This article is a follow-up on my previous articles debunking the business case for the Ontario Science Centre’s relocation, analyzing how the engineers’ roof report doesn’t call for a complete closure, demonstrating how a temporary location of the Science Centre would be costly and would not be open for two years, and calculating how the actual cost to repair the Science Centre is around $200 million—or just $25-30 million for tackling priority repairs—not the $478 million that is being cited by the Province.

Over 78,000 people have signed a petition demanding the reopening of the Ontario Science Centre. And it’s clear, as with any older building, that repair and reinvestment will be needed.

It’s true that in addition to the cost of roof repairs, there are other repairs needed to maintain the Science Centre’s buildings in good working order. But, as I have written before and detailed yesterday, the actual construction cost of repairs over the next 20 years is around $200 million—not the $478 million that the Province cites. To keep the building open for the next few years would cost much less—around $25-30 million.

The actual figure for repairs comes in at $211 million. This is based on the estimates provided by the Province’s consultants Pinchin and Rimkus, and applies industry standard figures for construction escalation, consultant fees, and contingency, instead of the province’s inflated mark-ups. It fully addresses deferred maintenance and sets the building up to be functional for decades to come, including addressing repairs needed to the roof and budgeting $16 million in repairs to the pedestrian bridge.

But what about just keeping the building operating for a shorter term—say, until a new facility is opened at Ontario Place? In its business case for the relocation, Infrastructure Ontario had planned to do just that. It estimated that the repairs needed to keep the Science Centre functional on a smaller footprint (presumably within the valley-side Building C, which contains the bulk of the exhibitions) until a new Science Centre was ready would amount to $32 million. (In reality, the cost should be $24 million if you were to use industry standard mark-ups and contingencies, rather than the Province’s mark-ups—and even less still if you take into account that Moriyama Teshima Architects, the firm that originally built the centre, has assembled a consultant team to help with the roof repairs pro bono—but we’ll stick with $32 million for simplicity).

Let’s also assume that roof repairs were an unexpected addition to this cost—and that the Province opts to undertake the full $2 million in roof repairs and replacements recommended by their consultants to take place in the coming five years for Building C alone. The total comes to $34 million.

$34 million is not insignificant, but it is also far less than the $478 million figure that Infrastructure Ontario says it is unwilling to invest in a Science Centre that will be soon closed. It’s also far less than the $83 million it may take to lease and fit-out a temporary location for the Science Centre.

Even if the Province manages to pull off the leasing and fit-out of a temporary location for $25 million (at the very lowest end of my calculations), that space would not be open for two years, costing $14 million in lost admission and membership revenue—a total of $39 million.

It would be less expensive, by the Province’s own numbers, to simply keep the existing facility running on a smaller footprint. The repairs would more than pay for themselves.

Closure doesn’t mean that the Province can simply walk away from the Science Centre. There are significant costs in addition to paying for a temporary location.

In the long run, when the Science Centre relocates to Ontario Place, the buildings will revert to the City of Toronto. The Province’s lease obliged it to keep the buildings in a state of good repair, and in terminating the lease, the City can seek compensation for losses associated with the early lease termination. In its business case, Infrastructure Ontario has allocated $21 million towards decommissioning the existing Science Centre to resolve this—a number that seems to correlate with the cost of demolishing the buildings, clearing the slate for redevelopment. But the business case for the relocation also acknowledges that the province may be on the hook for “costs related to returning the building to a state of good repair (up to $369 million).”

An excerpt from the business case for the relocation of the Ontario Science Centre details the cost of demolishing the buildings at $25 million, roughly correlating with the decommissioning costs detailed earlier. It also notes that “as a heritage asset, demolition would require Ministry of Citizenship and Multiculturalism (MCM) Minister’s Consent.” As commentators to Adam McNamara’s X thread analysis of the business case have noted, the current MCM Minister is Michael D. Ford, Premier Doug Ford’s nephew.

Demolition may become more difficult if the buildings become heritage designated with the City of Toronto, a process which is underway now, and which should be completed by mid-September, 2024.  This would require the approval from the City for any changes to the “heritage attributes” of the centre, and make demolition a last resort to other solutions for the site. However, as the Auditor General has pointed out, under the Province’s amendments to the Ontario Heritage Act in January 2023, Cabinet could exempt even a city-designated Ontario Science Centre from having to comply with heritage standards and guidelines.

Perhaps more pertinently, under the New Deal for Toronto, the City and Province are currently discussing retaining the buildings for “community-based science programming,” creating a public expectation that the buildings will not be demolished—but will, indeed, but repaired and reinvested in, whoever is paying the final bill.

If the Province no longer wants to be responsible for the Science Centre buildings, it would seem reasonable for the City to ask the Province for the $25-83 million it would otherwise have spent for a temporary location, plus the $21 million it had budgeted for decommissioning the buildings—easily something in the realm of $50-$100 million in all.

In return, the City could agree to reinvest that money in the Science Centre, including making the needed $26-32 million in repairs needed to keep it open it until a new Science Centre opens in 2030-2034. Under such an agreement, the Science Centre would also continue to receive its ongoing operational funding from the province. The small yearly operational deficit of the Science Centre, around $1 million, could be covered by the generosity of private donors who have stepped up to keep the Science Centre open—such as Sabina Vohra-Miller, Geoffrey Hinton, and  Adam McNamara; the Auditor General’s report also identified opportunities for the Science Centre to increase its self-generated revenues.

Ideally, some version of the Science Centre would continue operating on the site after a new satellite location is completed at Ontario Place—both to make full use of the Moriyama building, as well as to serve locals and school audiences who will have more difficulty accessing an Ontario Place location. To make this viable for decades to come would require a continual commitment of operational funding from the Province, as well as further support for capital work—but this would be to the tune of $100-150 million, not the hundreds of millions that the Province is suggesting. There would be years to figure out where that money could come from—perhaps some combination of public sources, the development of the Science Centre’s parking lots, private philanthropy, and self-generated revenue.

In any case, making the needed repairs to the Science Centre in the interim makes fiscal sense, and sets the Science Centre up for success in the future. Most importantly, it benefits Ontarians, and especially the province’s kids and parents—who want to see the doors of the Ontario Science Centre reopened as soon as possible.

Related:

The true cost of repairing the Ontario Science Centre is much, much less than what Infrastructure Ontario has been saying—and the proof is in its own documents

Cost of Ontario Science Centre temporary location exceeds cost of roof repairs

Ontario Science Centre doesn’t require full closure: A close reading of the engineers’ report

TSA issues open letter on Ontario Science Centre closure

Closing science centre unnecessary, says firm of architect who designed building

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The post How to pay for repairing the Ontario Science Centre? Let’s start by using the money it’s taking to close it appeared first on Canadian Architect.

This article is a follow-up on my previous articles debunking the business case for the Ontario Science Centre’s relocation, analyzing how the engineers’ roof report doesn’t call for a complete closure, and demonstrating how a temporary location of the Science Centre would be costly and would not be open for two years. Another piece will appear tomorrow about how the Science Centre could be reopened and repaired by using the money that the Ontario government is planning to spend closing and demolishing it.

How much will it cost to repair the Ontario Science Centre? Two figures have been cited by the Ontario Government: $478 million and $369 million. I have done a deep dive into the origins of this stated cost of repairs, and concluded that the actual figure is much less—around $200 million, or just $24 million if you were to prioritize repairs to a limited footprint of the Science Centre.

Let’s start with the $478-million figure that has been widely cited by Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma. This includes a generous $109 million allocation to cosmetic upgrades and to the renewal of exhibitions in the existing location of the Science Centre. At $66.5 million, the exhibition upgrade budget is equivalent to the entirety of the budget for exhibitions at the proposed new location of the Ontario Science Centre at Ontario Place. The $42.5-million renovation budget is also generous, especially considering that some $25-million of such upgrades appear to be double-counted in the cost for base repairs and renovations.

In any case, cosmetic repairs and renewed exhibitions fall in the category of nice-to-have, but not need-to-have. Over 75,000 people across Ontario have signed a petition saying they’d be more than happy to have the science centre back, just as it is. Tech sector donors have, unasked, also pledged over $2.5 million toward a reopened Science Centre—an offer that seems ripe with opportunities to work together towards sponsored upgrades to exhibitions. Personally, I think the “Hinton Hall of Computing and AI” has a nice ring to it.

Cosmetic upgrades and exhibition renewal aside, the cost for repairs cited by the Ontario government is $369 million. We can nitpick this—some $25 million of it, for instance, is for upgrades to interior ceiling finishes, flooring, walls, and kitchen millwork, which, as I have said, should arguably fall within the “cosmetic upgrades” budget rather than being considered part of core repairs.

But the bigger picture is that in order to create a business case that made the relocation to Ontario Place palatable, Infrastructure Ontario (IO) appears to have systematically maximized the possible costs of repairing the existing Science Centre, and, conversely, minimized the costs of building a new Science Centre at Ontario Place.

Environmental consultants Pinchin, who contributed to this business case by assessing the state of the Science Centre and estimating the cost of repairs over the next 20 years, came up with an estimate that would have originally been around $142 million.

Pinchin was asked to multiply its original number by an “adjustment factor” of 1.85 due to the “fact that Ontario Science Centre is a complex facility with unique characteristics” and “per Client’s [IO’s] request to account for the hidden internal and external fees.” This brings us to $228 million.

Then, since the work they recommended would stretch over 20 years, they were asked to assume a yearly inflation rate of 2.5% and add this to the adjusted estimate, bringing the total to $263 million.

IO then applied an additional mark-up of 40% to Pinchin’s inflated $228-million bill “to account for uncertain and rapidly increasing cost pressures,” to reach the estimated $369-million costs for its business case.

What about the roof? Pinchin’s estimate includes $32 million ($17 million before the complexity factor of 1.85 was applied) to replace the Science Centre’s roofs—an amount that correlates with the estimate for completely replacing the RAAC roofs included in the Rimkus report ($17 million in construction costs, plus 15% in consultant fees and a somewhat generous 20% in contingency, for a total of $21 million).

And the bridge? Pinchin’s estimate also includes the $11.6 million (roughly $6 million, pre-adjustment) that would have been needed to stabilize the bi-level pedestrian bridge when an issue was first identified with it in 2021. The auditor general’s office was told by Infrastructure Ontario that a new contract for the bridge repair amounted to $16 million, which would provide “a temporary solution to stabilize the bridge.” This seems like an overly large budget—a structural engineer I spoke with indicated that the cost of over $1,000 per square foot put the estimate in the realm of what he would expect to see for repairing a large, vehicular bridge, not a pedestrian bridge. But as the documents related to these bridge repair contracts have not been made publicly available, it is hard to assess whether the numbers are competitive. For the sake of a ballpark figure, let’s add the full $10 million difference to Pinchin’s $142 million, for a total construction cost of $152 million.

Adding 17% in construction inflation (according to Statistics Canada) since Pinchin’s report was generated in 2022, 12% in consultants’ fees, and 10% contingency, the total bill comes to $211 million in repairs.

This amount could be readily parsed into priority projects, if the intention is to keep the Science Centre functional only until such time that it moves to a different location. Pinchin’s report recommends that roughly half of the repairs for the next 20 years should be completed in the coming five years. Some of the items in Pinchin’s priority list might be reconsidered—for instance, some $8 million ($4 million unadjusted) in ceiling finish replacements that are marked “optional”, or a $1.7 million ($1 million unadjusted) replacement of vinyl floor tiles in the exhibition hall and offices.

