on site 7 :: transformations

2002

7 $7.50

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On Site review issue 7 2002 publisher Field Notes Press guest editor Tom Strickland editor Stephanie White contributors Lisa Der Marc Dufour Deirdre Harris Ilona Hay Sherazad Jamal Filiz Klassen Andrew King Bianca Lagueux Tracey MacTavish Tanner Merkeley Tonkao Panin Chris Roberts Sam Smith Tom Strickland Talbot Sweetapple Stephanie White Jennifer Wise

cover back: graffiti found in the Pilkington Glass building lifted and reused on interior glass partitions. photographs by Jason Stang. see Jennifer Wise, p 8. front: ez house by AKA Andrew King Studio. development drawing of the front cantilever by Paul Stady in form z. see interview on p 46.

translations Nathan Golden Raymond Arés editorial consultant Linda M Cunningham design & production Black Dog Running Syntax Media Services

published with the support of the Canada Council Publishing Program 2002

printer Makeda Press, Calgary

O

David Tsai whose Blood Pen we published in Issue 6 has received a top award for this project from CORE 77 in New York. See www.core77.com for details and other competition entries.

Snøhetta, whose Turner Gallery in Margate was also in Issue 6 has been shortlisted for Goldsmith’s College in London. Snøhetta, located in Oslo, Norway is an international practice based on competitions, their first, famously, the Alexandria Library in Egypt. Their site is www.snoarc.no Entries for the Architecture for Humanity competition for a Mobile HIV/AIDS Health Clinic for Africa are due November 1, 2002. Details and information can be found at <admin@architectureforhumanity.org> In Issue 6, on page 26, we inadvertantly printed KPMB Architects, as KPMG, who I understand are famous accountants, not famous architects. Our apologies to Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, architects of Jackson Triggs Winery. This building has recently received an award from Interior Design Magazine (New York: see the January 2002 issue).

Stephanie White editor

advertising sales Field Notes Press t: 403 266 5827 subscriptions per year (two issues): $15 +gst(individual) $10+gst (students) $20+gst (institutions) $25+gst (two year individual) $5 + gst for back issues make cheques payable to On Site: 1326 11th Avenue SE Calgary Alberta T3G 0Z5 GST Registration No 89648 5117 RT0001 Canada Post Agreement No 40042630 ISSN 1481-8280 copyright On Site Review and Field Notes Press ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The use of any part of this publication reproduced, trans-mitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of copyright law, Chapter C-30, R S C 1988.

1

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

ur guest editor for this issue is Tom Strickland, who has written before in On|Site, from the Hutterites meeting globalism in Issue 5 to the cement board siding of KPMB’s Jackson Triggs Winery in Issue 6.

well done!

B

oarded up buildings, crumbling warehouses and weed covered lots: this is Winnipeg’s industrial district, our city’s best-kept secret. Located just south east of Main Street and Higgins Avenue, this area is rarely acknowledged and largely avoided. Winnipeg’s ability to erase or tune out the existence of this district is what I call ‘civic stoicism’.

Civic stoicism allows us to endure our urban decay, as if nothing can be done while conducting endless debates and ideas, without action, without decisions, only stagnation. To confront urban neglect with solutions is what I call ‘civic action’. John Ruskin wrote about it in 1851: buildings are reflections of a country’s history and people; if we neglect our buildings, we neglect ourselves.

When Portland, Oregon legislated an expansion limit on city developmen, initially developers protested.

But construction did not stop; instead it became more creative focussing on abandoned sites within the city.

This same potential exists in Winnipeg’s industrial district.

If buildings are reflections of ourselves, and many of Winnipeg’s most interesting spaces are boarded up or abandoned, then what does that say about our values?

Will we continue being stoic, or is it time to take civic action? 

real places: Winnipeg t a n n e r m e r ke l e y a n d l i s e b e n n i n g e n

Tanner Merkeley

Tanner Merkeley is a Winnipeg photographer, architecture student, and activist.

He presently involved in the Canada25 political movement focusing on making Canadian cities more liveable and robust centres over the next 25 years.

the abandoned Winnipeg Flour Company

Sucreries Des immeubles condamnés, des entrepôts sur le point de s’effondrer et des terrains recouverts de mauvaises herbes : il s’agit du district industriel de Winnipeg, notre secret le mieux gardé – au sudouest de la rue Principale, à l’angle de l’avenue Higgins. Pour la plupart des gens, cette lignée 2

de terrains n’existe pas – son existence est rarement reconnue et surtout évitée. La capacité de Winnipeg d’effacer ou d’omettre l’existence de ce district est ce que j’appelle du «stoïcisme civil ».

Le stoïcisme civil nous permet d’ignorer notre déchéance civile, comme si on n’y pouvait

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

rien. J’appelle « responsabilité civile » le fait de faire face à la négligence urbaine de notre ville et de trouver des solutions.

Si les immeubles sont le reflet de nous-mêmes, et que plusieurs des espaces intéressants de Winnipeg sont condamnés, qu’en est-il de nos valeurs? Au

fur et à mesure que nous, la prochaine génération, prenons notre place à la table de discussion civile, continuerons-nous d’être stoïques, ou le temps est-il venu d’assumer nos responsabilités?

7 I

f any of you readers out there have a project of interest, or know of something worth looking at in your region, please let us know.

Most of the articles in On|Site are a response to a call put out by the editor a few months before each issue.

The next issue, 8, will be edited by Deborah Asche and Robert Barnstone. Issue 9 will be edited by Tonkao Panin and Juan Manuel Heredia. Their call for articles, due November 1, 2002 is below.

As well as the articles and projects that fit directly into the theme of each issue, there are a number of other venues.

Real Places is about where you live and what you see there.

Letters is just that, a letter about what you are thinking these days.

Over the Transom is work sent to us, on spec, by readers.

Details shows some very nifty bit of building and how it is done.

Articles are published in the language in which they are originally written. We then do a short precis for translation into either French or English. contact: editor@onsitereview.ca

On the Surface

issue 9: call for articles

What you see is what you get: What you get is not what you see.

The question at hand explores the power of architectural surface to shape and reshape the identities of both architecture and place; how architecture as it appears in direct experience —be it in its ‘immediacy’ as a given texture or in its remoteness as an ‘image’— gives us references and clues to the work of architecture itself and of the larger social, cultural and natural framework of its location. This twoway movement towards an inner and outer horizon endows architectural surface with the capacity to generate meaning — or ideology — and locates it in the crucial juncture by which it seems capable of transcending its own superficiality in many possible directions.

This inquiry into the depth of architectural Surface (Skin-Covering-Dressing-Cladding) touches upon its visible and non-visible manifestations, i.e. upon its practical, material, constructional, and representational aspects. Addressing various examples and innovative ways of thinking and building architectural surface in contemporary practice, the proposed subjects may include but not be limited to the relation between: Surface and Materials Appropriation

Construction Weathering

Production Transformation

Form Occupation

Space

Meaning — Cultural, Social, Economic send ideas now to Tonkao Panin tpanin@dolphin.upenn.edu all submissions due November 1 2002

Contents

6

introduction Tom Strickland looks at the transformative role of architecture in the increasing complexity our culture.

4

real places Tanner Merkely decides to be less stoical about Winnipeg.

projects Jennifer Wise tells us about Critical Mass in the Pilkington Building.

14 Sherazad Jamal describes her WTC 11:09:01 memory site.

30 Sam Smith takes permaculture to the ruins of a refugee camp in Macedonia.

8

work in progress 22 Talbot Sweetapple and Tom Strickland in conversation about how a small firm does a large building.

44 Andrew King talks about getting a house through the hoops. observers 12 Tonkao Panin discusses surface transformations in Herzog + de Meuron.

18 Deirdre Harris charts the transformation of a piece of the strip.

28 Stephanie White looks at stadiums, sports and war.

38 Ilona Hay looks at the curvy work of Ushida Findlay in London and Mark West in Winnipeg.

42 Lisa Der watchs as a Ger is erected in Ulan Baator news from the schools 20 Tracey Mactavish goes undercover in Halifax.

34 Feliz Klassen sets a studio based on tents, tables and toggles. details 16 Marc Dufour builds a whole new world in the attic; Bianca Lagueux writes about it. back page bridges 50 Stephanie White finds out about the Shylock Road overpass on the Coquihalla.

Transformations

On Site review

3

Introduction: Architecture and Transformation Tom Strickland Guest Editor

From the days of the Olmec and early Maya, in 1200 BC, cultural influence was subtle and profuse, and with time it got only more so, as Mesoamerica’s population grew denser, and cultural contact, via trade and war, expanded. The whole region came more and more to resemble a single brain, testing [ideas] and spreading the useful ones.

(Robert Wright. Non Zero:The logic of human destiny. Pantheon, 2000).

A

t first glance Shawnessy Towne Centre, a sprawling shopping locale at the far south edge of Calgary, appears to be a big jumble of buildings with no obvious connectedness or cohesion. It is, in fact, a network of roadways, randomly located off a primary four lane cruciform axis, that lead to sequences of parking lots wrapped by a ribbon of sidewalks, as per the building code. Shawnessy Centre looks exactly like what it is supposed to look like, a big box shopping centre. It would be irresponsible not to ask, ‘why does such a place exist?’ Is it a folly of the capitalist elite, organized by greed to lure the hapless public into a shopping frenzy? Not likely. Unlike the shopping mall of the 1960s

where under a single roof one could run from shop to shop with a Chargex card, shopping until dropping, Shawnessy is not a good design for shopping. The entrances to the need-specific buildings are often a block apart and protected by a great moat of parking. In some cases one could purchase a litre of milk and then return to the car, cross four lanes of traffic, get out of the car, sidestep through hundreds of parked cars to pick up a library book, only to do it all over again to purchase a much needed bottle of wine. Now imagine doing this with the kids in tow. We all have our tolerance levels, so why build such a place? Arguably economies of scale and brand identity are playing their part, yet here, massed in amongst the branded boxes we also find a high school, a library, and a recreation centre. The addition of these institutions in the mix connect Shawnessy with the idealized, but failed, democratic space of diversity of the shopping malls of the 1920s to 1950s, albeit in an exploded version. If a factor other then crude capitalism is evident here, it is the tendency for culture to move towards increased complexity. Robert Wright argues that the seemingly pointless cycles of cultural

Shawnessy Towne Centre, south Calgary, Alberta. ca 1998

À première vue, le Centre Shawnessy, un vaste centre commercial situé à la limite sud de Calgary, ne semble être qu’un méli-mélo d’immeubles n’ayant aucune connexion ou cohésion évidente de quelque sorte que ce soit. Il s’agit, en fait, d’un réseau de chemins se détachant, de façon aléatoire, d’un axe cruciforme primaire à quatre voies, qui mène à 4

des séquences de terrains de stationnement enveloppés d’un ruban de trottoirs, conformément au code du bâtiment.

Le Centre Shawnessy ressemble exactement à ce qu’il est sensé être: une énorme boîte de centre commercial. Il serait tout à fait irresponsable de ne pas se poser la question suivante: « Pourquoi une telle place existe-t-elle? »

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

Robert Wright soutien que les cycles apparemment n’ayant sans rime ni raison de la croissance et de la dégénérescence culturelles pointent à une évolution culturelle plus vaste sous laquelle les arts de la rédaction, de l’agriculture, de l’artisanat, de la construction et des domaines du commerce et du gouvernement s’enlignent vers des réseaux plus complexes

d’interdépendance.

Une idée utile qui a surgi de cette progression culturelle est la démocratie. Étant presque un but universel, elle est devenue, en quelque sorte, le facilitateur global de la prolifération du commerce et de la culture.

Toutefois, à un niveau régional, la démocratie peut être incline à la décentralisation, qui semble

growth and decay add up to a larger arrow of cultural evolution under which the arts of writing, agriculture, handicraft, construction, and trade and government advance towards more complex networks of interdependence.

One useful idea that has a risen as a result of this cultural advancement is democracy. Nearly a universal goal, it has become the global lubricant for the proliferation of trade and culture. However, locally democracy can tend toward decentralization which appears to make an argument for fragmentation. This makes its appearance in demands for local control over schools, infrastructure and building codes. This decentralized democracy also has a visual component that seems to prefer the jumble of individual buildings to singular images that represent a connected whole. In its less benign form this decentralized democracy can form isolated groups such as communities surrounded by gates, or need-specific buildings surrounded by barriers of parking and roadways which suppress the interaction of diversity, trade and culture. If Shawnessy Centre is the result of our increasingly complex culture, would it

not be best to accept the inevitable and embrace this place? No. At this centre we can see only the emerging evidence of evolving cultural needs. These will require tact and thoughtfulness from the design community, among others — for right now it is far from a good solution. It is not enough to mimic the past, as has been done in the New Urbanist communities, the problem is in accepting the virtues of fragmentation while combating its tendencies to isolation. This necessitates innovation in form (see, for example, Harvard Design Review, Summer 1999, ‘Housing and Community. Spaces of Democracy’ by Richard Sennet).

The theme for On|Site 7 acknowledges the evolutionary environment under which design and architecture occur. Each writer, architect and student in this issue has taken a critical and ingenious view of this condition. Through varied topics such as transforming skins, processes, practices, perceptions and form, this issue looks at the role of architecture in transformation. 

tom strickland

Tom Strickland graduated from TUNS in 1997 and practices architecture from High River, Alberta. Currently he is curating an architectural exhibit for Art City and is guest editor of this issue of On|Site.

formuler une argument en faveur de la fragmentation. On voit cette tendance apparaître sous forme de demandes visant le contrôle des écoles, des codes liés à l’infrastructure et aux bâtiments. Cette démocratie décentralisée comprend aussi une composante visuelle qui semble accorder une préférence au méli-mélo d’immeubles individuels au lieu

des images singulières qui tentent de représenter un tout relié. Sous sa forme la moins bénigne, cette démocratie décentralisée peut mener à la formation de groupes isolés, telles les communautés entourées de clôtures, ou les immeubles visant à répondre à un besoin précis et entourées de barrières de stationnement et de routes qui viennent

supprimer toute interaction avec la diversité, le commerce et la culture.

Le thème de On|Site 7 vient reconnaître l’environnement évolutionnaire sous lequel la conception et l’architecture se produisent. Chaque architecte qui a dû traiter de cette question a examiné cette condition de façon critique. Par le biais de sujets variés, tels la transforma

tion des structures, les processus, les pratiques et la forme, cette question vient révéler le rôle que l’architecture vient jouer dans la transformation.

Transformations

On Site review

5

jason stang

I

n the fall of 2000, Calgary’s abandoned 1913 Pilkington Building was renovated for the headquarters of Critical Mass, a large web design company. Originally the Canadian headqarters of the British firm of Pilkington Glass, it endured several failed attempts at resurrection.

While vacant, the building was occupied by squatters and street people who contributed the extravagant layer of graffiti. A team of architects, designers, engineers and craftsman proceeded to juxtapose state-of-the-art technology and design with this historical record.

Chris Roberts, the project architect, addressed the building as an archeological artifact, retaining the structural and historic character of the building while establishing a clear delineation between old and new: anything new was deliberately separated from the building envelope to look as though it was simply placed within the space.

All building code and life safety issues were resolved under this mandate. The exit stairs are steel latticework with open treads and appear to be suspended in the enclosed wells. A new elevator shaft, placed outside the building and clad in corrugated steel, appears superimposed on the flat exterior wall. In contradiction to the heavy massing and permanence of the original structure, it seems as though it could be simply unglued and removed.

Pilkington Glass manufactured a tangible product: Critical Mass manufactures intellectual property. Contemporary details that accommodate the needs of a contemporary client are as pragmatic now as the expressive nature of the structure was in 1913. To convey this continuity, there is a clear sense of separation between the building fabric of 1913 and the building furniture of 2000.

