oaaperspectives_spring2014

The Journal of the

Ontario Association

of Architects

Volume 22, Number 1

Spring 2014 $5.00

OAA Perspectives

the future reconsidered

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5O A A P e r s P e c t i v e s | S P R I N G 2 0 1 4w w w . o a a . o n . c a

IN THIS ISSUE

08 PresiDeNt’s MessAGe President Bill Birdsell discusses the perennial issue of architects’ fees and the steps being taken to clarify and improve the current situation.

11 resPONse Marcel Proust has his say on the subject of

cellphones, the AIA wonders if buildings are getting too convenient and we talk to the new Chair of the CCA Bruce Kuwabara.

14 FeAtUre Our contributors consider the architectural

future – through the eyes of the present and the past.

35 tHe PrOFessiON An Interview With New CCA Chair

Bruce Kuwabara – 19 December 2013.

39 BOOK revieW A review of a curious book written by

an architect for the benefit of amateurs intent on building their own house. It’s something that architects should read.

46 ONtAriO PLAces A massive collection of objects discarded in the past, now hoping to find usefulness in the future.

FOr its 125tH ANNiversAry (qUAsqUiceNteNNiAL) celebration, the OAA is planning a number of events, including its first-ever out-of-province Annual Conference – in Montreal – the release of a modest commemorative book, and an exhibition of the past twenty-five years of Excellence Awards, at Design at Riverside in Cambridge, Ontario, all of which will take place in May of this year.

While it’s instructive to look back at the distance we’ve come in the past twenty-five years, it seems just as appropriate to look ahead. In this issue’s call for submissions, we suggested, “As architects, it is our job to build on the past, while we speculate optimistically about the future.” Architects are, after all, predictors of the future. We can’t know what lies ahead, and yet we plan, design, model and draw architectural schemes that will be built at a future date and will continue to be experienced by people that we may never have met and may not even have been born yet. That’s quite a feat, when you think about it.

So, we asked our readers to think a little further ahead and suggest what they thought the next twenty-five years might bring – professionally and generally. A few writers have taken up the challenge, making some bold predictions. One writer has spun a romantic story about an unlikely future – always remembering that only the past can be factual; stories about the future must always be fictional.

Some writers took a “pluperfect” approach, looking at the future through the eyes of the past. How does the present measure up against what our predecessors thought it might be like, when they made their predictions, and discussed their aspirations about the future? Into this discussion, surprisingly, the city of Venice and the Toronto architect E.J. Lennox are inserted more than once.

Wherever you are, and whenever it is that you are reading these words, months – and possibly years – will have passed since they were written. Perhaps, some of today’s troubling problems will have been sorted out – or replaced by new ones. I hope you will be generous in assess-ing our naïve predictions. We are architects, after all, and prone to romantic optimism. ❚

EDITORIAL

OAA Perspectives is the official journal of the Ontario Association of Architects Published Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ©2014

EDITOR Gordon S. Grice

ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES Alana Place Tel: 800.665.2456

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REGULAR CONTRIBUTORSMary Ellen Lynch Comisso, Toronto; Amanda Fraser, London, UK; Debbie Friesen, Toronto; Errol Hugh, Hong Kong; Evangelo Kalmantis, Windsor; Vivian Lo, Toronto; David Parker, St. Catharines;Gary Pask, Toronto

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Ontario Association of Architects is an open and responsive professional association of members which regulates, supports, represents and promotes the practice and appreciation of architecture in the interest of all Ontarians.

The Association was founded in 1889 and its primary role is to serve and protect the public interest through administration of the Architects Act, and through leadership of the profession in Ontario.

For further information, contact the Administrator, Website and Communications, Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) 111 Moatfield Drive Toronto, Ontario M3B 3L6 Tel: 416.449.6898 Fax: 416.449.5756 e-mail: [email protected] Website: www.oaa.on.ca

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14 21 35 46

the future reconsidered

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8O A A P e r s P e c t i v e s | S P R I N G 2 0 1 4

Architect’s Fees

P R E S I D E N T ’ S M E S S A G E

tHe iNADeqUAcies OF ArcHitects’ iNcOMes is the subtext of nearly every conversation I have, in my role as a representative of the profession. It is our first admonishment to all those that express an interest in entering our profession: “You won’t make money.”

The issue of fees is also of considerable concern to the profession, given the constant downward pressure being exerted on design and construction costs, in order to reduce the overall project costs and minimize the client’s risk.

But the success of each unique project relies on the identification and valuation of the architect’s services.

Any discussion of the fee guide always has to survive the retort: “The Competition Act will not allow us to set fees.” This hints of con-spiracy. However, architects live in the context of a social contract. As society concentrates itself into a more compact urban form, the interactions within and without these built environments shape the quality of our lives. Architects add value to communities by creat-ing building designs with functional layouts and emotional content. Architecture is the sole profession whose members are qualified to design these environments. In matters of public health and safety, sustainability of the global environment and accessibility for all, architects are obliged to serve the public interest and respond to the public need. In this context the matter of architects’ fees seems ancillary to the primary goal of quality of service to the public. A reasonable fee seems reasonably necessary to achieve the primary goal, and since the parties to the agreement, architects and society, remain the same, no possibility of a conspiracy exists.

I would hasten to add that hiding behind “The Competition Act” seems to best serve the government agencies, whose goal is to drive fees down.

Architects were instrumental in the creation of the Ontario Building Code. Evidence of this is provided by the fact that a significant portion of design services can only be performed by an architect. However, the question inherent in design services has often been distorted by clients: “I know what I want. Provide the minimum services required to fulfil the permit process.” As a profession we need to fight back against this assignment of our services to the expense column of project cost. The essence of our work is the creation of value – not just for our clients, but for society as a whole. Architects need to be identified, with owners, as partners in Building Creation. We bring more than we take away. The question should be, “How can I get more architectural design services?”

This year the OAA is working together with the RAIC on a Validation Study of Architects’ Fees. The objective is to gather data which can be used to validate and/or update the information and fees contained in the RAIC document entitled: “A Guide to Determining Appropriate Fees for the Services of an Architect.” It should be noted that this document is part of a set of documents including “How to Find, Select and Engage an Architect, Using Quality Based Selection (QBS).”

A few of the factors affecting the current fees may include complex approval processes resulting in more project documentation, innovative building systems and technologies, variants from standard project delivery methods, extra consultants, Building Information Modeling, LEED® certification, greater pursuit costs, new expectations for energy conservation and building performance.

The assumption may be that complexity drives costs up, reducing net income. But an architect is just as likely to hear from a client that the project scope is so familiar and simple that it deserves a fee reduction.

Suffice it to say, in this environment it becomes impossible to assume that the same fee is appropriate for all projects, even if they are of the same size and building type. Today, the architect and client must agree upon a process to address the wide range of project requirements and negotiate an appropriate fee based on the unique aspects of each project. This is why I stress the importance of a set of documents that includes “Starting Building Projects,” “QBS” and “A Guide to Determining Appropriate Fees for the Services of an Architect.”

The OAA endorses these documents and architects are encouraged to use them in pursuit of commissions and in negotiations with their clients. Unfortunately a barrier to the acceptance of the Fee Guide by clients, specifically the level of fees, is the lack of validation of the level of service required to complete specific projects – perhaps due, in part, to the fact that that it was developed “by architects for architects.” To help gain more comprehensive acceptance of the Guide, a third party is needed, to assist in validating the numbers.

You will certainly hear more about this study method in the coming year.

The OAA has undertaken much, of late, to steward and protect the profession in these uncertain times. This effort is intended to address the inequities experienced by architects under the current social contract. We are not afraid of competition.

How can we continue to provide the well-paying, challenging and fulfilling jobs that past generations have enjoyed? What career opportunities will be available for our most talented and ambitious young men and women? How do we nurture leadership to enable architects to support society’s goals and demon-strate that Ontarians and Canadians have what it takes to be the best? ❚

BiLL BirDseLL, ArcHitect

B.e.s., B. ArcH, OAA PRESIDENT

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OAA BOOKThis year marks the 125th anniversary of the Ontario Association of Architects. In celebration, your OAA Perspectives team has prepared a commemorative book – not just any commemorative book, but one based on a careful selection from the past 25 years of articles. Just as OAA Perspectives explores architectural life, practice, culture and sometimes even architecture itself, the book will look at these same issues, with a focus on what has changed over the past quarter-century. Many essays have been reprinted or reconsidered, with lots of images and additional commentary. The book’s content, form and feel will help you remember why printed books are a lot nicer than e-readers, and this one is especially ideal for a waiting room, coffee table or gift to a client, colleague or family member.

The price of the book will be $49.95, discounted to $39.95 for those who pre-order by May 7. A further discount is available for volume purchases.

iPrOUst revisiteDiN tHe LAst issUe OF OAA Perspectives, I wondered what Marcel Proust might think about smartphones, even sug-gesting that the convenience of carry-ing, among other things, entire libraries in one’s pocket would probably please him. Now, I’m not so sure.