Infrastructure Ontario itself estimated that the footprint of the Science Centre could be reduced in footprint for that interim period, presumably restricting it to the Valley Building C alone, a move that it said would entail some $32 million in repairs. In reality, the interim cost of making the necessary repairs to keep the Ontario Science Centre in its may be closer to $24 million, if you were to use industry standard mark-ups and contingencies, rather than the Province’s mark-ups. It could be and even less still if you take into account that Moriyama Teshima Architects, the firm that originally built the centre, has assembled a consultant team to help with the roof repairs pro bono.

It is also plausible that, as part of constructing a business case for the relocation, Infrastructure Ontario directed Pinchin to adjust the priority of the repair items, in order to effect a shift of the overall Facility Condition grade assigned to the building, which is calculated in part using the repair amounts needed in the coming two years, in this case, 2022-2023 (to which over $60 million in repairs was recommended—repairs which were clearly not undertaken during that time):

This would explain a key discrepancy in Pinchin’s report, where in one sentence it notes that the Facility Condition is such that “the facility and its components are functioning as intended; for most infrastructure assets, this would infer that no repairs anticipated within the next five years”—a comment consistent with the facility receiving a ‘B’ grade. In the same section, though, the report notes the building’s grade as a “C.” Even this “C” is hardly a dire grade, but rather carries the correlating note: “The Facility and its components are functioning as intended; normal deterioration and minor distress observed; repairs will be required within the next five years to maintain functionality.”

As for running the Science Centre, in Infrastructure Ontario’s business case, the maintenance costs for the existing Science Centre are also exaggerated. Again, due to the “fact that Ontario Science Centre is a complex facility with unique characteristics” and “as per Client’s request to account for the hidden internal and external fees,” Pinchin “adjusted” the Current Replacement Value (CRV) of the property by a factor of 1.30. Since the maintenance expenses were calculated as 1.25% of the property’s CRV, the resulting annual maintenance estimate of $7.5 million per year is also inflated.

The actual maintenance number, without the inflated CRV, would be $5.8 million per year. This number is still significantly larger than the actual expenses in recent years. The Province charges the Ontario Science Centre $4.8 million as an annual occupancy cost—a figure that not only has historically covered maintenance, but also taxes, operating and management fees, utilities, and leasehold improvements, as outsourced to an outside property management firm. In other words, the Science Centre has been getting by on an annual maintenance budget that is somewhat less than $4.8 million.

Of course, reinvestment in the Science Centre—including in ongoing maintenance—is indisputably needed. All buildings, new and old alike, require regular maintenance. The Auditor General’s report notes that from 2016 to 2023, 34 maintenance projects identified as “critical,” totaling $12 million dollars, were approved, while 42 of such maintenance projects, totaling over $16 million dollars, were denied funding, which the Auditor General notes “result[ed] in further deterioration of the building.” The responsibility falls under different provincial leaders, but from 2016 to 2018, $11 million-worth of these projects were approved and $2 million denied funding; whereas from 2018 to 2023, the period in which Doug Ford has been Premier, just $1 million of these projects were approved, whereas $14 million were denied funding.

Although the difference may seem academic, the responsibility for the vast majority of repairs falls to Infrastructure Ontario as the building owner, rather than to the Ontario Science Centre, which has a limited budget and responsibility for building improvements. The Ontario Science Centre, for its part, seemed to be doing what it could with its limited means and scope. At the time of the auditor general’s report, the Science Centre was in the process of purchasing equipment using its exhibit renewals budget in order to reopen its planetarium in 2024.

As minor as it is, this may be, for me, one of the most telling details in this whole saga. Over the past five years, Infrastructure Ontario has systematically denied critical funding to the Ontario Science Centre, allowing its maintenance to lapse. The most visible effects of the Centre’s apparent decline have included the closure of its planetarium in 2022, and the closure of its pedestrian bridge that same year. At the very moment that the province announced the sudden, indefinite closure of the Science Centre on the flimsy basis of an engineering report that asked for manageable, phased roof repairs, one of those key experiences was about to be restored.

The Science Centre had scraped through the pandemic and suffered through putting its visitors on shuttle buses to its back entrance. It had been informed that the government planned to move it to a half-sized facility at Ontario Place in a few years, a move that would include laying off one out of every six people who currently worked there. And yet, it remained determined to give its visitors the best possible science experience in the interim. New exhibitions were still appearing in its Science Arcade and Weston Family Innovation Centre. And the planetarium was going to reopen.

Related:

How to pay for repairing the Ontario Science Centre? Let’s start by using the money it’s taking to close it

Cost of Ontario Science Centre temporary location exceeds cost of roof repairs

Ontario Science Centre doesn’t require full closure: A close reading of the engineers’ report

TSA issues open letter on Ontario Science Centre closure

Closing science centre unnecessary, says firm of architect who designed building

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The post The true cost of repairing the Ontario Science Centre is much, much less than what Infrastructure Ontario has been saying—and the proof is in its own documents appeared first on Canadian Architect.

As It Is: A precarious moment in the life of Ontario Place takes readers on a journey through the landmark site, aiming to capture the essence of the iconic buildings by Eberhard Zeidler and waterfront park by Michael Hough, while painting a picture of Ontario Place’s uncertain future.

The book’s 102 black-and-white photographs were taken by Evans between November 2021 and June 2023. The images are interwoven with texts by Evans, urban affairs journalist John Lorinc, and AGO curator of photography Maia-Mari Sutnik.

According to Evans, the project sparked during the pandemic. “It was something that was going to keep me busy in the dark days of COVID,” he recalls. “I went down there and almost immediately had a flashback to all of the experiences that I’ve had at Ontario Place,” he says, adding that he had gone there as a child, and brought his own children years later.

“Going back there, I was really struck by the place and how at that moment, it looked so decayed, and how sad it was. I really understood that the place was in trouble,” says Evans. “The buildings were rusting, there was an abandoned amusement ride, and the landscaping had deteriorated; it wasn’t in great shape. I was drawn to that because of the history that I have of documenting abandoned and neglected places.”

For Evans, putting together the book was more than just a way to revisit memories: it became an opportunity to showcase the significance of the landmark and its impact in Ontario and beyond. “Ontario Place is, in part, about history and about making history. It was a gift to the people of Ontario, and it was a place where people could come to understand where they lived, what their history was and imagine what the future might be,” says Evans, who notes that its futuristic architecture also represented optimism about the province’s prospects.

“When I started this whole thing, I wasn’t really aware of the political dynamics or the Ford government’s long-term plans. It wasn’t a motivating factor for me then, but it has since become an abiding one. I think people need to be alert to what’s happening at Ontario Place, and I really hope that the book will become part of the wider conversation about the importance and meaning of public space,” says Evans. 

As It Is: A precarious moment in the life of Ontario Place can be purchased in person or online from Swipe Design and the Spacing Store. An exhibition of the book’s photographs was on display at Urbanspace Gallery in Toronto. A panel discussion recorded at the exhibition opening featuring Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson, author John Ralston Saul, and landscape architect Walter Kehm can be viewed at urbanspacegallery.ca.

The post Book Review: As It Is—A Precarious Moment in the Life of Ontario Place appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT Pumphouse, Winnipeg, Manitoba

ARCHITECT 5468796 Architecture

TEXT Trevor Boddy

PHOTOS James Brittain

Medium density housing remains one of the most conservative realms of architectural design. Looking beyond surface effects, its fundamental forms are generated by an almost biological mode of evolution: changes in housing types and layouts come slowly, by minor increments, with new species of layouts dying off if they do not fulfill the needs of changing markets and varying profitability markers. As in nature, true innovation in housing is usually the response to a stressor, with artistic creativity being its means, not its end. 

Historically, key housing forms in Canada were produced from such navigation of constraints and seizing of entrepreneurial opportunities. Hard rock foundations and the free availability of sawdust for furnaces led to Vancouver’s characteristic wood frame houses, in which the main level is raised up twelve steps—the most on the continent—to make room for bulky sawdust burners in the basement. (Those burners were removed between the wars and the lower levels turned into suites, meaning my home city’s houses were almost never single-family.) Toronto’s and Ottawa’s landscape-defining high-rise slab towers were the product of cheap concrete construction in cities without mid-block lanes, combined with the availability of new large-scale bank financing to developers. 

Then there is Winnipeg. Not discounting innovations from the late David Penner, Stephen Cohlmeyer, and others, the current leading edge of Winnipeg housing is the output of a single firm, 5468796. The book just released by partners Johanna Hurme, Sasa Radulovic, and Colin Neufeld entitled platform.MIDDLE—a weighty collection of their housing ideas alongside built demonstrations—firmly secures 5468796 as one of the most important housing design firms on the continent. The trademark axonometric analytic diagrams collected there show how it is done, and any architect wanting to innovate in housing form and detail should study them.

This background is useful for understanding 5468796’s many accomplishments at Pumphouse (CA Award of Merit, December 2018), the most complex synthesis of their housing ideas to date. Pumphouse can be understood as a palimpsest of the entire run of housing innovations by 5468796 in their eighteen years of practice, a careful layering and modulation of their own previous design ideas. 

As with other truly innovative designs shaped by housing’s evolutionary forces, Pumphouse emerged from a complex set of constraints: it sits on a site dominated by a large, low-slung heritage building occupied by bulky equipment that could not be removed because of a 1982 designation. There is little room for development along the edges of the site to offset the cost of restoring and opening access to the heritage building. While the property was listed for $1 by the city for several decades, and many have hoped to see the heritage structure reopened as a museum, dozens of previous proposals for redevelopment couldn’t pencil out. 

The 1906 James Street Pumping Station itself was produced in response to one of the greatest urban stresses of those times—fire control in the face of conflagrations in Chicago, Vancouver and elsewhere that destroyed huge swaths of cities. Water was taken from the Red River and pressurized within the building’s Brontosaurus-scaled pumps, manufactured by the same Manchester company that built engines for the Titanic, to be distributed to fire mains throughout the adjacent Exchange and Warehouse districts. The Pumping Station’s equipment was built to last, and it served its original purpose until changes in firefighting precipitated its closure in 1986.

The desire to redevelop the property emerged in the following decades. A riverside rail spur line had long defined the eastern edge of downtown Winnipeg, blocking public access to the waterfront. In 1987, the city acquired the line and, at the turn of the millennium, replaced it with a road. New waterfront possibilities emerged, with a civic non-profit—CentreVenture—formed at the same time to encourage the area’s redevelopment.
In 2008, some of the earliest new housing in the area included 5468796’s youCUBE (2012) fairly conventional housing development at the north end of Waterfront Drive, and the Mere Hotel (2013) by David Penner and others, which transformed the Pumping Station’s waterside intake pavilion into a restaurant, and added a colourful block of boutique hotel rooms. 

Johanna Hurme says the eventual development of the Pumping Station itself is the perfect illustration of 5468796’s long-standing and practice-defining dedication to what she calls “creative opportunism.” Starting in 2015, the firm started producing a string of increasingly sophisticated schemes for the pumphouse parcel, but with no commission and no payment for them. Co-founder Sasa Radulovic notes the hugely increased value of this site—courtesy of their imagination and hard work. Once thought useless, this heritage-listed building on a marginal site went from a nominal price of one dollar back then to a final value of one million dollars upon completion in 2023. “A one-million-times land lift is rare anywhere!” he jokes. 

