on site 5: movement

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2001

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ast summer, when this issue was being planned, it seemed that one of the characteristics of the new century was going to be unpredictability.

How does architecture respond to abrupt change when buildings come out of a tradition of stasis? In a brilliant book by Jane Loeffler about US embassies, she tracks their increasing defensiveness, built to withstand attack. In the 1950s they were transparent, inviting local populations to view the open buildings of an open society. The bunker against change may be compared to a long tradition of de-mountable, moveable structures — whole populations can pack their tents and steal away in the night.

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movement, change, unpredictability Spring 2001

publisher Field Notes Press editor Stephanie White contributors Deborah Ascher Barnstone Robert Barnston Peter Bogaczewicz Al Donnell Tom Emodi Deborah Gans Carmel Gatt Geoffrey Gibson Tod Grant Deirdre Harris

David Hernandez Ivan Hernandez Matthew Jalicec George McCutcheon Andrew Macpherson Frances Mikuriya Asheshh Saheba Tom Strickland Adele Weder Stephanie White

design & production Black Dog Running Syntax Media Services

Instantaneous change where environments can be destroyed in seconds and the slow erosion of peaceful territories both have implications for architecture. Does it become resistant or supple, nimble or a strong front? One thing is certain — the picturesque, the scenographic and the ironic revision of architectural verities no longer seem very interesting.

Life is being trimmed a bit closer to the bone. In a war and a recession what service is it that we provide?

Buildings measure the shifting planes of economics, politics, culture and technology. During the Depression and the Second World War buildings were monolithic, monumental bulwarks posed against the turmoil of the 1930s and 1940s. Something is different now; Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim, built in a city engaged in a war of its own, dashes about its site, mobile and flamboyant.

The articles in this issue of On|site take movement, it its widest sense, as the general theme. This ranges from movement within buildings to moving away from conventional practice; from moving building components to economic change. Boundaries between disciplines, between practices and between geographies are re-examined.

Stephanie White editor

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kay past

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A most immovable building: pilgrims move past it. Santiago de Compostela.

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real places Pet er Bo g a cz ew i c z

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contents letters 6 Al Donnell sends another report from Las Vegas 7 Carmel Gatt goes home to Malta real places 4 On the bus with Peter Bogascevich 10 16 21 26

projects Ivan and David Hernandez-Quintela of Manoo Arquitectos find work at the side of the highway in Morelos Deborah Ascher-Barnstone and Robert Barnstone build an Indiana sukkah out of their dance and sculpture pasts.

Adele Weder dances in Baker McGarva Hart’s refurbished CPR roundhouse in Vancouver.

Stephanie White considers ARCOP’s Assembly Hall in Iqualuit and CPV’s Call Centre in Calgary.

work in progress 36 Deborah Gans and Matthew Jalicec propose some basic survival hardware for refugee camps and urban homeless. observers 8 Geoffrey Gibson interviews an inhabitant of Airport City.

George McCutcheon flies into Hartley Bay. 12 Tom Strickland visits three southern Alberta Hutterite colonies and finds changes.

31 Frances Mikuriya finds the other side of Ellis Island 34 20 24 30

from the schools Tod Grant at the University of Detroit-Mercy designs the base unit for a completely mobile interior environment.

Asheshh Saheba of the Kinetic Systems Lab at MIT introduces a variable volume detail.

Tom Emodi takes us on a tour of the Atlantic Rim. Anthony MacPherson at University of Toronto transforms a jacket into a tent. hey presto!

vernacular buildings 38 Stephanie White looks at dancing in central Texas.

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INCE I’ve moved to Las Vegas, one compensation has been the walk along the three and a half mile boulevard that loops around the development in which I live. Its gentle ups and downs have the rhythm of a children’s roller coaster. At its heights I can see the mountains that rim Las Vegas, their khaki colour greening in the spring, browning in the fall. The dips focus attention on the concrete blocks that wall in the houses, the alternating patches of desert, dirt and gravel and the plants at the tips of the irrigation drips.

Water here is parcelled out a drop at a time, once or twice a day, and at the end of each drip is a tree, a bush or a flower. There are none of the stately elms and oaks of my childhood, secure in the knowledge that the rain will always fall and the sun with always shine. The trees here are more modern, their limbs going first this way, then that as if never sure they will ever be in the right place in the right time. Many of these trees are bushes trimmed to look like trees: you can see their cousins out in the desert in the places where water gathers, uncut and in all their shrubbiness.

Sometimes along the walk there will be a row of broad leafed plants. Leaves of the desert are thin, often lacy in order to limit the loss of moisture. These broad leaves seem almost vulgar, certainly extravagant, like cows where coyotes should be. They are as out of place as the lawn and petunias located at the entrance to each neighbourhood; plants watered not by drips but by sprays. Occasionally, too occasionally, the desert has been left alone: volcanic rocks almost an equal distance apart, looking like those first photographs from Mars, only the hills are greener, the boulders bolder (this is America, after all).

My walk ends in a long descent, as I suppose all good roller coasters should, with a view of the entire Las Vegas basin: a million and a half people, at night every one with their lights on. 

Al Donnell is an architect, recently moved from Calgary to Las Vegas.

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l e t t e r f r o m L a s Ve g a s A l Donnel l

Visiting the Island of Malta for the first time, one is in awe of its history. Situated between Gibraltar and the Middle East, Europe and North Africa, it was settled or visited by the Who’s Who of Mediterranean power. Everyone left their mark, from eighty prehistoric sites to Roman ruins, to Renaissance monuments of the Knights of St. John.

letter from Malta C ar m el Gat t

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VER the last fifteen years Malta has developed almost uncontrollably.

On the surface, there is growth and prosperity the likes of which have never been seen here. The tourism industry is now building second generation five-star hotels and resort villages, too many to fill. Untrammeled residential construction has buried the old villages behind a dense barrier of poorly designed terrace houses, semi-detached homes and villas. Eighteenth century houses have been demolished to make way for ugly condos facing the sea. Much heritage has been destroyed in the name of progress. Malta now has its first high-rise office tower. Imagination is scarce.

can still sabotage the best laid procedures. A polarized two-party political system filters public input along political lines — the party that did not come up with the idea is against it no matter what it is. There is much agitated debate and gesticulation with little action.

Satellite TV, CNN, the Internet and travel bring new desires to these Islands. Entry in the European Union is seen by some as the way of the future; olonialization will then be complete and permanent. Like the proverbial dog who sees its own reflection in the pool, Malta is giving up its bone, its heritage, for something else. What then will the visitor see?

Although Malta has been politically independent for thirty-seven years it will take many generations to eradicate the colonial mentality ingrained in the culture after six thousand years of political overlording. There is still the us/ them divide, although the us now elects them. As a consequence there is little sense of ownership of the public domain. Roads are poorly constructed, sidewalks are driven over and broken soon after they are made, bus service is abysmal, the list goes on. The us wait for them to fix the problem.

carmel gatt

carmel gatt

Most public environmental and planning policies are the master plans of foreign consultants, executed by local officials. The processes may be exemplary on paper, but whom you know (and on a small island everyone knows everyone!)

above left: the Balluta Building in St. Julien, late nineteenth/early twentieth century.

Such buildings are increasingly flanked by or worse, replaced by, buildings such as the one in the centre picture, built in the 1990s. With the fall of the 20 year old socialist government in 1987, there was little planning infrastructure in place to handle the subsequent 10 year building boom. The result is the wholesale demolition of Malta’s urban history in favour of fun in the sun Mediterranean development.

above: Three generations of street building in Sliema: the centre vitrine is probably original and early twentieth century. The one to the right is a 1960s renovation — that slight arch is a copy of a Richard England detail. England, a Maltese architect, studied in Milan in the 1960s, bringing that very influential era in Italian architecture back to Malta. The bay on the left is from the 90s. In Malta, any piece of building over 60 square feet requires an architect, this balcony of aluminum and tinted glass most likely falls below that. Sliema is a resort: such eighteenth and nineteenth century houses, once the summer places of the middle class from Valletta, are being replaced by tourist hotels and condos. 

Carmel Gatt is an architect working in Calgary who recently visited his homeland.

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deirdre harris

citizen airpor t: an interview Geo f fey G ib s on

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GG:What would some of the qualities of its citizens be? Is there an ‘airport citizen’?

SD: There are groups of citizens, just as in a city. There are business citizens, who are very efficient, functional, and move through it with ease. They are experts.

They know exactly how to check-in, how much baggage they can or cannot

GG: So if the city was being designed for a certain group of citizens, it’s the business travellers?

