ON LOCATION A corridor with informative displays tell us the story of how the site was used, the extent to which it was polluted by industries and what was done to revive the site and the ecosystem. These displays make one appreciate the Brickworks even more. Climbing up a staircase from here, one reaches an inward looking balcony on the first floor which gives you a bird’s eye view of the visitor centre, the previously old brick holding room. If you look closely, you may even see the brick-workers stacking the freshly made bricks! A series of doors on this level take you to an external terrace that runs the entire length of the building. This incidentally makes it an excellent vantage point for the Tiffany Commons as well the children’s play area behind it. The balcony, together with its ceiling and the floor, frames the surrounding greenery. Staircases at either ends of the balcony take you down to the Tiffany Commons or the Children’s Garden or back to the YWC. It is as if there are no dead-ends! Back at the Young Welcome Centre, there are more doors to open and more spaces to discover behind them. One of the doors opens to an open boardwalk
that takes one to the Kilns and the CRH Gallery. As the name suggests, this space houses the kilns where the bricks were fired. The alleys between the kilns now serve as display areas for exhibitions. The major exhibit – a permanent one at that – is the graffiti on the walls. A few decades ago, after the factory was abandoned, it had become a space for illicit activities. Among other things, it included illegal rave parties and consequently become a place which graffiti artists frequented. As a poignant testimony to those times, the graffiti is preserved and is now a major exhibit item. A few interesting exhibits, like the Arctic Adaptations, Canada’s official entry for the 2014 Venice Biennale, has found a temporary home in between these erstwhile kilns. The walls of a few kilns seemed to be getting ready for new exhibits. It’s almost like the kilns had found a new purpose - a new lease on life. One side of the Kilns and CRH Gallery open to the dreamy Koerner Gardens - a large semi-open area with an open truss with islands of trees providing interesting nooks and corners. During winter, this area is converted to an ice-skating rink. Open to sky with hanging strings of light, one can only imagine how magical the place would be at night or during winter.
Walls of the kilns with temporary exhibitions. Image credit: Jiya Benni
106 CITY OBSERVER | June 2016