Connecting with the core of the Pilkington Jennifer Wise Pilkington Glass À l’automne 2000, l’immeuble abandonné Pilkington Glass de Calgary, datant de 1913, a été rénové et transformé en siège social de Critical Mass, une entreprise de conception pour le Web. Chris Roberts, l’architecte du projet, a abordé la question de cet immeuble comme s’il s’agissait d’un artefact archéologique : tout ce qui 6

était nouveau a été délibérément séparé du squelette de l’immeuble pour donner l’aspect qu’il avait été simplement placé dans cet espace.

Le grand nombre de graffitis, datant des années où l’immeuble avait été vacant, ont été recyclés comme détails dominants et point de départ pour le traitement de l’espace

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

intérieur. Des sections particulièrement attrayantes des graffitis ont été sélectionnées, reproduites de façon numérique sur du vinyle translucide et placés sur des cloisons vitrées qui viennent diviser l’espace intérieur.

Autres questions : Tom Strickland : Au sujet des graffitis — Chris Roberts : L’immeuble était un entrepôt de graffitis et la qualité en était remarquable.

Nous ne voulions pas assainir l’immeuble. Cela se produit souvent dans le cas de plus vieux immeubles; ils deviennent une restauration parfaite de

jason stang

Architectural restoration prioritizes the material state of the original structure, but social history is also significant. The state in which the Pilkington was found in 1999 was one of decay: its scars are part of a contextual lineage of both success and defeat. The extensive graffiti told the story of a street culture that claimed the building as home, in direct contrast to original structural elements, such as the concrete haunches, which were constructed in an era of financial optimism and urban growth.

The graffiti has been recycled as a prominent detail and a jumping-off point for the treatment of the interior space. Sections were selected, digitally reproduced in translucent vinyl and placed on glass partitions This detail lent a distinct character to the new aesthetic of the space and instigated a new culture of display — the web designers use glass partitions to show their work, contributing to the visual record of ownership.

l’original. Dans la mesure du possible, nous voulions qu’il reflète, le plus près possible, ce qu’il avait l’air au moment où nous l’avons trouvé. Il y a deux raisons pour ce faire : il s’agissait de la façon la plus économique de procéder et, historiquement, nous pouvions garder intactes toutes les pièces de l’immeuble.

TS : Dans le cadre de l’esthétique de cette installation temporaire que l’on retrouve dans un artefact, pourriez-vous nous parler de ces escaliers? De quelle façon sont-elles fixées à l’immeuble?

CR : En fait, leur montage aux murs est assez minime. Dans un immeuble de quatre étages, on y trouve 400 personnes.

Celles-ci ne prendraient pas

les ascenseurs. Les escaliers de sortie sont devenus la principale façon de se déplacer dans l’immeuble. Nous voulions qu’ils soient mémorables. J’ai grandi à Montréal et, comme enfant, j’étais habitué de marcher sur le pont JacquesCartier où il y avait une allée piétonnière en grillage surplombant le fleuve Saint-Laurent.

L’eau défilait sous mes pieds — vous saviez vraiment que vous aviez marché au-dessus du cours d’eau. Nous avions proposé des escaliers en grillage et une passerelle à grillage ouvert, ce qui a effrayé tout le monde.

Mais il s’agit, dans ce cas, d’une entreprise de rouliplanchistes âgés d’une vingtaine d’années.

Ils pourraient donc le tolérer.

Transformations

On Site review

7

Simpson Roberts Architecture + Interior Design

Tom Strickland: About the graffiti — Chris Roberts: The building was a warehouse of graffiti and the quality was very good. We didn’t want to sanitize the building. It often happens with older buildngs, they become this pristine restoration.

We wanted to keep as close to the way we found it as we possibly could. Two reasons: the only way to do it economically, historically it keeps all the pieces of the building there.

TS: Economically?

CR: If you want to reuse these kinds of structures, the less you do the cheaper it is, and the less you do, the better it is historically. Pilkington built beautiful buildings when they built them, and they built them all over the world. All we did was re-excavate the basement. The building was a strong object, we couldn’t afford to restore it, so we did the minimum to make it habitable.

TS : Et puis, il n’y avait aucune problème avec les codes?

CR : Il s’agit d’une enceinte à l’épreuve du feu. Les grilles ouvertes sont habituellement assez sécuritaires. Elles ont une assez bonne adhérence et puisqu’elles ont des arêtes assez solides, il vous est possible de voir la profondeur de marche utile. Le nez de 8

marche est absolument clair.

Le problème n’a jamais été d’une nature technique, il était plutôt d’une nature perceptuelle. Avant qu’on y mette la rampe, l’escalier de service était terrifiant. Mais il s’agit là d’une bonne chose. On s’en souvient.

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

TS: In this aesthetic of the temporary installation in a found artifact, could you explain more about these stairs? How exactly do they attach to the building?

CR: Well, the fastening to the walls is quite minimal. There are 400 people in a four-storey building: they weren’t going to be taking the elevators. Exit stairs became the primary way of moving through the buildng. We wanted them memorable. I grew up in Montreal and as a kid used to walk across the Jacques Cartier Bridge that had an open grate walkway over the St Lawrence. The water was rushing below — you really knew you’d walked over a bridge. We’d done open-grate stairs before, and once proposed an open-grate pedestrian bridge that scared the hell out of everybody. But this is a company of twenty-year old skateboarders. They could handle this.

jason stang

TS: And there were no problems with code?

CR: It’s in a fire-rated enclosure. Open grates are actually quite safe.

They’re pretty grippy and because you get a solid edge to them, you can see the tread. The nose of the stair is absolutely clear.

The problem was never technical, it was perceptual. The back stair before the handrail went on was terrifying. But this is good. You remember it.

The guys that built the stairs were great — it’s a beautiful welding job. The stairs don’t touch the sides of the space. In the old freight elevator shaft in the back, you can’t actually touch the walls when you’re on the stair, it’s like you’ve stepped off a four-storey building.

TS:That’s interesting. It’s something that is really removed from most buildings with any height to them at all.You get into an office tower and you have no idea where you are. I used to be a roofer and riding up that exterior elevator was as frightening as any roller-coaster. So it’s nice to see that that kind of knowledge of where you are in the world is expressed, right?

CR: Because the schedule here was so tight, the stairs had both a pragmatic reason and a design rationale. We built the elevator outside the building because it was the item with the longest delivery; we wanted to be able to finish the building without having to wait for the elevator to show up. The other reason is that trying to drill a 60-foot hole inside a historic building would have been incredibly disruptive and expensive.

TS: So the conditions of the project really supported the disconnection between the new and the old.

CR: Projects are made up of a whole series of ideas as opposed to the grand scheme, and if you’re lucky, all the ideas begin to connect. 

Architects: Simpson Roberts Architecture Interior Design Chris Roberts - Project Architect Jennifer Wise - Design Assistant Kevin Wilkins - Technical Coordinator Mark Latimer - Technical Assistant

Interior Design: Domus Interior Architecture Group Sharon Raycroft, Design Director

Mechanical/Electrical Engineer: LEW Engineering Structural Engineer: HMS Landscape Architect: Landplan Construction Management: SMED Construction Client: SMED International

Jennifer Wise is an interior designer with Simpson Roberts in Calgary. She studied building conservation in Rome on a Peter Rice Memorial Scholarship (2000) and did a VITRA Design Museum workshop in France (2001).

Chris Roberts is a partner in Simpson Roberts, a Calgary firm that specializes in historic renovation and restoration.

Transformations

On Site review

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tonkao panin

T

he Eberswalde Library first appears to be a simple box, clad or dressed with printed concrete and glass panels, and photographic images appearing repeatedly in continuous bands along the façade. It is often represented in publications simply as walls of communicative images. The question that comes to mind is: why are these images there? What do they have to do with the building?

The Eberswalde Library is a collaborative effort between the architects Herzog & de Meuron and Thomas Ruff, a Düsseldorf based artist who undertook the task of selecting the images. Drawn from Ruff ’s archive of newspaper photographs, these images range from the figure of Alexander von Humboldt, Lorenzo Lotto’s Venus, a prototype aircraft known as CBY-3, and a pair of stag beetles, to name a few. Each image seems to tell its own story, especially that taken on the day the Berlin Wall went up depicting a seventyyear-old woman being lowered from a house into the western sector of the city. This also seems to hold true for the image of a flag-

waving crowd gathered in front of the Berlin Reichstag.

Seen separately as photographic image, the meaning of each is undeniable. Except perhaps for the ubiquitous stag beetle, most images seem to pertain to certain contemporary relevance. Each seems to represent the portrait of a place, time, and attitude, yet as a collective whole, any unified meaning or category becomes elusive. Being repeatedly transferred onto concrete wall panels, specific meanings of these newspaper photos were inevitably transformed. Each photograph appears horizontally sixty-six times, presenting seventeen different bands of images enveloping the building. The boundaries of their effective meanings blur as each image is being repeated and each band is being framed by adjacent bands.

How are we to read the portrait of von Humboldt next to a stag beetle? Are we to read them as rhetoric images at all? Perhaps it is a deliberate act to subdue the sharpness and eloquence of the photographs’ meaning by repetition and juxtaposition. It becomes

futile to decipher their collective message or theorize Ruff ’s rationale for his choices of images: perhaps there is none. Yet, to conclude that aesthetic is solely the driving force behind those walls is also misleading.

At a closer look, as one approaches the Eberswalde Library, one realizes what lies ahead is simply an architectural surface: no more, no less. Perhaps it is not a surface that tries to communicate nor offers itself as a vehicle of ideology. Its etched concrete panels constitute neither a wall of messages nor a platform of meanings.

Consider the Eberswalde Library as what it really is: a building in its totality. Rather than a series of close-up photos, one can see that each image is no longer an individual newspaper photo or an archival picture. With their simple repetition and juxtaposition, neither the individual nor the collective meaning begs to be read: each image becomes an architectural element, an integral part of the building’s cladding, as much as a skin is a part of a person’s body.

From newspapers to walls Tonkao Panin

Des journaux aux murs La bibliothèque Eberswalde est souvent présentée dans diverses publications comme étant tout simplement constituée de murs recouverts d’images communicatives. La multitude d’images est le résultat d’un travail de collaboration entre les architectes Herzog et de Meuron et l’artiste de Düs 10

seldorf, Thomas Ruff. Parmi ces images, tirées des archives de photos de journaux de Ruff, figurent une photo d’Alexandre von Humboldt, une autre de la Vénus de Lorenzo Lotto, une photo d’un avion prototype connu sous le nom de CBY-E et d’une paire de scarabées cerfs-volants.

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

Considérée séparément en tant que photo de journal, la signification de chaque image est indubitable; cependant, vues dans leur ensemble, elles échappent à toute tentative de catégorisation ou de dégagement d’une unité de sens.

Les limites de leur signification réelle s’estompent avec la répé

tition de chaque image et la démarcation de chaque bande de photos par les bandes adjacentes.

La surface de la bibliothèque Eberswalde est une surface articulée, mais c’est une articulation qui ne demande pas nécessairement à être

Perhaps the images are there for the same reason that the white letters are screened, the green dots are printed onto the glass surfaces of the Suva building, and the Kantonspital.

While it is true that images etched onto the surface of the Eberswalde Library is not similar to painted colors that clad walls, veneers and panels that dress any architectural surface for either aesthetic or technical reasons, it is also true that those images no longer hold similar rhetoric as they once did as individual photographs on the newspaper pages.

At the Eberswalde Library, an articulated surface is made, yet it is an articulation that does not necessarily asked to be deciphered.

The transformation of those newspaper photographs perhaps blurs the line between the aesthetic, rhetoric, and technical reasons of architectural surface. It is a transformation of the public memory onto the building’s own identity.  Kantonspital, Basel. Herzog & de Meuron. above Suva, Basel. Herzog & de Meuron. right Eberswalde Library, Herzog & de Meuron. top left Eberswalde Library detail. facing page

déchiffrée. La transformation de ces photos de journaux en murs semble rendre floue la frontière qui sépare les visées et considérations esthétiques, rhétoriques et techniques d’une surface architecturale. La mémoire collective se trouve à être transformée en devenant partie intégrante de l’édifice.

Tonkao Panin Born: France Registered Architect:Thailand Currently working on a PhD. dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania.

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WTC. 09.09.11.2001 Plusieurs d’entre nous nous trouvons dans une position précaire en tant que citoyens de pays qui ont été créés par le biais de l’immigration : nous avons un si grand nombre d’affiliations, il existe un si grand nombre de collectivités auxquelles nous appartenons que nous ne sommes plus en 12

mesure d’établir une différence entre « nous » ou « les autres ». Dans nos interactions quotidiennes, il existe d’autres priorités que celles des binaires du terrorisme. Nous devons trouver un sens de paix en nousmêmes et comprendre ce que nous avons à perdre au fur et à mesure que les gouverne-

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

ments poursuivent leurs priorités non-humanistes.

L’occasion qui m’a été offerte d’articuler ces questions me provient d’ Amir Ali Alibhai, curateur de Dust On the Road: Canadian artists in dialogue with SAHMAT. SAHMAT a été établi en 1989 par des artistes con-

temporains de l’Inde et par des producteurs culturels en réponse à l’assassinat politique de Safdar Hashimi, un artiste public du théâtre. SAHMAT est aussi le mot Hindi pour « entente ». Les artistes portent aux rues leur art, littéralement, en fusionnant art, action et intention.

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awoke to images of two tall buildings on fire on my television. I must confess I did not feel much of anything, except perhaps that I was currently occupying surreal space in a Diego Riviera painting, a member of the sleepy middle class rubbing my eyes while symbols of capitalist power burned to their destruction before me.

And then the frenzy began. Not a war on terrorism but something more insidious — doubt in things that have been centuries in the making: ideas about human rights, the right to basic freedoms, the right to voice opinion, the right to live alongside each other with simple human dignity, despite differences.

Many of us find ourselves in a precarious position as citizens of countries settled through immigration: we have so many affiliations, so many communities to which we belong that we are neither ‘us’ nor ’them’. In the rhythm of our daily interactions, there are other priorities than terrorism binaries. However, we now need to find a sense of peace within ourselves, and to understand what we have lost and what we stand to lose as governments continue on their non-humanist agendas.

My opportunity to articulate these issues came from Amir Ali Alibhai, curator at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Vancouver, inviting me to contribute to Dust On the Road: Canadian artists in dialogue with SAHMAT.

s h e ra z a d j a m a l

My piece, Twin Spirits, pulls the lens back from the images of devastation, grief and fear at Ground Zero to a place where transformation through healing can begin. For the spirit who leaves the Earth, death is a freeing, a return home. And for those of us who are left behind, death marks the need to mourn, to let go and find a way to continue on until our own moment of freedom comes.

Twin Spirits is a site at which the process for letting-go can begin.

Dance when you are perfectly free WTC 11.09.01 Sherazad Jamal

Dance when you’re broken open Dance if you’ve torn the bandage off Dance in the middle of the fighting Dance in your blood Dance when you are perfectly free Jalaluddin Rumi

The towers are twelve feet tall and are made from white cotton fabric, referencing the Muslim tradition of burial in white cotton and the Hindu tradition of signifying widowhood through the wearing of white cotton sarees.

Inscribed in white paint on the towers are repeating, abstract patterns originally from Muslim art sources, and within them Celtic-looking knots. On each side are quotes from various religious, activist, scientific and poetic sources. All these voices seem to weigh in with similar messages: life and death are a circle of oneness in which details matter less than acting from love and dancing your own steps.

The towers are are set above a circle inscribed on the floor. Within the circle is an octagonal star generated from two overlapping squares referring to ‘us’ and ‘them’, but fused together — humankind is an interdependent, complete whole. Flowers were left near the piece and were added by visitors to this communal remembrance. 