An essay with the improbable title of “From Proust to the Mobile Phone” appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of Log: Observations on architecture and the contemporary city (New York: Anyone Corporation, 2004). In the essay, French author and researcher Chantal Thomas examines humankind’s enslavement to

the telephone – a subjugation that has only increased with the universality of the cellphone – beginning with Proust’s fin-de-siècle Paris.

Thomas’s essay begins in 1899, when greater Paris boasted 7,000 telephones. Subscribers included professional offices, bars, cafés and distinguished persons, as well as at least one novelist: Marcel Proust. The description of Proust’s curious relationship with the telephone, initially negotiated by his assistant and téléphon-iste Céleste Albaret, makes very interesting reading, providing fascinating insights into Proust’s character and work habits. Among other things, we learn that Proust finally had his phone disconnected because he found it intrusive.

In 2004, when the essay was written, smartphones were in their very infancy: the iPhone was still three years away. Mobile phones were primarily used for mak-ing and receiving phone calls. So the core message of the essay is fairly clear: if

R E S P O N S E

“…if Marcel Proust, more than 100 years ago, noticed that the phone was a distracting instrument, why do we continue to allow it to take over our lives today?”


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Marcel Proust, more than 100 years ago, noticed that the phone was a distracting instrument, why do we continue to allow it to take over our lives today?

Getting back to the original question – speculating about Proust’s hypothetical relationship with the smartphone – I would have to conclude that Proust would ally himself with those modern-day, self-confessed eccentric Luddites who avoid cellphone technology not because of the freedom it offers them, but because of its constraints.

iNcONveNieNt ArcHitectUreAnd while we’re on the subject of inconvenience:

Many of you, especially if you are involved in the design of retail and entertainment environments, will be familiar with the principle of “design of inconvenience.” Where, normally, the architect’s role involves the creation of comfortable and convenient spaces and pathways, it is sometimes best to take people out of their way – to make it attractive for them to forego a direct route or engage with an unusual space – in order to enrich their experience in some way. Now comes word that mainstream architects are also jumping on the bandwagon.

Under the heading “Do we shape our buildings, or do they shape us?”, world-architects.com1 reports the AIA is advocating that its members “design places that encourage walking, taking stairs, playing, and other activities.” The general idea is that obesity in the US has reached such epidemic proportions that architects should help out by encouraging (forcing?) building users to be more active.

This seems like a risky venture. But other professions have already signed on. Think of all the unhelpful wayfinding signs, the uncom-fortable furniture, the unopenable packaging and the baffling printed instructions that we all encounter daily. Why shouldn’t architects also join in the fun? As the AIA further notes, architects’ value exists in their ability to “affect the mental and physical health of everyone that comes into contact.” What an exciting opportunity. ❚

NOtes:1. http://www.world-architects.com/en/emagazine/architecture-news

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The FUTURe, ReCONSIDeReD

When we think of the future, we like to imagine a world in which technology has been harnessed to provide us with a life of peaceful grandeur. Ribbons of roadway spiral towards parking platforms perched high up on needle-thin skyscrapers. Bubblecars float lazily in the air. People seem happy doing their own thing, cozy, warm and dry under an enormous weatherproof dome.

iNTRODUCTiONGoRdon S. GRice oAA, FRAic

w w w . o a a . o n . c a 15O A A P e r s P e c t i v e s | S P R I N G 2 0 1 4

The FUTURe, ReCONSIDeReD

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

— Alan Kay, computer scientist

Technology gives substance to our concept of the future. Even architects – or maybe, especially architects – are in the thrall of technology. Recent discussions of architectural directions – and there have been a lot of them – have focused on the technology of architecture. Plainly, the digital revolution has opened possibilities that even the mid-century Popular Mechanics visionaries never dared to conceive: programmable building components, computer-generated construction drawings or animated walk-throughs, emailed from one continent to another, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, virtual space.

But in all this machine-dreaming, we can easily forget that architecture is a people profession. Architects provide shelter for people, collaborate with people, have people as clients. In the rush toward a technological utopia, the simple connection between architects and the public they serve is in danger of being overshadowed, even overlooked. Or has this already happened?

In the Spring 2000 issue of Perspectives, as we stood at the doorway of a brand new milennium, Alex Temporale described 15 “current trends that may be extended to form exciting visions.” Among those exciting trends were topics of pressing urgency at the time. In the following

essay, Alex revisits a few of those trends. Some of them continue to concern us, some have been resolved, others have fallen by the wayside, only to be replaced by new topics of discussion.

The original text may be found at: http://www.oaa.on.ca/images/docs/1316533118_PerspectivesSpring2000-1.pdfAlex’s 15 trends from Spring 2000, “Architectural Trends – The Unbearable Lightness Of Building”:[1] The Rise of the Avant-garde [2] Light Construction[3] Architectural Freedom and Fluid Space [4] Cyberspace[5] Hi-Tech, Heir to Modernism [6] Modern-ism [7] Preservation [8] Utopia: A Continuing Search Under the Dome [9] New Materials [10] The Electronic Cottage (The computer chip is everywhere) [11] Modules (Modular Living and Working) [12] Green Buildings [13] New Clients [14] New Building Types [15] New Practice

In his conclusion, Alex made some recommendations that foreshadow the major professional challenge at the beginning of the third millennium: the necessity to engage with the larger community. Architects will do this not by responding to trends, but by responding to basic human and social needs.


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n 2000, I wrote an article in Perspectives about the future and direction in which architecture was mov-ing. In order to do so, I began by first reviewing what appeared to me to be the pertinent forces of the past century that had brought western society into the new millennium. In doing so, I identified 15 trends

(see above) that I predicted would dictate the future direction of the field.

I looked back at the 2000 article with some apprehension, fearing that the field hadn’t evolved as anticipated. To my surprise, I found that, after 13 years, the predictions, to a greater or lesser degree, remain current.

The rise of the avant-garde to influence the direction of society (1)* con-tinues to wane. Instead, free-market economics and the interests of multi-national corporations seem to dictate the agenda. Architects remain largely ineffective at influencing the social agenda because architecture cannot detach itself from those individuals, corporations and institutions that have wealth and power.

In architecture, the avant-garde have risen to be identified as “star architects,” a fact that has attracted envy and criticism from those who have yet to reach that plateau. The terms “iconic” and “landmark” have been overused to describe their work, to the point that these terms are becoming clichés. Most architects, who are not “stars,” are either striving to get there or are advo-cates of contextual, functional, sustainable, and/or economical architecture.

In the earlier article, I quoted Charles Jencks who termed the new radical breakthroughs in form and light materials as “ecstatic” (2).

“We reached for our liquid guns and plastic fur and started up, erect as a new breed of creators, armed with the latest technology and began to spray new enticing shapes, never seen before…Together, we activated brain-cells, the super organism which, like a vacuum in outer space, lifted our confines of a heavy architecture and our bodies…floating, floating, floating…”

— Charles Jencks, “Fur and Ice Manifesto,” 1968.

The term “ecstatic” has not been adopted because the architectural free-dom and fluidity that defined it have become commonplace as a result of software advances. Architectural freedom and the fluidity of space and form (3) have been made possible because of advances in computer software. To achieve the so-called iconic buildings of the star practitioners,

BAcK & forth in tiMe

there have been major advances in the design of building envelopes. In parallel, improvements in envelope design were mandated because green building and sustainable architecture (12) moved to the forefront of design objectives.

The prediction that new lightweight materials (9) and construction meth-ods would be developed has been realized and the trend is flourishing. The advance of the smart building and the proliferation of computer technology to monitor and control all aspects of a building’s operations remain largely in its infancy. The “Electronic Cottage” (10) has not arrived, but developments in computer technology and telecommunications are advancing at such a rate that the future portrayed in Star Trek is not far off from being realized. Some view Star Trek’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, as a true visionary in that the world he created appears to have become the blueprint for the technical advances that we’re currently witnessing. The space age, however, has yet to arrive in the construction industry. (4)

In a short time-span, we have seen faxes replaced by emails and the desk-top computer has become increasingly obsolete following the release of smart phones and tablets. Watches can fully monitor your daily activities and staying connected can mean surfing the internet through your eye glasses. Architects, however, remain somewhat like neo-Luddites in this techno revolution, as highlighted by the field’s slow transition from 2-D to 3-D modeling software and the continued debate surrounding the merits of hand drafting and drawing versus computer generated imagery. It’s not that such debates don’t have value, but when technological advances have revolutionized nearly all areas of industry and all aspects of daily life, it appears that architects are looking to the past rather than setting our sights on the future. (5) Even the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, Robert Stern, has admitted to never using a computer, even for email, and that he prefers the rectangular grid over the curvilinear forms generated by computer.