SD: Absolutely. It’s definitely being designed for them. I was behind some tourists the other day. I knew they were going to be slow, and stop to see aunt so-and-so or their sister

deirdre harris

HE following are excepts from an interview I conducted with my longtime friend Sean Denny in May 2001 on the subject of the civic qualities and life of airports. Sean is an advertising planner for a large advertising firm in San Francisco and typically travels for business 2-4 days per week. I would like to thank him for his candid and revealing comments about contemporary airport culture.

have, what they will have to take out of their pockets when they get to security check-in points, how to live within their city. They know how to use it, as opposed to the tourists, just like a regular city. If I’m a tourist in San Francisco, I don’t SD: That’s tough because, while there know where things are. I don’t know are different neighborhoods, the thing how the trolley works. I don’t know how about airports, at least good airports, much the BART costs. I don’t know the is that they’re all the same...It’s like the local customs. I guess there are three invasion of the Gap and Starbucks in groups of citizens: the employees who neighborhoods that once had a lot of run the place, the business people who character and no longer do. They are are truly part of the community, and the not designed to be different. tourists. Because all airports are alike, if you’re a citizen of one airport, you’re a citizen of all airports.

8 ON SITE review 5 GG: Imagine all the airports of North America being amassed into one conglomerate city or metropolitan area.

What characteristics would you use to describe this city if you had to?

or whoever. They weren’t being functional about it. They were being emotional about it. They were in the way, but there was no reason to flip out. It’s not their fault that they’re not thinking like I am.

GG: Do you think there is a cultural life to Airport City? What do you think of all the public art in airports?

SD: I think if you are a business traveller, public art just flashes by. The only time it doesn’t flash by is if you’re stuck somewhere. It’s something to kill time, but it’s never a reason why you’re there. There used to be no choice other than the cafeteria and the newsstand. And now with the invention of the air mall, and bringing in branded restaurants and fast food chains, you actually have a choice. That’s great because you can do shopping on the way. If I forgot a shirt, now I can pick one up at the air mall. You could live in an airport. I wouldn’t recommend it, but you could probably get away with it. Especially in the modern ones: Denver, Chicago, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, one of the two has a really well-done mall.

GG: Have you ever made a friend in an airport or met the same people more than once?

SD: Airline crew. I’ve met the same airline crew on their regular flights.

I take the same flights on a regular basis. It is like going to the same coffee shop on a regular. As for friends, even though you might be a business traveler and I’m a business traveler and we’re sitting 3 or 4 seats away, I might go so far as to ask “May I borrow your newspaper?” but we’re not going to strike up a conversation because, again, it’s a functional thing. You’re not there to meet people. You’re there to get on a plane. You’re in your own space and you don’t mind interacting to a certain degree but you don’t want to get involved in a deep conversation. That’s not generally why you’re there.

GG:What distinguishes one airport from another for you?

GG: What might you propose if your were mayor of Airport City?

SD: The newer airports take into account certain built-in conveniences.

The whole idea of getting you somewhere as quickly and cleanly as possible. It’s basically the ability to avoid tourists. You want to be able to get around them. You want to be able to expedite yourself.

SD: Maybe some sort of educational program of how to get through an airport. It’s funny because you can buy a ticket, but you don’t have any idea of what’s going to happen. Travelling at Christmas for business is hell because there are lots of people who don’t travel except for that one time of year.

It’s not just them; it’s them and their three kids and Grandma. So they’re trying to figure out the social dynamic of keeping that group together while they have to deal with security and check-in. It’s weird to see them try to stumble through it. And I feel sorry for them, because it’s not their fault they don’t understand how to do this. They almost need a how-to guide. It would be like being thrown into downtown Mexico City and not speaking Spanish.

GG: What kind of spatial qualities correspond to that?

SD: There are double moving walkways, so there’s one where people can stand and herd their children and one so the rest of us can get past them. A lot of airports have dual both directions, so it’s like a four lane highway. Also they have very wide open areas, where you can just walk. It’s about sheer volume. You need to have space to move around. Families gang up in a row 5 people across, with their arms stretched out—it’s like ‘red

rover’. Make it bigger and I’m happier. I want facilities on a regular basis. I want a washroom every 2 gates because I don’t want to have to leave my gate. It’s even how the washrooms are laid out; how stalls are now extra wide so I can keep my baggage with me. Doorways need to be bigger because I’m carrying luggage. At home you can just put your luggage down and walk through a regular door, but when you’re traveling you have to keep everything with you, so you’re expanded.

It’s not just you; it’s you and your stuff.

GG: Does the sheer number of citizen effectively make this Airport City a civic entity?

SD: I don’t think we view it as a community that we need to give back to. The airlines and the service staff are there to service us; they’re not there as a community. They go home to their real communities at the end of the day, and we go home to our real communities at the end of the day.

Sometimes I might spend 24 hours in an airport, if I have a lay-over and I am stuck there. Some airports even have hotels so you can sleep there. But it still never really becomes a city. 

Geoffrey Gibson is a Canadian architect working in San Francisco.

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Kilometre 103 and 108 of Mexico City/ Acapulco Highway, a number of people have set up a series of extremely basic, provisionary structures adjacent to the highway from which they sell roses to tourists on the road. These structures are mostly made out of two garbage barrels with a wooden board on top of them as a table to put the flowers on. The more extravagant ones have four wooden poles connected with string and a plastic tent to protect themselves from the 32 degree heat. This temporariness results from the fact that these people are invading federal land and therefore are vulnerable to removal at any time. Such an action would put the venders in an even more precarious situation for the average vender has a family of 6 to 7 members, hardly speaks Spanish, and selling flowers is the only income. Thus, their invasion of the highway edge is a movement towards survival.

As we approached the first vendor, we recognized the importance of getting the vendors involved and made responsible for the construction, for these are hard working people who become suspicious of any action done for them with nothing asked of them in return. Their involvement in the process creates a sense of personal responsibility and that in turn creates a sense of dignity.

We decided to get involved, to move into the territory. We contacted the Governor of Morelos to propose a plan to him. If we designed a prototype, got sponsors to provide the material and the vendors provided the manual labor, would they allow the permanent settlement of these structures?

The Governor of Morelos has agreed to the plan and the first prototype has been built. Another move within the process of architecture has been made. Must continue…

etween

The construction consists of a carpet of local stone, eight steel poles that create a box connected with wire where six ivy plants begin to grow to create a skin. The vendor therefore can dictate how dense the wall and ceiling might become and where openings occur. Only the two facades perpendicular to the highway remain completely open to allow the merchandise to be seen by drivers on the move at 100 km/hr, while still providing shade to the vender.

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Manoo Arquitectos work in Mexico City

tecnicas de expresion arquitectonica: moving into architecture

manoo arquitectos

ivan hernandez

ivan hernandez

M an o o A rq u i t e c t os : Iv án Her n á n d e z Q u i n t e l a Dav id Her n á n d e z Q u i n t e l a

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O wnership in M ovement : from how one moves to generate a project, to who owns the construction, to who takes care of it.

P erception in M ovement : people being able to perceive the flowers in a structure that is also trying to protect the user from the sun while the potential buyer is driving at 100 km/hr.

C onstruction in M ovement : how the structure becomes a simple system for the vendor to construct himself.

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r e a l p l a c e s : l o o k i n g a t H a r t l e y B a y Geo r g e M cC u t c h e o n

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ii.

N my work, I have had the good fortune to travel to and do work in Hartley Bay, a small village of 200 people located at the mouth of a small river at the junction of the Greenville and Douglas Channels, Prince Rupert 150km northeast along the Greenville Channel and Kitimat 100km along the Douglas Channel. The village is only accessible by water or, as I have arrived by float plane. Regular flights leave Prince Rupert at noon, land at about one, and return to Rupert immediately. Usually I travel with other consultants and we charter in, leaving when the sun rises in the winter months and returning before the sun sets. In the winter this allows us about 6 hours in the village. The float planes have no radar, so if you are unable to see through the air to where you are going then you do not fly. We have the float plane wait for us, we know that if we get in then we will get out. This is a strange way to travel, the economics of business dictate how much time we are able to spend here.

We are greeted as returning old friends as we rush around, nosying into one space or another. With the charter we are always the visitor passing through. Sometimes villagers travel with us, there is always business to do in Rupert or beyond.

Occasionally, work dictates an overnight and one experiences a different pace to village time.

Riding out around an island into the Greenville Channel.

Once in the channel I feel the smallness of the boat and the four of us. The ocean is narrow but deep and in the calm we trawl along with 2 lines 50 feet down waiting for salmon.

We see a cloud, streaking the sky ahead, come toward us and we rush to reinstall the roof. The clouds that touch the water pass and the wind that drove the clouds leaves a stream of small waves. A ferry passes. The waves from the wake roll the boat. Each swell from the ferry contains 4 or 5 of the small waves from the cloud. After the boat has passed the sky clears and the ocean grows calmer and calmer. I am acutely aware of the great peacefulness of the ocean. Where comes our focus on storms and disaster. Considering the power contained within this huge body wrapping the planet, the ocean is at peace. The tides move inconceivable masses with great gentleness. I am dumfounded in the presence of this power and honoured to be in this strange unfamiliar place.