SAHMAT was formed in 1989 by contemporary Indian artists and cultural producers in response to the politically motivated killing of Safdar Hashimi, a street-theatre performer. SAHMAT (the Safdar Hashimi Memorial Trust) is also the Hindi word for agreement. The artists of SAHMAT take their art, literally, to the streets, fusing art, action, and intent, and addressing issues of freedom of expression, growing fundamentalism, sexuality, women’s rights and the inequities of the Hindu caste system. Dust On The Road was an exhibition of their work alongside Canadian work addressing political issues germane to this country — aboriginal rights, race politics, environmental concerns, women’s issues and the growing threat of war.

Mon article, Twin Spirits, offre une vue d’ensemble des images de la dévastation et de la peur qui régnaient à Ground Zero, et permet de nous placer de façon à permettre le début d’une transformation qui viendra nous guérir. Dans le cas des esprits qui quittent la Terre, la mort est libératrice. Il s’agit

la tradition hindou de signaler son veuvage par le port de saris de coton blanc.

Inscrits à l’aide de peinture blanche sur les tours, on trouve des motifs répétitifs et abstraits tirés de l’art musulman, mêlés de nœuds celtes. De chaque côté on peut lire des citations religieuses, tirées de sources

d’un retour chez-soi. Toutefois, pour ceux d’entre nous qui restent, la mort démarque le besoin de faire son deuil, de lâcher prise.

Les tours ont 12 pieds de hauteur et sont faites de coton blanc, faisait ainsi allusion à la tradition de sépulture musulmane dans du coton blanc et à

Sherazad Jamal (TUNS 1990) is a designer, home school teacher, gardener, artist. She left architecture to co-design, edit and publish Rungh Magazine, a South Asian quarterly.

religieuses, activistes, scientifiques et poétiques. Toutes ces voix vibrent au son du même message : la vie et la mort ne forment qu’un seul cycle au sein duquel les détails sont moins importants que les actes posés par amour.

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D

epuis le début du 20e siècle, la technologie et le rythme de vie de la population ont changés. La maison québécoise d’antan ne répond plus aux besoins énergétiques et programmatiques des familles contemporaines.

Située dans les Cantons de l’Est, la résidence Billiard est habitée par un jeune couple de Lyonnais et leurs deux enfants. Le nouveau programme pour la grenier demande l’implantation d’un bureau, d’une salle d’eau et d’une chambre à coucher. Tout qu’un mandat étant donné que seulement 73% de la surface de plancher du grenier possède une hauteur de plafond suffisante pour les espaces de vies.

Structure La forme en T du plan et la structure semblent diriger l’organisation du programme de façon naturelle. Il place le bureau, la salle d’eau et la chambre à coucher directement sous les faîtes de toit et profitent d’une hauteur de plafond maximale. Quant aux espaces de services (la douche, le vestiaire et les rangements) ceux-ci occupent les bas de pentes de toit. Le plan se divisent maintenant en deux différents types d’espaces: espace servi et espace de service. Situés dans l’axe transversal du plan, les espaces de service isolent le bureau et la chambre à coucher.

L’intersection de tous ces types d’espaces est indiquée par l’installation de partitions courbes. La douche ainsi que le corridor joingnant le bureau et la salle a coucher se distinguent de la configuration rigide du bâtiment par leur forme organique et soulignent la transformation qu’a subi l’espace.

Du passé et du présent Le mandat était de composer avec le passé autant qu’avec le présent.

Charmé par la robuste charpente bois et les volumes du toit, c’était décide de les laisser s’exprimer autant que possible. Et afin d’en faciliter leur lecture, les nouvelles partitions intérieures, non structurales, sont interrompues verticalement et latéralement. Le contraste de ces partitions avec la structure souligne le changement flagrand entre les techniques de construction éphémères d’aujourd’hui et celle d’autrefois.

Les partitions de forme organique (tels que les partitions du corridor et de la douches) et de fenêtres circulaires (hublots), de même que la balustrade rectiligne en acier rappellent l’idée des paquebots et du voyage. Les murs blancs, à l’exception des tuiles de douches bleues, rehausent la richesse de la structure de bois et de la brique, et aident à la définition des volumes faite par la pénétration de la lumière naturelle dans l’espace. Le blanc fait référence aux anciennes techniques de fini des murs, consistant en l’application de la chaux.

stephane lemire

Construction Les complications qu’occasionnent les rénovations d’une telle bâtisse sont nombreuses puisque les rendements énergétiques demandés de nos jours étaient inexistants autrefois. Cependant, ces changements permettent a l’architecte d’utiliser ses connaissances techniques et de les appliquer de façons innovatrices.

Secrets in the Attic Technology and daily rhythms have changed since the beginning of the twentieth century when this house was built. The old Quebec house no longer responds to the energetic needs and programs of contemporary families. The programme for this house was to have an office, a bathroom and a bedroom in the unused attic. The roof allowed only 73% of the floor area to be suitable as living space.

Structure

The T-form attic plan and the structure organised the programme. The office, bath and the 14

bedroom are directly under the ridges to profit from this extra height. The service spaces — the shower, closets and storage, occupy the low corners. Thus the plan is divided into two different types of space: servant and served. On the transverse axis the service spaces insulate the office from the bedroom.

At the intersection of all these spaces is a set of curved partitions defining the shower and the corridor that connects the office to the bedroom. Their organic form counters the rigid building configuration, under-

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

lining the transformation of the attic space.

Past & Present

Transformation of space is also the adaptation of space. The mandate was to work as much with the past as with the present. Charmed by the robust wood carpentry in the roof space, it was decided to leave it exposed wherever possible.

To facilitate this reading, the new interior partitions are not structural and are interrupted both vertically and horizontally.

It is the difference between today’s ephemeral construction

possibilities and the permanence wanted in other times.

Like a little submarine with round rooms, portholes, steel railings, the attic implies travel, other spaces. The white walls define the volumes and reflect natural light; they refer to the particular plaster technique that uses chalk, as well as the white of the modernists.

Construction

Renovations are characterized by the unexpected. This allows the architect to use technical understanding and applications in innovative ways. One of

Details: Marc Dufour La Maison Billiard Bianca Lagueux

L’un des imprévus du projet consiste au changement du système d’isolation du toit. Il était tout d’abord prévu que le type d’isolation consiste en un système de laine minérale, d’un isolant-pare-vapeur et d’un espace d’air pour la ventilation. Il fut ensuite décidé que la laine serait remplacée par de l’uréthane giclée pour son bon rendement d’étanchéite pare-vapeur et permettait ainsi d’en mettre moins épais (soit 4” au lieu de 5.5”). Afin que le système installé vieillisse bien, un espace air-ventilation entre les planches de toit existantes et l’isolant giclé était nécessaire. Pour ce faire, des panneaux de masonite installés sur des pièces de bois on du être installés sur les planches de toit pour créer l’espace d’air approprié. L’application de ce système d’isolation a créé un bénéfice esthétique; en étant plus mince, certaines pièces de la structure de bois, telles que les chevrons de noues, ont été laissées apparantes.

Pour ce projet, des descriptions précises sur les plans ont été requises afin determiner la courbe des cloisons du corridors et de la douche.

Les lisses des cloisons sont faites planches de contreplaqué découpées selon un rayon indiqué sur les plans et clouées au plancher. Les 2x4 ont ensuite été cloués perpendiculairement sur les lisses et ont été installés de manière à ce que l’axe longitudinale des 2x4 passe par le centre du foyer de l’arc créé par le mur. Afin de conserver la courbe, les 2x4 doivent être plus raprochés qu’à la normale, soit entre 12” (minimum) et 6” lorsque la courbe était plus accentuée. Ensuite une sablière de contreplaqué, identique à la lisse, est clouée au sommet des 2x4. Les planches de gypse sont ensuite vissées de chaque côté des parois.

Pour permettre une courbe de gypse constante, les planches ont dues être mouillées avant d’être installées. Les hauteurs exactes des cloisons varient quelque peu de celles indîquées des plans, elles ont été déterminées sur le chantier.

Les formes créées pas ces partitions courbes ne sont pas réellement définies par le désir d’efficacité et de fonctionnalité, mais bel et bien pour exprimer un style de vie contemporain émancipé, mobile et versatile. Ces formes sont fortes et occupent le coeur de l’espace du grenier, tout en contre-balançant bien les lignent droites de la charpente. Le grenier est désormais à l’image de ses résidents: jeune et moderne, dans un câdre solide et enrichi par les ans. 

the unforeseens of this project was the roof insulation. To gain important head height, the standard application of Fiberglas batts, vapour barrier and air space wouldn’t work. It was decided to used sprayed-on polyurethane to make an impermeable vapour barrier and to take up less space (4” instead of 5 1/2”). Ventilation is still necessary. Here, masonite panels where sprayed with the insulation and then attached to the structure. The application of this system gives a certain aesthetic: very thin, revealing pieces of the timber structure such as

the chevrons of the roof valleys and the ties under the ridges.

For this project precise descriptions on the plans were required to determine the curve of the partitions and the shower. The curve of the partitions are made of plywood cut along a radius indicated on the plans and nailed to the floor.

2 x 4s are then nailed perpendicularly on the curves and are installed in such a manner that the longitudinal axis of each 2 x 4 passes through the centre of the arc creating the wall. To keep the curve, the 2 x 4s are more closely spaced than

Marc Dufour étude d’architecture a l’université de montréal et a l’école d’architecture de Rennes en Bretagne (France); travail dans le milieu de l’architecture depuis 1990; architecte associé dans Cimaise de Sherbrooke depuis 1999.

Bianca Lagueux is working at Graham Edmunds in Calgary on her year out from the McGill Architecture program.

normal, between 12” maximum and 6” when the curve is tight.

A plywood plate matching the base is nailed to the top of the 2 x 4s. Drywall is then screwed to each side of the wall. For a smooth curve the sheets are dampened before installing them. The exact heights of the partitions vary sometimes from the plans; they were generally determined on site.

The glass mosaic tiles in the shower was a complex adventure and took more time than had been scheduled, for the curves demanded lots of cutting. The result though is

impressive. The curved partitions are not really defined by the need for efficacy or functionality, but work well in expressing a style of contemporary life, emancipated, mobile and versatile. These shapes are strong and occupy the heart of the attic space, in counterpoint to the right angles of the original house.

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Used car sales, on Central, Albuquerque.

When Convenience Leaves Deirdre Harris Goodwill drop-off depot, on Gold, Albuquerque.

GNC outlet, on San Mateo, Albuquerque.

Lorsque la commodité n’est plus de guise Il existait, dans les années 60, une chaîne de magasins Circle K à l’échelle des états du sud.

Les immeubles n’étaient que de simples boîtes avec un toit à auvent en porte-à-faux, l’auvent à lui seul vient définir l’icône.

Au fil du temps, la chaîne a été réduite et les immeubles ont trouvé de nouveaux usages.

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Le tout a trait à l’économie.

En une période de faillite économique, il n’y a aucune façon que l’on détruise un immeuble qui puisse être réutilisé. De temps à autre, ces immeubles Circle K remplissent toujours leur fonction d’origine, mais la plupart des immeubles ont été abandonnés par la chaîne

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

qui a alors construit de plus grands magasins, plus éloignés les uns des autres.

Bien qu’il soit vrai que l’histoire de cette chaîne en soit une qui ait davantage trait à l’économie qu’à l’architecture, ce qui est fascinant, dans ce cas, est de constater la réutilisation d’une chaîne multiple qui permet à

quelque chose qui était jadis répétitif et très répandu de devenir régional et bien précis.

Brake Stop, on San Mateo, Albuquerque.

Circle K, on Yale, Albuquerque.

T

here was once a string of Circle K stores across the southwestern states. It wasn’t very long ago— maybe the 60s. The buildings themselves were simple boxes with a cantilevered roof canopy; the canopy alone defining the icon. At some point the chain downsized, and the buildings, banished members of a Borglike structure, have found new uses over the years.

Motor Mart, on Cerrillos, Santa Fe.

The strip is all about economy. In times of economic failure, there is no way that a building that could be reused would be torn down and replaced. In the occasional case, these buildings are still fulfilling their original function. For the most part, the buildings were abandoned by the chain, which then built larger stores located further apart from one another.

The presence of these original Circle K buildings provides telling bits of information about the relatively recent history of ex-urban locations. It is true that the history of the strip is more a history of economy than one of architecture. But economy shapes cities and ultimately shapes the lives of all of us. The re-use of a chain of commercial multiples allows something that was once repetitive and ubiquitous to become local and specific. 

CWA Headquarters, on Truman, Albuquerque.

Deirdre Harris works in Santa Fe at SOBA Design.

Hi-Lo-Ma Chinese Restaurant, on Menaul, Albuquerque.

Karate School, on Morris, Albuquerque.

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The Crosswalk The Crosswalk validates a well-travelled but informal footway across Barrington Street, between the Turning Point Emergency Shelter and the outreach basement of the Brunswick Street United Church. People navigate four lanes in the pursuit of daily needs. Using the signs and language of the city itself, The Crosswalk temporarily defines a human space in no man’s land — an acknowledgment of how the city really works and where its movement patterns really are. The crosswalk signs were removed the following morning, paint takes longer to fade.

Venue The Venue questions what public space really is — designed space for human use, leftover fragments between buildings, or a type of mask intended for public deception. Each of three sides of the venue contain small viewports that frame views of public Institutions — the Public Library, the Halifax Courthouse, and the Technical University of Nova Scotia. Questions are written on the inside of the walls and markers left for responses: evidence of human interaction. ‘How does this space make you feel?’ ‘Who will take this down and why?’ ‘Where is public, where is private?’ Surveillance is reversed. The Venue is constructed on what most would deem public space — the lawn of the Public Library allowed it to stand for over 20 hours before being dismantled by library staff.

Boxmen (inspired by Kobo Abe’s The Boxman. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1974.)

The Boxmen are portable constructions enacted on public space. Each Boxman views the city from a moving framed view, interaction with the city occurring at the surface of the box. The urban void — the outside — becomes so expansive and impersonal that the private — the inside — becomes precious and one seeks solace in a space where one can control interaction at a definable plane. Compared to the densely built city of the past, the open expanses of the modern city begin to outweigh the built object. Here, the inversion of emphasis forces attention on the object, the box. Both parties are made uncomfortable as the Boxman is stared at, isolated and detached from his environment, and the city loses the sense of comfort found in homogeneity. Many people were amused by the extraordinary presence of a Boxman. Two of the Boxmen were asked to remove their box before completing their journey, one was denied access to a shopping centre, and one was interrogated by the police.

Public Mischief Tracey MacTavish

Espièglerie en public : une critique active des espaces publics de nos villes L’existence d’un tissu urbain non apparent, constitué de voies de communication et de lieux fréquentés qui ne font pas partie du visage connu d’une ville, se dévoile lorsqu’on observe la façon dont les gens de la rue vivent dans les espaces publics d’une ville.

Dans le cadre du projet dont il est question ici, l’aspect con18

tradictoire et faux de la perception que l’on a de l’espace public est mis en évidence lorsqu’une ville, dans ce cas-ci Halifax, se trouve confrontée à trois installations inattendues.

Le Crosswalk reconnaît l’existence d’un passage pour piétons très fréquenté, mais non officiel, qui se situe, dans la

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

rue Barrington, entre le refuge Turning Point Emergency Shelter et le sous-sol de l’église Brunswick Street United, où des services d’aide sont offerts aux plus démunis. À cet endroit de la rue, les gens circulent sur quatre voies à la recherche de ce qu’il leur faut pour satisfaire leurs besoins quotidiens. Identifié à l’aide de pan-

neaux et d’indications de la ville elle-même, le Crosswalk délimite temporairement un espace humain dans ce no man’s land.

Le Venue remet en question ce qu’on entend par « espace public ». S’agit-il d’un espace réservé aux humains, de fragments d’espace perdus entre

T Tool List: 1 gallon white paint 2 nails 2 washers 2 paint rollers 2 crosswalk signs 3 helpers 1 video camera 1 video tape 1 stool 1 truck

he existence of a hidden fabric, pathways and nodes of use that are not recognized by the audible language of the city are revealed by watching the marginalised street culture living in the public spaces of the city. In this project the contradictions and falsehoods in the perception of public space are made apparent when a city, in this case Halifax, is confronted by three active installations.