Some theorists see a dramatically different future for architects. In a world where complex industrial fabrication is undertaken by robots and vehicles can be driven by computers, it’s reasonable to predict that the mechanical drafting of architecture can and will be done safely by computers. The role of the architect may soon be to provide the design objectives and specify the program. Whereas the computer equipped with the relevant codes, precedents and smart technology, will generate the design options. In the future, the inherent limits of human intelligence to rapidly analyze and produce solutions will be supplanted by the computer’s calculating


logic. As a result, the risk of human error will be eliminated. In many fields, computers and robotics have drastically eliminated, reduced or changed the scope of work performed. In this vision of the future, the architect is more a project manager directing and implementing the tasks to create buildings rather than the currently associated roles of building design and drawing preparation. The visceral nature of experiencing architecture will mean that for the few who are able to create the art in architecture, there will be an ongoing design role.

One of the interesting pursuits of futurists has been the pursuit of Utopia. (8) In 2000, at the dawn of the new millennium, there appeared to be ongoing optimism. There was a recurring architectural pursuit of this chal-lenge over centuries from grand master plans to the architectural design of megastructures and domes encompassing entire cities. Unfortunately, the pursuit of Utopia has ended. At this point in history, our focus is on survival. Climate change has elevated sustainability to be a major driver of architectural design. The media is dominated with stories of the end of the world, and of the struggles of good and evil that will destroy life as we know it. In Under the Dome, Stephen King’s new television series, the dome is an entrapment rather than a Utopian environment. A sense of uneasi-ness and fear is a result of what now is an unstable world, economically, politically and environmentally.

In this age of communications, the world and its troubles are at your door-step. This is not to say that the modern age is without benefits. Architecture has become international; there are no borders. As a result of working globally, national culture has become less influential. Similar architecture can occur in Mississauga and the Mongolian desert. With the rise of indus-trialization in countries such as India, China and Brazil, a rapidly growing middle class provides Ontario architects with opportunities for new clients, in an era where the North American middle class is shrinking.

Since the last article, another force that has become increasingly influential is global warming. The majority of industrialized nations are attempting to address this problem, as major environmental changes can no longer be ignored. Sustainability and the environment pervade all aspects of daily life. The term “green” (12) has been applied to almost every new product, thereby reducing its significance and credibility. The green movement, as is the case with any movement in its infancy, will face conflicts in how best to achieve its goals, particularly for architects, who are not the masters of their agenda. There are different standards and a lack of critical science to validate the varying approaches to achieve sustainability. For example, the

We reached for our liquid guns and plastic fur and started up, erect as a new breed of creators, armed with the latest technology and began to spray new enticing shapes, never seen before…Together, we activated brain-cells, the super organism which, like a vacuum in outer space, lifted our confines of a heavy architecture and our bodies…floating, floating, floating…”

— Charles Jencks, “Fur and Ice Manifesto,” 1968.

desire of modernists to dissolve the visual barriers between indoor and outdoor space has created glass boxes with enormous energy loss. This conflicts with the current goals of energy conservation and sustainability.

Due to the major impact of the Green Movement, the Global Village and the Electronic Era, styles have become less important. Currently, the only prevalent “ism” is modern-ism. It is largely a retro return to the modern style that began in the 1920s and ‘30s, with buildings by architects such as Gerrit Rietveld, Corbusier, Richard Neutra and Rudolf Schindler.

High-tech was a topic in the 2000 article, (5) but that term no longer has any currency. In an era, when startling new forms are appearing rapidly from a wide variety of architectural practitioners around the world, everything new is high-tech.

The 2000 article ends with “What Now?” Since so much of what happens in the future depends on what steps we take now, here is my sense of what our profession should be doing:• Asin2000,Iwouldsuggestthatarchitectsbecomeincreasinglyinvolved

as the drivers of change. That means liaising with institutions and industry.• Tohelpshapechangeforthebenefitoftheprofessionandtobetter

understand the future, architects will commit to research and develop-ment and balance subjective opinion with supporting facts and analyses.

• Architectswillembracetechnologyandwilladaptmorerapidlytochange.• Architecturaleducationwillrecognizethatfewarchitectsaredesign-

ers and that architecture includes the role of engineers and financial managers who base decisions on facts and figures.

• ArchitectswillregaintheirroleasMasterBuilders.• Architecturalawardswillbemorethanbeautycontests.• MoreCanadianarchitectswillparticipateinthecompetitiveworldof

international business.

Lastly, in order to write an essay about the future, one has to step back and try to achieve some sense of perspective. Gaining perspective is an important activity for any architect – I highly recommend it. Take time to make your own assessments of the current direction of architecture and to plot your own future. ❚

Alex Temporale is principal of ATA Architects Inc., in Oakville, and a member of the

Perspectives Editorial Committee.

*Parenthetical numbers refer to the predictions in Alex’s 2000 essay, as enumerated above.


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AcK in the late 1970s, there was a science fiction show on television, entitled Space: 1999. I used to watch it and think the spaceships were pretty cool, along with any advanced tech gadgets and situations the show depicted. The series was definitely meant to portray a futuristic view of space exploration, albeit in

the not-so-distant future. After all, 1999 was less than thirty years away.

The series showed spaceships, astronauts, a gloomy lifestyle of Moon-habitation, science experiments, and even scenes of fighting off evil giant jellyfish creatures! Yeah, jellyfish on the moon. To a nine-year-old like me, these strange creatures were never really believable. The ships, space travel and the techie stuff, however, seemed totally reasonable. There was a certain anxiety on my part, that perhaps this could be the way of the future. Thirty years would go by quickly (!), and we’d get to enjoy this advanced technology and space/astronaut stuff soon enough.

Transportation played a big role in the show, as it was definitely the most exciting part of watching it. Space exploration has always been a fascin-ating topic to me, and the association of advanced forms of intergalactic travel has provided for an imaginative look into the future – a very near future. I’m not sure if the rest of the audience felt the same as I did, but maybe the whole point was to make the future seem more immediate (remember, the year in the title was 1999), as opposed to exploring space and defending the world from evil a hundred years away.

Speaking of futuristic visions, in architecture, as in other fields (and even in sports), there are times when certain individuals possess visionary (revolutionary?) thoughts and ideas, seemingly more advanced for their time – even at a young age. Frank Lloyd Wright was such a person. In the early 1960s he had proposed a “mile high” skyscraper. A mile high! Are you kidding? The Burj Khalifa (forty years later, at 828 m) is the world’s tallest building and it is only HALF the height of Wright’s proposed structure. And how about Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome? When developed and proposed in the late 1940s, it looked futuristic and awe-inspiring. Even today the concept seems a bit outlandish, maybe due to its enormous size, or perhaps even due to its myriad triangular-pattern grid connections.

Today’s building design is facilitated by sophisticated computer appli-cations and graphics. Architects and engineers are able to venture

hoW WiLL We LiVe 50 YeArs froM noW?

more and more into shapes and assemblies never seen before, due our ability to now join different materials, in unique ways not previ-ously attempted. Names like Libeskind, Gehry, Hadid and others seem to “push” for the seemingly “unbuildable,” often managing to prove sceptics wrong.

Once, while working with Studio Daniel Libeskind on a Las Vegas project, an architect from SDL told me about a tour of their NYC office that they were giving to a prospective client. As they walked along a wall of colourful illustrations, the visitor remarked that the photos were quite realistic, and that it would be nice if such buildings were ever to be built. He was quickly informed that all the images on the wall were photos. The buildings were all completed projects. So, advancements in material technology, as well as an ever-improving 3-D software, are great contributors to the constant changes we see in the way we assemble new structures. BIM (Building Information Modeling) is no more the way of the future. It is the way of the present.

But back to spaceships. Transportation is inherently connected to the development of cities, urban spaces and, at a smaller scale, build-ings. In a city like Toronto, where more than 150 highrise residential towers are currently under construction, it is not difficult to see that commuting and traffic within city limits are the most critical elements of infrastructure strategy and city planning these days. We (quickly) need to implement alternative transportation routes and come up with sound solutions to decongest the gridlock, while making all of this movement efficient. I’m not talking about extra bike lanes, nor widening of existing major arteries. I mean build more roads, build more bridges and extend transit lines into the outskirts of the greater metropolis.

The planning of cities (smaller satellite towns surrounding large urban centres) has now a greater emphasis, as the development of transporta-tion infrastructure must be looked upon as a long-term commitment, for the benefit of future generations. As cities continue to grow, the incorporation or tie-in of transportation, green spaces and oper-ationally efficient design turn out to be more critical than ever. This is definitely not an easy task for architects, planners and engineers, especially when politics play a big part. And, even in 2014, the space-ships that will carry us all off to the moon are still a long way away. ❚

Ted DuArte is a Lic. Tech. OAA with DIALOG in Toronto.


f E. J. Lennox (the architect of Toronto’s Old City Hall, among other notable buildings) was still with us, he would likely have an opinion about what architects will be doing and thinking about 25 (or 50) years from now.

In 1904 he published an article in Toronto’s Christmas Magazine, “What will the Architectural Appearance of Toronto be in the Year 2004 A.D”, and he had number of interesting predictions and recommendations:• By2004Torontowouldhavebecomeagreatmetropoliswithgrand

avenues, lake-front promenades, and extended and widened com-mercial streets. (That has certainly happened.)

