24migration

The architect's library: books, shelves, cases, collections, displays, exhibitions and READING.

on site $14 display until april 2011

culture urbanism architecture landscape photography research

ARTIST & INSTRUCTOR, SCHULICH SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

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STEEL STRUCTURES EDUCATION FOUNDATION

migrate: to remove from one place of residence to another at a distance, expecially from one country to another. migratory: given to migration; migrating at certain seasons; roving or wandering in one’s mode of life; unsettled.

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on site 24 contents

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Zile Liepins Zile Liepins Simon Rabyniuk Vera Frenkel Paul Whelan Christine Leu Joanne Lam Joanne Lam Samo Pedersen InfraNet Lab Michael Leeb Gerald Forseth

Those that left Those that stayed De-skilling the Garment Industry Bearing Witness. Ireland Park

10 13 17 20 22 24 26 30 34 35 38 42 44 46 49 52 55 60 64 68 71 72 73 74 78 79 80

Farming Translated Malls and My Soul

Temporary Permanence, Irbid Network Society of Bad Space Migration Intersects Canoe Journey Skeletons and Skins Shift

Marianna de Cola Enrique Enriquez Lauren Abrahams Calvin Chiu Kasia Mychajlowicz Michael Taylor Rob Story and Giovana Beltrao Department of Unusual Certainties

Being Little Mermaid Transitioning Towns The Evolving Myth

Settling Down Night Market

Mongolia Migrates Main Street Express Leaving Lebanon Between the Red Lines Athlete-Nomad Neglected Moments On Being Serious Azulejos introducing RE:site

Farid Noufaily Joshua Craze Ivan Hernandez Quintela Reza Aliabadi

Stephanie White Stephanie White subscriptions calls for articles masthead

issue 25: identity, issue 26: dirt contributors’ biographical notes

Marianna de Cola

cover: Leaving Newfoundland

DEPARTMENT OF UNUSUAL CERTAINTIES

opposite: Giovana, Delhi Station, India, 2009

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community invention space optimism peace

mutable culture canada by zile liepins

Culture reconstructed. A model of home. Cultural compound in Milton, Ontario

Summer camp is ready to start, with military tents in place and the Latvian flag overhead, 1950s. Dancing on the dance floor in the 1960s.

Immigrants have a choice – to assimilate and try to forget where they came from, or to promote and re-create their culture within their new environment. Often the decision comes down to the reason for leaving. Willing immigrants lean towards changing their names and blending in while people that have been forced to leave their home cling to their nationality more than before. Many Latvians emigrated in the 1940s, fleeing Russian occupation and deportation. Preserving Latvian culture was particularly urgent because already swallowed up by Russia into the mighty USSR, this little country risked extinction. Toronto is rich with cultures and cultural centres, but I wonder how many small ‘cities’ have been built in its outskirts. In the 1950s, the Latvian community (more specifically, St. Andrews Latvian Lutheran Church in downtown Toronto) built one in Milton. It was named Sidrabene, after an ancient castle in Latvia. It was a small haven, where everybody spoke your language and understood where you came from, where older people could remember and younger, learn. It is still in use, and in fact, there are two others like it in the Toronto area. Its fundamental purpose was to serve as a children’s camp but it has all the (mini) institutions of a small town – cabins, a church, a dining hall, a café, an outdoor dance floor, performance areas, a track field, tennis courts…even a small ‘hospital’ and ‘hotel’, where non- owners could rent rooms. The signage is in Latvian.

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The purchase of the land was funded through contributions of church members, in return for which they were given rights to a small plot of land on which they could build their summer cabin. Congregation members bulldozed the dirt roads themselves and the first structures were innovative and frugal – the first dining hall was constructed by building a floor between two out-of-service Yonge line TTC streetcars and the campers’ tents were donated by the military. Later, as money was raised, up went the main house, café and all the rest.

Congregation members bulldozed the dirt streets into the little village themselves. Two Toronto streetcars become a dining hall, 195Os. The playground had the most delightful attractions, most of which would likely be banned in a public Canadian playground today. Some are still operational, their age attested to by the countless colours peering through layers upon layers of paint. A favourite is still the hamster wheel, or ‘the barrel’ as it is called. It is built to run in, but it is just as popular for lying in with friends, head to toe, to chat or to await the rising sun after a party. Kids and counsellors carved their names in its insides until it was completely covered, but the boards have recently all been replaced. A fresh canvas for a new genera- tion?

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Celebrating summer solstice in the 1950s. Solstice, or Jani, is still celebrated each year in Sidrabene. Cheerleaders at a camp event, 1950s.

Today, while the land is well tended, the old structures have seen countless layers of paint; the signs have rusted, the track field and tennis court are overgrown and unrecognisable, the café has burned down and the streetcars have long been scrapped. Nationalist urgency has faded: Latvia was freed in 1991 and joined the European Union in 2004. The immigrants of the 1940s told themselves that they would return to Latvia when it regained independence, but the wait proved long. By then new lives with grown children and Canadian grandchildren were set.