The installations impart a story of the indifference of modern public space towards people who make it their living room. Each installation builds on the previous one transforming the face of the city into one of human inclusion, into one that accommodates and encourages difference. All of the installations were imposed upon the city and the city itself dismantled them.

The disassembly of each of the installations reveals the city’s attitude to difference. The modern city does not acknowledge alternative ways of living, in this case living in public space. The aggressiveness of the Boxman installation asks the question: what would it take be acknowledged, to move from an uncomprehending to a conscious city?

The power of the installations lies in the strategic act of installing them in public space, the reaction of the city to the installations as objects, and the continued discussion of what these observations of event mean for a new conception of the public city.

Tool List: 4 - 1 inch dowels (sharpened) cardboard roof 4 elastic bands 1 metallic emergency blanket 2 pens 3 hammers duct tape 3 stools 1 video camera 1 video tape 5 helpers

It is an architectural task to disassemble the indifference of public space; to call the hoax, to isolate elements of candor — the straight-up facts of human use and desire — and to construct an urban weave that includes marginalised groups and ordinary spaces to create a very different kind of ‘publicness’.

Tool List: 3 large boxes (modified) 3 digital cameras 3 helpers 1 bus ticket

The tools required to transform the city already exist. The animation of human transactions is less about surveillance and control and more about the design of successful space for patterns of activity that already occur It is a conscious move away from fear and toward the surfaces, scale and human presence in every aspect of public living. 

Tracey Mactavish spent two years working in the Canadian Arctic before moving to the west coast. She is currently working with Marceau Evans Architects in Vancouver.

These installations were part of her1998 MArch thesis at TUNS (now Dalhousie), House of Tools.

des édifices, ou d’un genre de masque qui sert à tromper le public ? Chacune des petites ouvertures pratiquées dans les trois côtés de l’objet offre une vue encadrée des édifices publics suivants : la bibliothèque publique, le Palais de justice de Halifax et la Technical University of Nova Scotia. Des questions sont inscrites sur la

face intérieure des murs et des stylos-feutres sont mis à la disposition de ceux qui veulent y répondre. Les réponses apportées sont la preuve même d’une interaction humaine.

Les Boxmen sont des structures portatives qui se déplacent dans l’espace public. D’un côté, chaque « homme de boîte »

a une vue encadrée et changeante de la ville; de l’autre, toute interaction avec la boîte se limite à la surface extérieure de celle-ci. Le vide urbain, c’està-dire ce qui est à l’extérieur de la boîte, devient si vaste et impersonnel que le lieu privé, c’est-à-dire l’intérieur de la boîte, devient très cher à la personne qui s’y trouve. Deux

des personnes, avant d’avoir terminé leur trajet, se sont fait demander de retirer leur boîte.

L’accès à un centre commercial a été interdit à une autre, tandis qu’une quatrième a été interrogée par la police.

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Tom: So, this is your second large building, your office is changing, you’re moving into a new space. How has what you guys have learned from doing houses influenced what you do now — larger buildings — or has it been able to?

Talbot: Oh absolutely. We treat little houses as public buildings. Brian designs in one sense at the beginning almost without scale, designing grammar, like Mies would do. But very fast, it becomes programmatically scaled.

One of the main things we practice is participatory design, that’s getting all the content of the buildings from clients. You know Brian has this amazing ability to get content from people. He has a way to tease out what people really want, right? He’ll look for key buzzwords and basically he’ll sit down and start drawing. This goes right back to Charles Moore — rooms, machines, dreams. ‘What do you need? You need rooms? you need a kitchen? you need a lecture hall?’ Very fast it’s right down to programme.

Tom: Which is the way clients think too.

Talbot: Machines are how’s it going to function, how’s it going to work. The dream is the key.

What’s the dream? ‘I want to wake up and walk out onto the deck and have a view of the ocean’, or, talking about Robert Campbell (the client at the University of Toronto) ‘I want a place that’s not hierarchical. You know — bumping into people, where circumstances are allowed to arise’. That’s the way the Computer Science Building (CSB) at

Dalhousie University worked too. So they’re very similar in that way and to be quite honest, Brian does have his grammar, his way of working things out. But we rarely have a preconceived idea of anything — there is no image. And there isn’t an image for a long time actually, right through programming and pre-design. Brian actually shies away from an image because he doesn’t want to be influenced by them. He wants to tease the concept as long as he can, until it’s right. I can draw a little axo and it’s, ‘don’t draw that right now.

I don’t want to be seduced by your drawing’.

We stick to the diagram or the concept ‘til it’s right and I don’t think that’s any different for a house, or a public building.

Tom: So there hasn’t been a dramatic need to change the way the office operates?

Talbot: No, not at all. Between Brian and I, we did the ARC exactly the same way we’d do a house: we sit down and we draw it. All that’s different is a big support group — that’s the key.

Tom:You hold onto the program for really a long time before you move into what the form is going to be.

Talbot: I’ll tell you about the process. Brian pushed, right in the middle of the interview [with the U of T], for participatory design. It’s what we do with houses. They come in, we meet ‘em on the site, in the office, we design with them. We don’t go away and do options to show them and then come back later and say ‘here’s what you’re getting’. Our first meeting after we were awarded

How to build an ARC

his is part of a conversation between two young architects who graduated from TUNS (now Dalhousie) in 1997: Talbot Sweetapple, who works with Brian Mackay-Lyons Architecture and Urban Design in Halifax and Tom Stickland, who is slowly working his way west, having worked with BML in Halifax, KPMB in Toronto and Jenkins and Associates in Calgary. The discussion was about the Academic Resources Centre at the University of Toronto which, when recently tendered, came in 15% under budget — this from a firm known for its precious, beautiful houses and its reinvestment in vernacular traditions. How did they do this?

Talbot Sweetapple and Tom Strickland

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On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

the job, we said ‘here’s what we’re going to do.

We’re going to do four workshops, the first one is called site, the second program, the third is called form, last material and technology’. They were a month apart from each other and we put together a committee of eight people that would remain constant throughout the process. Then we organized the workshops around the people with a vested interest in the future of this place.

Tom:What would you do in a programming workshop?

Talbot: We built a game. I got a student to build the program in three dimensions — blocks coded by colour and wood species and they fit into a module. We already had the module figured out.

So we made three of these games, gave them a site map of foam core to play with and the three teams all designed different schemes.

Each team of six or seven people had a project architect from our firm or our associate firm heading it. It was in the main meeting space of the university where people pass by; could join in or comment — Brian, Jim Sykes amd Rob Lyco floated in between.

That went on for about three hours and then we picked a person from each team, but not the project architect, to present their schemes to everybody. Then what Brian did, like a magician, was synthesize all three into one, taking the good from all three. That’s wild. Think about what that actually does in the process of design. He took

the best from all three projects. First of all, you would never get those ideas unless you did that process, never. Second, you’ve created ownership within the design of everybody which means that’s what really saves money in the end of the project, because everyone knows where everything comes from, no surprises, everyone understands. Whenever we suggest something, you know, it’s great because they can catch us leaving the process.

They are the ones that keep us true, keep us honest about our design. It’s a very open-book process.

Tom: And this process saves money.

Talbot: Not only does it save money, it actually ensures against changes and extras that we’re not going to be able to see because you don’t know what they’re thinking about. It’s not on the construction budget that we’re talking about where you save money. It’s a saving of everybody’s time, of our time, the client’s time, the crisis meetings that halfway down the road…

Tom: …end up costing thousands.

Talbot: That’s one of the untangible savings I guess; can’t put a real number to that right now.

Tom: So when you come in 15% under budget on this building as you did, you can’t claim, ‘this is because of this workshop process that we go through’.This is something that’ll happen later and make everyone feel good about the building. At the end of the day it’ll be an on-time and on-budget thing.

Il s’agit d’une conversation entre deux jeunes architectes,Talbot Sweetapple de Halifax et Tom Strickland de Calgary, au sujet d’un immeuble ARC à l’Université de Toronto qui, une fois le projet de soumission complété, s’est retrouvé en dessous de 15 % du budget initial ? ceci provenant d’une firme reconnue pour ses charmantes demeures précieuses et son réinvestissement dans les traditions vernaculaires. Comment y sont-ils arrivés?

Talbot: Well, it does affect the construction budget somewhat, but the big one is the schedule. This is a tight schedule and the only way we ran it was by participatory design. In a way, because we just went through all those workshops where everyone understood everything, there were no surprises, no going back. It just went very fast.

Tom: So Brian’s acting as a manager in this?

Talbot: Facilitator.

Tom: He takes his skills as an architect to turn this information — this data — into a building.

Talbot: That’s it. But in all honesty, he’s still got to layer his knowledge of architecture, his grammar, his way of thinking about architecture onto these people’s schemes you know, letting their schemes influence and move his grammar around. It just can’t be a free-for-all and they design whatever they want and we draw it. The architect’s not taken out of the process. It’s highly controlled, highly motivated by the architect.

The clients are getting educated. It’s a huge education along the way. What’s good is that in meetings you get some people saying, ’well I think we should do this’, and other people saying ‘well no, that will violate the concept of the building’.

Tom: Define the concept for me.

Talbot: Everyone knew it was a grove of columns from the beginning.

Tom:That’s the architecture — the grove of columns.

Talbot: That’s what it was. And it sort of morphs

Tom: Alors, il s’agit de votre deuxième grand immeuble, votre bureau change et puis vous déménagez dans un nouvel espace de bureau. De quelle façon votre façon de procéder a-t-elle été influencée, après tout ce que vous avez appris dans le domaine de la construction de maisons, en ce qui a trait aux plus grands immeubles?

Talbot : Nous voyons les petites maisons comme si elles étaient des immeubles publics. Brian

then, it sort of develops: it turned into columns plus bars.

Tom:Through the interactive workshop process?

Talbot: Exactly, the bars developed.

The site is a big thing. There’s the John Andrews’ building — this brutal architecture that hugs the ravine edge. We used the analogy of the hill town for those buildings, our building was up on the plateau with a piazza and a grove of columns. In the first meeting Brian said, ‘you need the mosque of Cordoba’, and he drew it on a chalkboard.

The mosque of Cordoba — I think it’s 1,300 columns — and over the years the Christians and the Moors each had a go at it, and you can see they each basically used the infrastructure of the building. There’s a cathedral built inside this 1,300-column grid; it’s an extremely flexible system, right? It’s just a big grove of columns and then we developed the idea of bars, a modular of concrete block that everything stems from.

There’s hardly any interior finish in this building other than concrete block. That’s one of the budget things I played with. For the trades — get a good concrete person, a good steel person and a good skin person — you’re done! There’s not much millwork in it either.

I can get down and dirty with the detail; I appreciate the details which is the Toronto trend — high, high craft, right, almost like jewelry. But we believe architecture can stand any material because the architecture is the infrastructure. If you go

conçoit, au départ, quasiment sans échelle ou grammaire de conception, comme je le ferais.

Le tout, par contre, se programme à l’échelle assez rapidement. Nous pratiquons ce qu’on appelle la conception participatoire, soit en obtenant tout le contenu des immeubles des clients. « Qu’avez-vous de besoin? » « Vous avez besoin de pièces? Vous avez besoin d’une cuisine? Vous avez besoin d’une salle de conférences?»

Vous voyez, on se trouve assez rapidement au niveau du programme.

Nous avons rarement une idée préconçue de quoi que ce soit — nous n’avons pas une image de ce que nous voulons faire avant un bon bout de temps, tout au long de la programmation et de la préconception.

Brian ne veut pas être influencé par une image. Il travaille le concept aussi longtemps qu’il le peut, jusqu’à ce qu’il soit

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with concrete block, it could easily be turned into something else. We don’t care if it’s concrete block or not, it just ended up being that way. All the siding is copper but we wouldn’t be afraid if it was galvalum or something like that. The architecture still stands. We always do that actually.

Tom:When you started into the planning, the idea of the mosque and the 1,300 columns was originally what defined the planning?

Talbot: That’s right.

Tom: And it became more organized based on the fact that you were in Ontario and there are good masons, so you chose to use concrete block as one of the heavier materials and that started to tighten up the detailing and the actual size of the building.

Talbot: That’s right.

Tom: Gotcha.

Talbot: We were given all our square footage and it was extremely tight. There’s not a space wasted in this thing, nothing gratuitous. All our public spaces — all our hallways and streets are programme-full.

Tom: What do you mean by ‘programme-full’?

Talbot: For example if you need 13 workstations, we’ll put ‘em in a hallway. We’ll just make the hallway wider to accommodate the programme.

Tom: So putting the workstations in the hallway, that was something you guys may have learned from the CSB? Talbot: Oh definitely. We learned a lot from the CSB because it was fast-tracked. Right at the beginning, we came up with a common denominator: that’s where it got complex. We knew we were going to have offices, we knew we were going to have classrooms, teaching labs, and parking spaces. We knew were going to have a lecture hall, café, etc. So okay, we say 30’ by 30’ is a goodsized classroom in the university, we determined that. Offices would be 10’ by 10; glass in a curtain-

à point. Je ne crois pas que ce soit bien différent lorsqu’on parle d’une maison ou d’un immeuble public.

Permettez-moi de vous parler du processus. Brian a insisté sur la conception participatoire. C’est ce que nous faisons dans le cas des maisons. Ils entrent, nous les rencontrons sur le terrain, au bureau, puis nous élaborons le plan de con22

wall system is 5’ wide, a parking spot is 10’ wide; a lecture hall is 30’ wide, so everything is divisible by five. We found a common denominator and all of a sudden we say, okay, we’d be safe if we went with a tartan grid in the computer science building of 10-30-10-30-10-30-10-30. Ten feet is pretty wide for travelling in, we’re making it a 10’ tartan to use for circulation, but we can also use it as a flexor zone just in case we have to programme it later, which we did. So hallways would then shrink down to 4’ as we encroach on them from the spaces next to them in the 30’ bay. It’s really neat.

If you go in the building, you’ll be able to see that.

If you plug in a classroom and the classroom needs to be a little bit bigger, you can actually take some of the floor space from that 10’ zone.

That’s exactly what we did with the ARC building too — find a common denominator — which is extremely hard on a complex project like that.

Tom: Okay, what was the common denominator then on the ARC building?

Talbot: Two offices plus a hallway equals 24’. Good passage route in a lightwell for two storeys we found is an 8’-wide crack. We call those cracks between all the bars. So everything’s on a 4’ module in this building — and it was hard to find a common denominator in this building compared to the CSB because it was so complex, but we had to start somewhere so we came up with a 24’ grid for everything. That’s what the columns are on, and it happens to be a good concrete module too. Thirty feet is about the extent of concrete before it becomes inefficient. So not only is it programme, but also technology helps us come up with the common denominator.

8-24-8-24-8-24-8 is this grid that we’re doing now [on the ARC]. Its smaller than the CSB actually.

One of the main reasons for that is I think this building here has more cellular than public space.

There’s 130-odd offices in this building.

ception avec eux. Nous ne nous en allons pas pour ensuite revenir plus tard et leur dire « Voici ce que vous obtenez ». Lors de notre première réunion, après qu’on nous a octroyé le travail, nous avons dit : « Voici ce que nous ferons. Nous organiserons quatre ateliers. Le premier s’appelle le site , le second le programme, le troisième la forme et le dernier le matériel

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

Tom: In the CSB, the public space is maybe a third of the whole building. Whereas in the ARC it’s almost zero, other than corridors.

Talbot: Yeah, there are a couple of town squares and courtyards. The other thing with this building [ARC] is the bars and cracks. The way this works is, if you look at the plan you see that you get columns on a 24’ grid and just outside that is your concrete block. This is the key to the design. The structure is basically columns and slabs. The concrete block is a cladding, an internal cladding. The reason we did that is because we were playing it safe where it came to budgeting knowing that the concrete block could change to anything and not hinder the structure.