• HeenvisionedavastlyimprovedYongeStreetasanurbanboulevard(apparently influenced by French town planning a la Baron Haussmann), but that hasn’t taken place yet. Yonge Street is no “Champs-Elysees,” but University Avenue is trying.

• Recommendationthat“BoardsofExpertCommissioners”beappointed,whose duty will be “that no building is allowed to be erected except when it is strictly of good design and one that will enhance the archi-tectural appearance of the city.” The City Planning Department might say that the Urban Design Panels currently perform that function. But Mr. Lennox was not describing a process of “recommendations” that are discretionary, and he didn’t anticipate the impact of the Ontario Municipal Board, which rarely considers “good design” as a criterion for its decisions.

• Lennoxpositedacitywithdistinctdistrictswhere“itshallnotbeper-mitted that business houses or stores of any kind will be located in resi-dential districts.” He imagined a city, for instance, with a Workingman’s District, a Boulevarded District and a Palatial District, among others. It sounds like he was a serious proponent of strict Zoning By-laws, which would have been considered very progressive in the early 1900s. (No mixed-use or live/work zoning for Mr. Lennox.)

• Hepromoted“sub-roadways”constructedunderthelevelofthepresent roadways, with streetcar traffic removed to these sub-streets. That sounds like Toronto’s subway system, which started to arrive 60 years after his prediction.

• Forthewaterfront,whichwasprimarilyindustrialin1904,Lennoxpro-moted a Park Drive, to further beautify the Esplanade, which would be constructed along the waterfront and extended to Toronto Islands by drawbridges over the Eastern and Western Gaps – sort of like Lakeshore Boulevard today, but without the drawbridges linking to the Toronto Islands which would have created a graceful circuit around the Harbour.

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e.J. LennoX and ontArio’s ArchitecturAL future

One of the most interesting of E.J. Lennox’s ideas was the “Great Tower Buildings” – occurring at, and marking, major downtown intersections, “adjacent corner blocks will be conformed to fit in and form in design a harmonious whole.” His proposed Board of Expert Commissioners would coordinate these buildings, making sure that they were built at “a height of many stories above the surrounding buildings and of splendid design.” He anticipated “air rights” over streets promot-ing connecting bridges between Great Tower Buildings like “triumphal arches” framing intersections at lower portions, and “monumental in appearance” at upper portions. His vision proposing elevated enclosed bridges at top levels, connecting one Tower building to another, “will not necessitate people having to descend to street level.” (This sounds a bit like an inverted version of the current PATH underground circulation system in the Toronto core.)

“It must be admitted,” E.J. Lennox wrote, “with the innovation of these great tower buildings, that a marked change will be introduced in street architecture…so impressive and lasting will be the appearance of these monumental buildings, standing majestically as they will, overlooking the roadways and the city generally, probably lasting on and into other generations…” E.J. Lennox imagined that these Great Tower Buildings, planned to be located at the four corners of major city street intersections and connected by bridges, providing orientation and urban legibility, would provide the primary visual impression of downtown Toronto by 2004.

But, as Marilyn Litvak, Lennox’s biographer, comments, “However, Lennox’s words were not heeded – hence the architectural pastiche that is present-day Toronto.” ❚

David Oleson is principal of Oleson Worland Architect in Toronto.


hAt will Architects be doing and thinking about 25 (or 50) years from now?

increAsinG urBAniZAtion:With increasing urbanization around the world, a

greater number of us will be living and working in closer proximity. In 2011, 81% of Canadians were living in urban areas. (Seventy years ago approximately only half of us lived in urban areas.)

intensificAtion:Urban sprawl is out; intensification is in. Innovative building strategies are necessary – live-work accommodation, mid-rise main streets intensification, and laneway housing, all of which are somewhat “experimental” today will become standard in the future. Multi-functional urban development strategies will increase efficiency and convenience.

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LiVinG BridGes – Another Vision of the future

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“In contrast to a purely vehicular bridge, the inhabited bridge provides a continuity within the urban fabric that is not only social and economic but also cultural, emotional and symbolic at a point where a natural break would otherwise exist. Indeed, it is bothseductive and functional.”

— Jean Dethier

urBAn infrAstructure:The quality and capabilities of our urban infrastructure will become increasingly important. Single purpose infrastructure is a pattern from the past – investments in our public fabric will have to deliver on a number of different levels. In the future, integrated, multi-use, multi-functional infrastructure will become standard. Infrastructure elements will be designed with the characteristics of “buildings”. Elements of urban infrastructure will increasingly be designed by Architects.

“LiVinG BridGes”As an example of the urban infrastructure design solutions for the future, bridge structures spanning ravines and river valleys will be mixed-use and multi-functional. The Living Bridges proposal developed by our office provides places for people to inhabit our connective structures – residential, commercial, live-work studios, recreational, community, religious or industrial uses can all be accommodated.

By way of example, we have proposed bridges for arterial roads and public transit across the natural system of ravines in Toronto. A large percentage of Toronto’s natural green space is represented by its ravines, “islands of nature in the midst of a giant metropolis”, per Ulli Diemer’s description.

Living Bridges will mark the crossings of the urban grid of the City with Nature’s “grid” – the ravines – and will provide continuity of the urban fabric, continuing the mixed-use intensification of our transportation arteries across what, in the recent past, have been seen as “obstacles” or “interruptions”. In addition they will provide easy public access from the ‘table land’ of the City


to the hidden landscapes of the ravines. (The standard development pattern of the 20th Century in Toronto often “privatized” access to the ravines, since they were often bordered by private residential rear yards.)

Improved linkages between the City’s developed areas and its natural topography will be the result of the proposed Living Bridges.

insPirAtionAL WritinG in suPPort of “LiVinG BridGes”In a sense, the Living Bridge proposal recalls historic design solutions. “From the twelfth century to the end of the eighteenth there were many inhabited bridges in Europe, including such celebrated examples as the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the Ponte di Rialto in Venice, Old London Bridge, and the bridges which once linked Paris’s Ile de la Cite to both the Left and Right Banks.” – Sir Philip Dowson, President of the Royal Academy

We are revisiting and building upon our history.

Toronto topographically is like “San Francisco turned upside down”, per Architect Larry Richards’s description, with Toronto’s ravines being as uniquely characteristic as the hilly topography of San Francisco. ❚

David Oleson is principal of Oleson Worland Architect in Toronto.

“It’s a city of

ravines. Remnants

of wilderness have been left

behind. Through these great

sunken gardens you can traverse

the city beneath the streets, look up to the

floating neighbourhoods, houses built in the

treetops. It’s a city of valleys spanned by bridges.” — Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

10,500 hectares of wilderness: “The ravines of Toronto are unique in the world. No other city has such an elaborate, such an extensive network of natural spaces.”

— Renata D’Aliesio

“Toronto was planned out on a grid system with the major streets forming wide avenues.”

“The most important obstacle to construction is Toronto’s network of ravines…. [P]lanners mostly ignored them, though today the remaining ones are embraced for their natural beauty.”

— Wikipedia

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saeculum has passed since the commencement of the era that heralded the fulfillment of all dreams of the future. One by one, the many threats to our technological democracy have bean annihilated by star champions. DC Comics’ pilots and lab scientists have gradually replaced the monsters-turned-super-

heroes of Marvel. Astro-agent Barbarella successfully accomplished her latest mission destroying the City of Night and with it the mad genius and last Dictator Duran Duran.

The Streamline Modern and ballistic speeding locomotive gave way to the Studebaker’s fuselage, the chrome propeller and gun-turret rear window, to Thunderbird’s jet-afterburner taillights, to Cadillac’s Lockheed P-38 fins, to Gibson Flying V guitars and Nelson’s starburst wall clocks. Atomic energy powers everything from air travel to a cornucopia of mass-produced appliances, and the spiky ball is its omnipotent symbol.

Neon is everywhere and orbiting around is the hula hoop. Googie archi-tecture promises that miracles become commonplace. The antigravity architecture of the atomic age employs new aircraft manufacturing technologies to overcome the hostility of nature and deliver the good life for all. Environmentally controlled interiors wrapped in seashell plastic walls are set on pedestals to float above Japanesque landscaping like “an abstract mushroom surmounted by an abstract bird.”1

Swiftly, a heap of stardust has settled over the artificial future. While Plastic Culture and Synthetic Art are in full flight, an apparently minor event may carry the seeds of twilight: the survival of the Great Tyrant. Both she and Barbarella were rescued from the burning City of Night by the ornithanthrope Pygar. Possessing no memory, he could not remember the evil deeds of the Tyrant and returned danger back into the Galaxy. Will the Great Tyrant succeed in destroying our young technological democracy? It is a question for the future. ❚

Lucian Nan is a member of the Perspectives Editorial Committee.

notes:1. Douglas Haskell, House and Home, February 1952. http://dh101.humanities.ucla.edu/DH101Fall12Lab2/archive/files/7c39d2dcb428971b0123b174d8319448.pdf

suddenLY it’s the future

ABOVE. THE NEW TECHNOLOGICAL PALETTE OF PLASTICS, CEMENT, ASBESTOS, GLASS BLOCKS, AND PLYWOOD IS SqUASHED INTO SHELL VAULTS AND HYPERBOLIC-PARABOLOID WAVES. FAR RIGHT. DR. MORBIUS’S HOME ON A DISTANT PLANET?

