Things too small to seem to matter, yet have a large impact on how we live, design and plan.
on site $12 display until october 2010
culture urbanism architecture landscape photography research
Small Things 23
MORRIS AND HELEN BELKIN ART GALLERY
JAMELIE HASSAN AT THE FAR EDGE OF WORDS June 18 - August 22, 2010 Since the 1960s, Jamelie Hassan’s work has been influenced by cultural politics and personal history. This exhibition presents work that takes up her interests in memory, language, text, and identity. This exhibition is curated by Melanie Townsend and Scott Watson and co-organized by Museum London and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia. The project was made possible with support from the City of London, the Ontario Arts Council, the British Columbia Arts Council and The Canada Council for the Arts.
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For further information please contact: Naomi Sawada at naomi. sawada@ubc.ca tel: (604) 822-3640, or fax: (604) 822-6689
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery University of British Columbia 1825 Main Mall Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z2
Hatje Cantz Architecture
arium Weather and Architecture Edited by Neeraj Bhatia, Jürgen Mayer H., texts by George Baird, Chad Dembski, Robert Levit, Henry Urbach, Mason White u.a., Rodolphe el-Khoury, graphic design by Eric Bury 2009. 320 pp., 70 ills., 37 in color, 170 drawings and diagrams
A handbook on weather and architecture Is Weather the last vestige of nature in the city? Do the forces in Weather systems hold the key to the energy crisis? Is instability and disorder something that can be designed? Is Weather the nemesis of Architecture or its best friend? Is Weather becoming the last form of cultural specificity? Does it all come down to the “green”? Arium is a guidebook to Weather and Architecture. Examining the relationship between the atmosphere, built environment, culture, and politics, this comprehensive research project—under the direction of the architect Jürgen Mayer H. from Berlin and urban designer Neeraj Bhatia from Toronto—offers an in-depth look at our contemporary understanding of weather through critical examinations of design and architecture.
15,80 x 23,40 cm hardcover
ISBN 978-3-7757-2540-8
http://www.hatjecantz.de
Let us look at small things. Modest, but important things; little, but beautiful; small of budget, slender of means. Things that are slight in scale, intense in impact. We’ve recently seen the crash of grande capitalisme and its struggling return. This has, perhaps, made us think a bit more about an architecture of intimacy, of personal attachment, of close attention.
sma l l things
on site 23
contents
Obra Ivan Hernandez Quintela Steve Chodoriwsky Department of Unusual Certainties Joe Ringenberg Josep Muñoz
2 4 6
Eight Points of Architettura Povera Aikido Architecture, Mexico City An Interview with Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Tokyo Anatomy of a Parkette, Toronto A Story in 36 Chapters FAD Door, Barcelona the lower case reading room, Vancouver Bar in a Box, Barcelona Small Lessons, Edmonton Little Feet, Calgary Marking Shadows, Vancouver Economy of Means: Fairey Marine, Hamble, UK Authentic Imposters Small Angles, Edmonton NOSA Research and Development Building, Teheran Small Companions
8 13 14 16 18 19
Grey Hernandez Carol Kleinfeldt Peter Osborne Gerald Forseth Matthew Woodruff Charles Lawrence
20 22 24 26 27 28 31 32 34 36 38 42 44 46 48 51 52 55 56 57 59 60 65 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 79 80
Melissa Jacques Myron Nebozuk Reza Aliabadi Gerald Forseth Matthew Johnson Steve Sopinka Chris Allen Rutger Huiberts + Evangelos Kotsioris
Weather Room, eastern Washington Micro-Studios, North Bay Ontario Oliver Farmers Market, Oliver BC Sacred Signs, Greece
Michael Leeb Denis Calnan Jon Piasecki John Gillanders
Building Drums, Claresholm Alberta Small Town Edges, Weston Ontario Small Acts of Landscape, western Massachussetts Small-Lot Solutions, Toronto Washrooms, Toronto Small Space Architecture, New York Small Edges 1, Toronto Small Edges 2 Mini-Shelters, Plymouth, UK Small Urbanity, Dublin Main Street Boundaries, Toronto The Sign Remains the Same, London 50.end, Copenhagen Getting Smaller Small Projects: Deydinler, Turkey and Katebo, Uganda Small Indignities, Edmonton Cuba Tarpology, Nanaimo BC Jamelie Hassan’s At the Edge of Words subscriptions and the call for articles, issue 24
Paul Whelan Shelby Doyle Paul Whelan Ruth Carolina Mora Izturriaga Ilona Hay Paul Whelan Victoria Beltrano Michael Summerton Samo Pederson Reza Aliabadi Kelley Beaverford Ron Wickham
Carol Kleinfeldt Stephanie White Stephanie White
Masthead Ivan Hernandez Quintela S White
contributors’ biographical notes front cover: Akido Architecture back cover: Tarpology