There is a lesson here to all young Canadian firms waiting by the phone for that call from Developer Mr. Right, or endlessly polishing their tiny portfolio on Photoshop for hoped-for webzines. A national reality and realty check, please: practicing architecture means far more of entrepreneurial improvisation than willful art or science. Winnipeg is one of the coldest architectural laboratories in the world and a comparatively underfunded one, and the difficult discipline of working there has honed 5468796’s brilliance. Please follow their lead, dear archi-brethren, and hustle with creativity and disciplined imagination around site and budget challenges, as they do. 

A breakthrough was achieved when 5468796’s team (at that time including designer Kenneth Borton) realized that an office floor could be hung from an intact gantry crane, locating a new level above and to one side of the machine room. This created a visually stunning working perch that could be leased to a commercial tenant, tipping the building’s pro forma into viability. This early thinking impressed the young and formerly Victoria-based heritage developer Bryce Alston, who then received CentreVenture’s approval to take on the unusual project. 

A new future for the heritage space being set, the architects went on to identify two zones for housing at either end of the pumphouse. The one at the west accommodates 70 units in a pair of wood and steel frame buildings set on concrete plinths, and a smaller single block at the river-facing eastern edge holds 28 more—this address now generates the highest rental rates in all of Winnipeg. Construction details are similar for all three blocks, and were kept simple: the only way Pumphouse would meet its financial targets was by using standard materials and workmanship. (The developer’s instructions, Radulovic recalls, were to make a design “that could be built by guys hired off Kijiji.”) Fire codes and access routes necessitated bridges to tie together the bifurcated project.

5468796’s existing portfolio equipped them well for dealing with the many additional challenges that arose from the dumbbell plan loading housing at either end, plus the complex layering of civic requirements for the space in-between. The east and west housing pavilions at the Pumphouse need to be understood as meta-projects, folding together ideas from 5468796’s eighteen years of practice, so a brief survey of those now. For instance, the city required views to be retained between the riverfront park walkway and a portion of the yellow-brick heritage structure. This led to a cutting back of ground-plane occupied space at the property’s southeast corner. Most of the rest of this main floor is now occupied by the Miesian temple of an entirely glass-wrapped hair salon overlooking the Red River—surely the nicest locale I have ever seen to get one’s curls chopped. On the west side of the Pumping Station, an access lane was required to be retained, resulting in a flanking cube of leftover space too far from windows for use as part of the west block housing. The solution? Adding tiered seats to this zone allows it to host resident gatherings, and serve as a covered amphitheatre during Winnipeg’s Fringe Theatre Festival. The playful inter-penetration of public and private space is a signature 5468796 theme, found in many of their designs. 

The details and disposition of the rental housing units even more clearly show how 5468796 draws, with sagacity, from its own prior design ideas. The smallest of Pumphouse’s rental units feature Murphy beds and walk-through, glass-walled and double-doored bathrooms, to save space and borrow light, a trick refined in prior projects. On a larger scale, 5469796’s 2010 Bloc 10 project on Grant Avenue demonstrated how corridors can be eliminated for three-storey, stick-built walk-up apartment buildings. As both an ex-Edmontonian and ex-Winnipegger, I can attest that apartment corridors in these two cities smell permanently of boiled cabbage. There are no boiled cabbage smells at Pumphouse, as corridors are almost entirely outdoor and ventilated by soft Prairie breezes off the Red River. In the west wing, a parliament of eight doors (half of which access stairs to units above—a skip-stop arrangement seen in several previous 5468796 projects) form a raised open-air small piazza with compelling views south to the brickish pleasures of Exchange District architecture. 

Noting that residents are not yet personalizing their entrances during our site tour, Radulovic pledged to buy each renter a pot for succulents and other hardy plants this spring. (Acts like this—to assist residents in realizing their fully inhabited potential of designs—ought to be the last phase of any housing commission, but sadly remain rare and “out of scope.”) It’s an idea that can be scaled up: open-air apartment lobbies with plantings—marketed as “sky gardens”—are similarly a feature on all 57 residential floors between the towers of Vancouver’s Butterfly, a project initiated by Bing Thom, and soon to be completed by Revery’s Venelin Kokalov. In the conservative realm of housing design, interrogating a feature as seemingly banal as corridors can be a breakthrough to innovation.

Hurme and Radulovic learned from the curving corridors of nearby 62M that vistas to neighbour’s doors help build both safety and community. Accordingly, one now cannot pass from the street, up Pumphouse’s dramatic exterior access stairs cantilevered out over public sidewalks, and then on to approach one’s own door without seeing many others, and at intriguingly different angles. Drawing again from Bloc 10, Pumphouse’s sections pack a surprising variety of unit types within the black box of its corrugated galvanized metal elevations. The Roman historian Suetonius quoted Emperor Augustus as saying, “I found Rome a city of bricks, and left it a city of marble,” and Arthur Erickson declared concrete “the marble of the twentieth century”; furthering the same line, corrugated metal has become cost-conscious Winnipeg’s signature cladding for the 21st century.

But this corrugated metal is black, entirely black, set in black frames, punctuated by black mullions, and so on; the building is a raven set amongst the sparrows and starlings of Waterfront Drive housing designed by other firms. The only time there is coloured relief from black metal, silver metal and grey concrete comes solely at night, and only when viewing the west elevation, where the gang-nailed soffits of panelized wood mill flooring can be seen through the large windows—a riot of colour by 5468796’s recent standards. Relax, my friends: a bit more generosity with smart hits of colour would humanize designs that are not nearly as aggressive in occupation as their blackness first indicates.

Where the designers have certainly got things right is in avoiding over-restoration of the yellow brick and steel trusses of the old Pumping Station. “We did not have budget to clean and repoint all the brick or repaint the metal, and they did not really need it,” says Radulovic. A patina of history remains on the Pumping Station, with its stains and cracks clear evidence of authenticity. Canada’s zealous over-restorers in the Federal Government and National Capital Commission need to go back and read William Morris’s 19th-century screeds against “scraping” the age and character off their restored buildings. 

With their new book and breakthroughs into more ambitious large works such as the Pumphouse and Calgary’s Platform 9th Avenue Garage, 5468796 has evolved to the point where their repertoire of housing forms and details have emerged as the true genetic structure of the firm’s brand—so now, the camouflage of black can drop away. The gifts to all Winnipeggers from these architectural leaders in their renewed Pumphouse complex are many, but are crowned by gracious good humour, and an aggressive comfort with local realities. Oh, that all cities could be so lucky!

Trevor Boddy, FRAIC wrote the introduction to 5468796’s platform.MIDDLE book and participated in the original 2019 IIT housing symposium of that name that started the publication rolling. Boddy will co-lead tours of downtown housing and Erickson’s Smith House II at the RAIC national convention in Vancouver, May 12-15, 2024, where there will also be a platform.MIDDLE book launch and talks with Hurme and Radulovic.

CLIENT Alston Properties | STRUCTURAL Lavergne Draward & Associates | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL/CIVIL MCW Consultants Ltd. | LANDSCAPE Scatliff + Miller + Murray | Interiors 5468796 Architecture | CONTRACTOR Brenton Construction | SURVEYOR Barnes & Duncan | CODE GHL Consultants | ENERGY Crosier Kilgour | AREA Heritage rehabilitation (office & hospitality): 1,670 m2; Multi-family residential: 7,110 m2 (incl. underground parking) | BUDGET $22 M | COMPLETION January 2024

ENERGY USE INTENSITY 138 KW/m2/year (PROJECTED) | THERMAL ENERGY USE INTENSITY 80 KW/m2/year (PROJECTED)

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PROJECT Wellesley Institute, Toronto, Ontario

ARCHITECT AGATHOM Co. Limited

TEXT Jason Brijraj

PHOTOS Scott Norsworthy

Toronto’s Moss Park neighbourhood is a rough part of the city—but a perfect fit for a recent project by AGATHOM for the Wellesley Institute. Led by husband-and-wife team Adam Thom and Katja Aga Sachse Thom, AGATHOM prides itself on working closely with clients, their in-house team, builders and craftspeople to make buildings that contribute to the well-being of their occupants. It was no surprise the public health-focused Institute approached the firm in 2018 to manage the repurposing of two recently purchased townhouses, backing onto a dodgy neighbourhood laneway, on a tight budget.

The Wellesley Institute has a longstanding history of providing healthcare to the neighbourhood. Founded by members of the long-demolished Wellesley Hospital’s Central Health Corporation, the Institute was the developer responsible for the mix of park space, residential and healthcare buildings now occupying former hospital lands. After their successful stint as developers, staff relocated to leased office spaces in Yorkville and shifted their direction, becoming a think-tank. However, their location in the upscale Toronto neighbourhood was at odds with their goals of finding tangible ways to overcome the social determinants of health to make healthcare more equitable. This prompted the move to be closer to their target clientele, and a short walk away from the original Wellesley Hospital site.

The resulting project combines the two townhouses, balancing between preserving existing elements and intervening where necessary. This starts at the entrance, where the original front stairs were removed and the entrance foyer rebuilt at grade, providing an accessible front door. Inside, the design celebrates quirky features resulting from the lowered ground floor datum, such as an oversized opening for the entrance door and raised existing fireplaces. 

Within, strategic openings in partitions and in the original party wall make for spacious, well-lit spaces. The design deftly threads spaces together with deeper light penetration, while preserving privacy in rooms. On AGATHOM’s recommendation, the offices are furnished with comfortable wooden furniture, replacing the corporate furnishings of the Institute’s Yorkville office.

A selective material palette creates a home-like atmosphere for staff. White-oak-trimmed countertops and thin steel edges contrast with heavier terracotta tile and aged brick walls. Scrupulousness with detailing and execution are evident throughout. Contractors Duffy & Associates “took immense care to make sure that bricks were re-toothed, instead of left messily sawed off,” notes Adam Thom. 

The neighbourhood’s character comes into focus when peering out of the south-facing windows, to the rear of the building. Along with the noisy hilarity and range of questionable commercial activities that is typical of Moss Park, the views of Oskenonton Lane are constant reminders of the disenfranchised people the Institute aims to help with their research. 

Much of the exterior intervention by the firm took place at the back of the building, so the south elevation became an opportunity for expression. By developing an in-house rainscreen wall assembly—in lieu of an expensive off-the-shelf system—the firm was able to use weathered steel panels that will age over time, while still meeting the project budget. The mosaic of solid metals and transparent glass reconciles the various interior program spaces. In the backyard, a newly planted London plane tree grows within a large concrete planter created in part from the previous building’s retained foundation wall. This opportunity to reuse the existing foundation is one of what Adam and Katja describe as “little wins” for the project. 

The back elevation, with its weathered materials and carefully considered composition, is designed to fit with the neighbourhood—with all its grittiness as well as its profound humanity. Like Diamond and Myers’ Sherbourne Lanes and Hariri Pontarini’s Robertson House Women’s Shelter, which also back onto Oskenonton Lane with sensitivity to their site, it demonstrates how the architects and clients have not turned their backs on the people their work will impact the most. It signals a project that, overall, is a quiet triumph for AGATHOM, The Wellesley Institute, and for equitable healthcare in the city.

Jason Brijraj is an intern architect working in Toronto with Diamond Schmitt Architects.