A


ABOVE. LAUTNER’S CHEMOSPHERE IS THE ARCHETYPE FROM WHICH THE HOUSE OF THE FUTURE HAS BLOSSOMED, GILDED WITH GLASS WALLS, HELICOPTER ROOF LANDING PADS, ULTRASONIC WASHING MACHINES, SWEDISH MODERN FURNITURE AND GAGGLES OF TAPERING SHAFTS, NEEDLE-LIKE PYLONS, DINGBATS, FROZEN SPARKLES, BURSTING ARROWS. LEFT. A FLYING SAUCER-SHAPED RESTAURANT SUSPENDED FROM BOOMERANGS EMBODIES ENERGY, MOVEMENT AND DIRECTIONALITY. AT NEARBY LAX, LANDING STRIPS OPEN TO THE SPEED OF JET ENGINES AND THE WORLD OF ROCKET AND SPACE TRAVEL.

ALL IMAGES: LUCIAN NAN


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Y Goodness, Where does the tiMe Go?Well, time doesn’t really go anywhere. In the big context – i.e., the infinite and eternal – time has no real meaning. It neither flies nor drags. It can’t be spent, wasted or saved. And whatever time you may perceive as having

at your disposal, you shouldn’t fritter away any more of it by pondering this meaningless question.

Which brings us to the next question: What does the future hold?

In the big context, it’s a safe bet that the answer is: Nothing. Oblivion.

But that’s not our problem. It’s the long process leading to that possibly ultimate state – especially the tiny patch of time that we call human civil-ization – that concerns us, and always has. And here, things get tricky. We can’t possibly know what this future holds; we can only speculate.

Speculation about the future is a constant in our lives. We buy enough food to last until Friday. We can’t wait until spring arrives. We buy lottery tickets and plan how we will spend our millions in prizes. We save for our retirement. We design and construct buildings to last for generations.

We base our prognostications on our knowledge of the past, which we pro-ject into the future, making allowances for events that we believe will occur. Architects, being among the world’s most optimistic prognosticators, create buildings and spaces that will live up to current expectations and will satisfy the anticipated needs and desires of people who have not yet been born.

When E. J. Lennox designed Toronto’s Old City Hall (1886–1888) “It was not only the biggest structure in the city at that time, it was also the largest municipal building in North America.” (www.toronto.ca/old_cityhall/his-tory.htm) And, although not a single person living then is still alive today the building still serves as a striking and impressive landmark as well as a functioning courthouse. The only designed function it no longer fulfills is that of a city hall – a distinction ceded to its neighbor to the west.

It’s difficult to imagine what Lennox would make of the Eaton Centre, whose planning almost spelled the end of the Old City Hall, in the 60s, or of any of the towering developments that surround the corner of Bay and queen Streets. It’s even more difficult to think what this Romanesque architect – and designer of Casa Loma – would think of the flamboyant

and unprecedented current City Hall. One thing is certain: he designed a building for the future and, 115 years after its completion, it, along with the civic plaza conceived by John Lyle a few years later, still serves the city and its population with great spirit.

Precise But inAccurAte.When you are upgrading your software or downloading/ uploading a file, on one of your fabulous 21st-century “smart” gadgets, there’s that little gauge icon that tells you how much time remains to complete the process. First it announces that it is going to take five hours, then it immediately changes its prediction to 15 minutes. A few minutes later, it revises its guess to 90 minutes. It really has no clue. When it comes to predicting the future – even for simple tasks – our smart devices are dumber than we are.

I just finished downloading new software on my new “Smart” TV. At first it said that I should set aside 58 minutes for the process. But this prediction began to wander up and down immediately. Subsequent predictions varied between 246 sand 428 minutes (seven hours!?). In the end, the process took about 90 tense, uncertain, nerve-wracking minutes. Computers and other such devices convince us that through precision, accuracy can be achieved. Implied, yes, but achieved, not a chance.

Some celebrated futurists make their mark by including precise predictions among their general predictions. Many of those predictions are wrong or preposterous, but knowing that if even one of them is correct, we will be astounded by it, they continue to predict. Computer imagery is a bit like that: we are so easily seduced by precisely detailed digital imagery of an architectural scheme that is barely conceptual that development of our grandest ideas is pruned before it has a chance to flower. Maybe our smart devices aren’t so dumb after all. They have no problem fooling us.

thinKinG ABout the futureIn a Globe and Mail article that appeared Christmas Day a year ago (“Four Key Factors in Predicting the Future”), Harvey Schachter condenses the advice of trends specialist Cecily Sommers, who recommends that we pay attention to the “structural forces [that] are the elemental components of change.” These forces are: Resources (energy sources), Technology (every-where, including those employed to “customize environments” – which includes us), Demographics and Governance (“the rule of law and the rule of markets. The future is shaped by both”). Ms Sommers recommends that we all spend a little more time thinking about the future that we are creating.

notes on the future


This brings us back to the discussion of architecture and planning. Certainly, Ms Sommers’s four points are important in conceiving future trends, espe-cially when it comes to accommodating people in a friendly built environ-ment. But study and contemplation won’t be enough. For today’s architects, I would recommend the following key factors: Goodwill, Good Fortune, Good Grasp and Courage.

VirtuAL enVironMentsSome prognosticators who are prepared to put their predictions in writing see a future in which virtual space enhances and even replaces physical space, leaving present architects to speculate what their role might be. In two recent issues, the architectural periodical CLOG shared ideas about what our future might look like:

“When the rendering becomes reality, reality no longer has to compete.” “… [S]oon technology will insert itself between the eye and the built environment, creating a window through which all architectural space is viewed.” Wearing special viewing devices (i.e., glasses) every user will have the option of selecting from an infinite palette of colours, shapes and textures to create his or her own environment at will.

CLOG: Rendering, Aug. 2012, “The Rend of All Things, or: the Tyranny of the Real” by Aaron Craig Smith, p. 145

Taking another viewpoint, as architects continue to become more adept at designing in the virtual world, following in the footsteps of architect/film director Joseph Kosinski (Tron Legacy), or architect/digital mood creator Thom Tennery, “architecture might soon reach a turning point in which architects of the visual world are more in-demand than architects of the real world.

CLOG: Sci-Fi, 2013, “Architecture Through a Sci-Fi Lens” by Kellen Qiaolun Huang, p. 131

Brooklyn architect Alpna Gupta suggests a future in which any designed space can exist in any environment. “Without planning for this future now, the architect’s role will be reduced to designing background noise behind the virtual screen of an augmented environment.”

CLOG: Sci-Fi, 2013, “Is Google the Next Starchitect?” Alpna Gupta, p. 133

Self-described “curious futurists” Connor Callahan and Shana Opperman take this thinking a little further by suggesting that we reconsider all built form. We already have the means at our disposal to “pirate” space by scanning 3-D form and printing it wherever in the world (or beyond it) we choose. Advancements in this technology would allow individuals separated by great distances to experience the same physical spaces, which could then be modified or enhanced, virtually. “Will architecture,” the authors wonder, “keep up with the fiction of reality?”

CLOG: Sci-Fi, 2013, “Constructing the Virtual + Pirating Space” by Connor Callahan and Shana Opperman, p. 145

MeMories of the futureMy bookshelf includes a small collection of books with titles like The Wonderful Future That Never Was1, Out of Time2 and Yesterday’s Tomorrows3 – books that examine, through a filter of nostalgia, past predictions of the future. The first book serves as a good example of the genre. Its cover features the subtitle “Flying Cars, Mail Delivery by Parachute, and Other Predictions from the Past.” Its compilers include the editors of Popular Mechanics.

First, a word about Popular Mechanics (PM): a “classic magazine of popular technology” (Wikipedia) that has been published continuously since 1902. “Popular technology” doesn’t really describe the wonders that the magazine has contained, nor the impression that it had on young minds in the 20th cen-tury, nor even the nostalgia that is evoked by the mere mention of the name. And the magazine’s brave, lavishly illustrated predictions for the technological

future continue to provide material for both inspiration and gentle derision.

A 1923 PM prediction, quoted in The Wonderful Future, describes a now fam-iliar vision: “Overhead thoroughfares supported on great arches between towering skyscrapers, double-decked streets, moving sidewalks bordered by show windows, and stores connected by artistic bridges and covered promenades…” In a very similar vein, Out of Time creates an image of “overwhelming architecture” from H.G. Wells’s “When the Sleeper Wakes”: “Overhead mighty cantilevers sprang together across the huge width of the place, and a tracery of translucent material shut out the sky…Here and there a gossamer suspension bridge dotted with foot passengers flung across the chasm and the air was webbed with slender cables.”