DEPARTMENT OF UNUSUAL CERTAINTIES
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eight points of architettura povera
un - manifestos | provisionality by obra architects
process working methods time intuition borderlessness
The term Architettura Povera is transposed from the famous description of Arte Povera made by Germano Celant when writing about a group of young artists working in Italy in the late sixties. The group, more than working under the protective conceptual umbrella of any defined manifesto, shared a disposition of disdain towards preconceived artistic principles. They were not only weary of theoretical frameworks to define the art, but also of any defined artistic language, which was viewed by them as more of an impediment to become intimate with the things of the world than an aid, in that sense. They tended to use the simplest materials found in nature, for example, metal, dirt, water, rivers, land, snow, fire, glass, air, stone, leaves, newspaper, and also, light, weight, electricity, measurement, stress, people, time, smell and horses. The materials were invariably left uncovered and relied on the specificity of their material substance for their effect. Rather than an exhaustive review of the works of Arte Povera , we recall these artists for their willingness to attempt an erasure of distinction between doing art and living. We would like to offer a consideration of Arte Povera in relationship to architecture to provide a kind of sympathetic lens through which to look at our recent work. The term povera or poor coincides with a desire to avoid material gloss and to get as close as possible to the elemental being of the matter involved, but in this consideration and as employed by Celant has more to do more with a self-imposed limitation of choices and assumptions. Or, as Gide would have it, ‘Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better’. 1 We would like to provide eight principles, albeit somewhat un- Arte Povera to suggest such an ordering, and therefore we propose eight PROVISIONAL principles underlying the work.
1 We are doomed from the start ‘To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail.’ — Beckett 2 We work to achieve certain mysterious moments of rare correspondence between an initial act of intuition and what would seem to be a real ideal object with a unique presence. Naturally, this kind of work is perpetually besieged by doubt. One aspect of the distinction between architecture and everyday lived reality that would be befitting to an Architettura Povera would be a treatment of the sense of time, analogous to the way we experience it in reality. How do you work in architecture with an idea of time that is different from the time of clocks and watches, the time of minutes and seconds, time chopped up and quantified, with rather time as it is felt, this chronological space that we’re in and we can’t escape from? It is both a reassuring and a terrifying predicament. For example, in our work, how do we achieve that sense of time about which Spinoza proclaimed, ‘We know and feel that we are eternal’. 3 How do you do something like that in architecture? From the outset we are doomed to failure. 2 To be honest with you, we always do the same thing We aspire to extend the intentions of our work from project to project, constantly looking for the possibility to address the same problems, leaving behind any orthodox notion of regionalism or site specificity. It is precisely because we always try to do the same thing that projects are very different from each other. The infinite variety of the nature of things is responsible for the difference between them. We might try to reinvent the wheel, but we always are trying to make the same wheel, it just comes out differently with each effort. 3 We are unable to ever finish anything If one behaves as human beings typically do, with an objective in mind, one wants to get somewhere, arrive at something, achieve certain goals. Then all things become objectified, everything becomes related to those goals, and time is flattened. But, as we’ve pointed at in our first principle, we have very slim chances of success anyway, so why not simply postpone the idea of achieving anything? Why not scrap all objectives? Or even better, why not make the effort of trying to do whatever there is to be done the objective in and of itself? As Borges said it, much more beautifully, ‘Every step you take is the goal you seek’. 4 So the work is never finished, or even better, it is always complete. Then the objective and the work of pursuit itself become one and the same; action and life become one, the work never finished, and reality infinite. Time is simply filled with a sequence of things that one does to perfect the work, forward and back, coinciding with the duration of natural lives.