CLIENT Wellesley Institute | ARCHITECT TEAM Katja Aga Sachse Thom, Adam Thom, Joshua Henk, Stanley Sun | STRUCTURAL Moses Structural Engineers Inc. | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Lam & Associates Ltd. | ELECTRICAL | LANDSCAPE AGATHOM Co. Limited | INTERIORS AGATHOM Co. Limited | CONTRACTOR Duffy & Associates Design Build Limited | CODE David Hine Engineering Inc. | AREA 492 M2 | BUDGET $2.5 M | COMPLETION Spring 2022

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PROJECT Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Phase 3 Expansion (Harrison McCain Pavilion), Fredericton, New Brunswick

ARCHITECT KPMB Architects 

TEXT Peter Sealy

PHOTOS Doublespace Photography

The recently opened Harrison McCain Pavilion at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, offers a powerful thesis on what makes good public space. The answer contained within the elegant volume of this 836-square-metre pavilion is not centred on ownership or function, although these factors are certainly relevant. Instead, it is a matter of generosity—of architecture’s ability to enclose a broadly accessible public realm. Designed by KPMB Architects, the McCain Pavilion gives equally to the gallery’s visitors and to the citizens of Fredericton while asking little in return. In so doing, its elegant loggia and light-filled enclosure celebrate the renaissance of an institution now moving beyond a tempestuous period of legal drama over its world-class collection in the early 2000s. 

Inserted between the original Beaverbrook building (a mid-century modernist design by Neil Stewart which dates from 1959) and Queen Street, Fredericton’s main thoroughfare, the pavilion raises the public realm both physically and symbolically. In plan, it uses a well-integrated series of ramps and steps to mediate between the low-lying street, which floods every spring, and the Beaverbrook’s existing galleries. What was once an awkward exterior entrance has been elevated into an enticing procession through delightful spaces. The presence of a fireplace contributes to this sense of civic ritual while also adding a touch of domestic warmth.

The design of the exterior colonnade is an exercise in parallax, causing an oscillating effect of solids and voids as the viewer’s position shifts—be it inside or outside. As a result, the pavilion hovers between classical monumentality and lustrous transparency. Distinct from many neoclassical buildings, the colonnade does not limit visitors to an axial approach. Instead, an exterior ramp placed laterally behind the colonnade draws visitors tangentially—and almost unconsciously—into the pavilion. Meanwhile, the façade’s gentle curve echoes the bends in the Saint John River and Queen Street at the Beaverbrook’s riverfront site. In so doing, it offers a subtle moment of deference to the Second Empire-style provincial Legislative Building across the street. The columns themselves were the result of a propitious collaboration with a precast concrete fabricator in Saint John, New Brunswick. Each one has the same cross-section but is rotated differently, while the intercolumniations are varied.

A newly commissioned mural by the Mi’kmaq artist Jordan Bennett fills both walls which frame the wide ramp linking the McCain Pavilion and the original gallery. The bold colours and symbolic forms of It pulls you in: it pushes you out provide a visual focus to this moment of transition. The presence of Bennett’s mural is an assertion of Indigenous presence within the institutional confines of the gallery and of this latter’s desire to welcome new publics within its walls. Together with the McCain Pavilion’s mute palette, the ensemble of art and architecture ennoble the public realm. 

The notion of indoor public (as opposed to private) space saw a welcome revival around the turn of this century, with museums leading the way. While the commodification of the museum experience is unmistakable—one may think of the title of Banksy’s documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop—at their best, spaces such as the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall or the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Galleria Italia offer grand public rooms, perfect settings for solitary reflection or chance encounters. 

While conceived on a far smaller scale, the McCain Pavilion successfully shares a similar ambition. As KPMB partner Shirley Blumberg and senior associate Matthew Wilson state, “This is a pavilion for looking at Fredericton, a social and community hub in which public life emerges.” The McCain pavilion is frequently used for events, with its ramps and steps creating an impromptu forum for public gatherings. Yet it is the pavilion’s uncontested ability to celebrate quotidian experience—such as drinking a coffee on a winter morning while gazing at the legislature—that is its greatest attribute. 

Balancing between restraint and dynamism, KPMB’s superbly detailed design provides New Brunswick’s capital with an outstanding and generous work of public architecture, whose qualities one hopes will be emulated elsewhere. 

Architectural historian Peter Sealy is an Assistant Professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

CLIENT Beaverbrook Art Gallery | ARCHITECT TEAM Shirley Blumberg, Matthew Wilson, Francesco Valente-Gorjup, Jinsu Park, Jonathan Santaguida, Lukas Bergmark, Ramin Yamin, Gerald DesRochers| STRUCTURAL Eastern Designers and Company Ltd.| MECHANICAL Crandall | ELECTRICAL RSEI Consultants Ltd. | LIGHTING DotDash | SIGNAGE Entro | BUILDING SCIENCE JMV Consulting | ACOUSTICS Aercoustics | AREA 836 M2 | BUDGET $11 M | COMPLETION September 2022

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In April, the Ontario Government announced that the Ontario Science Centre would be moved atop an underground parking garage at the redeveloped Ontario Place, and the 1969 building, by architect Raymond Moriyama, demolished. Here’s what Moriyama Teshima Architects has to say about the proposal:

“Design an institution of international significance.” That was the brief given to Raymond Moriyama by the Minister of Public Works in 1964. The brief would become the Ontario Science Centre (OSC), and when it opened its doors in 1969, it instantly achieved its simple, maybe even naïve, but indisputably ambitious goal. Every Torontonian remembers the hair-raising feeling of an electric current running through their finger while on a school trip. 

Science is the study of structure and behaviour in nature. The Ontario Science Centre is a landmark building, purposefully nestled into the natural ravine of the Don Valley, where it has succeeded in bringing that joyful study to the masses for over fifty years. The purpose of the Science Centre is inseparable from the site it currently inhabits. At Moriyama Teshima Architects, we believe the science is unequivocally telling us that we need to be preserving and regenerating our buildings. The carbon embodied in these structures is too valuable to discard.   

We all grew up with the Science Centre, and in turn, the city grew up around it. Toronto is not the same city it was in 1969, and Ontario is not the same province. There are millions more people who call this province home, and many thousands who now live in the Flemingdon Park neighbourhood. Our collective memories and the future memories of those yet to discover the OSC are too precious to discard.  

This is precisely the moment when we need to be investing in more public institutions. If there is a need for the Science Centre to modernize and evolve, the goal should be to regenerate it in a way that builds on its heritage, celebrates its unique architecture, and restores its commitment as an amenity to its neighbourhood. When Raymond Moriyama was designing the OSC he told the administration the programming should change every eight years—“If it didn’t change, it would die.” A regenerated Science Centre should continue its legacy of education, and can accommodate other uses such as community space, or even housing, if deemed appropriate.   

Likewise, if there is a need for a new public institution along the shores of Lake Ontario, let’s expand the mission and the footprint of the Science Centre, and explore a new facility that celebrates and explores that site’s unique surroundings. 

Science North in Sudbury is Canada’s second largest science centre. It was inspired by the success we cultivated in Toronto. Five years ago, Science North began a full review of its outreach efforts in Northwestern Ontario, to evaluate future opportunities for growth in the region and better reach underserviced and underprivileged communities. The results demonstrated a strong business case for expansion and efforts have been
ongoing ever since. The roadmap for an expanded, re-imagined and regenerated Ontario Science Centre already exists in this province.  

Ontario designed an institution of international significance once before. Let’s save the one we have and do it again.

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On April 18, the provincial government announced that it plans to demolish the existing Ontario Science Centre, designed by Raymond Moriyama as one of Canada’s landmark Centennial projects, and construct housing in its parking lots.

The government plans to move the Ontario Science Centre to become part of the redeveloped Ontario Place, in a facility atop an underground parking garage built to service the planned Therme development, as well as in the iconic Cinesphere and Pod complex. Construction is expected to begin in 2025, with an opening slated for 2028.

The Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (ACO) and Toronto Society of Architects (TSA) have issued statements opposing the demolition of the Ontario Science Centre.

The ACO’s statement, written by ACO Toronto presence Stephanie Mah, follows:

ACO Toronto urges the Province of Ontario to repair, restore, and care for the Ontario Science Centre instead of moving it to Ontario Place. This important landmark building is currently listed on the City of Toronto’s Heritage Register, and we request that the City of Toronto designate the building under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act as it meets multiple criteria for cultural heritage value under O.Reg. 9/06.

The Ontario Science Centre, originally known as the Centennial Centre for Science and Technology (CCST) at 770 Don Mills Road, has significant cultural, social, architectural, and environmental value. Opened in 1969, the Ontario Science Centre was designed by architect Raymond Moriyama as an Ontario project for the Centennial. It was one of the first interactive science museums in the world and received an OAA Landmark Designation Award. The Imaxdome was added by Zeidler Roberts in 1996. In 2017, ACO Toronto hosted our Annual Heritage Symposium “150+”on Centennial projects at the Ontario Science Centre, where award-winning architect Raymond Moriyama spoke about his experience on the ideas behind the building.

This iconic building has been featured in numerous national publications. In the book Canadian Modern Architecture: 1967 to the Present it is argued that “of all the projects completed under the auspices of the Centennial Commission, Raymond Moriyama’s ‘CCST’ best represents what critic Peter Buchanan described as the heroic period of Canadian architecture.”

Despite this, the building has experienced a severe lack of maintenance in recent years. The pedestrian bridge which links exhibit buildings was deemed unsafe in 2022 and closed. There are no plans in place to repair or replace this structure and visitors are currently moved around the museum via shuttle bus.

Even more concerning is the recent announcement of plans to move the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place. While a satellite expansion of the Centre could be explored, moving the entire program from this building puts both the building and surrounding neighbourhoods at risk. The Ontario Science Centre serves as an important community hub in North York and removing it would directly contradict efforts towards sustainable and equitable city-building. The Flemingdon Park, Thorncliffe Park, and larger Don Mills area is already at risk of losing access to another important cultural space: 123 Wynford Drive, another landmark building designed by Raymond Moriyama, originally the Japanese Cultural Centre now the Noor Cultural Centre, which is planned for redevelopment that will demolish much of the building.

We believe through stewardship, care, and community collaboration, additional housing and new amenities can still be provided elsewhere on this site and in the area, while allowing the Ontario Science Centre building to be restored and maintained as a vibrant cultural hub in North York.

The Toronto Society of Architects’ statement, written by Chair Ana Francesca de la Mora, follows:

The Toronto Society of Architects, in fulfilment of our role as advocates for the built environment in Toronto and the surrounding region, calls on the Province of Ontario and Premier Doug Ford to reconsider plans to move the Ontario Science Centre and any potential demolition of this significant architectural landmark.

We take this position on the following principles:

Architectural Significance

Opened in 1969 and originally known as the Centennial Centre for Science and Technology, the Ontario Science Centre is a building of national architectural and cultural significance. Representative of an era of heroic civic buildings looking to establish a unique Canadian architectural identity, it is part of a select group of landmarks across the country built to mark Canada’s centennial. Designed by the celebrated practice Moriyama Teshima Architects, the complex has been specifically built for its site, responding to the changing levels of the Don River ravine and forging an irreplaceable relationship between building and landscape. Its spaces engage all senses, encouraging exploration and physical interaction–a reflection of the science centre’s role as a pioneer of hands-on science education.

Demolishing the Ontario Science Centre would demolish an irreplaceable part of the province’s and country’s history. As caretakers of this landmark, the Province must invest in the repair and maintenance of this facility.

Sustainability

The building and construction industry represent 40% of greenhouse gases emitted in the province. Similarly, a significant portion of the waste filling landfills is caused by the construction and demolition of our built environment. The demolition of the Ontario Science Centre and its replacement with a new structure would generate unnecessary waste and require significant energy and material resources. The climate crisis we face today requires us to acknowledge our collective responsibility to change how things are done and demolition should be a last resort after all other options are exhausted.