With the passing of generations the need for cultural preservation has weakened, and although Sidrabene’s structures reflect this, a bit of that original energy and devotion has been conserved there like an artifact. It’s just gotten a bit rusty. A new generation is fleeing Latvia due to the recent economic downturn. Some have found a place in these remains of our grandparents’ community – working as counsellors or in the cafe. Some find it charming, others – very strange and surreal. /

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mutable culture 2 latvia by zile liepins

occupation resignation dreams

nature desire

Migration: being forced to leave your home, within and beyond your country Riga apartments vacated after the dissolution of the USSR

When someone leaves a space, what traces are left in their absence? The photographs are of walls in vacated apartments in Riga, Latvia, which tenants were forced to leave following the privatization of the building after the fall of the USSR in 1991. The owner of this particular building is a man who emigrated from Latvia with his mother in 1944 as a small boy – first to a Displaced Person’s camp in Germany, then to London, England and finally to

Russian language newspaper used as wallpaper. CCCP is USSR in the Cyrillic alphabet. The power of positive thinking? This tenant transported himself to a better place through wallpaper.The apartment had many walls covered in idyllic landscapes, behind broken, smelly appliances. Toronto. Russia was once again advancing on Latvia, and having witnessed the horrors of the Russian deportations of 1941, they knew what was coming. His father, enlisted in the army, couldn’t leave Latvia and went on to survive two deportations to Siberia.

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from top left: This wall shows us various periods in Latvian history in just a few square metres.The top and most recent layer was a rose patterned wallpaper. Next came Russian language newspaper, followed by Latvian newspaper in the old script not used today. The last layer revealed a beautiful art nouveau -style stencil. This was the only instance where I could put a face to a place. I can only assume that he is the boy who lived here. You work with what you can get.This kitchen was decorated with parts of food packaging.The text under the boy’s face says simply ‘juice’. from top right: More food packaging: cut-out plums.

The selection of vehicles in the USSR was limited, the most common mod- els being Lada, Moskvich,Volga and Zaparozec. American pop culture flowed freely to the former USSR in the 1990s. This apartment also had a Kurt Cobain quote, car stickers and pictures of Eminem and Backstreet Boys. opposite: The young boy living in this room seems to have outgrown the kitten wall- paper and gone the way of Emo, still very popular with Latvian youth. The foliage stencil is reflective of the golden years, the raucous 1910s and 20s when Riga could still compete with other European capitals and young artists had a special bond with Parisians. It was such a wonder to find under all that crap.

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After living a better life abroad for years, he returned to Latvia in the 1990s and was able to reclaim his grandfather’s building, in which he himself had lived until he was four. The building was in dire condition. He evicted the tenants who had grown to call these apartments home, living in communal apartments with a rent equivalent to 15 euro a month and rarely paying even that. The joke was that to replace a stolen mailbox three months rent needed to be collected. The building is now fully renovated and is rented to embassy workers and foreign corporation representatives for 700 to 900 euro a month. In the time between the evacuation and the renovations, I went into the apartments and photographed what was left behind. No doubt the unwillingness to leave played a part in the traces left.

Having little esteem for their landlords, the expelled tenants didn’t worry about cleaning up. The spaces still felt ‘warm’ and I didn’t feel fully comfortable in them. Other than some rusty appliances and old magazines, everything had been taken, but you can’t take the walls, and these yielded much information. They echoed a hundred years of history and cultural influence, from art nouveau stencils and layers of wallpa- pered newspaper in different scripts, to cutouts of Eminem and the Backstreet Boys.

The graffiti on the wall in the stairwell said – “The people that will live here will die. But we will still come here to drink”. /

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labour ski l ls

installation immigrant stories by simon rabyniuk

toronto survival handwork

6 garments, 4 machine-made, 2 hand-tailored

De-skilling the Garment Industry (6 garments, 4 machine-made, 2 hand-tailored) , is a sculpture originally produced for the exhibition, the Grand Trunk, at the Gladstone Hotel, in Toronto, Canada. Curator Casey Hinton, provided ten artists with an historic newspaper article and a suitcase, asking each artist to imagine what the person described in the article may have been carrying with them. Or, to start from a place of fact, and tease out a deeper narrative, fictionalising the story. De-skilling the Garment Industry looks at a period in Toronto’s history from the early 20th century. Jacob Galinsky becomes an exceptional character not for his individuality – represented by his petty personal offences – but for how his life experience is a part of the larger story of how one ethnic group came to dominate an industry. It explores the relationship between immigration, labour and transition within the garment industry.