Compare this cluttered but sculpturally rich urban landscape to the neon pastiche of 2019 Los Angeles, as envisioned by Syd Mead for Bladerunner. Needless to say, many inclusions in The Wonderful Future – as outlandish as they must have seemed – have already come to pass: a TV screen that hangs on the wall, an automobile that needs no driver (the Mercedes-Benz S-Class “can drive itself – but is not allowed to”4), a videophone, a convection oven.

There is a sweet nostalgia about these predictions and about the spirit that created them. Some of the architectural renderings in these books exude a romanticism that is often missing from today’s work, and it’s not just the lack of digital wizardry. In those old renderings, by masters like Syd Mead, William Robinson Leigh, Harvey Wiley Corbett and many others, there is a human engagement. People are happily going about their business, actually doing things – not just smiling and providing scale. And the sun is nearly always shining

By way of contrast, the futuristic work of Hugh Ferriss, depicts an urban future of impressive scale and luminosity. In The Metropolis of Tomorrow5, the image The Lure of the City includes a small robotic foreground figure who seems almost overpowered by a brightly glowing city of shimmering skyscrapers. The image of humankind, almost too small and powerless to control what it has created, pervades much of Ferriss’s powerful and influential drawing. Contemporary illustrator Paul Stevenson Oles6 refers to Ferriss’s “high impact and graphic drama,” – a drama that generated a degree of excited anticipation of what the architectural future might hold.

Many of our parents’ and grandparents’ old dreams seem hopelessly dated and naïve by today’s standards, but the very act of having created them has generated a kind of common history of the future that combines both anticipation and nostalgia. A more interesting challenge than trying to predict the future is trying to imagine what future generations will think of the predictions we make. We may never get the flying cars, but do we have to stop dreaming about them? ❚

notes:1. Gregory Benford and the Editors of Popular Mechanics. The Wonderful Future That Never

Was. New York: Hearst Books, undated2. Norman Brosterman. Out of Time: Designs for the Twentieth-Century Future. New York:

Harry N. Abrams, 20003. Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan. Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions Of The American

Future. Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 19844. “For Mercedes boss, self-driving cars are a hands-on experience,” by Michael Vaughan,

The Globe and Mail, July 18, 20135. Hugh Ferriss. The Metropolis of Tomorrow. New York:” Princetoon Architectural Press, 19886. Paul Stevenson Oles. Drawing the Future. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1988


ooKinG ahead is an unexpectedly difficult exercise – surprising given the popularity of science-fiction and a couple of centuries of speculation about it. Ask someone about the future – perhaps 50 years from now. It is likely that you will receive the same hackneyed answers, typically something

about “world peace” and “food for all”. Another possible response will inclulde some apocalyptic vision of an earth and humanity in a shambles – if they still exist. Planet-wide disaster is strangely popular; just look at the fare of trashy movies each week. One can see New York or Los Angeles destroyed (but saved at the last minute) by (check one): asteroid impact, volcanic eruption, climate change (up or down), pan-demic, space aliens, resurrected dinosaurs, runaway technology…the possibilities seem limited only by film-makers’ imaginations. Indeed, there is a substantial and fascinating academic literature on why we are fascinated by apocalyptic notions (hint: think about the messages in the ancient account of Noah and the flood).

quite apart from the entertainment value of ominous movie scenarios, other possibilities do exist. It might be more interesting to ask the question what you would like the future to be? If we don’t have any idea about what we want it to be like, it will be difficult to get it, perhaps thereby accepting outcomes as a matter of chance. Of course, people in the future will decide what they want for themselves. It would be pretentious to try to make excessively detailed plans for them based on our own preferences.

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reproduce. The problems inherent in this are obvious: it is not uncom-mon for individuals who have inherited significant wealth to descend into a life of endless partying, drugs, alcohol and dangerous sex, perhaps as an attempt to relieve boredom. Could it be that our fate as a species is to become terminally bored?

John Maynard Keynes, writing in 1930, in an essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren1,” wondered about this. He observed “To those who sweat for their daily bread leisure is a longed-for sweet – until they get it…Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.” Keynes thought that, for this reason, this future might be regarded with dread.

The apocalypse might not come accompanied by massive bangs, but with widespread yawning – or worse. Late 1914 saw queues of young men outside recruiting offices, hoping that the war would last long enough for them to see some action. Are we fated to do such silly things to allevi-ate the monotony of material prosperity? Is this why we have problems envisioning a positive future? Recall your upbringing: we were encour-aged by teachers and parents to diligently attend to our studies to get a good job. Did anyone ever tell you how to enjoy the fruits of your labour?

Of course, problems do remain, in particular the allocation of wealth; we also know that inequality decreases happiness, and the demand for some goods, such as housing can be effectively insatiable: those are things to be overcome. But, what do we do once we have filled our material needs and wants and no longer have to struggle to survive?

Some people, such as many architects (see “Improving with age”, Perspectives, Spring 2004) simply keep working. Work maintains their sense of relevance and human contact, and the odd bit of flirting with construction disaster does heighten the adrenaline level.

The last issue of OAA Perspectives (Winter 2013-14) reflected on what people do when they are not working, which in one sense is why we work: to be able to do other things. So we saw architects engaged in sailboat racing, beekeeping, travel photography, restoring cars, welding up artwork, practising yoga, pursuing music, reading Proust and, on an ongoing basis, writing for OAA Perspectives. They seem to continue with

On a larger scale, one would hope that human well-being continues to increase. Much research indicates that increasing affluence does make people happier, but only to a point, and then the relationship tapers off. If one is starving, a crust of bread can be vital, but once one has five or six German cars in the garage, another one doesn’t make much difference to one’s well-being. This suggests that we have to look not to quantity (more electronic devices, more cars, bigger houses) but to something else – perhaps some sort of increase in quality. Goals imagined in this form imply going against millions of years of evolution, where our ancestors, back to single-celled times, struggled to simply survive and


some sort of struggle, perhaps to achieve some improvement in their capabilities. Others indulge in charitable works, in an attempt to better the lot of humanity. But all of these activities have one thing in common: while they may add to individual and societal well-being, they do not have much impact on GDP figures.

Where does this take us, as creators of the built environment? We might hope that our cities become more thoughtful agglomerations of people – oriented towards social interaction, which is better achieved through walking and bicycling. We will worry more about the quality of our environ-ments. Indeed, the following story takes us to a future Venice, to witness the city’s ultimate inundation. But it’s more ikely that in the future our cultural monuments – the things that help to define us as a species – will become more important than our attempts to generate a bit more measurable GDP. In our future world of affluence, we will be able to take commodity and firmness for granted – it is the delight that will be the increasing focus of humanity. Venice will never be allowed to sink, because it will simply be worth too much to us. In this hoped-for world, architects will have a role of increased importance, although it will change. Utilitarian, functionalist architecture will become so 20th century, as people increasingly expect built environments to enhance communities and carry more complex meanings, something that is apparently already happening2.

Such change in the nature of demand, resulting from increased affluence, should be an opportunity. Perhaps we don’t have to invent anew, but only look around at the many examples of built environment alternatives around the world which are loaded with cultural meaning, and try to learn from them. Compact cities provide examples, as does the mixing of uses seen in so many places throughout the world. This article is being written in a sidewalk restaurant in Brussels, finishing a delightful meal and drinking a wonderful, exotic beer. The question is: do you just want more beer, or better beer?

Other risks exist, that might compromise this view of a wonderful future. Marx, Hegel and de Sade saw religion as the opiate of the people, but they had not seen computer gamers in action. Widespread availability of passive entertainment and distractions may turn the focus of the leisured people to

the unproductive pleasures of the virtual. We also need ongoing progress to support this emerging future.

Unfortunately, most civilizations do have periods of decline, even if some do rise again from their ashes. It is easy to count them: ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, China, Renaissance Italy, the Mayan civilisa-tion, the Khmer Empire, as well as numerous other cultures that remain only as subjects for archaeologists. Some were conquered, but many seem to have just fizzled away. Architects were usually exposed to the glories of the Italian Renaissance in school or on various ventures of first-hand discovery (see “Pilgrimages”, Perspectives, Fall 2004) but what happened afterwards is often forgotten.

If we consider our current well-being, in particular relative to how our great-great-grandparents lived, it becomes obvious that we stand on a long stream of intellectual and technical innovation. After all, only a hundred years ago, people faced dangerous childhood diseases, staggering levels of infant and maternal mortality, and only 50 years before that serious water- and sewage-borne diseases. We can only hope that world wars are a thing of the past, rendered obsolete by nuclear weapons and increasing globalization. But those ancient empires should serve as a warning: we have to remain vigilant, and not bring an end to increasing global well-being.