Should the Province proceed with moving the Ontario Science Centre, the existing structure should be re-used and adapted to new uses that continue to serve the community. Our city is filled with examples of adaptive reuse projects that have converted much more challenging existing structures to new uses including community spaces, theatres, museums, and more.

Placemaking

The Ontario Science Centre is an important cultural institution and community resource for Flemingdon Park and Thorncliffe Park, dense neighbourhoods that have historically been underserved. This institution plays a vital role as a community hub and is among the few large-scale cultural institutions outside of the city centre.

While our city and province have an urgent need for housing, this should not come at the expense of cultural institutions and community spaces which are essential for the health of neighbourhoods. There are other places better suited for additional housing development.

Consultation

As a place belonging to all Ontarians, any decision to move the Ontario Science Centre should include extensive public consultation. We have not been made aware of any previous consultation sessions on this topic and urge the Province to allow Ontarians to participate in a debate on the future of the Ontario Science Centre.

The Ontario Science Centre is a shared place of significance for many Ontarians. We firmly believe in the importance of not only retaining, but repairing and celebrating this important architectural landmark and cultural institution and call on the Province to rethink its plans.

As always, we make ourselves available to work together for a better Toronto and Ontario.

The post ACO and TSA advocate to save Ontario Science Centre appeared first on Canadian Architect.

PROJECT Hollywood Theatre & Residences, Vancouver, British Columbia

ARCHITECT MA+HG Architects

TEXT Benny Kwok

PHOTOS Ema Peter and Janis Nicolay, as noted

Down the street from where I recently lived in Vancouver, there’s a building that has long been a treasured local oddity. Designed by Harold Cullerne, the streamlined Art Deco Hollywood Theatre was built in 1935, boasting roofline hieroglyphic decorations, a black-and-gold tiled ticket booth, and vibrant neon signage. It was a source of escapism for patrons during the Great Depression and remained a beloved family-run cinema for 76 years. After its closure in 2011, the theatre was leased to a church group and was then proposed to be turned into a fitness facility. But communities around the city came together in opposition, and plans for redevelopment were eventually scrapped. Recently, MA+HG Architects have stepped in to restore the theatre to its former glory, while adding rental housing to ensure the long-term viability of the site. 

The process of saving this beloved icon of the Kitsilano community was a collaborative effort between the city, the local heritage community, the arts and culture community, and the public at large. Through a series of workshops and ‘curiosity sessions’, everyone found common ground in their goal to preserve the building, including its original use and unique identity. 

To achieve this, the theatre underwent significant upgrades, including the addition of adequate restroom facilities to maintain its status as a 650-seat venue. The Hollywood’s versatility was also emphasized,  opening the possibility of hosting not just films and live acts, but also community gatherings. The renovations were executed with care to respect character-defining elements, such as through maintaining the original light troughs and restoring the building’s wooden wainscotting. In the spirit of the Art Deco period, the new bars have a stylish yet understated design; red highlights appear throughout, a colour prominent in the original theatre. Behind the bar, film reels and curtains pay homage to the rich history of the building.

MA+HG also designed a six-storey mixed-use residential development on the neighbouring lot. Under a heritage revitalization agreement, the Hollywood property’s development potential was transferred to the adjacent property, together with additional bonus density that rewarded the restoration of the theatre. To showcase—and use—this relationship to full advantage, the condo block extends over the theatre, effectively gaining a third façade. This is an unusual opportunity on a commercial strip, where buildings normally only open to the front and back, and the added exposure allows for the inclusion of east-facing units. The city emphasized the importance of lightness in the building’s corners, and this was achieved by staggering the condo’s balconies to visually open up its edges. The building has been constructed above the street in such a way that the shadow it casts falls primarily on Broadway, rather than the single-family residences behind it, minimizing its impact on the low-slung neighbourhood.

The two buildings were further stitched together by setting the residential block back 2.7 metres from the street, creating a prominent canopy that echoes the theatre’s marquee and draws attention to the six-metre-tall Hollywood sign. In contrast to the vertical banding of the theatre, the residential portion of the project adopts a horizontal orientation, playfully accentuating the length of the site. The envelope of the new building was kept simple and box-like, with emphasis placed on height through tall front entry doors and a high-quality material palette. The balconies were allowed to have a slight dance-like effect, adding interest to the otherwise straightforward form. Its long horizontal bands are reminiscent of the fluidity “found in yachts,” according to design principal Marianne Amodio, or “a scarf blowing on a motorcycle,” with “a touch of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater” as an inspiration.

The building is designed to be slightly deeper than usual because of its greater width, allowing for slightly atypical apartment layouts, including studios that interlock with one-bedroom units, as well as over a dozen two-bedroom units and five three-bedroom units.  

The Hollywood Theatre is a symbol of the community’s memories and heritage, and its restoration became a win-win: preserving the institution for future generations to enjoy, as well as enabling a more flexible approach to the adjoining residential development. The outcome is a unique and visually appealing pair of buildings that showcases the potential of imagination and innovation in design. While the theatre will always stand out as the “weirdo on the block,” it is also a testament to what can be achieved with community, creativity and conversation.

Benny Kwok is a project manager with Herzog & de Meuron, and is co-founder of Vancouver- and London-based Smll Studio.

CLIENT Bonnis Properties | ARCHITECT TEAM Harley Grusko, Marianne Amodio (RAIC), Lindsey Nette | STRUCTURAL Kor Structural | MECHANICAL Integral Group | ELECTRICAL Integral Group & Advanco Electric | LANDSCAPE Prospect & Refuge | HERITAGE Donald Luxton & Associates | CODE Jensen Hughes | CONTRACTOR Bonnis Properties | AREA 5,852 m2 | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION August 2022

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PROJECT Montauk Sofa Montreal, Montreal, Quebec

ARCHITECT Cohlmeyer Architecture

PHOTOS Nanne Springer

In the summer of 2021, Montauk Sofa discreetly inaugurated its new flagship showroom on Montreal’s well-known St. Laurent Boulevard. The three-storey structure is barely noticeable among the heterogenous mix of buildings, which line what was once The Main for successive waves of European immigrants. Today, amid grocery stores, restaurants, bars, and businesses of all kinds, Montauk Sofa’s disconcertingly quiet presence conveys a timeless message, refreshingly at odds with its surroundings.

Five years in the making, the 1,200-square-metre showroom is the result of an intense collaborative effort between Montauk Sofa co-founders Tim Zyto and Danny Chartier, Cohlmeyer Architecture, and HETA landscape architect Myke Hodgins. The flagship replaces the company’s first store, opened in 1995 further up St. Laurent Boulevard. Like Montauk’s later showrooms in New York, Chicago, Vancouver and Calgary, several of which were designed with Cohlmeyer Architecture, the present commission involved the transformation of an aging structure, with the architects taking the lead in carefully uncovering an industrial backdrop and accenting it with understated contemporary interventions.

The Montreal showroom is in the heart of the Plateau-Mont-Royal, known for its narrow streets, lined with century-old, low-scale buildings. The charm of this lively, pedestrian-oriented neighbourhood, which has become one of the most popular areas in the city, comes at a high price for architects and designers called in to upgrade existing properties. The procedure to obtain a building permit—even for as basic a request as replacing a window— can last for months. Needless to say, it was a real challenge to get permission to tear down part of a building, insert a garden between the retained façade and the building’s remaining portion—the latter reclad with a minimalist glass wall—and to lower the basement, including consolidating the foundations on poor quality clay subsoils. 

Complying with fire code requirements was another major issue for Cohlmeyer Architecture and their engineers. The solution found—concealing fire curtains in the ceilings—was key to the whole project. The result is four gallery-like areas, open to natural light from front to back, displaying comfortable sofas placed among plants and beautiful objects. As architect Daniel Cohlmeyer notes, “It would have been atrocious to put an enclosed exit stairwell in this space and ruin the showroom’s effect of total openness.” Adds owner Tim Zyto, “In this particular building, we have a lot of space. We like to use it, not to cram a lot of furniture in, but rather to let it breathe.”

Architecturally speaking, there is no grand gesture here, but something perhaps more rare: an amazing ability to see a building’s hidden potential and to come up with inventive ways of revealing it. This vision was not about adding, but about subtracting, removing, stripping. The interiors, still showing traces of the past, were left bare. Mechanical, structural, and electrical components were concealed in sculptural, sawtooth-like ceilings—designed by Daniel’s father, firm founder Stephen Cohlmeyer, before his untimely passing in 2021. 

Special attention was given to the basement, a low, dingy space that required extensive work before it could be turned into a fourth showroom floor. Once it was excavated—and less spectacular technical problems, such as redirecting and properly insulating water and sewage lines, were solved—natural light was brought in using a 10-foot-wide exterior lightwell running along the front façade. In the centre of the composition, a storey-tall waterfall cascades from the ground-floor garden to the lower courtyard. Creating a magical effect was paramount for Zyto, who recalls initially wanting the waterfall to be the width of the entire façade. “For our client, vision is more important than budget,” says Daniel Cohlmeyer. “It is very rare.” 

While trendy, of-the-moment architecture is frequently celebrated, anonymous, nondescript buildings often reflect the soul of our cities and neighbourhoods. Montauk Sofa’s revamped new home embraces a sense of quietness, retaining the spirit of the original place. The various landscape, architecture and design awards lavished on this project are a remind­er that sometimes, simplicity is the best answer. And at a time when biodiversity is becoming ever more important, small, improbable gardens may point the way to the future.

Montauk Sofa may be heralding a new era for St. Laurent Boulevard. Slated to be built a few doors south of the showroom, the new Montreal Holocaust Museum, as designed by KPMB and Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, also takes a sober, yet entirely contemporary, approach. Hopefully, Montauk Sofa and the future museum, each in its own way, will set new standards for St. Laurent Boulevard—as well as for other Montreal locations that have much to learn from these two exemplary projects.

Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect.

CLIENT Montauk Sofa | ARCHITECT TEAM Daniel Cohlmeyer (RAIC), Matthew Vanderberg, Emmanuelle Guérin, Czesia Bulowska, Stephanie Shaw, Stephen Cohlmeyer (FRAIC) | STRUCTURAL NCK Inc. | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Ambioner | CIVIL | LANDSCAPE HETA | INTERIORS Cohlmeyer Architecture | CONTRACTOR Rampa Construction Co. | ACOUSTICS MJM Acoustical Consultants Inc. | AREA 1,672 m2 (INCLUDING FRONT COURTYARD) | BUDGET $3.2 M | COMPLETION January 2021

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PROJECT The Royal Hotel, Picton, Prince Edward County, Ontario

ARCHITECT Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects

PHOTOS doublespace photography, unless otherwise noted

In 1881, the newly opened Royal Hotel was a striking presence in Picton, the centre of Loyalist-settled Prince Edward County near Kingston, Ontario. It included a grand staircase leading to spacious upper-level suites, a handsome dining room, and a popular tavern. The whole was topped by an elaborate octagonal cupola.

Over the next century, the hotel went through ups and downs—becoming the hot spot for balls and birthdays among the area’s gentry when an air training facility was built in 1939, then declining when the county’s canning industry faltered in the 1950s and the military base closed in the mid-1960s. By the turn of the 21st century, it had become a boarding house with an unsavoury bar. In 2008, the building was shuttered, its arched windows boarded up.