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4 Make sure to only talk about food and drink Kierkegaard said about his hero Socrates, that he always talked exclusively about food and drink, but really he was talking about the infinite, while the others spent all of the time talking about the infinite in the loudest voices, while they really were only talking about food and drink. We believe that there is a deep sense of practicality that pervades the best architecture and that, well understood, summons that vertigo of the infinite much better than anything else. The infinite, as we know, can be infinitely large or infinitely small, and as such it is present in everything. Nothing converges to the essence of architecture as the potential clarified by the inhabitation it may suggest. 5 Our designs will be bettered by others One important aspect of a povera outlook is an interest for the living things of the world. The artists became interested in animals, plants, and even in the apparently dormant vitality of rocks and minerals, and of course in themselves and others. In that light a project must be left open to that vitality which then will have an opportunity to manifest itself by changing the architecture in both reversible and irreversible ways as time passes. When such openness is of a reversible nature, it may simply have to do with appropriately staging the potential of inhabitation. In the case of irreversible change, it has more to do with growth as analogous to biological growth, that is, not by fragments , which beget monstrosity and deformity, but rather by moments in a process of continuous transformation. 6 Maybe it is good not to be understood The Povera artist chooses the hard life of living amongst things, aspiring everyday to travel the distance that separates our knowledge from the essence of things. This is a trip undertaken in solitude. Every thing which exists, once known, can perform a function of communication; it has the potential to be conceptually understood and also bears with it the potential to become a sign. That sign is one more obstacle in the search for the true knowledge of things; that sign is one more enemy in the effort to attain an understanding of essences. In the 1930s, Ortega y Gasset spoke of the megaphone and the radio as the new enemies of man. Unrecognisable things –obscurity– point our consciousness in unknown directions, expanding the horizon of experience away from the familiar. Or, as Germano Celant, considering the alternative, put it, ‘Moving within linguistic systems to remain language translates into a form of cultural kleptomania that stifles the vitality of real daily life’.
7 If you want to do good architecture you have to be gullible St. Augustine said, ‘Faith is believing what you do not see; the reward of faith is to see what you believe’. 5 It is well known that the worst enemies of faith are the same as the worst enemies of art: skepticism and relativism. Skepticism suspects that nothing is true; relativism claims that everything can be true. They are both false. The belief in the effective existence of the object of perception or imagination is an aspect of their essence and the foundation of everything for us. 8 If you can’t come up with anything, you are probably thinking too much Embodiments of energy and the vital essence of all things were cornerstones of the works of Arte Povera , centering on an interest for the lives of animals and their existence directed by instinct as non-conceptual yet marvellous adaptation to vital problems. Intuition as a method of essential inquiry is related to the idea of instinct. Thought deals with things that have already happened, things executed and completed. If I move my arm, and I think about it, I break it up into moments of that movement. Intuition, instead, happens simultaneously with the moment lived, and thus it is aware of processes in their very unfolding.
v
1 André Gide (1869-1951)
2 Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). ‘Three Dialogues’, by Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit, p 21, in Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays , ed. Martin Esslin. Prentice-Hall, 1965 3 ‘Yet it is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our body can bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time, or have any relation to time. But, notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal.’ Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677) ‘Part V. On the Power of the Understanding, or of Human Freedom’ in Ethics, trans. by R H M Elwes (1883), MTSU Philosophy WebWorks Hypertext Edition, 1997 4 Jorge Luis Borges. Collected Fictions , translated by Andrew Hurley. Penguin Books, 1999. pp 504-507 For the original Spanish version, ‘La rosa de Paracelso’, see Borges, Obras Completas, Tomo III . Emecé, 1996. pp 387-390
5 Saint Augustine (354-430), Sermons, 43, 1
Lecture given on the occasion of a solo exhibit of work by OBRA Architects at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island, 9 April 2004.
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aikido architecture the insinuated furniture project
urbanism | streets by ivan hernandez quintela
absence stealth
seeds marks tactics
In the martial arts of aikido, one learns to use an opponent’s strength to create one’s own strength. I like this because it offers tactics to people that might seem as the weaker player to confront bigger opponents. I have always thought that a similar tactic could be used in the practice of architecture – a practice where one single individual could impact the city one gesture at a time. This individual would work with his or her body, one spot at a time, but that each small gestures could be contagious, could be reproducible, could spread all over the city; a sort of acupunctural architecture where one invades one zone of the city but could actually get to affect a much broader area. One would use the existing patterns, habits and idiosyncrasies of the city towards itself. I picture myself as an aikido-architecture practitioner and intervene the city with small projects called urban prosthetics. These projects attempt to shake the city one spot at a time. I would like to use one example to explain what I mean by aikido architecture. The Insinuated Furniture project attempts to call attention