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george mccutcheon

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george mccutcheon

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The village is located on a peat bog. The maritime moderated northern climate ensures that even in winter, the bog does not freeze to any significant depth for any significant period of time. The amazing thing about the peat is imagining the constant flow of water through the saturated ground.

A footprint in a soft spot becomes a puddle, the water fill all depressions. Wherever construction has taken place the flowing underground becomes apparent. A temporary road not removed creates a swamp with skunk cabbage in its wake. The interruptions to the natural landscape are readily apparent as are building problems due to a lack of understanding and respect for this watery terrain.

The boardwalks constructed today allow for the movement over the bog of ATVs, bicycles, pedestrians and small scale construction equipment.You must think differently when considering the movement of anything over this terrain. The boardwalks hearken to the village established in this location years ago. In pre-contact time the boardwalks ran parallel to the clam beach with connections between the houses. Now the boardwalks loop and curve to suit the suburban housing plan. Even with the newer winding boardwalks, the houses inevitably focus on the open bay.

The buildings and connecting paths in the form of boardwalks are all on piers. This is are the most practical way to deal with this terrain. The river divides the village as it is now settled. It is a salmon river and the delta and adjacent foreshore beach was a source for shellfish. Major engineered changes such as the rock breakwater, the barge landing and power plant constructed beside the river mouth have changed the pre-contact linearity of the village and transformed it, destroying the reasons for the shape of the old village. The longhouse village has expanded from a linear pre-contact form to an almost suburban village. The longhouses are gone and have been replaced with smaller stick framed houses. The way of life, together with the associated forms, has changed superficially. The longhouse remains a strong symbol of the recent past and is often, if not always used, typologically, for community and recreation halls that serve for feasts, drumming, singing and dancing

This is a small village, only about 200 people currently.

However, there is a lack of housing for people wishing to move back to the village. People move away, mainly just to Prince Rupert (a village of about 20,000 people) and some come back for various reasons. One of the problems is being resolved by an addition to the school. Currently the school handles children up to grade 10. When children reach grade 11 families must decide if they will remain in the village or move to Prince Rupert to be with the child entering grade 11. The move means pulling the younger children as well from the village school and moving them to Prince Rupert until they all have finished this cycle of their lives. The school is the heart of the community, the same as any small town. It is the focus of weekly activity.

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iv.

george mccutcheon

People are linked deeply to the ocean. One overnight visit on a calm evening I experienced people taking their boat out for a ride. There was the practicality of going out for food together with the need to feel the freedom of the open ocean expressed in one action. The short fishing trip served much the same as an urban promenade. Dropping the line, slowly trawling, hoping for something, though everyone knew it was still early for the spring salmon to be running, and it will only be good luck that will bring a catch. The pace is meditative, the water is dark and deep, the tide draws the boat along, the dimming sky and everchanging clouds are a sharp contrast to the stillness of the land. v.

The ocean at the mouth of the Skeena is muddy olive green darkened by the cloud cover above. Gradually, I become aware of patches of a lighter green in the ocean below, looking like the side of a camouflaged fish. It looks like underwater sand dunes close to the top of the water until I realize, as we fly into the sun, that I am seeing holes in the clouds blending with the ocean.

George McCutcheon works in Vancouver with David Nairne Architects.

george mccutcheon

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embodied movement: the indiana sukkot project Deb o r a h A s c h e r B arn s t o n e an d Rober t Bar ns t one

paul taylor

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william barnstone

design for the Indiana Sukkot project was our response to a call for reinterpretations of the traditional Jewish harvest pavilion, the Sukkah. From the start, it was clear to us that we had to try to understand the traditional structure, materials used, construction methods, and functions, in order to invent something new—a Sukkah with unexpected twists and turns and delightful details. he

The ancient Sukkah was a portable structure built in the fields for the harvest period. Farmers usually camped out and ate in the Sukkah until the harvest was over. Scholars are not quite sure what the original structures looked like—they may have been tents or huts, the Sukkah may be a reference to the tents Jews dwelt in during the Exodus—but it is certain that they were lightweight and portable. Today, the Sukkah is constructed for a week at harvest time as a place to celebrate bringing in the crops. In order to symbolically recall its historic use, the Sukkah is used as a dining pavilion and a place to sleep. We felt that because of the annual assembling and disassembling, the actions of reaping, eating, sleeping and dressing, and the passage of the seasons, the Sukkah is the embodiment of movement both implied and actual.

The rules for building a Sukkah are clear: 1 The Sukkah must have at least three sides. The fourth side can be left open.

2 The sides may be of any material, while the roof has to be made from growing things. You must also be able to see the sky through them.

3 The Sukkah must be big enough for at least one person to sit at table.

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Since the Jewish Federation of Indiana commissioned the design we decided that our Sukkah should use materials related the harvest that were indigenous to Indiana. We chose to work with the wood from local forests: poplar, maple, walnut, cherry, and oak, and to deck the structure with cornhusks, an icon of the Indiana landscape.

We also decided to make the structure quite transparent to views from the inside to the Indiana landscape, and from the outside, to the ritual being performed within. Again, our goal was to anchor this particular Sukkah design in the natural environment of Indiana.

The walls for the Sukkah are at once opaque and permeable, giving a sense of enclosure and privacy, yet permitting people standing outside to peer in to witness the ceremony as it transpires, or permitting those inside to observe the surrounding landscape. The visual connection to the landscape reinforces the spirit of the Sukkah as a symbol of the harvest and earth’s bounty. The walls are plastic, fluid entities that push and pull the interior space emphasizing the ebb and flow of natural forces.

A unique feature of this Sukkah is the use of built-in furniture, benches and a table, which are used for the daily feasts. The furniture is designed to fold up and leave the space free so that people can sleep anywhere inside. At one end of the structure, there is an opening through which food can be passed directly on to the table.

On the other facade there is an open shelving unit on which utensils and the ritual objects can be stored. The placement of the furniture offers the potential for action to take place, the furniture pieces are set pieces for an ancient ritual, traces of human activity in space.

The Sukkah is raised off the ground on two large wooden beams so

deborah asher barnstone

Robert and I bring unusual and varied backgrounds to architectural design. Robert was trained as a sculptor and painter before studying architecture, and I worked as a professional dancer, occasionally dabbling in choreography as well as set and costume design. Robert’s experience in making things has profoundly influenced the materials we choose to work with and the ways in which we construct. In his sculpture, Robert explores the relationship between frame and infill, plastic form and rigid material, solid object and mysterious void. On the other hand, my experience as a dancer heightened my sense of space as a physical presence while instilling in me a bias towards movement as the generator of architectural design.

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deborah asher barnstone

Because one of the meanings of the word Sukkah is ‘to weave,’ we decided to devise a construction technique that would literally use weaving and interweaving to form enclosure. We milled the lumber to 1/8” thickness so that it would be pliable. The strips vary in width from 3/4” to 1 1/2”. We used pneumatic tools to fabricate the Sukkah. Because pneumatic tools shoot many small nails at regular intervals, they operate almost like sewing machines and allow a more plastic construction than traditional hand tools. We nailed wooden strips on the inside and outside of a larger frame which is itself plastic. This construction technique creates the illusion of a woven surface. The weaving technique also gives the illusion of movement across the static façade structure since pieces move forward and backward in space.

We worked on the notion of embodied movement in every aspect of the design. The Sukkah is raised off the ground on two large wooden beams so that it appears to be suspended above the earth, allowing it to hover on the edge between stillness and motion.

The walls are plastic, fluid entities that push and pull the interior space emphasizing the ebb and flow of natural forces. Perhaps the wind blew part of the façade in—or perhaps a passerby bent it?

Because it can be assembled into small, light weight parts, the entire structure can be moved from place to place. The ten foot long

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walnut and maple dining table is suspended from the roof structure on one side and rests on a wall panel on the other—so that it appears to be cantilevered in the space, ready to fall at any moment.

The users move in and out during the daily ritual celebration. The food is delivered, passed over the table, eaten and removed.

The entire structure comes apart in sections small and light enough for two people to work with. The floor is made of two panels, vertical posts peg into the floor to support a series of wall panels that, in turn, support the roof. Connections are all formed either with simple pegs or with bolts making the Sukkah like a giant tinker toy. And like a tinker toy, anyone can assemble or dismantle it. In only a couple of hours, the entire structure can be taken apart and moved elsewhere so that it disappears without a trace. 

robert barnstone

that it appears to be suspended above the earth, allowing it to hover on the edge between the present and the past, between stillness and motion. The entire structure comes apart in sections small and light enough for two people to work with. The floor is made of two panels, vertical posts peg into the floor to support a series of wall panels that, in turn, support the roof. The table is suspended from the roof structure on one side and rests on a wall panel on the other.