Galinsky’s family was part of the wave of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe to Ontario between 1910 and 1930. His father came first, travelling from Kielce, Poland to Toronto, via Warsaw, Berlin, Antwerp and Halifax. Arriving before World War One, he delayed sending for his family when war broke out. Jacob’s mother followed eight years after her husband’s emigration, negotiating state borders to weather the fourteen day sea voyage with Jacob. They were greeted in Halifax by a Jewish mutual aid society who helped usher them on their way to Toronto. His two oldest brothers came several years later, separately. His father earned the money required to send for his family as a rag picker. Working in harsh conditions he sorted through worn clothes gathered from across the city, lashing bundles together to be sent to the mill for reprocessing into cloth. Each load of rags brought more filth into the workshop and the possibility of another

In 1945, The Toronto Star reported that Jacob Galinsky defrauded the Gladstone Hotel of $7.00 and that he stood accused of participating in the theft of clothing from a landed Jewish German retailer along Spadina Avenue. Galinsky was a sewing machine operator working for T. Eatons Company, out of their Terauley Street factory. He spent his working days sewing the inner lining into the shells of ready-to-wear suit jackets; one of the one hundred and fifty discrete operations required to make a single jacket. He had the aid of an assistant who worked between three other sewing machine operators, taking the finished jackets and delivering new shells, ensuring no breaks in the operators process. The success of the modern ready-to-wear clothing factory: every employee was a specialist, each part of the garment being handled by a different operator.

stillborn infant. It was a predominately Jewish workshop. New immigrants worked longer hours and were paid less then their naturalised equivalents. They were afforded the flexibility to leave work early on Friday to prepare for the Sabbath, although they were required to be back by Saturday after sunset – a wearing issue. ‘How is one to be at rest, when your mind is only thinking about the work you must do later?’ – a common question posed at worker-only meetings, organised to struggle with the issue of unionisation.

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The Star article ends with Galinsky released on bail, waiting for his cohorts to be brought to trail. He was expected back in court later that month. The contents of his suit case, as recorded in the police ledger, were a tweed suit jacket, a cotton white collared shirt, black slacks, worn leather shoes, an ochre tie, with matching underwear and a book. /

Following the advice sent in their father’s letters, both of Jacob’s older brothers sought experience in needlework. The middle brother earned an apprenticeship with a tailor; the eldest, failing to secure a similar position, was tutored in the evening by his younger brother. Jacob’s father was overwhelmed with anticipation of their arrival in Toronto. The workshop was always alive with news of family members arriving; his boss approached him before his sons’ arrival, asking about their work ethic. Jacob’s two eldest brothers were recruited to work in a non-unionised garment factory outside the central business district, located in St John’s Ward. It was part of a second tier of smaller garment workshops that were entrepreneurial endeavours setup to take advantage of low rent and proximity to a cheap pool of labour. The brothers’ work in Poland opened up more skilled positions for them. They were sewing seams on ladies’ serge suits, a sub-contract order from T. Eatons Company. Even with their awareness of their father’s decade of experience inToronto, they did not question the wages or work enviroment. In the end this position turned out to hold more opportunity than that of their father’s. They were upwardly mobile. St John’s Ward had been the home of the Galinskys when Jacob and his mother first arrived, before they moved further west to Kensington Market. Jacob left school before he was 16, seeking work and a trade. He had short stints selling newspapers, as a delivery boy, roofing, sweeping the shop floor of a clock factory and many other positions. It was his brothers who introduced the possibility of entering the factory as an operator. They started him at home, sewing small personal garments, easy tasks handled on the days when he had no paid work to do. When a larger contract came to the workshop his brothers spoke to their boss. Jacob got a position as a prepress, preparing garment seams to be finished by the presser.

further reading:

Biderman, Morris. A life on the Jewish Left: An Im- migrant’s Experience. Toronto: Onward, 2000 Frager, Ruth A. Sweatshop strife : class, ethnicity, and gender in the Jewish labour movement of Toronto, 1900-1939 . Toronto: Social History of Canada 47, 1992 Hiebert, Daniel Joseph. ‘The geography of Jewish immigrants and the garment industry in Toronto, 1901-1931 a study of ethnic and class relations.’ Annals of the Asociation of American Geographers , volume 83, Issue 2, pp 243-271. June 1993

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records development water construction erasure

installation aspiration and loss by vera frenkel

ONCE NEAR WATER: Notes from the Scaffolding Archive

(Transcript of voiceover)

I wasn’t ready for the terse death notice sent by her lawyer from her email address.

This report is about a lake, and about longing. Also about greed, and about ways of bearing witness. I don’t know the whole story, one never does.

Her name appeared first on a line by itself, followed by her address. Then the announcement signed by her lawyer:

But, in a tale told elsewhere, there’s a reliable account of how I met the scaffolding archivist.

“It is with regret that we inform you that the afore-named resident at the stated address has passed away. Death was confirmed at 7:43 PM EST Tuesday evening, cause unknown. This notice is being sent as a courtesy to all names in the address book of the deceased.” The envelope that arrived from the same lawyer’s office a week later contained a real letter, and a document combining images and words.These were clipped together and tagged by a note in her handwriting saying, ‘Notes from the scaffolding archive’.

I couldn’t know then, and still don’t know to this day, why she would choose me as her beneficiary. I have no experience with construction, nor with archives, for that matter. I want to make that clear before I hand over the material.

I realize that the Building Committee is entitled to whatever information I can provide.