to a lack of pubic furniture in Mexico City at the same time that it draws attention to the way inhabitants empower themselves against it. The project consists first of walking around the city noticing architectural surfaces that people use to lean and rest their bodies even though such surfaces where not designed for that purpose. I then draw over those surfaces, with masking tape, silhouettes of familiar furniture, such as the silhouettes of a chair, a bench, a table or a bed in order to call attention to them. I feel that such an act makes visible the creativity that everyday users of the city practice. I feel that my silhouettes could be drawn by anyone, and that soon, the entire city could be drawn over, making all surfaces inhabitable. I feel that such acts make anyone feel that they can conquer space. I feel that such gestures could provoke a new participatory attitude towards the city, where each inhabitant could construct little by little alternative ways to interact and inhabit their city. I feel that all of us have an aikido-practitioner within us waiting to be released – that all of us are makers of our city. v
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yoshiharu tsukamoto on pet architecture the micro-urbanism of atelier Bow-Wow
micro - urbanism | tokyo by steve chodoriwsky
scale interruption echoes body space
a conversation about small things conducted in March 2010 at the Tsukamoto Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology Department of Architecture
Much of your work focuses on a serious consideration of small space as bona fide space—not as something nostalgic or cute, but rather as a contemporary fact, something both useful and enjoyable. What are your thoughts on this? I think smallness can be a very strong tool for directing a design. For me, the very important thing is to handle the differences that emerge in every level of architectural composition and articulation. So if you want to make even a simple composition between rooms, some differences already emerge. Each room is just a room, but once they’re connected, their relationships create great differences—where you go in, or where you look— — it becomes complicated very quickly – It starts to be full of difference through these things. I think that, currently, the architectural discussion in Japan is based on how to deal with these small differences: how much you rationalise inevitable differences, how much you avoid or accentuate given differences from the outside environment, like site conditions or sunlight. If you start to be conscious of these changes, you need to break down levels of understanding into smaller elements and dimensions. For example, if you are aware of the temperature, this part of the room is really different from over there near the window. The light condition also changes. This is my interest with smallness—how to open up these kinds of different investigations, to understand the different qualities of space.
I’m interested in the connection between your small-scale preoccupations and your larger scale urban research. Do you feel that there are appropriate, effective ways to shift from the small scale to larger scales, or vice versa? In terms of scale, the biggest programs can also be embedded in the small scale. This idea always encourages me to be brave or proud to be working at a very small scale. I like to deal with large issues through a scale that can be really handled, because you need a good ear to hear the echo between a very small thing and a big issue. I really like to make this comparison. Showing the sound of the echo between this and that can be sometimes very enigmatic, sometimes elegant . . . . . . and sometimes humourous. In a recent essay you wrote that, when designing a small house in Tokyo, it’s impossible to have an effect on the city and so ‘it is allowed to be dreamlike—an object of our imagination’. I’ve always felt that your small work are somewhat fleeting, maybe even suitably incomplete. They’re not microcosms of grand concepts – you seem more concerned with articulating this echo relationship . . . I learned this from Jean-Luc Godard, when he was criticised by French journalists for not going to Vietnam to shoot a film; instead, he stayed in Paris. And Godard said, it’s not necessary for a film to go to Vietnam, but the more important thing is to let Vietnam pour into the film. This is an issue of echo. I like very much this attitude to the world, that you cannot be representative of the whole world, but you can create an echo with it.
House + Atelier Bow-Wow
A Project
[architects] Atelier Bow-Wow [location] Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo [site area] 109.03sqm [building area] 59.76sqm [total floor area] 211.27sqm [structure] reinforced concrete and steel frame [photo] Atelier Bow-Wow
[architects] Atelier Bow-Wow [location] Tokyo [photo] Atelier Bow-Wow
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The concepts Pet Architecture and Micro Public Space come up consistently in your activities. With them, how do you feel smallness is linked to promoting good spatial practice? I am interested in the concept of smallness as it relates to body consciousness – a relationship between space and the body. Since most of our basic understanding of urban space for everyday living is very segregated, life becomes quite mechanical somehow. All the pieces are articulated as a kind of packaged service within the city, and if you have enough money, you can enjoy this itinerary, visiting these packages, one by one. The body, though, is something which tries to go beyond this controlled experience, through inventive spatial practice. In certain places, right when the body goes beyond this package, you can feel like you have discovered the earth – a kind of wild aspect of the living condition of human beings. I like very much the feeling of de-packaging these services. So if you buy a house produced by Sekisui [ an industrialised housing company ] in a new suburban development ninety minutes from Tokyo Station by train, your whole life could be packaged. But on the other hand, in Pet Architecture buildings, which we found to be very interesting, don’t fit into this framework.