In only a couple of hours, the entire structure can be dismantled, and moved elsewhere.

Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Robert Barnstone teach at Washington State University and Delft University of Technology, and live in eastern Washington State.

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deborah asher barnstone

news from the schools Todd Grant, University of Detroit-Mercy

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todd grant

todd grant

HE project here is to develop a living environment that allows the user to create different spatial configurations based on their own wants and desires for habitation. Each component has one atypical seating position. Five other orientations form arches, walls and places to lie. The different components are connected with two spliced bottom brackets (axles and bearings) from a BMX bicycle. these act as a pin, creating a freely rotating connection. The pin is set-screwed inside a precision milled aluminum block. These aluminum blocks are held in grid coordinates by laser-cut mild steel. This enables the building components to be in any orentation and to form load-bearing structures. The latticework of bending plywood joins one of the laser-cut pieces (nodes) to another, making fragmentary pieces of a negative space, seats or a climbing apparatus in lieu of stairs. Once fully assembled the whole structure is free to move, minus one point of anchoring, like a giant mobile spinning on the ground. ď §ď źď Ł

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r i g ht:ba ke r mcg a r va ha r t. l e f t: a de l e we de r

rond des jambes Adele We der

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the edge of Vancouver’s West End stands a paeon to motion, an 1884 turning-track and repair-shop for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Today, this jumble of brick stands resurrected, renovated and rechristened as the Roundhouse Community Centre, almost two decades after a gaggle of activists stopped demolition vehicles from razing most of the original buildings.

At this year’s Lieutenant-Governor’s Awards for Architecture, Baker McGarva Hart’s refurbished Roundhouse was acknowledged with an Award of Merit.

the decision was in keeping with Vancouver’s growing reputation as No Fun City, where budding street life tends to be asphyxiated by the ruling powers.

Then, as now, the structure was all about moving: trains shuttling in, engine car pirouetting 180 degrees to be redirected back east. But now the movement has been turned inside-out: everything lively happens inside the building, and the outside is dead as a doornail. The principal locomotive sits inert in a glass hall known as Engine 374 Pavilion, like a reconstructed dinosaur skeleton in a museum; not so much a tribute to train transport but an affirmation of its demise.

The class happens within the slickly renovated hall — an unusually rich environment for attempting classical ballet, for better and worse. The principal instructor, Janet Clarke, will tell you that you shouldn’t design opaque storage-room doors smack in the middle of the mirrored walls. She will also tell you that it’s the best space she’s ever taught in: sunny, airy and floored with gleaming, forgiving hardwood. And big, with those gloriously high industrial ceilings. “If you dance in a small space, you tend to dance small” She means this literally: you get used to making tight pirouettes and abbreviated jumps. “If you dance in a large space, you dance way out there--you dance really big.” I thought about this as I walked home: we Roundhouse users are all jammed into puny apartments in the surrounding West End, False Creek and Yaletown districts. We tend to move small: we walk small, we gesticulate small, perhaps we even think small. It’s nice to go somewhere once a week where we can move big, even if our form is wanting and our time is limited.

t

The cryptically quiet circle of pavement around the turn-track could have been--should have been--a vibrant Beaubourg-like piazza animated by buskers, strollers, toddlers and lagabouts.

But inexplicably, the concave wall of doors on the north façade--the logical choice for the main entrance--is sealed off. According to Baker McGarva Hart, it was the developer who vetoed the use of this suite of doors as a main entrance. Perhaps the intention was to preserve the sense of peace and stasis for the residents of the developers’ freshly built condos across the street. Whatever the motive,

Yet inside, basketball, belly-dancing and drumming workshops shake up the house every day and evening, as the locals make use of this fusion of old brick and gleaming new hardwood. And, on Wednesday evenings, perhaps the most shameless body-space encounter of all: the Ballet course with the oxymoronic classificiation of Adult Beginner.

Not that we, the hamfooted Adult Beginners, require a National Ballet-calibre rehearsal hall. The hope is more for something elusive that you might call grace, the quality which allows the human body to control and define the space through which it moves. Ballet, as Janet Clarke advices us, is a motion leading up to a single point. Certain other forms of dance suggest an attempt to negate space, to break out of it. Classical ballet, by contrast, seems to create space, as though the dancer were generating an invisible and ephemeral architecture in her wake.

The basis of all movements in classical ballet begin at that long bannister called the barre.

From this two-dimensional starting point, we carve out motions with irresistible French names: grand plié, croisé rond-des-jambes, soubresauts. Then, warmed up, we penetrate the broader, three-dimensional space of the room, with jetés, pirouettes, tour enchaines and sissonnes.

The hall’s design imperfections neatly echo our own: even the unfortunate placement of storage-room doors provides periodical reprieves from the side of a galumping body.

And the aging joints that still manage to quit the earth, if only for a moment; even while anachronistic and abandoned old Engine 374 stands forever still in its tracks. 

Adele Weder is an architectural critic living in Vancouver.

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This is an open dance floor next to Pat’s Hall in Fredericksburg, Gillespie County. It is a concrete floor, 120’ in diameter, under a live oak tree in the centre. This is the link, in my mind, between the very early settler dances on wagon sheets and the wooden platforms built in the shade under the trees, and the octagonal halls. Did the big, wheeling two-step circling around the halls come from dancing around a tree? Is the developmental history of the dance hall actually dependent on the developmental history of dancing, rather than on construction technology?

inventing a building typology Stephanie White

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exas dance halls were in their heyday from the 1890s to the Second World War; every small rural community had one.

While many are still in use for vast country weddings, church suppers and dances, an equal number can be found storing hay on a farm, or boarded up and rotting, or gone — just a trace on the map: at the end of Tin Hall Road is just another muddy field.

untrammelled dancing. Trusses spanning 70’ made of 1 x 6s, the odd 2 x 6, inventive, lightweight, elaborate, decorative, home made.

Vernacular buildings manage a tight fit between function and form with the most ingenious construction ideas. They really do make us question the over-engineered standards to which we have to build simple wood frame buildings today.

A typical hall is a large single room, about 6000 ft2 with a tall roof volume ventilated with louvred lanterns. The floor is raised off the ground on piers, shuttered window openings are without glass. Interior walls are unlined, uninsulated, a bench runs around the perimeter often up on a step, the exterior is painted white.

Outside is a beerstand with deep eaves shading counters made by the let down shutters. There is a substantial barbeque pit, often roofed. Sometimes there are shade arbours over picnic benches.

Once in a while there are separate kitchens. All this sits in a field, with companionable live oak trees nearby.

Few halls have airconditioning, floors wear out, roofs need attention; increasingly old halls are replaced by modern metal buildings with HVAC plants.

Dance halls were the sites of courting, weddings and wakes — the milestones in a rural community’s life. Stories of bands that played till 4am and by 5 everyone was out in the fields offer brilliant sunfilled slices of a rural Texas life almost completely dominated by nature, the seasons, climate, weather and the agricultural calendar.

Early German and Czech settlers danced on canvas stretched out on the ground. A bit more permanent was a moveable wooden dance floor in the shade of an oak tree. Then came a roof to keep the rain and sun off the floor, then the walls. Two shapes: rectangular and polygonal; a bit barn-like but with clear spans for

Perhaps the cultural revolution that is the act of emigration, with all the difficulties that face the immigrant, extinguishes the desire for revolution in architectural form. The building at the heart of these communities evolved in small clear steps, never exceeding the grasp or the capacity of that local pool of builders. Dance halls in central Texas evolved over about fifty years until the point where American society began to change rapidly: television, the emptying of the rural hinterland, changes to farming practice that needed fewer people, rising education levels — tight rural communities loosened their hold on their territory.

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The 20th century obsession with revolutionary progress must be set alongside evolutionary vernacular building practices.

Architecture and architects’ desire to be instrumental in social, cultural and political change, rather than mere accommodation marks the difference. These community halls are, above all, accommodating.

stephanie white

Turnverien, Bellville, Austin County. 1885.

Turnveriens were gymnastic clubs started by German settlers in the 1850s. This hall is twelve-sided and rests on a stone foundation. I cannot think how this was laid out – a system based on three, 60* angles rather than octagonal halls based on 90*. 12 devided by 3 = 4 quarters, then divided in 3 again. And every side is exactly 21’-2. From corner to centre is 42’. Their measuring unit appears to be 21’. Below is the central queen post, supporting the roof and ventilation lantern at the top.

Baca Pavilion, Warrenton, Fayette County.

Is the 1935 Baca Hall, now used exclusively for antiques fairs, still a dance hall? Formally, yes: pivoting shutters, cross breezes, ventilated floor.