Much has happened in the years since that first encounter near the yellow wall… Curious, and impatient for experience, I travelled. Calm, she stayed put and wrote her second book. I married – and divorced. Twice. A time-consuming activity. Ruth (… I’m calling her Ruth to ensure her anonymity) – Ruth remained steadfastly independent and continued gathering data in her chosen field and writing about it. Though we weren’t close, we did exchange postcards from time to time, and later on, the occasional quick email, always with the polite hope that we’d meet again. And so it went…

Seeing it, I hear her voice again.

I don’t think it dishonours the dead to quote them. There’s nothing in the letter or support document to be ashamed of. So, I’ll just read it to you. But first, for the Committee, a short summary of what Ruth was doing before she died: An anonymous archivist, passionate about destructive change in the city where she lives, comes to the end of a long recording vigil. Acknowledging the losses so carefully documented, the archivist passes on the only copy of the archive to a trusted associate.

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So now you know as much as I do.

I documented anything with scaffolding, she goes on, from tiny shop window renovations to annihilated city blocks, the numbering system based on location, date and time of day. In the early years, I included weather conditions as well: temperature, wind direction, humidity, dew point … but, oh my dear! That was far too cumbersome, so I stopped. My wanderings through the city brought to mind that every boy of a certain generation who had a Meccano set would try to build a crane on the living room floor, getting it to lift little things over here and put them down over there. The romance of engineering persists no matter how many planes explode or bridges fall. In the stand-off between cranes and water, scaffolding is the interlocutor, the sweetener, the mediator, satisfying a longing for structure on the one hand and love of transience on the other.

And here’s the letter. I’ve read it so many times, and I’m still wondering …

This is what she writes:

“By the time you see this, the city we knew will be gone; a rich, multi-course meal now a dry biscuit.

And our ideals? Who can say ….

My survey of construction projects began, she continues, using an unobtrusive pen camera with which I could also make notes.

Transience was all. Transience was all …

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Later on, in those instances where the legality of the scaffolding itself was at issue, either due to questionable structure or lack of a permit, things got more complex, and I had to adopt whatever role was necessary to acquire proof.

Legal or not, the scaffolding and also the archive mark the erasure of places where we played, worked, loved, mourned and buried our dead.

And here she grows pensive: In the long run, given half a chance, water will win. Dams burst, bridges drown, buildings soften like sponges. Where we walk today may be flooded tomorrow. Transience is all … The last archive entry is dated today, September 19th, 2008. The key to the code is on the folder itself and repeated as a legend on each chart. You’ll find the full record in a flat waterproof box under your front step, behind a screen of weeds.

My deceptions (and my wardrobe) , she writes, remembering… were, though I say it myself, quite inventive.

(I imagine she smiled writing this.) Distinguishing the detective from the criminal is always a challenge for the authorities. Still, they nevertheless managed to find me, and my ongoing brushes with the law were well-documented.

(This must have happened while I was away.)

Please remember, there is no copy.

Mapping greed, she writes, the words underlined, … Mapping greed is a thankless task.

Do what you want with this: Reminisce. Advocate. Grieve. Write.

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Cities have their cycles and we’re approaching the high-speed end of ours. Beautiful as they are in their fashion – and they are beautiful – cranes will fail; water will prevail. And scaffolding … ?

My one request, now that the sightlines between lake and city are destroyed: let it be known that our city was once near water.

I trust you to protect these notes and images.

And she ends almost as she began: By the time you read this, the person you knew will be gone; once a rich meal, now a dried biscuit.

Be well, my friend. Take note and take positions. All is not lost.”

And then the familiar signature –– ‘Ruth’, for purposes of this report.

The box was where she said it would be. It contained files of notes and glassine negative sheets –– the digital held no charm for her.

I appreciate the patience of the Committee (and the unexpected tax receipt!)

Parting with the archive hasn’t been easy and it took time to make the decision. It’s probably just as well that it be locked away.

Your advice during the investigation was most helpful.

Vera Frenkel’s ONCE NEAR WATER: Notes from the Scaffolding Archive was commissioned by the Images Festival, for SHIFT Festival of Dutch and Canadian Art in Amsterdam. It premiered at the Muziekgebouw in November 2008 and in Canada at Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre in April 2009. A two-channel installation of ONCE NEAR WATER premiered at Calgary’s EMMEDIA September 10 - 24, 2010.

Thank you.

(End of transcript)

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sculpture abstraction quays memory interpretation

memorials leaving ireland by paul whelan

On June 8, 1847 a ship pulled into Toronto harbour with seven hundred Irish emigrants escaping the Great Hunger – the potato famine. This was the beginning of a six month inundation of over 37,000 into the small city of 20,000. Many of these people were so weakened by hunger that they became easy victims of typhoid fever. By the end of the summer over 1,100 died in the temporary fever sheds erected at King and John Streets. The largely Protestant citizenry of Toronto was remarkably generous towards the largely Catholic migrants. Many public servants administering to the immigrants contracted fever and also died over that summer. Within a year, over 98% of the surviving emigrants had moved on from Toronto to the interior of British North America or even further, into the United States. The memory of Black ‘47 quickly faded from the city’s consciousness. Much like subsequent waves of immigrants, the migration of 1847 had no impact on the physical form of the city. Toronto neighbourhoods like Kensington or Cabbagetown once had large Irish communities but there is no memory of this fact imprinted onto the city. There is no part of the city that looks like Dublin, or Shanghai for that matter. Perhaps the impulse to commemorate the arrival of of a people is given impetus by their seeming lack of imprint of on the city. Ireland Park is a commemoration of the summer of 1847. It sits at the foot of an almost impossibly powerful backdrop, the grain silos of Canada Malting. The park is conceived as simple grass field with three elements - entry wall, cylinder and sculptures.