Tom: So it could become steel stud and drywall.

Talbot: Exactly. It would still be monolithic-looking, still be solid-looking. It could have been wood, it could have been anything. The market was so volatile at the time, and we didn’t have any idea about this building because nobody knew what it was going to come in because it’s a pretty oddlooking building. But we wouldn’t be heartbroken over a material change either, really, because I think the building would still stand. The concept is strong, but the materials really help define the concept even more. If you do it right.

It’s like the Louis Kahn stuff, eh? The Yale Centre for British Art — you know how big an impression that made on me, right? It’s the same thing. Y’know you could have plugged those holes with cork instead of oak and still have had the same building. There is a fine line where it turns into a WalMart, you might lose everything: we wouldn’t do that either.

You could though. Somewhere that could be the best thing to do.

Tom: With WalMart you’ve got programatically one big space and up front you’ve got a bar of function; entry, exit, washrooms, cashiers and the rest is just open space. So there’s no real complexity to those buildings.

et la technologie ». Ils étaient à un mois d’écart les uns des autres, et comptaient un comité central de huit personnes.

Tom : Et ce processus vous économise de l’argent?

Talbot : Non seulement nous permet-il d’économiser de l’argent, mais il nous protège contre les modifications et les frais supplémentaires. C’est une économie de temps pour tout

le mondeÉ notre temps, le temps du client, les réunions d’urgence qui doivent se tenir à mi-chemin…

Tom : …qui finissent par vous coûter des milliers de dollars.

Talbot : Il s’agit là de l’une des économies impalpables, j’imagine.

Tom : Pourriez-vous me définir le concept?

Talbot : Tout le monde savait

Whole programme

Halls

Theatre

Library

Structure

Talbot: This ARC building has the same floor plate as a big box. That’s probably one of the reasons it’s actually very cheap. But we acknowledge that it’s going to be a place for people to work in and you’ve got to have light in the middle, so some of these cracks in the section have clerestories above.

The other cool thing, you have these big concrete bars 24’ wide by 280’ long just lining up next to each other, big trailers, and there’s an 8’ crack in between and on the second floor in that 8’ crack there’s a floating mezzanine made of steel.

Tom:There is a lot of opportunity in the building to cut cost, because you’re not really attached to stylized detailing.

Talbot: This can work for you or against you with the clients. All we care is ‘that’s solid, that’s less solid, that’s a heavy material, that’s a light material.

Here’s a range of light materials, here’s a range of heavy materials, and here’s some relationships that work well together’. So we’re not too hung-up on what they are.

Tom: So you guys came in 15% under budget, how’d that happen?

Talbot: Materiality’s one.

Tom:The frugal beauty.

Talbot: The frugal beauty. You know, it’s just a concrete building with some extras. It does have a copper skin which right now is not that expensive.

There’s some wood in there, in the sweet spots of the building, but for the majority the materials aren’t that lavish. They’re not modest either. They are, let’s say, medium to high. Exposed concrete floors, exposed ceiling, exposed ducts.

Tom: Earlier you mentioned how few trades were involved. What about reducing the connections between trades?

Talbot: There aren’t a lot of trades dependent on other trades, because everything is sort of separated. But the other one is, this is a bloody,

Squares

Streets

bien qu’il ne s’agissait que d’un bosquet de colonnes du départ.

Tom : On parle de l’architecture?

Un bosquet de colonnes?

Talbot : Le site est d’une grande importance. On y trouve l’immeuble John Andrews — cette architecture brute qui frôle la bordure du ravin. Notre immeuble était sur un plateau, avec une piazza et un bosquet

de colonnes. La mosquée de Cordoba compte 1 300 colonnes et une cathédrale. Il s’agit d’un système extrêmement polyvalent, n’est-ce pas?

Le ARC est en fait un énorme bosquet de colonnes, de barreaux, et un bloc modulaire de ciment duquel le tout émerge.

Il n’y a pratiquement aucune finition intérieure à cet immeuble à part de ce bloc de ciment.

Il s’agit de l’un des éléments budgétaires avec lequel j’ai du jongler. En ce qui a trait aux métiers — si vous avez un expert du ciment, un expert de l’acier et un expert de la structure extérieure — le tour est joué! Il n’y a pas énormément de menuiserie en jeu.

Si vous regardez le plan, vous voyez les colonnes sur la grille de 24 pieds et, juste à

l’extérieur, vous avez votre bloc de ciment. Il s’agit là de la clé à la conception. La structure consiste principalement en des colonnes et des dalles. Le bloc de ciment est un placage interne en soi. On ne prenait aucun risque lorsque venait le temps de budgétiser en sachant que le bloc de ciment pouvait se transformer en n’importe quoi et ne nuirait pas à la

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bloody, simple building. The plan — people look at it and go ‘this is a joke’ Some things, like the new ROM or whatever, they look at it, they don’t know how to price it, they’re going to put in a factor like the unknown factor, you know. The 300% that they all add on because they didn’t see that the reveals between the brick were actually ebony. But they look at our building and it’s just a bunch of concrete block and concrete. ‘We can whip this up in a day— get the structure up in three weeks — this whole thing is just one big lift’. The super-rational infrastructure, the systematic approach, which is a modular, is probably the main thing.

Materiality was another one of the big things, articulation of form was another. We really tried to articulate this building as five trailers; they’re all in rows like the Kimball, and that was costing a bomb right? So all we did was shorten them, put a roof over it, put some clerestories in and that was one of the major shifts in the design. A $4 million shift.

We had to do it.

Tom: And when did that happen?

Talbot: Probably at the end of schematic design.

Tom: So you’d had all your workshops by that time.

Talbot: Yeah, it didn’t change anything. Didn’t change plan, just the formal expression. It was the same thing at the CSB. The skin was almost ready to go up and we had all these reveals in the tartan and the client asked the cost estimators ‘how much does this reveal cost?’ and he said ‘Each one is $40,000’. Well, $40,000 times 5 is $200,000.

‘Ah…,let’s get rid of those’. As soon as you put a price tag on something like a feature or an item, it’s up for grabs, right, and that’s what they did.

We said, ‘okay we can do without it’. Maybe the building benefitted from it.

Tom: As you are going into this process, is there an

idea that the roof might not make it to the end and so you are already starting to think of options or do you think of it as that happens?

Talbot: We figured we had it right and the Class D estimate came in and it was well over budget and we had to drastically think how to reduce cost. We knew it wasn’t a material question at that point, it was ‘okay we’ve got to change the form a bit to save some money’. We had copper parapets, we had all sorts of things that were gratuituous. It was expensive. We made it simpler.

Tom: How long did it take to decide to go with the roof change.

Talbot: One hour. I did a sketch, Brian said that’s what we’ve got to do.

Tom: Did you sit down together? Was it like a charette or something?

Talbot: Nah. It was a Sunday night before I was flying to Toronto on Monday and we did a sketch and figured it out and we just went and got a price and saved a lot of money.

Tom:The roof over top of the theatre — that didn’t change?

Talbot: It got articulated a little bit differently. The theatre is actually a big wrapper that went over two of the trailers.

Tom:What about on the inside, these roofs over the trailers were peaked?

Talbot: No. They were just flat little bars with little parapets: five of them.

Tom: Really the only expression that anyone experiences as far as change is concerned is…

Talbot: …the roofscape. What you see from a distance is the major thing. We tried to keep the concept as strong as we could, right? So now

they’re trailers with a big roof over them.

Imagine you have five trailers banked next to each other and an 8’ crack in between each one, and that crack is basically extruded all the way up and those cracks all have skylights — the crack in between solid forms. So what we did, we took those solid forms and it was like taking your pants down: we just skinned it down to the 17’ mark.

Basically when you’re standing on the second floor, it’s up to your waist in height. We took that skin down.

Tom (very cautiously): Okay.

Talbot: The skin of those trailers got pulled off and dropped down to railing height on the second floor. So now, if you isolated one of these trailers and you’re standing on the second floor there’s no walls above the 3’-mark, anywhere. But your columns stayed where they were and then we put a big flat roof over everything. When you’re inside this building now, the concrete block always stops at the 3’-mark on the second floor: you’re going to be able to see about 300’ on the second floor.

They’re all open study lofts.

Tom: A nice expression. It may even be nicer than if were they closed.

Talbot: Yeah, I think so.

Tom: Really dramatic.

Talbot: We had great clients for the ARC building, couldn’t ask for anything better. These guys were amazing. They were raising the bar for us every meeting. Always asking us, “are you sure?” We had to cut the budget all the way through. Everytime we’d do something, they’d say ‘sure you’re not compromising the design? Sure you don’t want us to go raise more money for this?’ They were really good. 

Project: University of Toronto at Scarborough Academic Resource Centre Design Architect: Brian MacKay-Lyons Architecture Urban Design Design team: Brian MacKay-Lyons (Principal), Talbot Sweetapple (Project Architect), Melanie Hayne, Justin Bennett, Dean Poffenroth, Chad Jamieson

Prime Consultants: Rounthwaite, Dick and Hadley Architects Rob Boyko (Partner in charge), Dave Premi (Project Architect), Momine Hoq, Carlos Tavares, Daniel Herljevic, Kevin McCluskey

Structural: Peter Sheffield & Associates Ltd. Mechanical: Keen Engineering Co. Ltd. Electrical: Hidi Rae Consulting Engineers Inc. Size: 9,300 sq. m

structure.

Tom : Il pouvait alors se transformer en charpente d’acier et en cloison sèche?

Talbot : Exactement. Il aurait quand même une apparence monolithique et solide. Il aurait pu s’agir de bois ou de n’importe quelle autre matière.

Nous ne serions pas contrariés pour une question de changement de matériel. Je crois que 24

l’immeuble se tiendrait quand même.

Tom : Il existe un grand nombre d’occasions, en ce qui a trait à cet immeuble, de couper les coûts, puisque vous n’attachez pas une grande importance aux détails stylisés.

Talbot : Ce facteur peut jouer tant en votre faveur que contre vous auprès des clients. Tout ce qui nous importe c’est « que

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

Talbot Sweetapple is a project architect at Brian MacKay Lyons Architecture and Urban Design and has taught at Dalhousie, Syracuse and Arkansas.

ce soit solide », « que ce soit moins solide », « que ce soit un matériel lourd », « que ce soit un matériel léger », ou encore, « voici une gamme de matériaux légers, voici une gamme de matériaux lourds et voici certains liens qui font que le tout fonctionne bien ensemble ». Alors, on n’attache pas vraiment une grande importance à ce qu’ils sont.

Tom : Alors vous êtes arrivés à 15 % en dessous du budget? Que s’est-il produit?

Talbot : C’était, d’abord et avant tout, une question substantielle.

Tom : La beauté modeste.

Talbot : La beauté modeste, voilà! Vous savez, il ne s’agit que d’un immeuble de ciment avec quelques extras. Son recouvrement est de cuivre qui, à l’heure actuelle, n’est pas

très dispendieux. Il y a aussi du bois, aux points idéaux de l’immeuble, mais la plupart des matériaux ne sont pas si luxueux.

Nous avions de superbes clients pour l’immeuble ARC. On ne saurait demander mieux.

Ces gars-là étaient superbes!

Ils montaient la barre pour nous à chaque réunion. Ils nous demandaient toujours « êtes-

vous certains? ». Nous devions couper le budget tout au long.

Chaque fois que nous faisions de quoi, ils disaient: « êtes-vous certains que vous ne compromettez pas l’aspect de la conception? » ou encore «êtes-vous certains que vous ne voulez pas que nous allions prélever d’autres fonds pour ceci? ». Ils étaient vraiment sympas.

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I

n George Orwell’s Spanish Civil War book Homage to Catalonia, he speaks about taking the streetcar out to the front. This has always struck me as almost absurd, that war could be so domesticized.

Somehow, I have great spatial divisions in my understanding of the killing fields and everyday life. However, the streetcar that takes old ladies to shops and soldiers to battle is simultaneously military and public space: there is no functional transformation, for the function, transport, remains the same. What is transformed is only a personal relationship with a spatial practice.

The streets of the cities hosting meetings of the WTO, the G8, the IMF, or APEC, with their attendant anti-globalization protests, are similarly transformed. Before and after the fence, the riot police, the tear gas, the street theatre and the surveillance, the streets are full of business people going to work, tourists, vendors: the usual. The streets — the public spaces of the city — promiscuously support anything that wants to occur in them. They appear as neutral spaces, apolitical, mere scaffolding for events in Colin Rowe’s terms, or in Lefebvre’s sense, a firm representation of civil, efficient, modernity.

One particular building type, the stadium, offers an extreme example of structures which support conflicting kinds of spectacle.

In liberation movements, rebellions and other wars, the incarceration of large groups of people is one of the constants. Often the prelude to disappearances, the question must often arise: where to put them?

The soccer stadium offers controlled entrances and exits, concrete superstructures, and soundproof privacy. All those things that support singing sports spectators who pay to see the game can also work to hide terrible abuses. In June, large screens were set up in the stadium in Kabul so that Afghanis could watch the Argentina-Italy World Cup match. This would have been impossible under the sportbanning Taliban just six months earlier, when an average of three public executions a week took place in the same stadium after Friday prayers (Australian Broadcasting Corporation newscast 14/10/02). Daniel Igali, a member of the Toronto presentation committee to the IOC for the 2008 Olympics, was appalled that the committee “ignored China’s human-rights violations, including the mass execution of prisoners in stadiums that would be used for the Games” (Globe & Mail 14/07/01).

Not a new history, there are the stories of the Velodrome d’Hiver in 1942 Vichy Paris and the National Stadium in Santiago in 1973. No transformation takes place in the form — crowds have looked down on the field since the Coliseum — but the spectacle changes. This spectacle, as a spatial practce, differs from that outlined by Debord: a capitalist conflation of event and commodity. While this is definitely a workable analysis of professional sports, it is the more primitive, primordial spectacle of struggle that is being discussed here. Tim Parks, in A Season with Verona, writes that the fan activities around Italian football contain a ritualized version of the warring city states of the Italian peninsula. For a day, Verona can battle Bologna to the chanted insults of the fans.

Tighter crowd control within stadiums, such as fewer entrances, has proved lethal to spectators who can so easily be trapped and crushed in the panic to avoid violence: no less frightening in its way than being assembled unwillingly in a velodrome. Sport is a metaphor for war and this particular architecture of sport slips easily into being a tool of war. This slippage is all the more effective because in an unsuspecting society such as Canada, where stadiums are all about the Grey Cup and Lilith Fair, the lethal possibilities of the form seem to be completely risible. Stadia are in our midst, in the centres of our cities, and our universities.

It is not that we can’t visualize spatial practices, but we seem to have difficulty placing them in our own territory. At the tag end of modernism, the belief that a neutral position is possible gives us streets without judgement and public spaces that take no sides. But do they emerge from the tear gas and water cannon with any scars? Are the stadia washed in the blood of the lamb simply with the reinstatement of riotous football fans singing We are the Champions?

There is no obvious physical transformation here, such as the removal of two 200-storey office towers in lower Manhattan, or the flattening of the 18th century tomb of Vali Gujarati which now lies under a newly paved road in Gujerat. What has been transformed is a perhaps unthinking trust in civic space: there is a new realization that public venues are simultaneously ominous and innocent in the most banal sort of way. 

Stephanie White is an architect, the editor of On|Site review and is currently researching issues of nationalism and urban form.

Stephanie White

Des stades et autre choses Dans son livre Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell parle du fait que le tramway doit prendre les devants.

Cette notion m’a toujours paru comme étant des plus absurdes, que la guerre soit si domestiquée.

Il me semble qu’il existe un grand espace entre ma compréhension des génocides et de la vie de tous les jours : le tramway qui mène les vieilles dames aux boutiques et les soldats à la guerre est, d’une façon simultanée, un espace tant public que militaire. Ce qui se transforme n’est que la relation personnelle que l’on accorde à une pratique spatiale.