Functionally, no. It is not the centre of a local, geographically defined community. It maintains the now fictional landscape of these huge belllike volumes in fields of grass and stands of oak, while actually servicing a dispersed community from Houston to Dallas bound together only the quest for patchwork quilts and primitive furniture. Is the green metal shed out on the highway a dance hall? Functionally, yes. It has a stage, a dance floor, a beer stand inside, a barbeque pit out in the back. Formally, no. It could house machine shop equally well, and in many places, does.

stephanie white

The disjunction between form and function is characteristic of the hybridizing late twentieth century. It is not unconnected that the great discussions of typologies that occurred over the last twenty years established a sentimental affection for the look of the past divorced from use. The erosion of a vernacular building type happens as much from this detachment of function from form, as from wind, weather, termites and desertion. 

Stephanie White, editor of On Site review, is an architect living in Calgary.

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variable volume architecture Ash es h h Sa h e b a

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AKING spatial propositions has a great impact on the inhabitable environment. As our surroundings are built, shelter is created both physically and socially. The construction of space and its use is regulated by the life span of occupation: volumes are renovated, reprogrammed, or torn down placing substantial demand on the boundary condition. The enclosure that defines occupation is an important interface that initiates the act of making architecture.

Living is a dynamic enterprise. Space is sculpted with response to variable parameters. Architecture becomes a living entity, and as such must be adaptable. Using this framework, one can use movement as an essential component in building research.

hinge component

In reaching equilibrium between the external and internal environment, the components of architectural assembly must also maintain structural integrity. Here, a two dimensional surface is transformed and broken by movement. This fractured skin is splayed, physically, to produce a three dimensional spatial structure.

Through this manipulation, the planes that create the membrane begin to overlap and create gaps between the skin and the structural frame.

As changes in geometry take place, loads on the skin continue to be transferred to the frame. The structural change of the surface in the expanded condition increases the depth of the opening. This depth change allows lateral forces (wind loads) to be transferred more efficiently to the frame from the skin. Also, positive pressure that is present when the surface lies flat breaks up as the surfaces shift out of plane with each other. Negative and positive wind pressure are present in the expanded condition.

The characteristics of the boundary are integrally dependent on its form. Permeability of light and air are dependent on the configuration of the system. The potential of this relationship is that the fine tuning of the boundary brings about a greater awareness of external conditions and efficiencies in performance.

Using geometric change to design an adaptable system creates the basis for a transformable architecture. The performance of this system is not only measured in terms of quantitative values, but also in terms of the spatial quality achieved.

asheshh saheba

The digital environment is critical to the design of the pieces: the movement of the assembly depends on a high level of accuracy. A minimum tolerance level ensures that the pieces will interact in a precise and predictable way. Also, movement can be tested within the digital environment before physical production. The software gives us an assembly model showing the degree of movement for each piece. Then the components go through a design refinement process before final production.

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system movement model

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Moments are envisioned and sequenced to show the spatial configuration of a variable volume architecture — the images of such an imagined landscape act as a catalytic shift of paradigms, for the development and deployment of this architectural stance pivots on the hyper-collision of design and construction processes.

landscape 01

The discussion of spatial constructs identified in the work presented cannot exist without the consideration of flexibility at each level of architectural investigation. Within existing material, volumetric and structural frameworks lie the untapped resources towards an enriched occupation of space.

Volumes f luctuate.

Boundaries dissolve.

Architecture lives.

landscape 02

  

landscape 03

asheshh saheba

Asheshh Saheba is an architect working in New York City.

More of this work can be found at http://architecture.mit. edu/~asheshh

landscape 04

prototype - collapsed

prototype - expanded

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keith ir ving

moving to the edges Step h a n ie W h i t e

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HE North is Canada’s periphery and one of the major buildings in it is Arcop’s Assembly Hall in Iqualuit. Peripheral to the architectural terrain in urban centres is the industrial hinterland at the city’s edges — warehouses, industrial plants, transport depots. Unlike the high-profile urban condition, this industrial hinterland is known almost entirely by people who actually work in it and by truckers. Just as one doesn’t drop by Iqualuit, neither does one drop by a call centre out where the coyotes roam and the snow blows.

Bruce Allan of Arcop says that Iqaluit was a box city of ATCO trailers in a white desert. The form of the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut, 1999-2000, was inspired by the wind which scours the snow off of and from around the building.

This is not a case of a building looking like a snowdrift, but rather being a shape that conspires with wind and snow to provide shelter. It is, Allan says, a large building specific to the far north, not informed by the south.

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keith ir ving

Sites on the edge of developed cities are practically virgin, close to agriculture in the most romantic way and seem to invite a kind of clarity without urban reference.

So to what do they refer?

keith ir ving

Arcop Group + Full Circle Architecture in Joint Venture

The logistics of building in the far north revolve around climate. Everything in the eastern Arctic comes by one or two sea lifts between the end of ice in July and the coming of snow in September. All materials are precut, all bolts counted out, all necessary tools included.

these pages: Legislative Assembly of Nunavut, Iqaluit. 1999-2000 Arcop Group, Montreal

Arcop Group + Full Circle Architecture in Joint Venture

The Nunavut government operates with an open, transparent philosophy. The building matches: government is seen at work from the both the exterior and from an open gallery that connects the assembly hall to the administrative offices. It was built by the Nunavut Construction Company using local Inuit tradesmen — given the four month work season it is difficult for young graduates of the northern technical colleges to complete their apprenticeships: the building of the Assembly Hall was a major learning and development project for the community.

Arcop has worked, since the mid-1970s, in India and Pakistan with affiliated offices in New Delhi and Karachi. Within these contexts it is instinctive for them to work with available technology and materials, with regional craftsmen. As with the Assembly Hall this gives the community a more extended sense of ownership of their buildings.

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The TransAlta Call Centre, now occupied by EPCOR, designed in 1998 by Craig Gilbert when he was with Culham Pedersen Valentine, is also located in a box building landscape — the industrial-commercial park hinterland that is northeast Calgary. Seen as an undistinguished, open setting, there was a feeling that they could do whatever they wanted here.

In a step down from the stainless steel precision of CPV’s Nova Building of the early 1980s, the use of galvanized steel and aluminum gives the building a brittle sort of edge that appeared tougher than the firm’s usual work.

As Fred Valentine sees it, the building used rougher materials with more discipline, less taste, more adventure. This project raised the bar for that kind of district and that kind of building — the call centre typology not immediately springing to mind, this one will serve as a serious beginning. It also raised the bar within the firm updating CPV’s high tech iciness into something more contentious.

these pages: TransAlta Call Centre, 1998.

Culham Pedersen Valentine Architects, Calgary, Alberta

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culham pedersen valentine

stephanie white

There are two peripheries here, one so geographically remote that skill sets, materials and schedules allow no slack in the architect’s management of the project; the other not so distant in miles, but psychologically remote from the scenographies imposed on urban environments, allowing a different kind of rigor. Rather than fobbing off these distant sites with quick conventional buildings thinking no one will ever see them, the sites are treated as serious, independent countries with the potential for a new world architecture. The resources of the centre, in the form of two well respected, well established architectural practices, are sent to the periphery and return, changed.

The periphery is the source of many movements that seed future developments at the centre. Latin American political theorists invested the word periphery with its simultaneous underdeveloped and activist reading: colonies provide the raw resources for the benefit of the core. It suits the core to keep the colonies from developing to the point that they are self-sustaining and don’t need to export their resources — resources, the story goes, that the centre no longer has, or is too complacent to extract. Naturally after a time the periphery began to feel a bit exploited and the resultant anger fuelled the decolonisation movements of Africa in the 1960s.

Also in the 1950s and 60s, South American colonies ‘decolonised’ in the nineteenth century through Spain’s ineptitude, found that economic colonisation was still alive and well. André Gunder Frank proposed that the choices for Latin America were underdevelopment or revolution, Cuba being the most long lasting example. Now, this is an almost irresponsible gloss on a half-century of rich and important social movement, but I want to use it to locate some of the peripheral architecture being built in Canada today, using the core-periphery relationship.

We have a large periphery — the hinterland outside the urban centres, and local peripheries — the edges of those urban centres. We have designers peripheral to the profession and a country peripheral to the well published architectures of the oldest centre of all, Europe and the twentieth century centre, the USA.

modernism than was ever enacted in Western European or American cities. And in this was the problem. Architecture as freely practiced on rule-less sites ignores the rules of the culture it is serving.

The Legislative Assembly counters this through the process of construction and the shape of the building itself. Harriet Moulton-Burdett, who had a practice in Iqualuit and now is located in Halifax, has noted the way that people working in the building have occupied it with their own work: sealskin intarsia abounds — the building is a housing for significant cultural practice. Bruce Allan has noted that during an assembly if a herd of caribou is seen on the street through the open glass walls everyone leaves to hunt them — the building is a housing that doesn’t interrupt significant cultural practice. He also speaks about the sealed nature of the construction; there are no voids to fill with snow. The building is constructed of wood which is a more malleable material than steel: the forgiving tolerances of timber are put beside the high performance details that confront the weather.