Former Ontario finance minister Greg Sorbara, whose family runs a real estate development firm, had moved to a farm in Prince Edward County four years earlier. In 2013, after a nearby church was demolished, he decided to purchase The Royal to save it from a similar fate. The restoration process began in 2016, and took off in earnest when architects Giannone Petricone were brought on board and Greg Sorbara’s son-in-law, Sol Korngold, took charge of the project. 

The building was in terrible condition. “It was crumbling in on itself,” says Korngold, recalling holes in the roof, mold growing up the walls, soggy carpets, and a swamped basement. The eastern brick wall collapsed during the construction process. The process of rebuilding it as a hotel, says Korngold, was like “making your way through the darkest jungle with a machete.” But Korngold and the architects were determined to save what they could—the handsome upper storeys of the façade, the western brick wall—and moreover, to restore the spirit of the place as a hotel and community hub.

The new Royal Hotel follows a similar formula to its predecessor (luxurious rooms for hotel guests, a restaurant at the back) but with modern updates. Instead of a doughnut-shaped plan with a central lightwell, it’s shaped as an L that occupies only a portion of its previous footprint, allowing all of the 28 rooms to enjoy natural light and views to the surrounding town. The front-of-house tavern has become an all-day counter bar; the open-plan ground floor includes a boutique with artisanal goods, a fireplace-warmed lounge, and a cozy games room. The basement has been underpinned to accommodate a Finnish spa for hotel guests and conference room for corporate retreats. 

“For us, it’s not enough to have an approach of respect, integrity, and commitment to the original structure,” says architect Pina Petricone of Giannone Petricone, who collaborated with heritage specialists ERA on the project. “How do we enhance that structure? How do we not only restore and resuscitate these historic buildings, but take them to their next life?

Early in the design process, Petricone recalls, they brought the client photos of a crisp, folded tuxedo shirt, and a rumpled tweed button-up. The power of the place, they argued, would be analogous to creating a wardrobe that could accommodate both garments. It would need to respond to the building’s past history of formality and grandness, as well as the more laid-back identity of Prince Edward County today. They also wanted to add a touch of humour through details that referenced the hotel’s restoration from a derelict state.

The Royal’s Victorian origins are alluded to in embroidered motifs on upholstered walls, and tartans that adorn carpets and mosaic-tiled washrooms. Ceiling rosettes are reinterpreted as rippled features, nodding to the earlier waterlogged state of the building; Bocci lights with darkened patches hint at the appearance of plastic burned by hot bulbs. In the lobby, a rippling plaster wall surrounding the fireplace suggests a finish damaged by water, unfurling to reveal a strip of seersucker wallpaper, and a corduroy wall suggestive of an underlying wooden lathe. The elevator is surrounded by construction grade metal grating, a reference to the accordion-like gates of antique elevator cages. 

Activity-wise, the twin hearts of the building are its counter bar—a buzzy spot open from morning to evening—and its restaurant. Both spaces evidence Giannone Petricone’s expertise with hospitality spaces, built up steadily over the decades since their renovation of Toronto’s Bar Italia in 1995. The counter bar has a vintage-Italian-meets-farmhouse feel, with chrome-tube bench seats, leather-wrapped columns shaped to suggest fine gloves, and white oak fins that transform from a valence to a display for jams and honey from local producers, including the Sorbara family farm.

Farm produce is also on the menu in the restaurant, which takes on the drama of a theatre: the brightly lit kitchen is framed by an opening that resembles a proscenium arch, with plated food materializing under spotlight-like pendants in the front pass. Heavy drapery to the sides appears like stage curtains, and allows the kitchen to be closed from view. In the centre of the room, a supersized rosette has the presence of a grand chandelier—a dramatic presence, created in part to mitigate the relatively modest floor-to-floor heights of the existing building. (“The way to deal with a low ceiling is to make some areas that are even lower, so that the main ceiling feels higher,” says Petricone.) The designers liken the dining room rosette to the underside of a mushroom, with dew drop-like Bocci 21 lamps floating underneath it.

A more-is-more approach risks becoming a cacophony of competing curiosities. But here, all is part of a coherent vision, built through many details and repeated motifs. The leather-wrapped columns from the main floor, for instance, are echoed in the shape of clay baseboard tiles, turned on end and used to clad basement walls; the same terracotta tone appears in the grout between off-white tiles in the circulation core. The basement includes tapered columns that suggest stems for the mushroom-like rosette above. In premier guest suites, fireplaces are framed by a finely veined marble with rough-cut channels that hint at the quarrying process; the same detail is used on the edge of the stone-top dining tables in the restaurant, where it suggests an imprint left by long-gone starched tablecloths. 

Happily, Giannone Petricone not only had its own considerable experience to draw from, but also a passionate client with compatible tastes. While the architects were sourcing washbasins with duck-feet supports for the main floor washrooms (one of the hotel’s most Instagammed spaces), Korngold was ordering a leather punching bag to give the hotel’s gym an old-school feel. He amassed a stock of antique silver trays, purposefully left semi-tarnished, so that guests are greeted with a tea service in their room; common areas are accented with giant vintage clay vases filled with ceiling-height dried bouquets grown locally. “It was five and a half years of waking up at 3 am, and thinking: we need small towels for the spa! We need books for the games room!” recalls Korngold. (The latter resulted in a large, late-night order from Taschen; the games room also includes Korngold’s own guitar, which a guest was thoughtfully strumming during my tour.)

Unlike a Victorian parlour’s fragile cabinet of curiosities, the Royal “wants to feel relaxed—and the more you stay there, the more you discover,” says Petricone. “We’re operating in a place that has a lot of looseness, with many missing teeth in the street wall,” she continues. “This layering [of elements] is essential because it creates much-needed texture: now, new interventions can afford to be more minimal.”

Some of that contrast is created in the Royal Annex, a new-build also completed by Giannone Petricone on the site of the former stables. The barn-shaped building is clad in dark kebony; a zinc roof extends down the north façade to meet fire code regulations for building to the lot line. The geometric shape and dark materials create a backdrop to the hotel itself; the views from the terrace and pool between the two buildings are further screened by espaliered plane trees, part of a landscape design by Janet Rosenberg. 

The project is still expanding in breadth and depth. The Sorbara family has acquired two nearby historic mansions for use as staff housing; Korngold jokingly refers to the creation of a “Royal Precinct.” And a planned art program will further the hotel’s connections with its locality. In the summer, the proprietors will display the intricately embroidered jacket of a local who used to room in the hotel when it was a boarding house, and has since passed away. It’s one of many initiatives planned to help make the hotel of its site, and a place that honours its past while looking towards the future. Says Petricone: “The project was to give back to Picton, and to ignite something in this town.”

CLIENT 247 Main Street Picton LP | ARCHITECT TEAM Pina Petricone (FRAIC), Ralph Giannone (FRAIC), Partners; Andria Vacca (MRAIC), Senior Associate; Joseph Villahermosa, Avinash Davidson, Victoria Chin, Cassandra Hryniw, Tracy Ho, Kevin Martin, Carolyn Fearman, Michael Rietta, Ulysses Valiente, Helena Skonieczna | STRUCTURAL/MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL EXP Global Inc. | CIVIL | LANDSCAPE Janet Rosenberg & Studio | INTERIORS Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects | CONTRACTOR HADY Construction Associates (Building shell), Structure Corp. | HERITAGE ERA Architects Inc. | KITCHEN Trend Foodservice Design & Consulting | ACOUSTICS J.E. Coulter Associates Ltd. | FF&E PROCUREMENT P360 Concepts Inc | GRAPHIC DESIGN/SIGNAGE/BRANDING Blok Design | ARTWORK Tatar Art Projects | A/V The Terminators 2008 Inc. | IT TAS Consulting | CODE LRI | AREA 2,880 m2 | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION October 2022

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PROJECT MacKimmie Block & Tower Redevelopment, University of Calgary, Alberta

ARCHITECT DIALOG

PHOTOS Tom Arban, unless otherwise noted

Glass has fascinated medieval cathedral builders, German Expressionists, and modernists such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. As German art critic Adolf Behne wrote, commenting on Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion for the 2014 Cologne Werkbund exhibition: “The longing for purity and clarity—the glowing lightness, crystalline exactness—for immaterial lightness, and for infinite liveliness found in glass a means of its fulfillment—in this most bodiless, most elementary, most flexible material, richest in meaning and inspiration, which like no other fuses with the world.” 

And yet the extensive use of glass cladding has been often challenging—or plain irresponsible in terms of environmental sustainability—in the Canadian context. More recent technologies, however, including the use of double-skin façades, allow for designs that are both fully glazed and well-insulated. While double-skin systems are intricate, expensive, and time-consuming to install, this technology has been deployed with impressive results in the recently completed deep-energy retrofit of the MacKimmie Tower and newly built adjoining Hunter Student Commons at the University of Calgary. The project supports the university’s aggressive sustainability policy: by 2023, the institution will have 16 LEED-certified buildings on its main and peripheral campuses; the university is striving to be net-zero by 2050. 

Achieving a highly performative deep-energy retrofit and accompanying new-build was a learning experience for the client, the design team led by DIALOG, and the construction companies involved. Early in the process, the MacKimmie Complex was selected as one of sixteen projects to participate in the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC)’s Zero Carbon Building pilot program, allowing access to additional technical expertise and to the sharing of experiences with other teams in the pilot program. Boris Dragicevic, Associate Vice-President of Facilities Development at the University of Calgary, speaks highly of the process, as do Rob Claiborne and John Souleles, the DIALOG partners-in-charge of the project. 

The retrofit involved the reimagining of one of the campus’s earliest structures. The 1972 MacKimmie Tower had its cladding removed, interiors gutted, and two floors added atop it. The concrete structure’s out-boarded perimeter columns made it well-suited for the application of a double-skin glass façade as part of the retrofit. This approach was also supported by expertise from Munich’s Transsolar Klimaengineering. The detailed design of the glass cladding was carefully studied by the DIALOG team, using both physical and parametric models. The final design features a system of diagonal mullions that turn the corners with a faceted geometry. Due in part to its relatively compact floor plate, the Tower is not used for lecture rooms, but rather houses various administrative units, meeting rooms, and the Faculty of Social Work.

Adjoining the MacKimmie Tower, the Hunter Student Commons is a case-study in how a similar double-skin system can be deployed in a new-build. Replacing an older steel-framed building that was structurally inadequate, the Student Commons contains a variety of classrooms, study spaces, the Registrar’s office, and the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking. The centre of the building is occupied by three sculptural shafts that provide solar-assisted stack effect. (In the MacKimmie Tower, a former elevator shaft performs a similar function.) Interiors are minimalist, with exposed concrete structure and simple detailing. What is also noticeable is the lack of exposed HVAC equipment and the generally quiet environment—features enabled by the under-floor displacement ventilation system that harnesses supplementary ventilation from the double-skin façade and works with the stack effect (the same approach used in the tower). 

A variety of devices effectively transform the pair of buildings into smart machines to achieve net-zero. The active ventilated façades, manufactured in Germany by Hueck Aluminum Systems and assembled and installed in Calgary by Ferguson Glass, are compartmentalized into one-storey zones on the tower, and a multi-storey zone on the Hunter Student Commons. Within these zones, operable windows are controlled by highly reliable motors, which respond to sensors that track the sun, wind, and temperature. Automated blinds between the two façade layers are used for sun-shading. Users can override the automated controls, by means including opening or closing the blinds according to personal preference for up to two hours at a time. Heating for the buildings is provided by the university’s central heating plant, a carbon-efficient co-generation facility. The MacKimmie Complex’s electricity is in part generated by PV arrays on the roof of the tower and embedded in the Hunter Student Commons facade. (Arrays will eventually be added as well to the Student Commons’ roof.)