26

Un type particulier d’immeuble, le stade de soccer, offre un exemple extrême de structures qui viennent appuyer des genres de spectacles conflictuels. Les entrées et les sorties contrôlées, les superstructures de béton et le privé insonorisé – toutes ces choses qui viennent appuyer les spectateurs chanteurs de sports peuvent aussi dissimuler de terribles abus. En juin, de grands écrans ont été installés dans le stade de Kaboul afin que les Afghans puissent regarder la partie de la Coupe mondiale entre l’Argentine et l’Italie, une chose complètement inimaginable sous le

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

régime taliban d’il y a six mois.

On se souviendra que ce régime avait banni le sport et qu’en moyenne, trois exécutions par semaine avaient lieu dans le même stade après les prières du vendredi.

Le sport sert de métaphore pour la guerre et cette architecture de sport particulière passe facilement comme étant un outil de guerre.

Ce passage est des plus efficaces au sein d’une société peu méfiante comme celle du Canada, où les possibilité létales de la sorte semblent complètement risibles, tout comme les intellectuels du Chili ont dû se sentir en 1972 au

moment où ils étaient sur le point d’être emprisonnés dans le Stade national de Santiago. Les stades sont au cœur de nos sociétés, au centre de nos villes et de nos universités.

Dans le cas qui nous concerne, il n’existe aucune transformation physique. Ce qui a été transformé, peut-être, est la confiance aveugle que nous accordons à l’espace public : on remarque une nouvelle constatation du fait que les endroits publics sont un présage simultané et innocent, de la façon la plus banale qui soit.

stephanie white

Stadiums — not just for soccer

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Overcoming the refuge: rebuilding Cegrane Sam Smith

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uring the Kosovo crisis, the Cegrane Refugee Camp, close to the Kosovo border became the biggest refugee camp since World War Two. After the Balkans peace agreement in June 1999 and the subsequent departure of many of the refugees returning to their homes in Kosovo, the United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees undertook the rehabilitation of all the camp sites in Macedonia. The small Muslim village of Cegrane had been left with a 50 hectare site full of post-refugee junk—canvas tents, tent poles, lice ridden blankets, fencing mesh, razor wire, generator shelters, pallets.

The project was to design and implement a site that was self-sustaining. This included on-site water via a 7.2 kilometre system of wells and swales (able to hold up to 40 million litres of water), reforesting and stabilising the site with 18 000 trees of which 3 000 were a mixed fruit tree orchard, planting mixed vegetable gardens and building an education centre, office buildings and student accomodation. With time, the vision was to incorporate housing for the local community who would also the manage the centre. My role as part of the Australian contingent was that of Site Architect.

The brief

I was to design an eco-village and all of the main structures within, document the buildings, procure the necessary local government permits, workshop with the national staff, teach some of the Permaculture Design Certificate courses and build the village. This would take four months just to get the planning and design correct and I would stay until then — the end of stage two.

I was in my element. There were not the usual holds in place that stifle one’s creativity— no over-anxious client, greedy developer or blood-from-a-stone boss. There were financial and time constraints, but as long as I could think and act quickly there appeared no limitations to what I could do as long as I thought on my feet and aimed at finding creative solutions.

When you are put into this kind of situation, it is possible to bring architecture back to its most basic form as shelter and to find a rare kind of beauty in buildings that without the hype are truly honest — a kind of ‘habitat for humanity’ philosophy.

The beginning

In the first week, we [with my translator Ganimet Latifi, architect Sami Fatir, site manager Dave Clarke and a subcommittee from the local community] had designed the site layout and a schematic of all the major building components. With a quick course in solar passive design, I left the main design elements up to our local architect. We were not dealing with cutting edge design elements, but more realistic solutions to shelter. The end products are somewhat clichéd 70’s style solar houses, but for the tiny village of Cegrane this was quite a leap. We used traditional ideas and building styles, local building knowledge and materials while incorporating permaculture methods of creating energy, collecting water and dealing with waste and the straw bale construction techniques.

The Vardar Valley is stunning, both under snow and in the 40+º C days that occur in the summer. The surrounding medieval villages are picturesque with a very distinct local vernacular. Mud, straw and stone structures with timber lintels foil movement in this earthquake-prone part of the world. There are a lot of Ottoman Empire influences; mosques and minarets, while the modern buildings are very Eastern Bloc, communist-era utilitarian, using in-situ concrete and red ‘blocka’ bricks, not so helpful in an earthquake. It was quite easy to see why countries, usually developing countries, often have huge fatalities in earthquakes and natural disasters. It is difficult, with western eyes and education to let go of what you know to adapt to the local methods, to try to incorporate cultural sensitivity into your process. I was constantly aware of not wanting to come across as a western know-it-all. I wanted to use the local vernacular and knowledge. I definitely learnt more on this project than I taught.

Cegrane

Après les accords de paix des Balkans conclus en juin 1999 et le rapatriement de nombreux réfugiés au Kosovo, le Haut Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés a entrepris la réhabilitation de tous les sites de camps de réfugiés en Macédoine. Le camp de réfugiés de Cegrane, situé près de la frontière du Kosovo, avait été le plus grand camp 28

du genre depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

Le petit village musulman de Cegrane s’est retrouvé avec un site de 50 hectares rempli de déchets que les réfugiés avaient laissés derrière eux : tentes faites de toile, mâts de tentes, couvertures infestées de poux, grillage à clôture, barbelés tranchants, caisses de généra-

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trices et palettes. Le projet de réhabilitation du site avait pour but l’aménagement d’un site autosuffisant, approvisionné en eau au moyen d’un réseau de 7,2 km de puits et de baissières pouvant contenir jusqu’à 40 millions de litres d’eau.

Nous avons réussi à stabiliser le terrain en plantant 18 000 arbres, dont 3 000 forment un verger d’arbres fruitiers

divers, et à aménager des jardins potagers où poussent une variété de légumes. Nous avons construit un centre d’éducation, des immeubles à bureaux et des logements pour les étudiants. Le projet prévoyait la construction, au fil du temps, d’habitations pour les gens du village, à qui serait également confiée la responsabilité de gérer le centre

P

sam smith

ermaculture is basically a system of design for creating sustainable lifestyles, encompassing shelter, food, energy and waste management,education and community development. Rudina boasts the most Permaculture Design Certificate graduates anywhere in the world. Geoff and Sindhu Lawton ran several courses with the Ethnic Albanian community using inspired translators, and graduated over 400 people, at least a quarter of these were Muslim women who previously had not had any education or equal employment opportunities.

With this knowledge in place the project was about helping people to help themselves rather than offering the usual band-aid solutions.

d’éducation. Mon rôle, au sein du contingent d’Australiens, était celui d’architecte chargé de la conception et de l’aménagement du site.

Quoiqu’il y ait eu, dans le cadre de ce projet, des contraintes de temps et d’argent, on n’y retrouvait pas les contraintes habituelles qui étouffent la créativité personnelle. Quand

une telle situation se présente à soi, il est possible de ramener l’architecture à sa fonction première de conception d’abris et de trouver une beauté toute particulière à des bâtiments qui, dépourvus de toute ostentation, ont une apparence toute simple. C’est là en quelque sorte une philosophie de l’architecture qui se rapproche de celle d’Habitat pour

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sam smith

l’humanité.

Pendant la première semaine, nous (un interprète, un architecte local et diverses personnes du village) avons dessiné un plan de l’aménagement du site et une esquisse de tous les principaux composants des bâtiments projetés. La réalisation des produits finis a fait appel à des techniques et matériaux de construction 30

locaux et a incorporé à la fois les suggestions des gens du village et des styles de construction locaux. Ces produits incorporent également des méthodes de permaculture de génération d’énergie, de collecte d’eau, de gestion des déchets et d’utilisation des techniques de construction de bâtiments en ballots de paille.

Les hommes ont érigé les structures portantes (fonda-

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The building

While the men put the hard structures up, the footings, framing and roofing elements, the women were the wall builders. We used tent poles for framing, razor wire for footing reinforcement, all manner of refugee junk to fill rubble trenches that were faced with the local stone (un-quarried and hand collected on site) to bring the straw bale walls above the snow line. We used fencing mesh to make a roof canopy which was then draped with cement dipped refugee blankets. These were then covered in thatch. The women’s work teams did the straw bale infill walls, window setting and waterproofing. I showed them my method and within minutes they, as a team had refined the technique and improved it. And they were fast and strong.

We built the infill walls and rendered them so fast it was mind blowing. The school children then came over, as part of the art initiative, and painted the walls.

After we had built more sheds than we needed, in all manner of shapes and sizes including round ones, and we had run out of things to ‘infill’ as the hard structures for the main buildings were still being constructed, we decided to recycle generator shelters into small accomodations units. This was not part of the master plan; it was completely impromptu. We could weld together four shelters to make a room that could sleep four people. A bed of blue chips was put down and old timber pallets were pegged into place. Recycled chip board was nailed to the this and these became platforms from which our walls would be fixed. This was a completely low tech solution and would possibly only last a few seasons, but it would solve a short term accomodation crisis that was looming. The best of it was that the women (2 teams of 6) could put 2-3 of these small shelters up in a day. In a week we had accomodation to sleep 48 people. Windows and doors were framed up with canvas and mosquito wire (again refugee junk) and whilst they may not have been great for the winter, they were certainly better than tents and would be great in the summer.

The main structures were still not complete by the end of stage two. It frustrated everyone, but it was an unrealistic program to start with. There were errors in design and placement that could have been avoided by allowing more time in the design and documentation stage. There were in-house procurement issues.

The government body responsible for issuing building permits were impossibly slow, possibly waiting for a bribe. Aside from that, we had accomplished a huge amount in a very short period of time. We already had built around 20 small buildings and had framed up and roofed the main community building, built and landscaped a lake and refugee memorial and established an orchard and several acres of organic market gardens. We had set up a recycling system for the whole town and educated over 400 people in Permaculture design. It was much more than I thought possible in a few short months.

I still get emails from the people there, some about the conflict, some about permaculture, and I still receive the newsletters and photos of the site in progress. The project is still in operation, on a much smaller scale. The local mayor claimed the community building as his office and a lot of the gardens have become residential housing sites. I guess the community needed housing sites more than organic tomatoes! Maybe they never wanted organic tomatoes to start with? Did anyone ever ask?

At the end of the day, as difficult and challenging as it was, it was the best thing I think I have done in my architectural career. I think about it frequently and how the process could have been improved. It combined a whole series of influences and theories that I had about humanist architecture and involvement of real people and their needs being met by real architecture. Whether the project was a success or failure, I don’t know. A bit of both! I do believe that it was a great prototype of how Architecture can be used to better a community on an international level, not just in aid work but in all architectural work. I can’t wait to be able to get back into the field again. The next project I hope to be involved with is the Aboriginal housing issue here in Central Australia. Funding permitting!  Sam Smith is an architect in East Geelong,Victoria, Australia who also teaches at Deakin University in Geelong. Further information about this project can be found at www.rudina.org.mk

tions, charpentes et toitures), tandis que les femmes ont construit les murs. Je leur ai montré ma technique de construction en ballots de paille et, en l’espace de quelques minutes, elles l’avaient perfectionnée. Puis, des écoliers ont peint les murs.

En très peu de temps, nous avons construit quelque vingt petits bâtiments, dressé la

charpente et la toiture du bâtiment communautaire principal, aménagé et paysagé un lac, érigé un monument commémoratif aux réfugiés, et aménagé un verger et plusieurs hectares de jardins maraîchers biologiques. Nous avons mis en place un système de recyclage pour tous les gens du village et enseigné les principes de la permaculture à quelque 400 personnes.

Ce projet a permis de faire appel à tout un ensemble d’influences et de théories que j’ai au sujet d’une architecture humaniste, selon laquelle une architecture bien réelle peut répondre aux besoins de personnes bien réelles. Il a permis de prendre en compte les questions concrètes de logement, de recyclage, de préoccupations environnementales, de site, de climat et de politiques.

Il s’est avéré un excellent exemple de la façon dont l’architecture peut servir, à un niveau international, à l’amélioration du sort d’une collectivité, en lui fournissant non seulement de l’aide humanitaire, mais aussi une aide au plan de la conception architecturale. visitez le site www.rudina.org.mk

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T

he idea of transportability and transformability of space, furniture and building systems have radical implications for the future of design discourse. Creating environments, objects or furniture that we can carry with us or can adapt and change to fit our different needs has inspired many innovative designers throughout the decades. The Personal Shelter and Transformable Table design investigations in the second year design studio, Ryerson University, School of Interior Design, contribute to the debate about our contemporary culture’s increasing desire to be mobile and flexible.

The idea of building where permanence is neither possible nor desirable opens concepts of transportability, transformability, flexibility and adaptability to a wide range of explorations. The success of such design investigations rely on the sense of urgency, humor and wit in the conception, along with the sense of surprise created at each stage of transformation. Concentrating on accessible materials and technology in creation of customized spaces and objects, these investigations also empower the individuals and provide numerous opportunities for them to actively gain control over their environment.

Nomad Jacket/Blanket proposes a wearable jacket with a personal space bubble/blanket in its transformed position that offers a mental shelter and protection from the images of media.

The padded jacket includes a hood that acts as an inflatable pillow and a sleeping bag/blanket that unwraps from the back. (By Danielle Leon, Rene Ng, Modesty St-John and Robert Walshaw)

Personal Transformations Filiz Klassen Personal Shelter Project Here, students designed and fabricated a prototype that defined a personal space and a territory set in a context of their own choice.

This design investigation expands the crossdisciplinary design imagination by combining strategies of building, clothing and furniture making. Involving research in architecture, interiors, furniture, industrial design and fashion, the design resolutions range in context from wearable, carryable and/or recyclable shelters address cultural issues in our urban or suburban landscapes.

Transformations personnelles Transformations personnelles L’idée de la transportabilité et de la transformabilité de l’espace, des meubles et des systèmes d’immeubles a eu des répercussions radicales sur l’avenir du discours sur la conception. Au fil des décennies, nombreux sont les concepteurs innovateurs qui ont 32

été inspirés par la création d’environnements, d’objets ou de meubles qui nous pouvons trimbaler avec nous, adapter ou modifier pour répondre à nos divers besoins. L’abri personnel et la table transformable, deux travaux de recherches en conception offerts dans le cadre du programme de studio de

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design de deuxième année à la School of Interior Design de l’Université Ryerson, viennent ajouter au débat sur le désir croissant de notre culture contemporaine d’être mobile et flexible.

Projet sur l’abri personnel Dans le cadre de ce projet, les étudiants ont dû concevoir et fabriquer un prototype servant à définir un espace personnel et un territoire établi dans un contexte de leur choix. Cette recherche en conception vient élargir l’imagination interdisciplinaire en combinant

Enza, derived from the Japanese straw mat idea, is a modular shelter composed of a series of closed-cell foam noodle water toys linked together with polypropylene rope. It is a very flexible play and relaxation shelter to use on and off the water with many, many possible configurations. (By Nancy Chang, William Lau, Julie Lee and Adrien Sin)

les stratégies de fabrication d’immeubles, de vêtements et de meubles. Les définitions de conception, qui exigent des recherches en matière de conception architecturale, d’intérieur, de meubles, industrielle et de la mode, varient d’un contexte à l’autre, qu’il s’agisse d’abris que l’on peut

porter, apporter ou recycler.

Elles traitent des questions culturelles dans le cadre de nos paysages urbains ou de banlieue.

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Design Student’s Sleeping Shelter is a knapsack that unfolds into a sleeping bag, providing students who stay up all night in the studio with a comfortable personal space to read or sleep protected from the harsh studio environment. (By Hyun Ju-Lee, Jeung Min Hong & Hyun Jung Park)

Box/Table surprises in its transformed position, exposing a work surface and storage nooks for anyone who enjoys working on the floor and tucking clutter away once finished. (By Hyun Jung Park)

Table de travail transformable Dans quelle mesure une table est-elle une table? Lorsque nous nous y asseyons.