The periphery is the centre for those who live there, the circumpolar region is increasingly well defined and self directed.

We have lots of what can be seen as periphery in Canada. It points to a direction for Canadian architecture: we might look to our edges, which are culturally rich, individual and full of different kinds of challenges and are uniquely ours. 

Reading Frank, Wallerstein, Anderson and other such economic theorists, one is pleased to discover that innovation, lateral thinking and provocative movement happens at the edge, not at the core. In the case of the TransAlta Call Centre, building on the edge simply provides a rule-less site on which to experiment, there is no cultural component here, as there is with the Legislative Assembly in Iqaluit. The developing world is replete with social and political experiments built in architecture — look through John Donat’s World Architecture of the 1960s and one can find a much more adventurous

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When the Technical University of Nova Scotia joined Dalhousie University in 1999, it identified that working with actual communities in coastal environments was one of its strengths.To build on this expertise it has started to look beyond its immediate region.

Dalhousie Faculty of Architecture and Planning is contacting partner nations on the Atlantic Rim which have no university level programmes in architecture or planning, and collaborating with other nations which have such programmes, hoping to both learn from and to expand their range of offerings. In both kinds of collaboration we expect to extend our own knowledge of coastal design and planning.

The criteria for choosing potential partner countries includes the use of English, a secondary school system which produces graduates, the absence of architecture or planning programmes and relatively stable political and economic situation (on this basis

above: a new lever arm pump and a pulley pump, designed and built by local students, Richard Kroeker and Tm McAllen in Gunjur

r i c h a r d k r o e k e r a n d To d d m c a l l e n

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coasts of the Atlantic and the Caribbean include several countries which share the opportunities and problems of seaside nations: maritime economy, tourism, environmental exploitation including water pollution, erosion and ocean habitat destruction. These countries include Iceland, The Gambia, Belize, Guyana, Bahamas, Bermuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, Antigua & Barbuda, St. Lucia, St.Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago, ranging from very wealthy (Iceland, Bermuda), to very poor (The Gambia, Guyana). he

moving around the atlantic rim Tom E m o di Sierra Leone is unfortunately excluded at present). The strategy of working with the countries around the edge of the Atlantic and Caribbean underpins our Atlantic Rim Initiative: the development of culturally and environmentally sustainable education in design and planning with and for Atlantic Rim nations.

The long term vision is programmes involving students and faculty that operate in several countries. This allows comparative studies to be made, either simultaneously or in sequence. Cultures and climates differ — one of the interesting dimensions of the initiative will be these comparative studies.

Our work in the Gambia has already been extensive. A studio with eighteen local university students, led by Jean Hill developed a strategy for heritage status with and for the town of Janjanbureh, about 200km inland on an island in The Gambia River, a settlement of historic and cultural significance in the troubled period of colonisation of West Africa. We have worked with the village of Gunjur, a successful coastal community based on boat building, fishing and fish processing. Gunjur’s water is supplied by many individual wells, some public and most private, all operated mainly by women and children drawing water using ropes and buckets, thereby polluting the aquifer on which the village depends. Using a studio course working with twenty local university students led

by Richard Kroeker and a graduate student, Todd McAllen, two prototype pumps made of local materials (mostly underused or discarded) were designed and built.

In Summer 2002 Dalhousie will offer two Atlantic Rim studio courses. A studio with Brian Mackay-Lyons will take place in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The other will be in Reykjavik. with Richard Kroeker of Dalhousie and Dori Gislason, director of the school in Iceland.

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These design and planning exercises are the laboratory basis for a full scale program of undergraduate paraprofessional studies in design and planning -- exactly what, for example, the Gambia needs to begin to make more effective use of its resources. In 2003 we will work in Serekunda, part of the Gambian capital Banjul, a newly flourishing community with bazaar-like main streets and thousands of dense family compounds, many exceedingly poor. Issues facing Serekunda will be compared to those of Reykjavik, the thriving historic capital of Iceland, contributing to a strategic understanding of potential Atlantic Rim initiatives.

We are also, with the University of the Gambia and the Gambia Technical Training Institute, developing an undergraduate programme in design, construction and planning. In some places major fundraising is involved, and in others modest fundraising efforts are adequate. Iceland and the Gambia represent one of each of these scenarios.

The Atlantic Rim Initiative is an intense effort requiring involvement and commitment from increasing numbers of faculty members and students and is not without significant dangers. While investing effort in the planning and architecture of developing nations we must fuse that perspective with the issues found in developed nations and cities like our own. We are acutely aware that we are preparing our graduates to practice sensitively wherever their careers take them. The comparison and contrast between village and metropolis promises depth and richness for advanced studies in planning and architecture.  Tom Emodi is Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia

globalising the unchangeable: new shifts in hutterite colonies Tom Strickland Before the fall of the Berlin wall and the strained widening in perspective of communist China there existed a group of people who bridged the gap between Communism and Capitalism. Adapting to changes and mutating at the very edge of our juggernaut of western capitalism the Hutterites continue to nourish a communal life that is financially sophisticated and successful. Through thoughtful adaptation that has kept the intentions of their society intact while accepting the changes in our world, this group has also substantially increased in number at a minimal expense to the planet. Given the relatively low defection rate from their colonies, Hutterites seem to have succeeded so far in maintaining their membership more effectively than any other ethnic group. The communal way of life is certainly not a universal solution, yet, with current suburban sprawl consuming farmland at a rate of 1.2 million acres a year - farmland that is poised to double its production to meet the global demand by the year 2080, according to a recent UN study - it seems valuable to investigate communities who successfully approach a similar contradiction of ideologies. The Hutterites perhaps do not make these connections but simply do what they do, successfully, in both their world and ours.

tom: its beautiful here. henry: yah it is, but beauty does not make money son. tom: it does in banff. henry: that is tourism.

Cayley Colony, Alberta. June 2001

H

ISTORICALLY the Hutteries have not been as private a people as they seem today. The founders of the movement were far ahead of their contemporaries in social and political awareness, grounded in social structures prevalent in pre-capitalist and even pre-mercantile central Europe, especially the agricultural institution of the commons and the manufacturing organization of the Guilds.

The Hutterite movement solidified during the Reformation when the convincing logic was religion, and social ideas could only be expressed through religion. The Hutterites along with many other groups searching for a language with which to resist feudalism, mercantilism, and capitalism seized upon the writings of Luther to articulate social demands in the name of religion. The eventual elimination

of communal rights in Europe bypassed the Hutterite movement: communal rights had been codified through the Hutterite socio-materialistic interest in the terminologies of the bible, thus was realized a new order based on Christian communistic principals.

This super-commitment to communal intentions presents itself in the form of the colonies within the landscape.

The relationship of these formations to infrastructures show changes in the actions of the colony and the colony’s relation to exterior events and activities. The buildings themselves illustrate how the colonies retain their communality at the every day level, while allowing the collective form to adapt to new modes of transportation and expanding market demands.

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Each colony is organized around three primary components: housing, a mixed-use building called the kitchen and agricultural buildings. Traditionally housing forms a courtyard with a central kitchen. Agricultural buildings extend away from the housing complex like fingers extending away from the palm of the hand. The mixed-use building contains the kitchen, dining area and church. It responds to the strong communal needs of the Hutterites — under this roof the colony gathers to eat, hold forum, worship, and celebrate. It is always occupied and provides a gathering place for the whole colony at least four times each day.

Maintaining the equality of people and spaces, this very active building is almost indistinguishable from the housing. The construction system and exterior surfaces, including the roof with its low pitch, are the same. The only distinguishing feature is its central location. Exactly how central varies from colony to colony. At the Cayley Colony, the mixed-use building is in the middle of rows of houses, whereas at the Star Ridge Colony it is the piece that forms the closure to a circular courtyard.

Housing is universally formed around a courtyard typology. The same roof covers the whole housing complex: in support of equality there is no attempt to distinguish one dwelling from the next. This is a visibly poignant contrast to ordinary suburban development where a similar type of ground-zero construction is employed yet the struggle for individuality is paramount.

In the house of Henry and Marie Walter a simple and familiar event has occurred. A bedroom on the main floor has been turned into a small office for the colony computer. According to Marie Walter the computer has become a necessity at the colony as, “...the finances have become so complicated here that Henry would be working 24 hours a day to keep up if he didn’t have it.”

to m s tr ic k l an d

Each unit has a small front porch giving a place to sit and access to the house as the foundations rise two feet above grade. This common Canadian construction detail is exaggerated at the colonies where the basement is used as a living space and thus requires good daylight. The dwellings themselves are very simple: a common room, a closet, a bathroom, two bedrooms on the main floor, and two bedrooms in the basement. There are no individual kitchens as all meals are cooked and eaten communally.