Upon entry one is confronted by a fragmented crenellated wall of Kilkenny limestone. This wall resonates as a reference to Ireland despite the fact that there is nothing like it there. The rugged quality of the wall and the stacked stone clearly reference the Irish landscape and also the construction technique of the abandoned Irish cottages. The impossibly narrow vertical gaps between the stacked stones are engraved with most of the names of those who died in Toronto that summer. Only those sufficiently emaciated from hunger could possibly slip through the wall. We must walk around it.

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The 45m by 25m park landscape is defined on the south and east sides by Lake Ontario, on the north side by the Canada Malting Grain Silos and between these edges by six new oak trees, located immediately south of the silos.

figures have a different impact. Materially they appear almost to have staggered out of the wall. They have also been distorted and generalised in a manner that universalises the suffering of crop failure and starvation. The act of turning memory to stone is extremely difficult. Ireland Park has the power necessary to invoke that memory. An internet image search yields many photos by people who have passed through the park and have been moved by it. The park succeeds because it is accessible to those who respond to the evocative abstraction of the wall as well as for those who prefer memory to be packaged more melodramatically in sculpture. Both elements are mutually reinforcing and together create a moving and contemplative place on Toronto’s waterfront. /

Behind the wall and close to the silos is a cylindrical glass block tower. While reflecting the shape of the silos, it appears far too small and perfect. Intended as a representation of contemporary Ireland and its recent high-flying high-tech economy, the challenge is that the technology embedded in the cylinder will require constant upgrading to retain its technological ascendency. Straggling across the lawn are a series of sculptures by Rowan Gillespie. These gaunt attenuated ‘arrival’ figures are a companion to similar ‘departure’ figures on a quay in Dublin. At first glance the sculptures reminded me of the figurative sculptures placed near the Vietnam memorial in Washington – figures that create a false moment in the memorial. However the Ireland Park

location: Bathurst Quay, Toronto client: Ireland Park Foundation architects: Kearns Mancini Architects landscape architect: Quinn Design Associates sculptor: Rowan Gillespie contractor: Kenaidan Contracting stone mason: Trinity Custom Masonry

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The glass silo houses the park’s controls and utilities, power, data and communication lines. Three interactive computer screens give visitors access to the story of the park, the famine tragedy that it commemorates and an acknowledgement of those who made the park possible

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gardens agriculture transition assimilation neighbourhoods

urbanism portable knowledge by christine leu

front yard production

A few years ago I bought a house in the west end of downtown Toronto. My roommate and I moved in during the winter. In early spring, when it was barely above freezing, we saw an elderly Chinese couple toiling away in their front yard every morning. We marvelled at their hard work but could never have imagined the remarkable fruits of their labour. The neighbourhood is composed mostly of detached and semi-detached houses from the early 1900s, with front porches overlooking front yards and sidewalks with private backyards and back lanes. It is home to many Portuguese families, some living in the neighbourhood for multiple generations. I am part of a recent gentrification wave. We are singles and young families who have been drawn to the cheaper land and rent, and the active nightlife and art scenes. In between these two demographics sit a few first- and second-generation Chinese families. The elderly Chinese couple are the Tongs. They are tiny, no more than five feet tall, with grey hair under their traditional bamboo hats. They are also industrious – they work long hours a day in the blistering cold of early spring, the extreme heat and humidity of summer and the first frosts of fall. The Tong family emigrated from China in the late 1990s. The extended family, six children and dozens of grandchildren, all live within a few blocks radius. The elder Tongs speak an obscure dialect of Cantonese and no English. Our communication is restricted to big smiles and eager waves hello. They were farmers in China, and after they immigrated to Canada they had nothing to do, so the family suggested that the grandparents farm as they did in China. Unlike the pristine lawns and perfectly trimmed flowers of my Portuguese neighbours, my Chinese neighbours converted their entire lawn into a small urban farm. The Tongs’ front yard is about 10’ x 10’. There are mismatched wooden boards for walkways, salvaged white, orange, green, and blue polyethylene mesh bags to protect the vegetation, miscellaneous building materials to prop up taller plants and vines, large plastic buckets for cleaning, sorting, and watering and dozens of red and green planter buckets on the walkway. There are three urban farm sites on our short street. The Tongs live in a house at the middle of the street. There is a small side plot at the family-run convenience store, and last year, the corner lot across from me was sold and the rear lot was quickly converted into a farm even before the interior renovation. We gradually realised that the elderly Tongs were farming all of these lots. Relatives had purchased the property across from mine, and the Chinese convenience store family let the couple farm it. It was confusing to piece together who did what and who lived where as there was plenty of criss-crossing on the street, people coming in and out of each other’s houses and conversations held on the sidewalk.