There is a premium to using double-skin systems. However, as Boris Dragicevic of the University of Calgary points out, this was offset by retaining the existing concrete structure of the tower, as well as by a reduction in the cost of mechanical systems. The per-square-metre construction costs for the project was not extraordinary, and Dragicevic claims the additional costs of achieving LEED Platinum and net-zero will be recouped in just over twenty years. The maintenance of the façade will involve cleaning twice a year, something the University has accepted. The scheme has received several awards and certifications already, including a 2020 CaGBC Excellence in Green Building: Zero Carbon – National Award and 2020 CaGBC Zero Carbon Design Certification. 

All of this effort was put towards an impressive result. The properties of glass—reflectivity, transparency, and durability—allowed the designers to achieve an overall crystalline effect, enhanced by the overall shaping of the scheme. The two new buildings at the University of Calgary are highly precise, but also transform according to the time of day, the weather, and the angle from which they are viewed. The result is a compelling piece of design that has dramatically enhanced the intensity of activity on the campus.

Graham Livesey is a professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary.

CLIENT University of Calgary | ARCHITECT TEAM Douglas Cinnamon (RAIC), Robert Claiborne (RAIC), John Souleles (RAIC), Steve Veres, Tracy Liu, Matt Parks, Jodi James, Matthew Parker, Neal Philipsen, Matt Stewart, Leanne Junnilla, Caleb Hildenbrandt, Kristen Forward, Hayden Pattullo, Michelle Brecht, Joel Penner, Ryan Van Marle, Stephanie Fargas | STRUCTURAL Entuitive | MECHANICAL DIALOG—Tim McGinn, Mike Bauer, Amisha Pope , Mike Torjan, Michael Mochulski, Alex Tansowny | ELECTRICAL SMP Engineering | CIVIL | LANDSCAPE DIALOG—Doug Carlyle, Nathan Grimson, Stacie Harker | INTERIORS DIALOG—Louise Aroche, Maria Zhang, Cara Oakley, Larissa Moore | CONTRACTOR Stuart Olson | CLIMATE ENGINEERING Transsolar Klimaengineering | ENERGY MODELLING, COMPLIANCE AND TECHNICAL MODELLING DIALOG | CIVIL Urban Systems  | COMMISSIONING WSP | CODE Jensen Hughes | ACOUSTICS Patching and Associates | ACCESSIBILITY Level Playing Field  | WIND Gradient Wind | ELEVATOR Vinspec | AREA 35,300 m2 | BUDGET $257 M | COMPLETION  Tower—Nov 2019; Block and Link—Sept 2022

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 75 kWh/m2/year | WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 0.31 m3/m2/year |

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Toronto-based architectural firm GBCA (GoldsmithBorgal & Company Ltd. Architects) received three awards in October after serving as heritage consultant on the $184 million Massey Hall Revitalization Project.
The firm was honoured with the Award of Excellence (Conservation – Architecture) by the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals, the Special Jury Award by the Architecture Conservancy of Ontario and the 2022 Crafts and Trades Award by Heritage Toronto for restoring and revitalizing the city’s performance venue.
“We are truly grateful for the recognition,” says Christopher Borgal, President and Senior Principal at GBCA. “For us, what mattered was striking the right balance between preserving the Hall’s heritage fabric while making room for it to be modernized. It was a collaborative effort on part of the various teams involved that helped us preserve the Hall’s unique architectural identity.”
To help various teams working on the project, GBCA working alongside lead architects KPMB, designed a conservation strategy that became the guiding map for revitalizing the 128-year-old Hall. The goal of the project was to undertake much needed improvements to the Hall while protecting the original building’s key heritage elements, which include.

“We are grateful to GBCA for the pivotal role they played in our restoration of Massey Hall, one of the country’s most cherished heritage assets, ensuring it will continue to make history one concert at a time for future generations,” says Grant Troop, Vice President of Operations at The Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall. “We are delighted for the widespread acclaim that GBCA, and the local skilled artisans who worked alongside them, have received in restoring the beauty of the original hall. The entire design and construction team shares in this praise for respecting the architecture of the original hall while at the same time modernizing the way it connects with patrons.”

Project Credits:

Heritage Consultant – GBCA
Architecture and Interior Design – KPMB Architects

Sub-consultants and trade

Eve Guinan – CAHP*, Eve Guinan Design Restoration (Stained Glass)
John Wilcox – CAHP, Vitreous Glassworks (Stained Glass)
Jean-Francois Furieri – CAHP
Iconoplast Designs Inc. (Plaster Restoration)
Eric Stewart – CAHP, Historic Plaster ConservationServices (Plaster Restoration – Assessment)
Fiona Graham – CAHP (Conservator)
Sam Trigila – CAHP, Clifford Restoration (Heritage Contractor)
Charcoalblue (Theatre)
Sound Space Vision (Acoustics)
Entuitive (Structural)
Entuitive (Building envelope)
The Mitchell Partnership Inc. (Mechanical)
Crossey Engineering Ltd. (Electrical)
Crossey Engineering Ltd. (Security & I.T.)
Martin Conboy Lighting Design (Architectural lighting)
Bhandari & Plater Inc. (Signage& graphics)
Engineering Harmonics Inc. (Audio-visual)
LRI (Code/fire& life-safety)
NAK Design Group (Landscape)
Anjinnov Management (Food services)
BA Consulting Group Ltd. (Transportation)
Turner & Townsend (Project management & cost consultancy)
Reich & Petch (Exhibit design)
Total Opening Consultants (Hardware)
Pro-Bel (Façade access systems)
WSP (Civil engineering) ç
*CAHP – Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals

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The Architectural Conservancy Ontario (ACO) has released a statement regarding the Government of Ontario’s recent  Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022 announcement.

On October 25, the Ontario Government proposed changes to the province’s natural heritage and land use planning legislation and policy by removing environmental protections, and reducing the role of Ontarians in land use planning.

The ACO’s news release outlines the devastation for Ontario’s Heritage in Bill 23:

“Whether intended or not, the changes proposed for the Ontario Heritage Act (OHA) in Bill 23 will make it practically impossible to protect most of Ontario’s identified heritage properties. This can only be seen as a knee-jerk response to a vindictive attack by the development industry on our heritage system. There was no consultation or consideration of the destructive impacts of these proposals across Ontario”, says ACO Chair Diane Chin. “Why drop a cluster bomb of changes into the heritage system that will not create a single unit of affordable housing? The proposed changes to the OHA must be dropped from Bill 23”, adds Ms. Chin.

Two of the proposals stand out. Forcing communities to drop “listed” properties from their heritage registers if they are not designated in two years and requiring that the standard for designation of properties be hiked from at least one of Ontario’s heritage criteria to two.

Requiring a property to meet two of the legislated criteria for designation, instead of one, will make it challenging to protect the often-humble buildings and places associated with the historic contributions of Black, Indigenous, Franco-Ontarian, multicultural, and 2SLGBTQIA+ communities to Ontario. This will seriously hamper communities like Little Jamaica or Kensington Market currently seeking heritage status and protection.

Ironically this effort to stymie advancements made in recognizing and celebrating cultural diversity is being promoted by the “minister of heritage,” the Minister of Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Michael Ford.

The change to the treatment of listed properties is equally confused, baffling, and counter productive. Listing — placing a property on the local Heritage Register — recognizes cultural value without the expensive and cumbersome process required to “designate” under the Ontario Heritage Act. Listing is an important planning tool, imposing no conditions on property owners save for requiring 60 days notice of intent to demolish.

“Why make it so much harder to keep listed properties on the Heritage Register,” asks Ms. Chin. “Designation should not be seen as the holy grail of heritage protection; listing is easy to implement and does the job in most cases. Why is the Ford government forcing unnecessary designations on municipalities and heritage property owners?”

In most of Ontario, identification and protection of heritage is undertaken by volunteer organizations and members of Municipal Heritage Committees. Most listed properties are not in any danger, so listing is an adequate tool for local councils to identify and celebrate their cultural heritage. The changes to listing requirements proposed in Bill 23, forcing either designation or the dropping of thousands of properties from the register within two years, leaving them with no heritage status, will undermine decades of volunteer work identifying and honouring local properties of value to their respective communities.

Planning Regime Shake-up: What Bill 23 means for you

Environmental organizations call for amendments to Bill 23

OAA Reviewing Ontario’s New Housing Legislation

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TEXT Max Amerongen

PHOTOS Courtesy Butterwick Projects

There’s a lane in Sundance Housing Co-op that provides a perfect “before” and “after” picture for housing in Canada. On one side are the original townhouses, clad in 44-year-old tan stucco and brown siding. Across from them sit their freshly updated siblings, transformed with colourful new fibre-cement siding, new windows, and air source heat pumps outside. The old gas-heated buildings use about the same amount of energy as typical Canadian townhouses. The new ones use one quarter of that, all electric, and soon to be all-renewable. And they do it at a fraction of the cost and the emissions of a new build.

The retrofit of Edmonton’s Sundance Housing Co-op is a $7 million upgrade to the 59-unit, 15-building townhouse complex. The project is funded in part by Natural Resources Canada’s Green Infrastructure Phase II, Energy Efficient Buildings Program. Built in 1977, the Sundance Co-op had been well maintained; but, beyond replacing windows in 1998, it had not had major interventions until now. The Sundance membership has a history of foresight. When the development was being built, they decided to forego closet doors to pay for the upgrade to 2×6 walls—exceeding the building code. Forty years later, they knew re-cladding was imminent, and realized that if they ever wanted the buildings to be net zero, it was now or never. The combination of decent structural condition, necessary exterior maintenance, and forward-looking collective-minded ownership made Sundance a good candidate for a deep retrofit.

A panellized approach

When our net zero design-build firm, Butterwick Projects, was approached with this project, we suggested that a panellized retrofit process had the potential to minimize the disruption for residents and reduce costs. While preparation and finishing still takes time, the work is much less disruptive than a site-built solution would be.

The process starts with a Lidar scan of the existing buildings. The resulting point cloud is used to determine the building geometry and the locations of key elements. These dimensions are turned into panel drawings which are sent to the panel factory. The stakes are high. A mis-sized panel or misplaced window will grind the installation operation to a halt. Nine buildings in, that hasn’t happened yet. While the 2×4 framed panels are being manufactured, the buildings are prepared for their arrival. Porches and decks are removed. A hydrovac crew creates a slot to the footing, allowing 5” of lower-carbon, graphite-infused EPS insulation to be added to the basement walls. An insulated PWF panel support box will support the new panels, decks and porch roofs, accommodate service penetrations, and provide a base for parging. The overhangs are removed to allow for a continuous air barrier over the old roof surface.

When the panels arrive on site, original windows and doors are removed, and the panels are flown into place by a crane. Each panel includes the primary air barrier, vented rain screen, and new high-efficiency windows and doors. They are tied back to the existing structure as they are put in place. A finishing carpenter follows the panel crew, installing new window returns and casings. Once a building has been covered in panels, cellulose insulation is blown into the cavity between the panel and the existing structure. The cellulose provides about R28 in new insulation, for a total of R40 including the original wall. A new scissor truss roof provides space for an additional R50 of cellulose and a new air barrier over the existing roof. Testing so far indicates that the airtightness target of less than 0.7 ACH50 is being met. The remaining heat load can now be met by air source heat pumps. After installation of air source heat pump water heaters, the old fossil-fuel gas lines are decommissioned. A solar PV system will provide about 80% of the remaining electrical load, with the balance being purchased from renewable sources. By the end of the process, the envelope and mechanical specifications are very similar to a new net zero build.