Storage is in small built-in counters units with cupboards above, and dressers in the bedrooms for clothing.

from the top: Cayley garden, housing, porch Starridge Colony

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This is a familiar change for many of us, however what it represents to a Hutterite colony is the significant change from communal farming to agri-business. With enormous landholdings the Hutterites feel the pressures of a growing population placing increased demands on the world’s resources. Rising energy prices increase the cost of operating farm machinery and heating colony buildings. Combined with the decrease in market prices for agricultural products due to corporate competition on a global scale, these events are forcing the colonies to participate more and more in capitalist markets. This is now reflected in the newer colonies at a scale that affects the form of the colony itself, where changes to the traditional arrangement of the three components can be seen.

Located as close to the highway as a service station, the Bieseker Colony has rearranged the traditional palm to finger relationship between the housing complex, the mixed-use building, and the agricultural buildings. The agricultural buildings focus on the highway instead of the housing. In general most agricultural buildings are active along the length of the building; the vehicles begin loading or unloading at the doors at one end of the building with the product being moved down the length of the building.

By locating the colony within feet of the highway and by redirecting the focus of the active length of the agricultural buildings toward this same highway the colony allows transportation vehicles to leave the road and park within feet of the active end of a building. for easy loading and unloading. The kitchen, traditionally the central focus of the colony housing complex, is now located between the housing and the highway adding to its role as an internal organizing mechanism that of mediator between the colony and the public realm.

from the top: entrance to Cayley entrance to Beiseker Beiseker and its proximity to the highway Beiseker mixed use building

to m s tr ic k la nd

Facing many of the same questions every community faces, the Hutterites have responded in similar ways by making small functional changes to previously defined spaces, while at the same time responding with dramatic shifts in colony form as they continue to bridge the gap between their culture and ours. 

Communication with the Hutterites can run into difficulties. This is not because the colonies avoid sharing their lives and communities with visitors, but instead stems from the differences between the cycles of life in our society and theirs. In most cases visitors are more than welcome as the colonies are very proud of their homes and their lives, however as each day unfolds at the individual colonies. finding a good day for a visit can take weeks or even months.

A visit in late May through June is impossible, this is planting season and the colonies are working in 8-hour shifts 24 hours a day for six to eight weeks. During planting season there is no such ‘good day for a visit’. To find a good day one must call the morning of the day of the intended visit and hope it can be arranged. These meetings can be cancelled soon after they are arranged, as events at the colonies can change hourly. It was mentioned by Marie Walter, my tour guide, that CBC Radio had been trying for two weeks to meet with two girls who were to be the first Hutterites to graduate from senior high school. ‘It is difficult for their schedules to meet’, she told me with a sigh.

Tom Strickland is an architect working from High River and in the process of setting up a non-profit architectural office.

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B

ETWEEN 1892 and 1954 twenty-two million immigrants landed on Ellis Island in search for a new life. Leaving the old world behind; they abandoned their own country, their families and their roles in their own homes. Their past was washed away as they travelled to this new land.

Underneath the surface of hope and new beginnings lay the fear of separation, rejection and deportation. The island was both an open door for the fortunate and a locked door for the deported. For detainees it was a place of uncertainty and separation It was a place filled with deception for the ones whose hopes and promises were denied fulfillment by the American government — that guardian of individual freedom and dignity. Untruths about health conditions, supposed relatives waiting in America — a host of dishonesties were used to get into the land of rebirth.

American government immigrant officers were filled with suspicion, often receiving the immigrants with hostility.

Ellis Island, this threshold over which one enters the land of new possibilities by discarding of one’s former self, has itself become discarded. The buildings on Islands Two and Three are in decay, dereliction — no life except for pigeons and untended bushes. Sunlight streams through the broken windows. The space speaks powerfully of the trauma that the immigrants brought with them when they gave up their old lives, and of the misfortune of those who either died on the island or were detained and separated from their families.

In 1990 Island One was renovated as a museum. The original main immigration building was restored and is now an information centre depicting the immigration process in the actual layout and in old photos. Original furniture and pans used to feed the immigrants are on display. The depiction of the island’s past has been carefully set up to inform the public of the nation’s rich immigrant heritage.

Ironically, the part that is shut off, the forbidden part with the words, NO TRESPASSING on the gates, tells the most accurate story. It is this other part of the island that does not need reconstruction. Another reality exists here, hidden away from the groups of visitors so preoccupied with the information offered in the replicated space of the restored building.

Islands Two and Three contain a strong presence of the people that once were but are no longer here. Walking into the deserted rooms brings chills to one’s spine. The door left ajar, the single chair in the empty room are traces of people who have abandoned the space. Emptied out filing cabinets were once filled with personal documents of the immigrant’s life. Like Christian Boltanski’s les Habits de François C. where piles of clothes in the concentration camps brings us the absent man (Boltanksi, Milan: Charta, 1997), on Ellis Island the furniture, the half opened windows, the toilet are a direct link to prior users. It seems that these inanimate objects once had a sense of existence, lived through their own lives and have exhausted themselves. Like the buildings, they have no more life to give.

ellis island — the abandoned

frances mikur ya

Fr a n cis M iku r y a

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ON SITE review 5

The museum on Ellis Island speaks of the immigrant heritage only on the surface – pure factual information. An Ellis Island web site allows one to track down one’s ancestors. It contains timelines of historical facts, missing all the real qualities of the island. The ancestors found through the web site were the ones who made it across. What about the detained, the deported and the ones who died on the island? There is no reference to this dark side of the history.

Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin speaks to the void: the void in the museum that organises all the other spaces and the void in the space of Berlin: ‘that which can never be exhibited when it comes to Jewish Berlin History. The void is the space which represents the absence — the eradication of Jewish life in Berlin.’ (Libeskind. Jewish Museum. Berlin: G and B Arts International, 1999.)

a proposal: a memorial for the absent A museum is a place for the public, to educate the public and make them aware of the historical moment. A memorial is a place to commemorate. A memorial here should pay respect for not only the brave ones who crossed; equally important but forgotten are the ones who never made it in their pursuit for freedom. The rest of Ellis Island could be opened up, leaving the existing dilapidated condition as it is, since it is a place more powerful than any architect’s attempt to portray reality.

It is reality.

The abandoned condition should be preserved by having a path around the site and an installation of mirrors and cameras reflecting and showing the inside of the buildings: the hidden will be exposed, even the morgue and the crematorium where it is pitch darkness and cold.

The mirror reflects us as we reflect upon this this delicate and desolate space. 

frances mikur ya

Frances Mikurya has just finished the graduate program in architecture at Columbia and is currently living in San Francisco.

ON SITE review 5

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kosovo

Deb o r a h G a n s a n d M a t t h ew Je l aci c One in every 269 persons on this planet is a refugee and a blue tarp is what we give them. Unhappy with the tarp, but without the expertise to develop alternatives, several aid organizations sponsored an international ideas competition for the design of disaster relief housing, which we won.

T

he traditional factors of disaster relief housing are ease of transport and assembly, low cost, and the ability to withstand varied environmental conditions.

Our project won because it understood the inter-related nature of the factors but also because it addressed the cultural and psychological needs of the refugees. For example, ours was the only design with a toilet or kitchen because most entrants and relief organizations assumed the conditions of refugee camp — group latrines and soup kitchens — to be de rigeur.

We proposed that the refugee camp itself be re-thought in terms of design and indeed in terms of its very existence.

Our strategy and goal was the immediate return of the people to the sites of their former or future homes. Our kit works in a camp situation, but also serves as a utility core and structural scaffold on sites of reconstruction, and can even remain as a permanent part of the new house. In this

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ON SITE review 5

A model of the kitchen and toilet kits with living space in-between that could be enclosed with tarps or doors,

way our approach meets the needs of a new kind of refugee, the Internally Displaced Person. The UN recently recognized the existence of 25 million IDP worldwide whom they want to help restore to their homes.

Doctors Without Borders goes one step further in their definition of refugee; to include people internally displaced within functioning society, in other words, the homeless. For example. they send their disaster relief teams into the slums of Rio. In our practice, we too operate with this understanding of the continuum of homelessness. Around a year after the competition, the housing organization Commonground asked us and our partner on the project Marguerite McGoldrick to design a new flop-house, meaning de-mountable rooms that stand within a larger-loft space as an alternative to the sea-ofbeds shelter.

A full scale model of one room, exterior.

In its pre-fabricated component system and spatial flexibility this housing is a lot like our proposal for disaster relief. In this case, a knock down aluminum frame is bolted to plywood panels with a simple wrench — almost like a really big Ikea cabinet.