Yes, although they lack size, they retain extremely customised functions, and also personalities. Their time and space are not served by anyone or anything, they’re really there, and this condition is irreplaceable. And the participation of the real body really supports the existence of that combination of time and space. This is quite strong for me; it stimulates my sensibility of urban living conditions today. Our intention was to show Pet Architecture as the foreground—I think it is often just pushed to the background. Do you think they play the role of urban monuments? Yes, I think it’s a kind of micro-monument, a witness to the transformation of the city. I found that Pet Architecture emerges out of specific contexts, where new or enlarged streets cut through old urban fabric, or, in spaces where the geometry of curving rivers or railways encounter orthogonal street patterns. They always appear at very unique points where these interventions occur. In that sense, they definitely have a monumental aspect. And people are really fond of these buildings, they become imprinted onto individuals’ memories. If you ask someone to talk about Pet Architecture in their neighbourhood, they can usually mention at least two or three really tiny buildings . . . Compared to an individual’s daily routine, which you frame as a series of complete packages, Pet Architecture becomes a kind of jarring interruption. This tells of an insufficiency or incompleteness in these buildings. But this also allows them to open to the environment – that’s an important quality. They can’t be closed-off systems; they must be helped by other buildings . . . I really like the generosity of Tokyo, which allows these kinds of structures. The city doesn’t want to clean them up, or force every building to be formal. Of course new construction must fit to regulations, but still, they can keep a feeling of informality . . . v
atelier bow-wow
things you might like to know but never have the chance to ask: Atelier Bow-Wow is a translation from the Japanese Atelier Wan, which is, naturally enough, the sound a dog makes in Japanese. Doubling the wordplay, Wan written in phonetic Japanese, is homonymous with One.
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the anatomy of a parkette Our observations suggest strongly that open places intended as public squares should be very small. – Christopher Alexander 1 The attraction of urban life is in being able to obtain a level of convenience and comfort similar to inside a room even while outside. – Atelier Bow-Wow 2
typology | parks by department of unusual certainties
interstices parks toronto opportunities confusion
Toronto and its parkettes Small public spaces in Toronto are commonly referred to as parkettes – a canadianism which speaks to our affinity for parkland as the quintessential public space in our cities. Under this association any public space too small to be a park (i.e. too small to serve active recreational activities or ecological functions) wins the diminutive title of parkette. This linguistic turn handicaps the parkette from the outset – forever compared to the accomplishments of its big brother, without having its own distinct virtues recognized. The City’s Parks and Recreation Department currently takes care of roughly 537 small public spaces in the city, where small is defined as anything under 0.5 hectares. Not all are listed as parkettes, and many have no name at all. Most of these spaces have been acquired ad-hoc by the City — orphans of the property market – awkward corners, traffic circles, road allowances, surplus land from infrastructure projects. They are unwanted bits and pieces of land that for some reason or another could not turn a profit. Each parkette, in its deviation from the norms of the property market, reveals a small story about the development of the city. The City of Toronto itself lacks formal records of how and why these spaces have been acquired. The Parks and Recreation Department struggles with the definition, programming and servicing of these spaces. For this reason, we see a value in delving deeper into this study to explore the nature of these spaces and to start asking what they could become. The following is the first step in this research project; a preliminary attempt to classify these different kinds of small public spaces, and highlight their significance.
the virtue of small public places Christopher Alexander, in A Pattern Language, determines the ideal size of a public space by relating it to the physical limits of the senses. A public space should never be wider than 70 feet because this is roughly the maximum distance at which a person’s face is recognisable in a crowd and it also nears the limit at which a person’s voice ceases to be audible. Thus the relation of space to the body and the senses is at its highest in these small public spaces. Intimacy is also an oft-cited value attached to these spaces, although the term is more difficult to pin down. Atelier Bow-Wow –masters of the small, with their study of tiny or pet architectures in Tokyo and their own brand of incredibly small house designs – see intimate urban life as gaining a sense of an interior life even while outside. In this sense small public spaces act as a collective living room where people feel the convenience and comfort normally found in their own homes, even while out in public among strangers. Such spaces are often described as being imbued with a heightened energy because of their embedded position in the urban fabric. Their economy of size intrinsically links them to their surroundings: one can directly observe the ballet of city life, the passers-by on the street, the shops and their window displays, the motor engine blasts and honking horns, the person sitting by their second-floor window eating a bowl of soup. But, just because something is made small doesn’t mean that the above-listed virtues will suddenly materialise. Small public spaces in the city are a mixed-bag. A lot is dependent on how the space is maintained, the subtleties of design, how the space is programmed and how people appropriate the space in the end. Much of the time, small urban public spaces underperform, sitting empty and forlorn – untapped opportunities for public life. This mixed-bag syndrome becomes immediately evident with a preliminary study of the spaces in our own town, Toronto.
Parkettes ≤ 0.1 hectare Toronto’s smallest parkettes in the context of the six former municipalities which now make up the current city of Toronto. Each municipality had its own methodology for creating parkettes – Toronto inherited an assortment of types, each developed through a unique process, solidifying the parkette as a creature of circumstance.