Lorsqu’elle n’est pas utilisée, une table peut remplir d’autres fonctions. L’on pourrait transformer la table à tous les jours, ou au moment où nos besoins et nos exigences en matière d’espace changent. Des étudi34

ants ont fabriqué des tables qui peuvent remplir plusieurs fonctions, en utilisant des feuilles de contreplaqué en bouleau de 5’ x 5’ x 3/4”. Les matières de récupération pourraient ne pas dépasser 10 %. Les étudiants ont dû proposer une table que l’on peut plier, rouler ou transformer en n’importe quelle de ces transformations, tout en considérant les aspects pra-

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tiques et ergonomiques. Les étudiants devaient comprendre assez rapidement le poids actuel de la table ou le facteur encombrant d’une transformation, par le biais de modèles construits à pleine échelle.

Ces projets ont été réalisés dans le cadre des recherches continues du professeur Filiz Klassen dans le domaine de

la mobilité humaine et de la transformation des environnements d’immeubles dans des contextes culturels divers. Ces projets en été enseignés au printemps 2002 avec l’aide de Paul Mezei et David Johnston, avec l’aide inestimable des techniciens d’ateliers David Loewy et Blaine Evans.

Transformable Work Table When is a table a table? When we sit down at it. When it is not used, a table can accommodate other functions. One might need to transform a table daily or as one’s needs and space requirements change. Students made tables that accommodate many functions using a single 5’ x 5’ x 3/4” sheet of Baltic birch plywood. Waste material could be no more than 10%.They had to propose a table that folds, collapses, rolls away or transforms in any combination, while considering the practical and ergonomic issues of the transformation. Students had to quickly grasp how much the actual table weighs, or how cumbersome an act of transformation can be, through the building of full-scale models.

These projects are conceived as the studio outcomes of Professor Filiz Klassen’s on-going research about the issues related to human mobility and the transformation of built environments in diverse cultural contexts. These projects were taught with Paul Mezei and David Johnston in Spring 2002 with invaluable help from workshop technicians David Loewy and Blaine Evans. 

Filiz Klassen shares her ideas with interior design students at Ryerson University and is an independent curator. Her research is in urban issues that involve transformability and sustainability in a hybrid practice of fashion, interiors, architecture and graphics.

Coffee Table/Shelf toys with the idea of what playful, adaptable and flexible really mean in the context of a plywood table by offering a surprise act of transformation. This exploration is about the simplicity of lifting up a 5’ x 5’ plywood sheet by adding a number of folds and hinges. (By Rene Ng) Wall-Hung abstracts the relationship between table top and underneath. In its hung position, it reveals the carefully articulated underside of the table that we don’t usually get to see. The table unfolds by lifting a wooden peg, to reveal a Victorian traditional writing desk, resting on a single Queen Anne leg. By using, re-using and recycling traditional forms in a provocative and humorous way, this project re-interprets the tradition of furniture making. (By Robert Walshaw)

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A lecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects (March 2002) by Canadian Mark West illustrated several new possibilities in construction. His experimentation with concrete in fabric formwork results in fluid undulating concrete structures. British architects Ushida Findlay, a partnership between Eisaku Ushida and Kathryn Findlay, also produce fluid forms, using a range of materials. Both West and Ushida Findlay provide a challenge to the now-tired trend of austere minimalism that has dominated architecture of late.

Uncommon Practice The work of Mark West & Ushida Findlay

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uch of this work is due to changing attitudes, new forms of calculation and construction and attention to environmental buildings and local culture. The result is a new type of organic structure that breaks from stereotypes of granola, mud and twig; this architecture is modern, comfortable and technically sophisticated.

Mark West’s material- and form-based work is developed at the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology (CAST), at the University of Manitoba. He has developed range of methods for casting concrete structures, including columns formed with a fabric corset. Column moulds are made from two rectangular pieces of fabric, laced together front and back. Concrete is poured into the formwork. By tightening and loosening the laces different shapes, distinctly reminiscent of vegetation or body parts, emerge. The possibilities of fabric formwork are extensive, with both architectural and engineering implications. His more recent precast wall panels explore another dimension of fabric-formed concrete. Fabric trampolines pro-

Ilona Haye

Mark West cast panel

À l’aube d’une fluidité nouvelle L’architecte canadien Mark West et le cabinet d’architectes anglais Ushida Findlay, dirigé par Kathryn Findlay, créent des formes fluides en utilisant pour y arriver une variété de matériaux. Il en résulte un nouveau type de structure organique, qui rompt avec les structures stéréotypées faites de boue et de petites branches, et un 36

type d’architecture moderne, techniquement sophistiquée et ayant une allure confortable.

Mark West a mis sur pied le Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology à l’université du Manitoba, afin d’explorer de nouveaux procédés de construction. Il a développé une panoplie de

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procédés pour couler des structures en béton dont, entre autres, des moules à colonnes faits de deux morceaux de tissu rectangulaires qui se lacent à l’avant et à l’arrière. En resserrant ou en desserrant les lacets après avoir coulé du béton dans les moules, il crée des formes variées qui évoquent nettement de la végétation ou

des parties du corps.

Ushida Findlay explore les formes fluides en jouant à la fois avec les techniques de construction et les matériaux, parmi lesquels on retrouve le béton, les tuiles, le bambou, le chaume, l’herbe de brousse et un matériau synthétique, les toiles tendues Barrisol.

vide formwork for panels. These trampolines are stretched horizontally over boards arranged to create patterns. Concrete is then poured onto the trampoline mould, which bulges under the weight. It sets and then is lifted off. Panels cast in this way can also be used as moulds for casting lightweight structural shell panels.

West’s fabric-formed structures are irregular and organic, not bound by traditional rectilinear timber and plywood formwork. Different fabrics create different textures, and excess water and air escape through the weave, minimising imperfections in the finished surface.

Ushida Findlay explores fluid forms with a variety of materials, using both traditional and new technologies. Their forms also find their own logic, but through architectural manipulation of both program and material. Their palette includes concrete, tiles, bamboo, thatch, bush grass, and stretched Barrisol (a manmade fabric). To Ushida Findlay, each project is unique and solutions must not be bound by

conventional construction techniques. The firm has produced a wide variety of buildings from commissions to competitions, including a number that can be classified as hairy, including green-roofed Soft and Hairy House in Tokyo, the thatched-roof Poolhouse in Sussex, and the undulating brushwood 1009 Footpath.

Other projects with pure, curvilinear forms include Kashara, steel ribbon desks in a London office re-fit and the Truss Wall house. In Truss Wall, Möbius-strip bands of concrete trusses wrap around the building and smooth, interlocking paving stones for the courtyard used balloons as formwork. Typical of Ushida Findlay work, the house is a combination of techniques.

Construction and Calculation Construction that is linked to forms of calculation, and production that dates from the industrial era, are based on the linear milling of materials. Industrial processes produce planar units with ease and speed making rectilinear components and buildings easier and cheaper

Ushida Findlay’s Hasahara House

Bien que leur travail ne soit pas explicitement écologiste, West et Findlay se préoccupent tous les deux de questions environnementales. Pour sa part, le cabinet Ushida Findlay fait appel, dans la mesure du possible, aux gens de métier et à la main-d’œuvre locale.

L’approche environnementale de West est moins évidente, Transformations

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to mass-produce. As well, structural calculation for rectilinear components is simpler. Once built form was created by trial and error, guided by natural forces. These forces of compression and tension, cause the construction material to find it is own structural logic.

Now, computers make the more complex calculations of organic geometries possible.

Ushida Findlay’s and West’s work is designed and built intuitively, with post-analysis revealing an adherence to naturally occurring forms and patterns often described by fractal geometry. Dependence on planar construction components and measurement has slowed exploration of this particular geometry, however, both West and Ushida Findlay use alternate construction techniques in order to create these natural curves.

For Ushida Findlay, each project is a new exploration. They use scale and computer models, work closely with engineers, research materials thoroughly and use local expertise to produce an integrated architecture. Findlay notes the danger of graphics-based computer drawings of surfaces, in that they imply space and surface, but not structure or material. Her interest is in real forms, not cyberspace.

above, Mark West’s laced fabric column formwork right, Casting a thin panel over patterned formwork far right, Concrete panel detail.

étant donné qu’il ne travaille qu’avec la structure. Le moulage de structures en béton avec du tissu produit toutefois beaucoup moins de déchets que les techniques traditionnelles de coulage du béton, le coffrage utilisé pour mouler le béton étant à la fois plus compact et réutilisable.

Le temps est venu pour que 38

ça change, pour que la fluidité vienne assouplir nos vies et nos espaces devenus trop rigides.

Les recherches de ces architectes et de leurs équipes de collaborateurs peuvent servir d’inspiration à d’autres, tout en introduisant une touche d’humour et de sensualité dans la création architecturale.

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mar k west

West’s fabric formwork and natural cellular structures repeat the form of a liquid and a membrane: the cell, organic at the most basic level. Going back to pre-industrial construction and trial-and-error are West’s preferred methods of working: he finds structural forms through manipulating materials and forces in a lab environment, then analysing the results. West points out that ‘if you start by generating forms with a computer, you are always left with the problem of how to construct them’.

Environment Both West and Ushida Findlay address environmental issues, although their work is not overtly green.

Ushida Findlay use local trades and labour where possible. Thatch, traditionally used for roofs in both England and Japan, was chosen for the Poolhouse. Although programmatic requirements were technologically demanding — a pool with complex heating and ventilation — the setting was traditional. Thatch suited the adjacent16th century building and its mature country garden. While a swimming pool is not the best environmental practice, effort was made to keep the project as efficient as possible. Local thatch, which would have reduced transportation costs, was too weak, so French reed was used. A traditional thatching method was specified although the thatch is held in place with steel rods rather than traditional hazel spars and local thatchers were employed. Traditional thatched roofs are steep to shed water, making for large, dim attic spaces. The steeply pitched Poolhouse roof, however, breaks from tradition with a long glazed skylight at the ridge.

West’s environmental approach is less obvious, as structure is the only system he is involved in. His fabric formed concrete creates substantially less waste material than traditionally cast concrete. The formwork is compact and re-useable. For the columns of a Puerto Rican house, the formwork fit into three duffle bags. Construction is low-tech and straightforward, allowing unskilled local labourers to use the method. The fabric itself is also inexpensive, especially as recycled material can be used. His students have built with snow fences, duct tape, and chain-link fencing. The concrete aggregate itself can be recycled material. At the Hardcore exhibition at the RIBA (March-May 2002) there were pieces of concrete with marbles, bottles, and shells in the mix — decorative but full of future possibilities.

ushida findlay

With the Kashara Amenity Hall in Japan, Ushida Findlay aimed to create a highly efficient building with low running costs. The building’s form responds to summer and winter sun paths, preventing solar gain and allowing passive cooling with ventilation currents. The roof holds snow in the winter as insulation and the wall cladding is locally produced tile.

According to Kathryn Findlay, agents “channel forces and issues. filtering through personal choice in a rational manner.” Both Ushida Findlay and Mark West are agents of change for a very curvy architecture.

Is this just a trend? It would seem not, as West and Ushida Findlay are developing their work seriously, finding old and new techniques appropriate. CAST provides a site for architects and engineers looking beyond planar boundaries and Ushida Findlay is creating a portfolio of precedent buildings.

Ushida Findlay’s work is refreshing and new, especially in the use of traditional materials. Designs are elegantly orchestrated, bringing together program, shape and space. Mark West’s work is sculptural and evocative. His version of concrete, with a variety of textures and volumes, is pregnant with possibility.

The time seems ripe for a change, for fluidity to enter our now rigid lives and spaces. These designers, their teams, and research provide inspiration for others to follow and inject amusement and sensuality back into architecture.  Truss Wall House, Japan, above. below, Pool House, England.

Ilona Hay is an architect in London, England currently working for Feilden Clegg BradleyAssociates. She studied architecture at the Bartlett and TUNS and is interested in interdisciplinary crossovers.

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U

laanbataar, capital of Mongolia is a scruffy, pitted city with an Eastern European centre of concrete, blocky, government buildings and sky rise apartments, ringed by sprawling, dusty, white canvas ger suburbs. A ger (the word for home) is a large white canvas tent seen all over Mongolia. Although building materials such as wood, concrete and steel are available, many Mongols choose to live in traditional gers because natural materials are more easily found and are cheaper. Mongolia is largely populated by nomadic people who need a household structure that can easily be moved and can withstand harsh cold and windy desert conditions.

Mobility in Mongolia Lisa Der

lisa der

It is quite an amazing sight to stumble across a family disassembling their ger, which typically takes anywhere from 1-3 hours depending on the size. An average ger weighs approximately 250kg and traditionally was transported by camel or yak. The ger design follows the same guidelines throughout the country. The main insulating factor of the ger is made up of felt (esgi) which is made by several layers of sheep’s wool sprinkled with water by grass and continuously rolled back and forth until a thick insulating layer is formed. This is then sandwiched between canvas. The insulating wall is supported by a collapsible willow birch wooden frame of painted orange lattice walls (khan). The frame, ranging from 16 to 20 feet in diameter, has anywhere from 4 to12 walls and 10 to 15 wooden roof poles (uni). The walls and poles are held together by leather straps and supported by two large posts in the center of the ger. The posts are not structural but they add stability in high winds. The top and center (toono) has a small cartwheel shaped opening that allows smoke from the dung fed stove located in the middle to leave and fresh air to enter. Most gers have no electricity; people rely on candles for light and the fire for heat. The ger rests on the ground and hides and colorful wool carpets are used on the floor and as added insulation and decoration for the interior walls.

The unique structure of the ger is not only designed well for the nomadic needs and environmental conditions but it also carries great traditions and holds proper etiquette rules. The floor layout is practically non-existent but everything has its proper place, the same in every ger I visited. The traditionally decorated door always faces south to allow the sunrise and light in and to avoid north winds. Stepping on the door threshold is considered a taboo, something like stepping on someone’s neck. The back wall is a sacred area where the elders sit and all treasured possessions are displayed. To the left of the door entrance (the male side) is where the saddles, tools, ropes and leather bags are strung through the exposed lattice. The right side (the female side) is where the dresser is filled with cooking implements, water buckets and food. The remaining circumference is where two or three orange flower decorated beds are, as well as a miniature table and several child-size chairs. A typical ger houses two adults and three to five children. 

La ger Oulan-Bator, capitale de la Mongolie, est une ville d’apparence pauvre et misérable, entourée de faubourgs qui s’étendent dans tous les sens. Une ger est la grande tente blanche faite de toile que l’on aperçoit en milieu rural, peuplé en grande partie de nomades ayant besoin d’une habitation qui peut se trans40

porter aisément et qui peut résister à la fois au froid rigoureux et aux vents du désert.

Une ger de taille moyenne peut abriter deux adultes et de trois à cinq enfants. Elle pèse environ 250 kilos et se transporte à dos de chameau ou de yak. Le principal matériau d’isolement des murs est con-

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stitué de plaques de feutre (esgi) tendues entre deux toiles et posées sur une armature de bois démontable (khan) faite de saule et qui mesure de seize à vingt pieds de diamètre. Les murs et les perches en bois du toit sont liés ensemble avec des lanières de cuir et soutenus par deux grands pieux qui servent à assurer la stabilité de

l’habitation par grand vent. La ger repose sur le sol. Des peaux et des tapis de laine aux couleurs vives couvrent le plancher et ornent les murs intérieurs de la tente, tout en servant également d’isolant.

Lisa Der D.A.T., C.Tech, is an architectural technologist in Calgary. She has spent time volunteering on school building crews in Mongolia.