With this caution, one might go back and at least give the future some con-sideration. What do you want for your grandchildren. In optimistic visions of the future you should hope they become architects! ❚

Ian Ellingham is Chair of the Perspectives Editorial Committee.

notes:1. Widely available on the internet. The one used was on www.econ.yale.edu/smaith/

econ116a/keynes.1.pdf Accessed October 14, 2013.2. Research that indicates this is now underway: See: (a) OAA Perspectives: Why are

(some) buildings so ugly? Vol.20, No.3, Fall and (b) papers presented at 2005 Conserving the Modern in Canada Conference, in Algie, S. and Ashby, J (eds) Conserving the Modern in Canada: Buildings, ensembles, and sites: 1945-2005, Trent University, pp.55-66. (available at www.winnipegarchitecture.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/CMC-Proceedings_Eng_a.pdf) [1513]

PHOTOS: OAA PErSPECTIvES

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the sirens had sounded early in the morning signal-ling the impending aqua alta, and he’d put his wel-lies on just in case. He’d been on Accedemia Bridge when the Vaporetto loudspeakers gave the general evacuation order in four languages. A group of giddy art students from Prague left the dry arch of the bridge

onboard a garbage scow, plastic bags taped over their shoes. They’d implored him to join them. He declined, waved and smiled.

The water was now almost a metre high on the palazzo walls, and rising as twilight fell. Fish from the Adriatic were already exploring new avenues through the cafes of Piazza San Marco, coursing through emptied jewelry cases, hovering above upturned chairs in the squares of Venice.

The sky was growing angry again and it would soon start raining. It was only going to get worse: the confluence of extreme high tide and record rainfall. Was this how it ended? Not with a bang but a splutter? George flipped the page in his journal and started another sketch.

Like many men his age, George, had been born the same year as the British prince and then named after him. He’d hated his name as a child; it mocked him from check-out line tabloids and celebrity hoopla. But it grew on him and he grew into it: a solid, old-fashioned name. There were three Georges in his final year at architecture school. The other two were more serious than he was, and maybe more talented, but they became a brotherhood of sorts and eventually formed a partner-ship: George3 Architecture.

George3 made a name for itself landing a plum commission as the designers of Ikea’s new line of flat-pack houses. They were the go-to firm for plug-and-play country houses and George would sometimes even co-pilot the helicopters that delivered the injection-moulded creations to sites in the hills north of the city. It all had an envigorating Brave New World feel to it and the partners of George3 were riding the wave of success. They drank Manitoba Merlot and joked about the coming of the New Georgian Era.

More suddenly than anyone had predicted, the downturn morphed into the biggest recession in decades. The plastics disappeared with the oil and work dried up overnight. Despite their efforts to save it, George3 dissolved and, as the three Georges raised a farewell glass, the tractors

carted off their mobile office. The property was quickly put under the plow for a new urban field of engineered canola.

George called in some favours and finally found a position with a sky-scraper demolition firm in Toronto. He read and interpreted the old plans and charted strategies for pulling down crumbling 50-storey liabilities, relics of the heyday of the high-rise. Faded paper drawings cluttered his desk. He loved the line work, the cross-hatching, the deft hand of the 20th-century architects. It was all hieroglyphics to the technicians, adept as they were at animated hologram presentations and 3D printing suites, but to George the drawings were a link to a golden age.

He papered the galley of his wedge-plan condo with old vellums of foundation details and side elevations. He became a minor authority on traditional drafting techniques of the late 20th century, amassing a collection that read like the DNA of Canadian Architecture. His drawn records were often all that remained of buildings that were largely forgotten. An exhibition at the AGO followed. And then, as he entered his 50th year, he was asked to curate the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Borrowing from Vitruvius, he’d named the show “Firmness, Commodity and Delight: The Legacy of Architectural Drawing in Canada.” Archives had opened for him, rare drawings arrived by courier, foam-core models in crates. Old architects who had practised back in the 2020s and even earlier sent him hard-copy gems from their files. Using these curious old tools – models and drawings – George and his team put the raw seeds of his country’s built legacy on display to the world.

The newly crowned king, just turned 50 himself, was slated to open the British Pavilion and tour Canada’s show. George would meet George.

The king was architecture savvy as his grandfather Charles had been. He’d studied under Zaha Hadid’s daughter at Cambridge, campaigned for brownfield development, given lectures at the RIBA. After the cor-onation, Neo-Georgian Architecture became the style-du-jour. Columns and pediments adorned re-charge stations along the Western Ontario Beltway. There was the usual righteous backlash by architects, but at least architecture was in the press.

King George was slated to visit the Canadian pavilion and review the legacy exhibition. As curator, George hoped he’d have a chance for a bit

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of royal small talk, maybe compare notes on their common first name. Could you ask a king for an autograph?

But that was before the most relentless scirocco in history started to pound the Venetian Lagoon from the southeast. The Moses flood defense system, which had worked for the first half of the century, was overwhelmed. No one had predicted this.

The Biennale district was flooded and evacuated before the exhibition could be dismantled. There would be no opening ceremonies, no king, no autographs.

George stood on Accademia Bridge, looking east along the Grand Canal. An exodus of boats and barges streamed below him, a parade no one had ever wanted, heading for higher ground on mainland. The water rose so fast he could follow its progress up the facades of the ancient palazzi, drowning pilasters and pediments. George ignored orders from a passing fireboat to leave the bridge. He waved them on and they yelled something frantic in Italian, leaving him alone in the centre of the arch which now sprang from a turbulent urban sea.

The invading waters now lapped the tops of the ground floor windows, still rising. The twinkling lights of the Jewel of Adriatic went dark as the

power grid finally gave out, sparking and fizzling into oblivion. George gripped his pencil tightly in a shaky hand. In the dim twilight he kept drawing, as if he could somehow hold back the water by recording things as they had always been: architecture as frozen music: firm, commodious, delightful – and immovable. But the Venice he’d known, the architecture the world had treasured, died quickly into darkness, wrapped in a mist of hissing rain and wind.

In the Arsenale district, the old boatbuilding precinct where the archi-tecture biennale was held, a new sort of procession was setting out to sea. Curled vellum drawings inscribed with the patterns of a thousand buildings spun slowly in the swirling eddies, taking a whole world to the bottom of the lagoon. Flotillas of white models drifted past, upturned modern villas, capsized works in progress, unbuilt cities of the future now destined for sodden graves. Venice had finally sunk below the waves – The Serene Republic, home to the last Architecture Biennale, submerged for the final time.

It was a show no one would ever see, not even the King, whose schedule was once again thrown into disarray by a wild world of extreme weather. And thus began the new Georgian Era. ❚

David Gillett is an architect and illustrator who lives and works in Orillia.

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An interview with New ccA chair Bruce Kuwabara19 December 2013By GORDON S. GRIcE OAA, FRAIc

T H E P R O F E S S I O N

tHis yeAr, WHiLe tHe OAA celebrates its 125th anniversary, the Canadian Cen-tre for Architecture will be celebrating two important events. The first is its twenty-fifth anniversary. The second is the appointment of Bruce Kuwabara to succeed founder Phyllis Lambert as Chair of the Board of Trustees. Bruce, who has been a member of the Board since 2007, assumed his new position on December 4.

Bruce and I spoke on the phone, two weeks after his appointment, with the news still fairly fresh. My first question to Bruce was: How would he maintain his role as founding partner in an active practice in Toronto, as well as managing the affairs of the CCA in Montreal? While there are still a few things to sort out, Bruce assured me that, with Phyllis still active on the Board and a very energetic CCA team, there is more than sufficient support to allow him to be effective in both roles.

The role of the board is to support the vision and life of the CCA. As chair of the Board, he sees his role as a public advocate for the CCA in terms of promoting its programs, people and achievements. This requires that he maintain a fairly intimate knowledge of how the place works and runs by staying in constant communica-tion with its leadership team, including the Director and the team of Associate Directors and staff.

Over the past six years that Bruce has been on the board, there has been a focus on giving the CCA a “clear voice” – a reengineering of its internal organization was established in order to achieve this. Bruce feels that one of his main tasks now will be to ensure the continuation

of what the CCA has already in place and to expand it wherever possible. The CCA, through its programs, exhibitions, research and collection, has been work-ing on redefining a new platform for the discussion of architecture to take place – a process that Mirko Zardini, the CCA’s Director, considers to be in line with the fundamental premise of the institution which defines architecture as a public concern. Bruce wants to ensure that the CCA work remains, in his own words, “pro-vocative, probing and contemporary – not just celebratory.”

Bruce pointed out that the CCA has been trying to engage different segments of the public by shifting the idea of “education” into “conversations”. A cur-rent program at the CCA involves hosting groups of schoolchildren and encouraging them to draw – an activity for which they require little prodding. This program has the potential to engage younger visitors with architecture and design. For more advanced graduate and post-graduate students, in a shift toward increased collaboration and interdisciplinary work, the Study Centre, will engage the CCA’s collections with the academic community by having senior scholars work with small teams of emerging scholars. A new Mellon-funded program, for example, looks at how architecture might envision a transformed society through research into the work of Cedric Price, whose archives form part of the CCA’s Collection.

Zardini is also focusing on “democratizing” the subjects that the centre deals with and ensuring that they will remain, in Bruce’s words, “provocative, probing and contemporary – not just celebratory.”