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typological examples Urban Cuts
These spaces are essentially vacant lots which have been taken off the property market and transformed into public spaces. They are immediately recognisable as cuts in the urban fabric – a sudden and conspicuous absence of building in a built-up area. They suggest a history of a building that no longer exists. The cycle of building and rebuilding is halted and a broken aspiration for land development is memorialised in the space. The space not only reveals a past failure, but also the hidden infrastructure of the city – the bare firewalls of adjacent properties, rear lanes and views to the backs of houses on adjacent streets. These parkettes peel back a layer of the city and allow us to glimpse its inner workings.
name: Dundas/Watkinson Parkette location: 2742 Dundas Street West size: 0.09 hectares rank: 165th smallest park in Toronto
elements: seating
waste bin water fountain table lighting trees and plants playground equipment
Grid Interrupted Toronto is a grid city. That said, sometimes large infrastructure projects, changes in topography and a few errant streets interrupt the grid, creating awkwardly shaped parcels of land. Because zoning by-laws, building codes and building practices are generally geared toward building on rectangular plots of land, wherever the grid is interrupted, a small piece of triangular land is often left over. While most of these leftover bits remain private and are used for patios, storage or parking, some are converted into public space. In these instances parkettes reveal the obstinacy of the grid and the cookie-cutter nature of building codes and practices. Even in places where the grid has been interrupted, the built fabric continues to be stamped out in rectilinear orthogonal forms, producing triangular orphans of open space.
name: un-named location: Dundas Street West between Clendenan Avenue and St. Johns Rd
elements: seating
waste bin lighting trees and plants
size: unknown rank: unknown
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Lakefront Slips The older lakefront neighbourhoods on both ends of the city were laid out without a lakefront public street. For the most part, private residential properties back onto the lake, granting the lucky few a privileged view. By-products of the grid however are the small pockets of land left over where the north-south road meets the lake. These spaces vary in their usability, some of them precariously wedged between asphalt and a precipitous bluff, but many afford enough space to accommodate a singular bench – allowing for philosophical gazing into the expansive emptiness of the lake.
elements: trees and plants
name: un-named location: the end of 12th Street size: 0.12 hectares rank: not listed
Subway Surplus Lands When building the city’s subway lines, swathes of land were appropriated by the Toronto Transit Commission, usually between a major commercial corridor and the residential neighbourhoods adjacent to it. After construction was complete, the surplus land was no longer needed and was either converted into public parking lots, sold off for development or converted into parkettes. Because of their location next to transportation hubs, these spaces are often used as shortcuts for commuters getting to and from their homes. They are perhaps the most transitory of spaces in the
small public space catalogue. name: Susan Tibaldi Parkette location: 620 Brock Avenue size: 0.11 hectares rank: 184th smallest park
elements: playground equipment seating event board water fountain lighting trees and plants waste bin
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Traffic Islands These are generally the smallest public spaces in the city. They occur at cul-de-sacs or in areas with irregular traffic convergences. Normally separated by roadways on all sides, they are also the least accessible and are correspondingly supplied with the fewest public amenities. In fact most are not intended for any kind of use whatsoever and merely act as an aesthetic feature of mediocre quality. Some have a flower bed, but most are sparsely landscaped. Because of their general uselessness and low-aesthetic quality, they give parkettes a bad reputation.
name: Platsis Parkette location: Mimco Street size: 0.01 hectare rank: not listed
elements: trees and plants
Road Allowances Road allowance parkettes occur in places where the City has withheld land from the property market for a public road. In some cases the road allowance is wider than needed and even after the road is built there is ample space left over. At this point it becomes possible for the Parks and Recreation Department to take over the space and convert it into a parkette. Road allowance parkettes function more as enhanced streetscaping projects than anything else. Benches, public art and landscape elements frame both sides of the street and provide a setting for people to sit and watch the hustle and bustle of the street. The character of the park spaces is defined by the street that it is situated next to; they work best in very urban settings where there is a lot of street activity. In suburban areas, or areas dominated by large singular institutional structures, they aren’t as effective.
elements: seating
name: Toronto Jail Parkette location: 0 Don Jail Parkway
waste bin
trees and plants
size: 0.47 hectares rank: 518th smallest
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Awkward Situations These spaces occur when streets, infrastructure, land parcels and buildings collide in an irregular way. Because of the regularity of the grid in Toronto, these chaotic situations are rare. However, when they do occur they are a refreshing change in what is otherwise a rather monotonous street layout. In this sense they are like beauty marks – blemishes, that because of their rarity, are appreciated. The public spaces created in these spaces take on unusual dimensions to fill in the awkward situation. Columbus Parkette begins as a narrow opening on Dundas, rapidly slopes downward and widens out, framed on the back end by a series of laneways and garages.
elements: playground equipment seating lighting water fountain waste bin trees and plants
name: Columbus Parkette location: 1985 Dundas Street West
size: 0.24 hectares rank: 354th smallest
looking forward Small public spaces in Toronto are under-studied. As the city grows significantly in density, these spaces will become more important as more users share the same finite public resource. Looking forward, there are several questions we need to address if we want to maximise the quality of these small public spaces. Ultimately the goal should be similar to what Atelier Bow-Wow says of creating a space where one feels all the comforts and conveniences of being in one’s own living room, even while outside. As a way forward we suggest three actions to be incorporated into the the design of small public spaces.