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My parents emigrated from Taiwan to a suburb of Toronto in the 1970s. I grew up eating very little Asian produce – bean sprouts were the only Asian vegetable to be found the local A & P. Chinese broccoli and the like would only be had on occasional visits to Chinatown. In response to changing demographics and tastes, our local grocery store gradually began to stock some ethnic produce and products. Then local Asian grocery stores appeared, and my mother finally had access to her foods from her former home. The Tong’s produce is grown from seeds purchased in Chinatown. Since they grow for themselves, they decide what they want to eat based on what they like – one grandchild stops by on his way home from school to pick tiny tomatoes as a snack. We, despite our Asian heritage, were unable to identify very much in this garden. There are mysterious melons and beans and herbs – many would be difficult to find even at a Chinese grocery store. The Tongs fertilise everything once a week and do not use pesticides. Over the spring, summer and fall their garden yields huge crops.

I must admit to a lack of interest in gardening. It reminds me of my father making me weed the front lawn. My opinion, however, is changing. My roommate and I joked about negotiating a deal with the Tongs. Maybe they could farm my front lawn in exchange for 10% of the yield. But, it would have to include basil for my pasta, arugula for my salad and mint for my lemonade. While chatting with May, one of the Tong daughters, she motioned towards my own front yard and said that I could easily grow food in it. She led me towards my lawn and picked a fistful of weeds and explained that they were edible. I had very good soil, she said, I could easily grow tomatoes and lettuce. She then offered to help grow food for us. The Tongs are a model – an answer for pressing issues like food security, healthy eating, carbon footprints, land development, scarcity of fertile land, and activities for the elderly. In a time when designers are creating solutions that require huge infrastructural outlays and a suspension of disbelief, the Tongs’ life is remarkable for its simplicity. Whereas my Portuguese neighbours – many originally from farming communities – have dropped their farming ways, the Tongs are unabashedly living as farmers in Canada’s largest city. /

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this page: Market Village, the former Cullen County Market,

Markham Ontario.

opposite: Pacific Mall, also in Markham, and Pacific Mall expansion plans.

shopping culture transit suburbanism image

typology little hong kongs by joanne lam

Hong Kong, Sundays. We wake up. We get dressed. We take public transit to a Chinese restaurant and have dim sum with my grandmother. Afterwards, we shop in the area, meandering through the streets.Then we end up at the bustling market to pick up fresh meat and vegetables for dinner. Markham, Sundays. We wake up. We get dressed.We drive to a Chinese mall, choose a restaurant and have dim sum with my grandmother when she visits. Afterwards, we wander around the mall. Before long, we end up at the supermarket that serves as a mall anchor and get groceries for the week.

The food may be just as good, the restaurant just as crowded, but pretend as we might, life in Hong Kong cannot be replicated by simply inserting it into a mall in our newly adopted country. My parents and I immigrated from Hong Kong, one of the densest cities in the world. We were part of the decade-long mass migration that left the tiny 80 square kilometre island in South China Sea to place roots in a new country before Hong Kong was returned to China by Britain. Canada, Australia and Singapore, being politically stable, economically viable and having an open- door immigration policy, were our top three choices. In the summer of 1988, we contributed to the annual 60,000 immigrants. We chose Canada. In Toronto, our new life thrived in a series of suburbs: Scarborough, Markham and Richmond Hill. Because we have always lived in small boxes in the sky, we are naturally attracted to the big houses and wide lots. Outside of our cookie cutter houses, the suburb consists of strip malls of various sizes. Since our arrival, I have watched scores of strip malls gradually become dotted with Chinese restaurants, Chinese grocery stores and Chinese bakeries, a lot of which were decorated with Imperial Palace canopies made of precast concrete. Despite the fact that the wide setback, the parking lot in front and the tinted precast bear minimal resemblance to the street-oriented development back home, the sheer amount of Chinese goods and services garnered Markham the unofficial nickname of ‘Little Hong Kong’.

In the early nineties, the strip mall fell by the wayside when Market Village emerged. On the border of Markham and Scarborough, Cullen Country Barn, a collection of shops housed in a series of cutesy brick buildings was transformed. Market Village aptly describes the outside, but is completely unrelated to the Hong Kong shops inside. It was a strange hybrid. Stores were internalised but the clusters of shops were not connected. Nevertheless, it was immediately popular from the first day. By the late nineties, a sizable area of Market Village’s parking lot was developed to be Pacific Mall. This self-acclaimed largest indoor Asian mall completely internalised the stores. For our family, it used to be a day out to Cullen Country Barn to get a taste of the Canadian countryside. Overnight, it became part of our weekend itinerary. Within the Little Hong Kong world, malls have quickly risen to landmark status. Although street grids still reign in the suburbs, they only serve the purpose of giving directions. The mall is the centre of the action because it serves as a family equaliser. It may not offer the best but makes up for it in variety, keeping each member of the family content. So, on a typical weekend we drive to one of the malls, negotiate the sea of parking and follow the corridors for dim sum, shopping and groceries. Our disconnection to spontaneous Hong Kong street life is complete. The irony is that the developer feels compelled to name the corridors in Pacific Mall after Hong Kong streets. /

