Complexity and Convention

July 27, 2016

To October 16, 2016

www.winnipegarchitecture.ca

www.cca.qc.ca

July 23, 2016-January 8, 2017

www.agakhanmuseum.org

www.aibc.ca/tours

To July 15, 2016

Institute on the Library as Place July 7-8, 2016

Taking place in Oakville this year, this annual meeting assesses trends in library design. A host of sessions includes a bootcamp stream, geared to guiding clients through the build process. www.accessola.org

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design’s current exhibition features the work of MASS Design Group.

MASS’ projects explore how architecture can address social challenges, affect systemic change and mobilize communities. www.daniels.utoronto.ca

Presented by the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation, this walking tour focuses on the area’s Modernist architecture and post-1945 development as a business district.

The third installment in the CCA’s series on the use of digital tools in architecture, this exhibition examines 15 seminal projects from the 1990s and 2000s.

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BACKPAGE

THE ARCHITECTS ARE HERE TEXT

Javier Zeller Jonathan Friedman / Partisans

PHOTO

Shipping containers were used to transport temporary seating into the Hearn, then arranged into balconies and box seats enclosing the pop-up theatre.

ABOVE

EMERGING FIRM PARTISANS REVAMPED THE HEARN GENERATING PLANT TO HOST THIS YEAR’S LUMINATO ARTS FESTIVAL.

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This June, Jörn Weisbrodt, the outgoing Artistic Director of Luminato, changed the script for the Toronto arts festival. Instead of holding the two-week festival’s exhibitions and performances throughout the city, Weisbrodt chose a remarkable single venue: the Hearn Generating Station in Toronto’s Eastern Portlands.

The Hearn is an enormous former electricity generating plant, first fired by coal and later by gas. Since being decommissioned in the 1990s, it has languished in semi-ruin, emptied of its equipment and scavenged for valuable scrap. Its role as a power plant has been usurped by a newer energy big-box next door.

Even in its neglected state, the Hearn has remarkable spatial power, with a turbine hall three times larger than the Tate Modern.

The hall is bookended by tall ribbon windows that give the appearance of an industrial cathedral. With the original upper f loor demolished, the remaining turbine bases form a procession of arches that hold up nothing but air. South of the turbine hall, the complex is a sequence of vast, interconnected vertical spaces. The dangling remains of conduit and twisted equipment mounts give a raw character to the spaces there.

To address the challenge of adapting the Hearn to the requirements of hosting a festival with art installations, live theatre and music performances, Luminato enlisted Toronto

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architectural firm PARTISANS and British theatre designers Charcoalblue to create a 1,200-seat theatre as well as exhibit spaces.

This was no small task. Given the scale and state of the space, part of it remained effectively open to the surrounding weather. The theatre in particular was an ingenious transformation. Hanging shrouds of acoustic duct liner curtained it off from the surrounding cavernous hall. Shipping containers—re-purposed into theatre boxes and sound ref lectors—straddled the existing structure to create a tall room that felt connected to the space of the Hearn, despite the acoustic surround.

The deployment of additional shipping containers through the rest of the Hearn was less convincing; in these locations, the containers did not transform space so much as stand in as a shorthand for industrial chic.

Most effective was PARTISANS ’ collaboration with the artist Scott McFarland to create the exhibition Trove. McFarland inserted photographs of 50 Toronto treasures—animals from the Toronto Zoo, paintings, sculptures— within a virtual Hearn-turned-art-gallery of the future, as visualized by PARTISANS and architectural graphics firm Norm Li. The treasures are melded perfectly into their imagined context, giving the appearance of having been photographed within a completed space.

The imaginary gallery fashioned by PARTISANS is a sequence of floating exhibition pods.

The firm deployed smooth, white ribbons of space to hold the 50 treasures, a foil to the material weight and polychrome of the turbine hall. The site of this virtual gallery, suspended in air, artifically repaired the unfortunate removal of the majestic hall’s f loor. The resulting artistic collaboration—represented in a series of perspective images mounted along the 90-metre-long north wall of the actual turbine hall—was the festival’s most evocative architectural intervention.

Whether Luminato’s new location succeeds in changing Toronto’s perceptions of the Hearn remains an open question. It has likely drawn people to the site who wouldn’t have otherwise gone. Given the current real estate market, it’s all too easy to imagine both developers and consumers awakening to the potential of this industrial corner of the city—an area already slated for re-development. With the distance between architecture and real estate becoming vanishingly small, Luminato may have succeeded in bringing more than art and architecture to this site. Hopefully, the qualities that inspired Weisbrodt to choose it in the first place will remain intact.

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

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WOOD makes the DIFFERENCE www.prodema.com

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