Relief organizations resist the sea of beds and therefore underutilize the safe havens of armories, factories, schools and gyms because they haven’t considered alternatives like our design for Commonground. We envision that Extreme Housing will allow for the armory as well as the camp, the city as well as the muddy field as sites of relocation. Extreme housing will meet the physical and economic criteria of disaster but also reconstitute the qualities of privacy, self-determination, comfort and beauty that everyone calls home. 

The interior of the room above.

The basic unit above, and to the right, two units showing how they can colonize safe haven space.

Deborah Gans and Matthew Jalisek have a practice in New York City.

ON SITE review 5

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fro m t h e sc h o ol s An th o ny M a c p h e rs o n University of Toronto

the brief: meuble/immeuble(deployable habitation) this assignment asks you to design and construct a full scale deployable habitation for one person. Combining strategies of building, furnishing and clothing, your construction must attend to two states of the body, the first in movement and the second in stasis.

Instructors: David Carter, Terence van Elslander, An Te Liu(coordinator), Brenda Webster-Tweel

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ON SITE review 5

New! ADS1 Taddepol Tentecote Solo habitation providing protection from nature’s harsh elements. True to its namesake, this innovative design metamorphoses from tapering tunnel-shelter, comfortably sleeping one adult, to functional rain jacket, offering warmth and dryness as well as trend-setting style. Constructed solely of rattan and nylon, the tent’s two states balance sturdiness and durability without compromising on overall weight. Features double in utility and role: i.e. jacket sleeves to windows, hood to canopy. Opposing reversible zippers allow for refreshing air flow. Fits to 180cm in length.

Made in Canada.

Colour Swamp Green. Sizes Custom-Fit Men’s L Only 2001-11-02 Men’s 805g (L) $88.00

W

e were asked to create a full-scale deployable ‘habitation’ for one person, that exists in two states, one being stasis, the other motion. Only two materials were permitted for use, one as a structural element (no larger than would be found in a 2x3x8 piece of wood) and the other a membrane element. I defined habitation as a that which gives one a sense of protection, whether from the elements, or predators, or of personal space. I decided then that I would focus on protection from nature, as I felt doing so included many of the other aspects we seek shelter from. With the assignment requiring the habitation to be portable and deployable, I sought to use materials that were very light and easy to compress, and held their form, thus rattan and nylon, not to mention economical (being on a student budget). I first drew up the tent form, and then went about determining how I could compress it, while making it portable. The ideal situation was a jacket form, as it was easily portable, moved with the body, and also suited my definition of habitation; shelter from nature. Completed, it is possible, as the photos show, to change from one state to the other without removing oneself from the habitation.

I named my habitation as the Todepole Tentecote after the middle english terms for tadpole and tent/coat. The ‘tadpole’ is a reference to habitation resembling the many states a tadpole enters from tadpole to frog (i.e. body with tail, body with tail and legs, body with tail legs and arms, body loses tail).

andrew macpherson

Materials list: Rattan, nylon, (2 zippers, snaps, clip belt) 

ON SITE review 5

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Who writes for On Site?

Here is the index of the first five issues.

Some back issues available at cost — $5.00. Order below.

Allen, Arthur Ancelin, Ryan

Andreas, Greg

The Last Asylum, Weyburn Saskatchewan os | 3 Straw board os | 3 Recycling Rummer os | 2 letter from San Francisco os | 1 * Bambury, Jill Fischer Housing Project, New Orleans os | 2

Dramatic Rites: Capilano College/

Henriquez + Partners os | 1 Baniassad, Essy Essential Health Care, Tanzania os | 3

Nancefield Hostel, Soweto os | 4 Bochud, Michel Radiant Energy and Low Emissivity os | 1 * Cairncross, Rosalind Breathing Walls os | 3 Cavanagh, Ted Second Nature/Second Growth,

Capilano College os | 1 Carroll, Michael The Tempest: the 1998 ice storm project os | 4 * Dodson, Jim letter from Norway os | 2 Donnel, Al real places: LasVegas os | 3

letter from Las Vegas os | 1

letter from las Vegas os | 5 Dyson, Brian the Tate Modern os | 4 * Felske, Lorry Wash Houses and Hospitals os | 3

The Western Canadian Coal Miner’s Cottage os | 2 Ford, Lilian Coyotes and Nature inthe City os | 2 Forster, Kim Discursive and Practical Spatialities:

the Anti-Loft symposium os | 3 Fraser, Linda Saving Architecture: the Canadian

Architectural Archives os | 1 * Gatt, Carmel letter from Malta os | 5 Gibson, Geoffrey Necessary Chaos os | 3

Lightwells os | 4

Citizen Airport os | 5 * Haraldsson, Arni Woodlands Asylum, New Westminster, BC os |3

Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation,

Firminy, France os |2 Harris, Deirdre Excessive Cleanliness os |3

Lightwells os |4 Hayes, Kenneth McMaster Health Science Centre os |3

Rec Room os |4 Henriquez + Partners Library, Student Services and Theatre,

Capilano College os |1 Heredia, Juan Manuel Old Uses/Contemporary Interpretations:

Mexican House os |2

letter from Mexico City os |1 Hernandez, David Architecture and Time, Mexico City os |3

letter from Mexico City os |1

Moving Architecture: Flower Stands, Morelos os |5 Hernandeza, Ivan Old Uses/Contemporary Interpretations:

Mexican House os |2

Moving Architecture: Flower Stands, Morelos os |5 * Hill, Robert Craven Road, Shim and Sutcliffe os |4 Hinton, Lori Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation,

Firminy, France os |2 * Kaplan, Ken Design Under the Knife os |3 King, Andrew Budapest os |4 Klaver, Eric Local Colour, the native plant movement os |3

The lawn: Surface of Everyday Value os |2

S(o)wing artifacts, Capilano College os |1 * Lowry, Heather On Type: from the ashes of Dusseldorf os |1 *

MacDonnell, Bill Dien Bien Phu, 1954 os |4 Martin, Tom Views of a Bridge, Calgary os |4

Pedestrian Bridge Crossing, Sarcee Trail, Calgary os |2 Maurer Kobayashi Nats’ Ekhi Ku Health Centre, Whitehorse os |3 McCutcheon, George real places: Cow Bay, BC os | 4

Looking at Hartley Bay, BC os |5 Mikurya, Frances Paper Houses os |4

Ellis Island - the Abandoned os |5 * Norlander, Glen Heavy Maintenance Shop,

Aurora Mine, Alberta os |4 * Owen, Graham Architecture on the Crest of the Wave:

globalization os | 2 * Rusted, Brian The EmpireStarted Here:

Newfoundland Root Cellars os | 1 * Saheba, Asheshh letter from Ammadabad os | 1

Variable Volume Architecture os | 5 Silver, Angela Budapest os | 4 Sonntag, Hardmuth Rain and Rosemary: green roofs in Weisbaden os | 2 Soto, Marcela Valparaiso: new urban intersections os | 4 Smeins, Linda Pedestrian Views: the Experience Music

Project, Frank Gehry os | 4

Representing Houses: Arch Record and

Canadian Architect os | 2 * Timms, Arran New World Building System os | 2 Tsai, David Hand Over Matter os | 4 Tweel, Brenda mcdonough.com os | 3

ofOz, 100% Design os | 3

BUILD now, Montreal os | 2

Modernism: the Aalto Alternative os | 2

Guilded by Association: working

partnerships os | 2

Parc Downsview Park, Koolhaas and Mau os | 4 * Weder, Adele Health Fetish: sex, lies and magazines. os | 3

A Room of One’s Own:VanCity Place,

Nigel Baldwin os | 2

The Roundhouse Dance Studio,Vancouver os | 5 White, Stephanie 3 Models: Health delivery in difficult environments os | 3

P Thibault’s Temps et Materialité os | 4

Canadian Forces Camps in Bosnia,

Kosovo and Somalia os | 2

Regional Modernity,Vancouver BC os | 1 Wotherspoon, Justin Canadian Light Source synchrotron,

University of Saskatchewan os | 3

real places: Saskatoon os | 4 * Young, Dennis The New Tate os | 4 * Zaharuk, Michael Looking at NAFTA os | 2

Tax Cuts and Health Care os | 3 Zedda, Antonio A Northern Evolution: Public Works Housing in

Whitehorse os | 2 *

to order, send a cheque for $5 + gst and the number of the issue(s) you would like to on|site 1326 11th avenue se calgary, alberta T2G 0Z5

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ON SITE review 5

ivan hernandez

Architecture and Movement

stephanie white

above: Manoo’s Pabellon on the highway between Mexico and Acapulco. See moving into architecture, p.10 right: Culham Pedersen Valentine’s call centre building in the industrial zone of northeast Calgary. See moving to the edges, p. 26