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Not only do these malls disconnect us from our past, they also keep us disengaged from the present. Day to day in the suburbs there is little chance of casually interacting with the existing population or other immigrant communities. The car is the all- consuming mode of transportation; the mall is predetermined and the journey becomes a commute. Our lives are planned down to the minute and spontaneity goes out the window. Changes to how we get around is coming however, indirectly led by all of us immigrants. The many malls that have proliferated have created enough traffic woes to fortunately translate to a demand for an improved transit system. York Region Transit, of which Markham and Richmond Hill are a part, has invested in developing a rapid transit system since 2006. From strip mall to cluster mall to full-blown indoor mall, I watch Hong Kong street life being unsuccessfully reproduced, to feebly imitated, to being turned outside in. The next phase seems to be the competition for bragging rights to be the biggest Chinese mall, with Pacific Mall as a candidate proposing to triple in size. Is bigger always better? More importantly, is that how our generation of immigrants define ourselves? With its many neighbourhoods, Toronto has established itself as a very successful multicultural city. It allows each immigrant group to celebrate its culture, yet its street grid forms a coherent fabric that facilitates casual wandering and discovering. A parallel version for the suburb still needs to be conceived. If there is enough of a critical mass to drive changes in transit, surely we can demand better in our built form. We can take a page from our

lives in Hong Kong, one that emphasises street development and the public realm. Scale and density need to be recalibrated but our attention should be focussed on turning the street into public space: for shopping, travelling, socialising and meandering. Imagine turning a mall inside out and carving out blocks through its parking lot. Each block would have medium-density apartment buildings with shops and offices on the ground and second level. Instead of being cocooned by only-Chinese shops, others would set up shop because the perception of for-Chinese-shoppers-only is gone. The area can be stitched to the neighbouring lower density residential fabric rather than being separated by a fence. Shops in strip malls may suffice in the beginning when immigrants first land, however as we find our footing in Canada and develop our identity as Chinese-Canadians, our architectural expression needs to adapt, mature and innovate. We know transit will come, but what will it support? Whatever form it takes, one thing is for sure: mall typology has run its course. Little Hong Kong will never be Hong Kong, nor should it be. My family and I did not move half way across the world expecting to find the same thing. This next wave of development will define immigrants of my time and my generation. We have to design and build it recognising that we are part of a multicultural community in the suburbs of Toronto. We have to infuse it with our contemporary, Canadian, immigrant soul. /

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l imbo optimism impermanence displacement waiting

urbanism refugee camps by joanne lam

Rumour has it that some Palestinian refugees still wear their house keys around their necks, holding onto that hope that one day, they will walk into their house in Palestine again. Their conviction and their optimism have lasted for the past 60 years while generations grow up, get married and start families in the refugee camps. Nowhere else is the question of identity, migration and future planning more intertwined than for the Palestinians who have been living in limbo for decades in a neighbouring country. How does one fashion their environment to suit their needs when their future is not within their control?

carried over from the tent era, making it extremely difficult for cars to drive through. Almost 3000 families, averaging almost 9 persons per family, are packed into about 1700 units 2 . The numbers are overwhelming. Naturally, the major complaint is that housing conditions are considered too close and too noisy 3 . On the flip side, the very narrow streets and the high density makes the community very walkable and vibrant. Children play on the streets. Shops spill out onto the road. Inside the camp, the main commercial strip occupies a road that is slightly wider than others. Despite the lack of sidewalks and other urban design features, it feels safe to shop, to walk, to play and to inhabit the street. In a way, it makes for a good example of the walkable communities loudly championed by architects and planners these days. It also serves as a strong contrast to the rest of downtown Irbid where cars, pedestrians and market stalls all fight for a piece of the street, traffic lights be damned. Unfortunately, despite being a very pedestrian friendly community a mere five minutes walk from downtown Irbid, the tight conditions have garnered the camp a less than palatable reputation and is rarely visited by typical Irbidians. While Irbid Camp continues to hustle and bustle today, its future remains off topic. Even though the recently completed Irbid Master Plan looks at the population and employment growth in the next twenty years for the region and the municipality, it only documents the camp’s existing conditions. The master plan does not offer any future scenario for the land, the buildings, or