1 Accommodate the lives and needs of contemporary citizens, especially in the context of an increasingly large and dense city. This needs more research into what those lifestyles and needs are, as well as how different spaces and functions – not only public ones – currently respond to them. 2 Explore and experiment with different kinds of programs and amenities that can be designed into outdoor small public spaces, beyond your standard set of benches, swings and slides. 3 Provoke community stewardship, creating a situation where the community members can give the space an added-value beyond that supplied by the Parks and Recreation Department. v
1 Christopher Alexander. ‘Pattern 61. Small Public Squares’ A Pattern Language , 1977 2 Atelier Bow-Wow. Post Bubble City , 2006
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a story in 36 chapters narrative | architectural starting points by joe ringenberg technology
urbanism research reflection
I am for an architecture that begins as a story, some scenario or recollection instead of as
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Foment de les Arts i del Disseny’s door
architecture | entrances by josep munoz
barcelona signs passage attention urban details
In the Plaça dels Àngels, the doorway of the Foment de les Arts i del Disseny was jockeying for position by means of a large sign above the small entrance, drawing on Venturi’s I am a monument philosophy. Nonetheless, the door to the chapel of Convent del Àngels continued to steal the show. The new proposal situates itself, observes its surroundings and integrates; it is a mechanism for standing out, consolidating the urban landscape and revaluing each line of sight. In this way, the door turns from the perpendicular that was its original position to stand parallel to the façade of the Convent dels Àngels in relation to the street. This shift gives the door a higher profile presence in the eyes of the city, at the same time creating more direct line of sight between the interior and the outside. Simultaneously, the door increases in height, establishing a direct relation with the compositional order of the door to the chapel. In this way, the Plaça dels Àngels recognises the presence of both doorways. The raw material used to make the door is black steel, simply treated with industrial varnish to protect and enhance it. On the inside, the threshold is intensified in lead paint – a metaphor of protection and continuous transition. The door and sign frames are made of sandblasted stainless steel to establish an abstract interplay of space and time. v
This project has received two recent awards: Young Architects Association from Catalan Architectural College - AJAC VI Award and an Urban Landscape Award from La Vanguardia
above: competing doorways: on the left FAD, on the right Capella, a convent chapel used as the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona’s exhibition area right: new FAD door revolving away from the building face to more fully engage with the adjacent Carrer dels Àngels street axis opposite: the FAD presents its information in a coherent assemblage to the outside, and pulls throught to the inside with a passage of orange painted steel Simultàniament, l’alçada de la porta creix i s’estableix una relació directa amb l’ordre compositiu de la porta de la capella. D’aquesta manera, la plaça dels Àngels queda presidida per ambdues portes. La matèria prima per a la constitució de la porta és l’acer negre i, com a tal, es conserva intacte exteriorment, mitjançant vernís industrial que el protegeix i l’embelleix. Interiorment es conceptualitza la volumetria de pas, en taronja, com a metàfora de protecció del trànsit continu. Els marcs, per contra, són d’acer inoxidable sorrejat i es relacionen els uns amb els altres mitjançant un joc abstracte en l’espai i el temps. A la plaça dels Àngels, la porta del FAD lluitava per aconseguir posicionar-se mitjançant un cartell de grans dimensions sobre el petit accés, proper a la filosofia venturiana del I am a monument. Malgrat tot, la porta d’accés a la capella del Convent dels Àngels prenia tot el protagonisme. La nova proposta se situa, observa l’entorn i s’hi integra; i aquesta integració és un mecanisme per singularitzar-se, consolidant el paisatge urbà i revalorant-ne cadascuna de les visuals. Així, la porta gira en relació a la perpendicular sobre la qual es recolza, i se situa paral.lelament a la façana del Convent dels Àngels respecte del carrer dels Àngels mateix. La porta, gràcies al gir, aconsegueix una presencia més gran davant del ciutadà i, a la vegada, les visuals de l’interior cap a l’exterior es multipliquen.