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The big ez Andrew King

T

he initial proposition was that the house is a magnifier for a partying and entertaining kind of life. We brought to the project an intention about the city and about densification, creating a house by defining a series of lines that move almost infinitely through the city. These lines become the tectonic elements of the house, the first being the property line, the second the curtain wall which defined the garden between the property line and the house, and then the lines get denser as you move through the house with the programmatic elements imposing themselves at certain places. We are creating an idea about how to densify the city, how to create an urban condition in what is right now a suburban condition. As you walk along beside it, its no longer a house, you’re walking along beside a two story curtain wall building. I mean, its not like you’re walking next to your grandmother’s house. There’s an intention there about the way in which we perceive and see buildings in the urban context.

Tom:This is cultural criticism.

Andrew: It’s certainly a cultural criticism of the way in which we are dealing with our established communities.

We’ve got a cantilever hanging out in front of the house where you’d never see a cantilever. It says, ‘this is the living box that hangs off the ground’. As part of the formal strategy, it talks about the house moving beyond its ground plane. It’s a box that could conceivably be projected all the way down the street, all the way along that north/south axis.

It also talks about pushing the envelope of the bylaw boundaries.

The house’s footprint is based on the foundation and the guidelines read that the foundation is where your setbacks are taken from. so essentially we’ve picked up five feet along the front of the house by cantilevering out past that. There’s a conceptual design issue, there’s some pragmatic issues, and there’s also a kind of practical issue in trying to give the client more space.

The cantilever wouldn’t work at all if you didn’t perceive yourself being cantilevered. When you are standing in that zone hanging out above

e z Cette maison vient amplifier le style de vie de fête et de divertissement. On y trouve une certaine intention au sujet de la ville et de la densification. On crée une maison en définissant une série de lignes qui se déplacent de façon quasi-indéfinie à travers la ville. Ces lignes deviennent des éléments 42

tectoniques de la maison, la première étant la limite de la propriété et de la maison, puis les lignes deviennent plus denses au fur et à mesure que vous vous déplacez dans la maison, avec des éléments programmatiques qui s’imposent à certains endroits. Nous créons une idée sur la façon de den-

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sifier la ville, sur la façon de créer une condition urbaine qui se trouve présentement en ce que nous appelons une condition banlieusarde.

Nous avons une poutre en porte-à-faux qui pend devant la maison, à un endroit où nous n’en verrions normalement pas.

Celle-ci transmet le message suivant : « voici la boîte vivante qui est suspendue au terrain ».

Dans le cadre de la stratégie formelle, elle parle de la maison qui va au-delà du sol. Il s’agit d’une boîte qui pourrait facilement être projetée jusqu’au bas de la rue, tout le long de cet axe nord-sud. Elle parle aussi de

the ground, that’s just where you enter into the house. You perceive it and then you enter it, which is part of a whole series of events about moving into and through the house.

Tom: And along the curtain wall there are different types and levels of screening?

Andrew: Sometimes there’s a floor, sometimes not, sometimes there’s a stair. The steel columns are displaced from the curtain wall, so you actually see the structure, whereas the usual strategy would be to line the structure up with the curtain wall.

Tom: Is that more expensive?

Andrew: When they first looked at it they thought it would be, but actually it isn’t. It’s a very efficient way to use curtain wall in terms of the lengths. This is the maximum length of the curtain wall piece and these pieces of glass are as big as you can get without heat treating them.

préconiser les limites des arrêtés municipaux. L’empreinte de la maison est basée sur le fait et les lignes directrices voulant que la fondation est souvent là d’où émanent vos contretemps. En conséquence, nous avons prolongé le devant de la maison de cinq pieds en encorbeillant. Il y a aussi une ques-

tion de nature conceptuelle, des questions de nature pragmatique et aussi des questions pratiques visant à accorder un plus grand espace au client.

Tom: Vous construisez cette maison au sein d’une communauté établie et la ville a déjà une idée préconçue de ce que cette

Tom: Did this curtain wall system define the length of the house?

Andrew: It tuned the length of the house. I have to say, we were not undermined by technical issues at all except for the length of the cantilever which we wanted a bit longer, and there are some sectional qualities that we would have liked to keep but couldn’t because of the mechanical loads on the house. It’s pretty close to the original concept which was a series of sections through the cantilever, through the full two storey space, through the stair, through the open space and how those spaces vary as you move through. As an experience, it’s a series of spatial events about meeting and talking to people in a sequence of spaces that go from a more private condition which is at the entry, oddly enough, to a more public condition which is in the living room, and then to a series of private and public relationships along the stairs and the landing that allow you to view out, view in, and view other parts of the house. It’s almost cinegraphic; that’s how we perceived it at one point. Whether that’s still resonant or whether all the other

communauté sera.Vous avez, en un sens, critiqué cette idée.

Andrew : La position de la ville — en lui accordant le bénéfice du doute — est de respecter le contexte et l’opinion des voisins. Si vous allez respecter le contexte de façon instinctive, et si vous allez, plus précisément,

être à l’écoute de vos voisins, ils diront qu’ils veulent une maison traditionnelle, et généralement, la ville prend cette position. La résistance de la ville est presque politique, axée sur le fait qu’ils ne veulent pas subir l’opposition de leurs électeurs en ayant laissé passer une architecture inappropriée.

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issues have nullified that initial concept now that it has become a real house, we don’t know, but that was the original spatial intention.

Tom:You are building this house in an established community and the city has an idea about what that established community is going to be. You have, in a sense, critiqued this idea.

Andrew: The City’s position, giving them the benefit of the doubt, is to respect the context and the opinion of your neighbours. If you’re going to respect context in a knee-jerk way, and if you’re going to listen to your neighbours specifically and very clearly, they are going to say they want a traditional house, and generally the City defaults to that position. But the actual ARP guidelines for this particular community don’t have anything really specific. The City’s resistance is almost political, based on the fact that they don’t want to receive flack from the constituents if they let inappropriate architecture happen. So then there are two strategies: you can either respond politically, or you can respond by convincing them that the architecture is appropriate, which is what we did. We documented all the old stock modernist

44

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and new contemporary houses in the neighbourhood, defining them as flat roofed, cleanly articulated, stucco covered masses and then showed them that we are doing a flat roof, cleanly articulated, stucco covered mass. The document that we created is a little essay on how prevalent modernism is in that neighbourhood that they like so much. All kinds of things trickle down from modernist architecture, so it was a matter of making it clear that those things exist and that’s the vocabulary that we are planning on using. Having said that I think this house goes a step beyond that which we didn’t clearly articulate.

One of the main walls of this house is glass and the stucco is going to be pre-cast concrete panels.

Tom: So, you defined the clearest and most recognizable modern conditions in the neighbourhood and presented the house in terms of those conditions.

Andrew: Essentially we were playing poker with them. They said, ‘the house is not appropriate, what are you going to do to the house to change it?’ We said ‘we’re not going to change the house at

all, but we’re going to convince you that the house is appropriate’. If that argument had been unconvincing then we’d have to go back and change the house, but we spent a lot of effort in the argument. We didn’t dumb it down, we talked about various architectural elements, we talked about horizontality. It was all formal, it wasn’t conceptual and theoretical, but we didn’t dumb it down, partly to show them that we know what we’re talking about, we’re trained, we’re university professors.

Tom:Was there an intention to educate here?

Andrew: I don’t think the City is worth educating, I don’t think the neighbours are worth educating. If you’ve got a client that wants us to design a house for them and they didn’t know much about architecture — well, they know a lot more about architecture now just going through the process. They know a lot more about the difference between building, architecture and critical architecture — even the fact that those three conditions exist. I’m not sure if they’d use us again to make a building because I think they are frustrated by the

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amount of effort we put into design and the amount of time we take to design something.

Tom: One thing that takes this house beyond the typical forms being built in this neighbourhood is the curtain wall. Was that an issue with the City?

Andrew: No. We had support from the City. The neighbours were appealing it not on formal grounds, but on the grounds that they just didn’t want development next door to them. There were comments that the architecture wasn’t appropriate, but again we countered those comments quite quickly. The curtain wall is an interesting thing— it’s a site specific response. There is a major city boulevard between this house and the road. The distance from the centre of the road to the facade is a limiting distance which here allowed for around 85% of that elevation to be glazing, so all of a sudden the opportunity was there.

What the client was asking for was one of our previous houses, which was a very private condition, unlike this site which looks out on to

En conséquence, il existe deux stratégies : vous pouvez soit répondre de façon politique, ou vous pouvez répondre en les convainquant que l’architecture est appropriée, comme nous l’avons fait. Le document que nous avons rédigé consiste en un bref aperçu du modernisme qui règne dans ce voisinage 46

auquel ils tiennent tellement.

Plein de choses découlent d’une architecture moderne. Il était donc question de rendre évident le fait que toutes ces choses existent et c’est le genre de vocabulaire que nous prévoyons utiliser.

Tom : Est-ce que cette maison

On Site review Transformations Issue 7 2002

the street. When we asked, ‘what do you like about it?’ the response was all the glass, which is a purely visual response. For the house to become an armature for this big piece of glass, once we realized we could do it, we said, ‘this has to be all curtain wall then’. It comes together as being a conceptual response, a site specific response and a technical response. The owner knows about mechanical systems, so those three things also come together: concept, context and client to make the curtain wall achievable.

Tom: It was a nice coincidence then, that the client was interested in extending their life out towards the city and having the bylaws support that.

Andrew: Absolutely. The project turned around completely when we started to understand this condition. Rather than a lens, which was how we started, perceiving the city through this long north/south axis, it became very flat, like a screen. To actually get this site condition and then have a client that’s willing to allow you to push that idea to what even I think is a bit of an extreme— it’s a house defined by a sheet of

affiche le fait qu’au sein d’une communauté, une personne a le droit de vivre comme elle l’entend?

Andrew : Je crois que c’est ce que ça dit au client. Je crois qu’aussi longtemps que l’on s’en tient à certaines lignes directrices, on ne bloque le

soleil pour personne, et on n’agit pas comme de mauvais voisins. Je crois que vous avez le droit de créer les projets que vous voulez. Ce projet élabore sur une nouvelle réponse matérielle à la condition banlieusarde, dans son cheminement en condition urbaine. Il parle du fait que vous pouvez y arriver à

curtain wall, and how often do you get to do that?

Tom: Does this house say that in an established community a person has a right to choose the way they want to live?

Andrew: I think that’s what it says to the client. It says more complex things to me such as, ‘I’m not a dyed in the wool, kinda libertarian Albertan oil guy’. I do believe that as long as you’re within certain guidelines, you’re not blocking somebody’s sun, you’re not being a bad neighbour, I think that you are allowed to create the projects that you want. This project talks about a new material response to the suburban condition as it becomes the urban condition. It talks about the fact that you can do this from materials which aren’t particularly indigenous, and when I say indigenous I mean they don’t exist on that street. The City of Calgary looks at that street, they look at the five neighbours to the left, they look at the two neighbours to the right and they ask, ‘how does it respond to that?’ This house says that there is also a global response. Some people look at it and say it’s very strange; Paul and I, and Dustin Cousins who worked on it a little

bit, look at it and say it’s well within a series of formal strategies that are happening in northern Europe and elsewhere. What we are trying to say, as is John Brown, as is Down + Livesay, is that the Calgary context can be informed by something other than local consideration. 

e z house, Calgary, Alberta AKA andrewkingstudio principal Andrew King project partner Paul Stady team Craig Kolstad, Dustin Couzins, Scott Pavan with

Dale Taylor Architect (detail support) engineer Saretsky Quinn Engineering contractor Heritage Crafted Homes client Steve Sakreski and Alourdes Eserve

partir de matériaux qui ne sont pas nécessairement propres à cette communauté.

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T

he Shylock Road bridge over the Coquihalla Highway in central BC was designed in 1984 for the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Highways by David Anidjar-Romain of SPAR Consultants, in Victoria. The Coquihalla was built as a bypass to the TransCanada between Hope and Kamloops — a narrow, twisting roadway cut into the side of the Fraser Canyon. The Coquihalla instead goes over a mountain range between Hope and the Nicola Valley and has notoriously bad winter weather. Built in a rush to funnel interior BC residents and Albertans down to Vancouver for Expo 86, it cuts two hours off the trip.

block of soil — a ground anchor. The other end follows geo-technical engineering parameters established by BC Highways: the paved plane follows the natural angle of incidence for soil at that site. The single pier is a shear wall, rather than a post, to counteract sideways forces such as wind and earthquakes.

The concrete deck has a standard one metre concrete parapet for the logging trucks. The girders are actually corten steel, the rusty weathering meant to match the stone on the site. In a failure of nerve, BC Highways painted the steel blue: what would have been a maintenance-free bridge is now on a painting schedule.

After many a conventional bridge along the route (piers in the median between the two roadways) this bridge has a real 1980s Jamie Reid feel to it: a-symmetrical, one end grounded in a plaid sort of block and the other intersecting a paved slope, the sole supporting pier a thin blade of a concrete wall.

What we have is a narrow logging road going up a hill over a four-lane highway going around a corner. The design started with the longest girder that could be transported to what was then a remote site.

The longer and deeper the girders, the fewer piers and foundations needed — a simple cost equation. At the low side of the overpass, the abutment is a reinforced earth retaining wall where the face of the natural slump of the earth is held in place by burying tension straps in the fill, attached to face panels. This creates a self-contained

It all sounds so straightforward, but there is something else going on here in that slippage between what is economically and structurally determined and what the bridge is.

Rather than smoothing site conditions into an unthreatening equality, this bridge appears precipitous. The opposing tilt of the road surface and the bridge deck above sharpens the angles, makes the single pier seem even more fragile. The pier itself is not smooth and urban but rough — it appears as a slice of something rather more primal, as materials go. Each element is unsynthesized, and refers to nothing but itself. The context for this bridge is the over-referenced and decorated 1980s alongside the pre-glasnost cold war, apartheid and the dawning of the AIDS pandemic. This bridge, on a mountain pass in British Columbia, cuts through all that. 

Shylock Road Overpass Stephanie White

Le pont de Shylock Road qui surplombe l’autoroute Coquihalla, au cÏur de la Colombie-Britannique, a été conçu en 1984 pour le compte du Ministère des Transports et des Autoroutes de la Colombie-Britannique, par David Anidjar-Romain de SPAR Consultants, à Victoria.

Après plusieurs ponts conventionnels le long de la route (des piliers dans la médiane, entre les deux voies), ce pont est asymétrique, une extrémité étant reliée à la terre dans une espèce de bloc quadrillé, l’autre en intersection avec 48

une pente pavée, le seul pillier de soutien étant un mur de béton brut, de profil très mince.

Ce que nous avons est un chemin d’exploitation qui monte une côte par-dessus une autoroute à quatre voies, virant un coin. La conception a débuté par la plus longue poutre qui pouvait être transportée à ce qui était jadis un site éloigné – une simple équation des coûts. À l’extrémité basse de cette culée, on y trouve un mur de terre renforci (la façade est renforcée par l’enterrement de courroies de ten-

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sion dans le remblai, attachées à des panneaux frontaux. Ceci crée un poteau d’ancrage). Le plan pavé de l’autre côté suit l’angle naturel du terrain de ce site. Le seul pilier est une plaque, plutôt qu’un poteau, qui sert à obvier aux forces latérales sur le pont.

Tout ceci semble bien routinier, par contre, au lieu de lisser les conditions du site à une égalité non menaçante, comme on le fait habituellement, ce pont semble plutôt escarpé. L’inclinaison opposante de la surface de la route et le

tablier du pont au-dessus viennent accentuer les angles, l’unique pilier semblant ainsi plus fragile. Le pilier, lui-même, est de béton brut. Il n’est pas d’apparence lisse, finie et urbaine. Il paraît plutôt comme étant une tranche de quelque chose de plutôt primal, en ce qui a trait aux matériaux. Chacun de ses éléments n’est pas synthétique, et ne fait allusion à rien d’autre qu’à lui-même.

Le sens visuel de Shylock est plus élémentaire.

architecture and transformation