Bruce also mentioned that work is underway to enlarge the CCA’s archives and collection in order to make them more accessible and to sustain current and future research. Some of the latest donations include the archives of Gordon Matta-Clark, Pierre Jeanneret’s work on Chandigarh, Abalos & Herreros, Foreign Office Architects (FOA) and 25 projects relating to the project Archaeology of the Digital. Furthermore, the CCA is increas-ing its publications – both on paper and digital – revising its cataloguing processes, and testing the possibility of digitizing part of its collection, a move that should help to facilitate access to documents. The value and delicacy of the materials including models, drawings and rare books requires that visitors put on gloves before handling the physical documents, which becomes a little surreal, when the visitor is examining his or her own documents, as was the case when Bruce was handling the CCA’s KPMB Kitchener City Hall drawings. In the library, the wearing of gloves will

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of us, one of the great professional motivators is the knowledge that kids – our toughest audi-ence by far – might appreciate what we do. Bruce, who has two children, confessed that “one of the rewards of doing certain cultural projects is creating spaces that my children enjoy experiencing.” He added, “When you go back, you’re not the architect anymore.” He was speaking specifically about the Gardiner Museum, Canada’s National Ballet School, and the tiff Bell Lightbox, but in the context of the CCA open-ing its doors to a wider demographic, this may provide an exciting direction for intensifying the use of the CCA’s existing facilities.

Bruce’s connection with Phyllis Lambert goes back to his early years in practice. He says, “Phyllis has been a major influence in how KPMB practices architecture.” As a young practitioner, Bruce attended the CCA opening and remembers Phyllis saying to him, “Stay focused on the art of architecture.” – a focus that Phyllis herself has successfully maintained through the years, and one that Bruce vows to honour in the years to come. ❚

continue. “It is,” as he says, “the only real way of preserving artefacts.” The CCA will continue to build its remarkable and extensive collec-tions. As Bruce is happy to claim, it is one of Canada’s great cultural institutions, continually evolving and “also an important building and urban landscape.”

Throughout his professional career, and espe-cially over his years on the CCA Board, Bruce has become a firm believer that the success of any organization depends on people and relation-ships. In the case of the CCA, the relationship with both the public and private sectors will continue to grow in importance. As cultural institutions become increasingly challenged for both attention and funding, financial support through donorship has become as important a focus as content, and one to which Bruce will turn his attention, “Generosity,” he said, “is a good business principle.” Two major keys to the CCA’s future success will be content and funding – both are critically important.

Toward the end of our conversation, the subject turned to kids. For Bruce, as for many

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Designing a house REvIEwER: GORDON S. GRIcE OAA, FRAIc

B O O k R E v I E w

WHAt MiGHt APPeAr tO Be a truly human trait – the imperative to design and build one’s own home – is really a characteristic that is shared by many living organisms, from ants to aardvarks. Some of these homes are ornate and colorful (bowerbird nests) and elaborate (beaver lodges). What truly distinguishes modern humankind from other creatures is that (1) we require instruction in order to design and build our homes or (2) we can hire someone else to do it for us. Lester Walker’s book seeks to provide the former.

Walker, an architect, has the best of intentions in wanting to share as much of his knowledge as possible with those who are keen to take on the complex task of designing their own home. He offers advice that he has accumulated over his long architectural career and even offers insights that many builders and do-it-yourselfers lack.

He advises would-be home designers to learn how to look at houses. First, observe general shapes and forms; enjoy the overall appearance of things and don’t become preoccupied with details too early. Learn to appreciate spaces. How does the space feel and how does it feel to move between spaces? Before your design decisions are finalized, think about light penetration, ventilation and shade. Be mindful of prevailing breezes and the position of summer and winter sun.

Too frequently, untutored home-designers begin by thinking about the appearance of their house, without considering the character of the site or the qualities of the surrounding land and neighborhood. Walker recommends getting to know the site and thinking about all the site elements: walkways, driveways, landscaping views from the house, and views of the house. Drawing the site is an effective way to accom-plish this.

Walker earns an architectural seal of approval when he talks about drawing: “Sketching or drawing is one of the most important skills to develop because it is the simplest form of visual communica-tion.” In light of the current standard of digital modelling and the resulting scarcity of hand drawing, this is sage and refreshing advice indeed.

All the same, this book might be approached with a lit tle caution. Remember that Walker is presenting, and certainly simplifying, an architec-tural education and many years of office and field experience into about 10,000 words – many architectural books have longer footnotes than this.

Walker follows the development of a simple house, from site analyses through programming and bubble diagrams, right up to finished design drawings. It appears to represent a reasonable sampling of the kinds of problems that a home designer might face. But in fact, it is a particularly uncomplicated design exercise on a generous, uncompli-cated, apparently unregulated (and un-surveyed) rural site that places few restrictions on the design or placement of the buildings.

A would-be designer for a similarly-sized home on a tighter urban lot would encounter a host of complications includ-ing site access, grading and drainage, mechanical services, building set-backs, excavation restrictions and soil condi-tions that would frustrate even the most ardent DIY enthusiast.

Back to drawing again, it’s good to practice drawing, but the rapid mastery of architectural drawing is something that Walker appears to take for granted. Most amateurs and many professionals would be hard-pressed to duplicate the skill and fluency of the freehand plan drawings that Walker presents in the book.

Designing a House: the illustrated Guide to Planning your Own Home

By Lester Walker

The Overlook Press, New York, NYJuly 4, 2012ISBN 10: 1590201396ISBN 13: 978-1-59020-139-8144 pages

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As many readers will be aware, hand-drawing tools have been all but replaced in architectural offices in the twenty-first century. Design drawings, construction drawings and, increasingly, even study sketches, are all done digitally. So Walker’s designer’s shopping list of draft-ing boards, T-squares, set squares and triangular scales represents not merely a quaint throwback, but will certainly send readers scurrying to antique stores (see Ontario Places) and may end in a fruitless search. And, unless would-be amateur house builders live in a large city, with well-equipped art stores and flea markets, they may be further stymied when they try to find canary paper, a mechanical pencil, a sanding block or a

pencil pointer. There are now many cheap, user-friendly digital drawing programs that are easier to master.

It’s entirely possible that the book will constitute a form of aversion ther-apy for over-ambitious DIY enthusiasts. Designing one’s own home is great for professional development, but if you’re not an architect, maybe consulting one early in the process, rather than later, would be a good idea, in case design difficulties, personal (or marital) crises, or uncomfortable legalities should arise. It’s always good to know that while the primal urge to conceive one’s own home is healthy and satisfying, the ability to hire someone else to do it demonstrates the clear benefits of evolution. ❚

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rideau Antiques By GORDON S. GRIcE OAA, FRAIc

tHe DescriPtiON, As eNticiNG As it sounds, barely does justice to the collection of objects to be explored, experienced, marveled at and purchased at this incredible trove in Lombardy, Ontario.

The family business started as a small operation, in 1961 – a few useful items, followed by a few more, gathered first in the family woodshed, then, as the collection grew, relocated to the present property on Rideau Ferry Road, eventually spreading to more of the buildings and grounds, and then to the barn across the street.

When my friend Don Ball offered to take me there, I was a bit confused. Don is a neat person, but the place he was describing to me sounded extremely cluttered. I hadn’t considered that a place could be both neat and cluttered at the same time. The phrase “ordered chaos” might best describe Rideau Antiques.

If the key to modern merchandising is editing and curating merchandise, Rideau Antiques is conspicuously deficient on the first count and spectacularly suc-cessful in the second. There appear to be few constraints on the acquisition of inventory, but all of it has been care-fully sorted, categorized, stacked, piled,

shelved, drawered or suspended. In the main building, narrow cluttered aisles and rooms are encrusted with treasures that have been bound, labeled and priced.

For the acquisitive architect, there are many exciting prospects. There are the usual doors, window, furniture, knick-knacks, light fixtures and hardware. But there are also nostalgic items of profes-sional interest. I bought a mahogany T-square and a fine old standing rule. There was a drawer filled with slide rules and wooden scales as well, but by the time I found it, I had already blown my budget.

The day of my visit, I encountered a few dozen other spellbound antique shoppers (note: “antique” applies to many but certainly not all items), some of whom had travelled great distances to experience the collection and make their purchases. But despite the brisk retail trade, the mass evidently continues to expand – in quantity and variety – seem-ingly unaffected by any feeble attempts to reduce it. ❚

visitors to rideau Antiques will discover the almost endless collection of canadian furniture, clocks, glass, china, woodenware, lamps, bottles, primitive tools, books and hardware. Outside in the yards, one can find a vast array of shutters, doors, stoves, tubs, sinks, farm implements, grates, license plates, cast iron tractor seats, signs and so much more!

— http://www.rideauantiques.net/

your chances of uncovering a personal treasure somehow overlooked by an earlier prospector are quite good. that’s because the Miller family have been keeping their customers happy for nearly fifty years, by constantly renewing the cache of local canadiana.

— Rideau Antiques brochure

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