Refugee camps sprang up in Arab nations starting in 1948 at the wake of the first Arab-Israeli conflict. When the convoluted history started in 1948, UNRWA, United Nations Relief and Works Agency, set up to solely manage Palestinian refugee camps, was not in existence yet. The 1948 war was triggered by Resolution 181, passed by the United Nations General Assembly, to create a Jewish state in what was largely Palestinian land. Mayhem ensued. Borders changed. ‘Palestinian refugee’ became an official term. In Jordan, one of the four earliest refugee camps administered by UNRWA, is located in Irbid, the main city in the northern part of the country. The Jordanian government provided the land and infrastructure and at the outset, Red Cross provided emergency relief. Like typical refugee camps that are meant to be temporary, the Palestinian refugees were originally housed in tents. It was not until the late 1950s when UNRWA replaced the tents with more durable structures 1 . Over the years, the population has grown but the camp area has remained the same, resulting in the extremely crowded conditions of today. Irbid Camp sits just north of downtown Irbid, geographically separated from it by a hill and a cemetery. From the air, only the density and the defined boundary betray the existence of the camp. On the ground, it is remarkably similar to the built form around it. The palette of concrete, punched windows, and three- to four- storey buildings render the camp almost seamless with the rest of the urban fabric. The small lots and narrow streets have been

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its inhabitants. Essentially, the plan ignores it. Not on purpose, mind you, but to propose anything would mean predicting the future of the Middle East. Wading into this political, historical and emotional minefield would invariably bog down the progress of the master plan. However, the camp’s future, purely in terms of living conditions, needs to be addressed. Though Palestinian refugees in Jordan are granted Jordanian citizenship and are free to move outside the camp, many stay for reasons such as being close to family, or having easy access to refugee support. The current buildings and community layout is without a doubt overcrowded and unsustainable. Ignoring it will only let the problem get worse. By separating the political discussions from the one about everyday living conditions, at least a plan can be sketched out for the future, just like any other community. Whether the negotiations are starting or stalling, life continues inside Irbid Camp. Let it be established that building a permanent community does not take away the refugee’s right of return, nor does it tie them to the unit in which they are currently residing. It is merely a physical and structural plan, for both the Palestinian refugees and the Jordanian government. Regardless of when a peace agreement is signed, the plan is implemented in stages to ensure the living conditions are supporting the growing population. The broad strokes may or may not seem attainable or realistic depending on the current political climate, but at least, they are laid out clearly for all, especially the Palestinian refugees, to see. Only then will the discussions begin. UNWRA, after a decade of tents, provided concrete and mortar. Approximately 50 years afterwards, the agency started an infrastructure and camp improvement programme that ‘promotes environmentally and socially sustainable neighbourhoods’ 4 , with

pilot projects upgrading housing and public squares in Syria and West Bank. Thus, the camps are effectively being treated as communities in situ, and UNWRA is carefully, albeit unofficially, taking the long term view, come what may on the political front. It is a small but significant step. The Jordanian government, specifically Irbid Municipality, should follow UNWRA’s lead. It is never too early to start work on a community plan on Irbid Camp and the surrounding areas, ensuring that it is well connected to downtown Irbid. Ultimately, it will be Irbid and its citizens who have the most to gain or lose. City building evokes a certain permanence, a certain legacy that has been capitalised upon by emperors, dictators and heads of states around the globe. Though the definition of city building is broad, it is usually differentiated from temporary structures, held up by air or cables, that denote a definite timeline to their existence. Attaching a time limit to architecture and planning is a contradiction. Yet, this contradiction is exactly what the Palestinian refugees are living through, their futures hinging on outcome of discussions far away. They could be here for many more decades, or they could potentially cross the border tomorrow, homeward bound. Being stuck in a state of temporary permanence renders the Palestinian refugees powerless. A plan will give them some direction, and therefore, hope. /

1 www.unrwa.org 2 Ministry of Municipal Affairs. Irbid Master Plan . Jordan, 2010 3 Blome Jacobsen, Laurie. Community Development of Palestinian Refugee Camps: The Material and Social Infrastructure, and Environmental Conditions of Refugee Camps in Jordan. Oslo: Fafo. 2004 4 www.unrwa.org

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waiting planning putting up with enduring l iving

urbanism permanently temporary by samo pedersen

samo pedersen

The other day I found a migrant village on the top of my building. Just to clarify I live in a 22 storey apartment building in Shanghai. I have found out since, by climbing some more rooftops, this is not an uncommon phenomenon. Through my travels I have seen quite some different settlements, floating villages in Halong Bay and Lake Titicaca, housing-caves in Tunisia and outback Australia, various favelas and shanty towns. However I must say I was caught by surprise. It is actually wrong to mention previous listed settlements in this context, as they have very little to do with my newly discovered rooftop habitats. First the rooftop migrant worker housing is not an informal settlement, but mainly for people who are employed within the building, as cleaners, security guards, porters, kitchen staff in case there is a restaurant. Further it is not an isolated village. Mainly these people from the rooftops are working in the service sector, positioning them in a vital part of the urban network. The reason for being surprised was not so much for finding people living among plant and AC units but the fact that their rooms were planned to be there. The developer, architect and whoever else was designing the building agreed that the best way to use the penthouse/rooftop terrace was to create some very low quality units, that most of all remind me of lift shafts with beds and televisions in them. A worker told that in his case it is only temporary, this living under these conditions. When he has saved enough money he will move back to his home town and start his own business.

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