Butterwick Projects is also currently retrofitting three single-family homes, with the backing of the Smart Sustainable Resilient Infrastructure Association (SSRIA). These homes, typical of Edmonton housing stock, get a similar digital capture and panelization treatment, and will further develop the processes required to retrofit at commercial scale.

In Ottawa, a retrofit of four 70-year old townhomes has been completed using similar techniques. Ottawa Community Housing performed the work themselves, with design and detailing assistance from Cold Climate Building and If Then Architecture, as well as support from Natural Resources Canada.

The case for deep retrofits

The fact that, as an industry, we are only now doing pilot projects is alarming, given the scale of the challenge. Around 40% of Canada’s total emissions come from the buildings we live and work in. Of the buildings that will be around in 2050, 70-80% are already standing. Reaching zero emissions from existing buildings is an immense challenge. If Canada is to reach this target, we will have to retrofit a lot of buildings. The time frame and the cost mean we need to do it as carefully—and as efficiently—as possible.

Partial and “piecemeal” upgrades—the kind encouraged by most incentive programs—can do more harm than good. People are picking the low-hanging fruit without a plan to get to net zero, adding mediocre windows that are a slight improvement, adding attic insulation without air sealing, and re-siding with some insulation but not enough. Not only do these partial upgrades not solve the problem, they undermine the business case for a more holistic deep retrofit, and lock in the remaining emissions. Typically, we get one chance per building. The money spent on partial upgrades, particularly if some of it was spent renewing the exterior, will be next to impossible to find again for any future net zero retrofit.

Aside from the obvious motivation—avoiding planetary catastrophe—deep retrofits provide a chance to transform buildings in a relatively cost-effective way. Reduced energy costs are an obvious benefit, and while we don’t know what mix of energy solutions will make up our future zero-emissions grid, everything points to a significant price increase. A deep retrofit can also fix deferred maintenance problems, and reduce future long-term maintenance costs by employing the best building science. Improved comfort is also a major factor: regardless of how residents feel about the climate emergency, they can appreciate a quiet, climate-controlled, draft-free home with a window seat in every window. In some cases, retrofits can also be used to fix previous aesthetic blunders and realign the building with the original designer’s intentions. All of these things increase resale value. Viewed through this total-cost-of-ownership lens, the upfront cost makes sense.

An energy leap

A useful example of how the industry can scale up can be seen in the Netherlands Energiesprong initiative—Dutch for “Energy Leap”. This program for rapid retrofits provided the conceptual basis for the Sundance pilot project. The panelized retrofit technique the Dutch teams have developed is well optimized for the regular, predictable row houses they currently focus on, which are much simpler than the complex forms of Sundance. They have succeeded in making the process minimally invasive for residents, using 3D scanning, factory-built panels, and even new mechanical equipment packaged into integrated, plug-and-play pods.

Deep retrofits may seem like a limited niche, but Energiesprong shows that they can become big business. One of the main companies working in this space in the Netherlands is multibillion-euro construction giant Volker Wessels—a multinational infrastructure company that builds bridges and stadiums, is responsible for a portion of the UK’s HS2 rail line, and holds road maintenance contracts as far afield as Alberta. Over 10,000 homes have been retrofitted in the Netherlands, and similar projects are underway elsewhere in Europe.

Retrofit Canada

In order to connect the projects happening across the country and share their learning, members of the Sundance project team and champions of retrofits from across the country have formed an organization called Retrofit Canada. The primary goal of Retrofit Canada is to open-source the knowledge coming from these pilot projects. They are developing several tools to facilitate knowledge transfer and make newly developed processes accessible to the rest of the industry. The tools include a growing collection of retrofit case studies, from townhouses and bungalows to apartment buildings. The team is also developing a ‘retrofit roadmap’ to help others through the challenges—from the technical challenges of digital capture, 3D scanning, and envelope detailing, to tips for managing resident relations and obtaining financing. Knowledge is being shared openly between projects. With millions of potential retrofits spread between every town and city in Canada, there’s more than enough work to go around.

The future of retrofits

How do you build an industry overnight? Answering this question will unlock immense opportunity, but there are many things we need in order to get there. We need more pilot projects both to learn, and to demonstrate the viability of retrofits, with examples in different regions and building types. We need to push for policies and programs at all levels of government to help support this climate action. We need to ensure that architects, engineers, energy evaluators, designers, contractors, trades, manufacturers and lenders are all on the same page. We need to attract, train, and retain the workforce by showing them there is a prosperous and stable future in this work.

And then we need to retrofit a few million buildings.

Peter Amerongen is leading the design of the Sundance project and is a co-founder of Retrofit Canada. He has been designing and building energy-efficient housing in and around Edmonton since the 1970s. He is a speaker at the Green Building Festival in Toronto and online, which convenes on November 1, 2022.

Max Amerongen is a designer and writer in Edmonton, working on topics including heritage, unbuilt architecture, and climate.

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PROJECT Centennial College Downsview Campus Bombardier Centre for Aerospace and Aviation, Downsview Park, Toronto, Ontario

ARCHITECTS MJMA Architecture & Design + Stantec — Architects
in Association

TEXT Aidan Mitchelmore

Turning off Keele Street, just minutes north from the commotion of Toronto’s busy Highway 401, the city retreats. It is quiet, calm. The expansive grass fields and unobstructed sky views of the former Downsview Airport are a fitting landscape for a new aviation hub. 

Centennial College’s facility for Aviation and Engineering Technology & Applied Science, designed by MJMA and Stantec with ERA as Heritage Architects, is an adaptive reuse project situated within the geographic heart of Canadian aviation history. The school proudly occupies one of the most significant of several sprawling aircraft buildings that flank the lengthy Downsview runway. The historic de Havilland of Canada building is the oldest surviving aircraft factory in Canada; it’s where nearly 3,000 Tiger Moth aircraft and some 1,134 Mosquito bombers were built; where the company developed the Twin Otter and Dash-8; and where the first Canadian satellite, Alouette I, was assembled. After the plant’s closure, the hangar was used by CFB Toronto, and later served as an air and space museum before being mothballed in 2011.

By the time Centennial College acquired the facility, the 1929 building had preserved its additions from 1937, 1939, 1940, and 1944, but was slowly falling into disrepair. Through selective demolition and addition, the designers undertook the challenge of uniting the complex, while respecting its original fabric and rich history. Today, it welcomes a new generation of aviation technicians-in-training.

A glass overhang stretches along the property’s entrance off Carl Hall Road. This element frames the restored masonry of the 1939 and 1940 façades and builds on a tradition of bold civic entrances. Cantilevered at either end, the canopy refers to an acrobatic aeroplane wing. A wall adorned with historic images creates an exterior public gallery, and the backdrop to an appealing barrier-free ramp. This welcoming gesture—one of just a few bold architectural moves within the project—sets the tone of the design as a strategic refurbishment, which takes its cues from the history of the building.

“The site had a clear story to tell,” says MJMA principal Robert Allen, explaining that the ambition of the team was to reveal that story as clearly as possible. Stephen Philips, senior vice president at Stantec, adds that “patience, patience, patience” was key to achieving this goal. The two firms worked closely together to develop an architectural strategy that preserved and made highest use of the building’s existing fabric, including its large open spaces.

One such space is a former double-height warehouse area, which has become the Student Commons, just inside the main entrance. Here, varied aspects of student life converge with informal gathering areas, food vendors, and study rooms. Tall ceilings and clerestory windows contribute to a sense of openness, despite a compact layout. Imprinted into the terrazzo floor of the Commons is an oversized windrose—a reminder of how the site’s unique wind patterns shaped the airport’s runway configuration, along with the de Havilland building’s placement and orientation.

The Commons is surrounded by program on all sides, including a two-storey glass partition that looks into the building’s most dramatic space—a cathedral-like, 2,600-square-metre hangar, complete with a 28-meter-wide bridge crane capable of lifting 3,000 kg. In this case, new construction was necessary, as the historic hangars were too small to accommodate the wingspans of the commercial aircraft that students are learning to service. Like the grace of a heavy aircraft taking off, the hangar appears to hover effortlessly above its concrete floor. An ambitious structural design leaves its glass enclosure appearing weightless. Despite the hangar’s program as a functional classroom, it has been conceived with thought and care—replace the Cessna Citation II commuter jet and Bell 206 helicopter with Richard Serra sculptures, and it could easily be the show-stopping atrium of a contemporary art gallery.

An equal thoughtfulness is evident through the project. The team from MJMA, Stantec, and ERA was careful to balance between narrating the building’s historic significance while creating architecture for daily use: after all, the building is now a teaching facility, not an aviation museum. Throughout the facility, glazed interior partitions connect common areas and circulation zones with meeting rooms, classrooms, and labs. This allows the structural bones of the heritage architecture to enjoy a continuous presence throughout, while also putting the contemporary teaching artifacts on display, including impressively ornate, elephant-sized engines. Existing walls were stripped to reveal restored masonry, while new walls were embellished with aeronautics-themed infographics. Fittingly, the building’s high-performing mechanical systems are exposed throughout.

Following an old aviation tradition, the building’s green roof bears the name of the College—today visible by pilots and passengers, as well as Google map viewers. Classrooms at the building’s centre are given sky views through clerestory windows. While several of the lab spaces are double-height, the 1939 portion of the building is topped by a second level, housing additional classrooms and computer labs. In the upper storey space, an informal study zone overlooks the Student Commons below, while a glass-enclosed boardroom also enjoys views over the two teaching hangars—its sightlines similar to those of an air traffic control tower.

MJMA, Stantec, and ERA have brilliantly brought themes out of the existing elements, while skillfully adding their own mark. The result is thoughtfully executed architecture that reads lightly. Centennial College’s Centre for Aerospace and Aviation at Downsview inspires a new generation of aviation experts while demonstrating that, for architects embarking on adaptive reuse projects, the sky is the limit.

Aidan Mitchelmore is a Toronto-based Intern Architect who has a passion for architecture and public buildings.

CLIENT Centennial College | ARCHITECT TEAM MJMA Architecture & Design—Robert Allen (FRAIC), Ted Watson (FRAIC), Timothy Belanger, Tarisha Dolyniuk (FRAIC), Andrew Filarski (FRAIC), Chris Burbidge, Kristin Beites, Sean Solowski, Maryam Mohajer, Katya Marshall, Jason Wah, Mitchell May, Cathy McMahon, Agnes Yuen. Stantec—Stephen Phillips (FRAIC), Dathe Wong, Ricky Papa, Bob Wood, Anthony Lue, Alicia Resendes, Sy Selick, Gunta Mackars, Carolina Mora Izturriaga, Nicolas Boutin, Tim Lee, Mario Bon. | STRUCTURAL Blackwell Engineers | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Crossey Engineering | LANDSCAPE Stantec Consulting | INTERIORS MJMA Architecture & Design + Stantec | HERITAGE ERA Architects | CONTRACTOR Bondfield Construction | EXPERIENTIAL GRAPHIC DESIGN MJMA Architecture & Design | AREA 12,340 m2 | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION April 2019

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 204 kWh/m2/year (Operational data not clear given opening during COVID campus restrictions and a non-typical year of use)

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