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the lower case reading room zines and things
architecture | the regional assembly of text by grey hernandez
reading accomodation pr ivacy adaptation l ibrar ies
There are other larger and more complete zine libraries. The Anchor in Halifax, or ZAAP! in Seattle and in Vancouver The Purple Thistle, have extensive collections, as well as residency programs, lecture series, and workshops. But none manages to do so much with so little. This was not The Regional Assembly of Text’s original intention. When the Emily Carr graduates took over the space from Lucky Comics, it was being used as an office. Gradually it was transformed into an art gallery, complete with a curator and opening night parties. That such a small space required so much effort to maintain became an issue, and so the lowercase reading room was born. In doing so, it has became a beacon for bibliophiles, comic nerds, typography enthusiasts, print makers, and artists across the city.
Libraries, by their nature, are often ambitious monuments to nationalism or architectural ego. The reader can be an afterthought, which in part is what makes the lowercase reading room so charming. Coming in at just under 3m 2 , what is possibly the smallest library in the world is located in a stationary store in Vancouver. Housed in a former closet, the lowercase reading room was started in 2005 by Rebecca Dolan and Brandy Fedoruk as a means of housing their zine collection. In a space just big enough to stuff a vacuum, the founders of the Regional Assembly of Text have managed to amass and display one of the best collections of small books in the country.
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The scale of the space also suits the content. Self published, hand printed, often labouriously fabricated using retrograde technology, zines are monomanial love poems to obscure subjects. Often they are received by an equally tiny audience. Small books are mini- propaganda machines for groups of one, published in desperation from the margins by activists, pedants, radicals, and loners. Think about the fan base of I Hate This Part of Texas , for example, or Cinema Sewer . Miniscule, probably, but certainly not indifferent. Architects in particular have had a long affinity for them, as Beatriz Colomia notes in her upcoming book on the subject, Clip, Stamp Fold: the Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X .
It is fitting that the scale of the space suits the aim of the visitor. Take its dimensions: only 3’6” x 9’, with a sloping ceiling under the stairs above. A small light illuminates a wooden bench and pillow and there is a foot stool. All around the room there are tiny four inch selves jammed with hundreds of small folded books, glued, stapled and hand stitched together. On the right hand wall are the books thoughtfully curated for the visitors enjoyment on themes such as phobias or weather. On a high shelf, just like in an old corner store, are the zines rated R for their content. Here you will find saucier zines such as The Jericho Hot Tub Infiltration Project , or Book of Cocks .
What to read first? There are zines on every possible subject imaginable, in sizes ranging from microscopic to tombstone. There are cut and pastes, collages, blow ups, linocuts and recycled bits of not-quite-sure. The colours are spectacular, as are the contents. What’s not appealing about a zine called Fish Piss ? Or Hate is something I’m good at ? The cataloguing system is simple, by size. According to Fedoruk, this causes visitors to ‘either panic or get comfortable’. Browsing tends to be five minutes or several hours, with no room in between. You are reminded of Paul Valery’s comment on being overwhelmed at the Louvre, on a much tinier scale. Each book seems to compete for your attention, and you are confronted by seemingly ‘incompatible, warring factions, each with a weak, yet persistent singularity’.
Le Corbusier made them. So did Matta-Clark, and Steven Holl. Its refreshing to think that there was a point when the ideas of these architects, and others, were considered so radical, so jarring, that they had to publish themselves. And that as small as their initial readership was, that one existed. When asked what qualifies entry into the lowercase reading room, Fedoruk responded simply ‘a definite point of view’. Reading is a singular experience. Unlike going to the movies or listening to a record, the consumption of the printed word is an internal, and unique activity. Which is why going out in public to commit a private act seems at first seems so strange. But the ultimate triumph and the pleasure of the lowercase reading room is the recognition of this fact. Only one person at a time can and should enjoy Night School. Luckily, they now have their own room. v
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bar in a box
transformations | barcelona by carol kleinfeldt
beaches bars storage
temporality minimalism
Beach bars in Barcelona are enigmatic boxes in the off- season and flip open to become wonderful little oases in the summer. v
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small lessons Nine people in ten seriously suppose that the good or bad appearance of things depends on their design alone. -David Pye, The Nature of Design 1
architecture | lessons learned by peter osborne
construction concept process craft product
mean a lack of experimentation. There is always some level of experimentation and research that goes into the design of any project; the transient shelf was no different. On the drafting table it took on different shapes, hinging options and materials. But if good architecture is a combination of good design and good construction, there is actually more room for true experimentation and research if you move away from the drafting table or computer screen and into the workshop. Errors I made in construction and finishing will inform future variations on the shelf – variations as simple as changing the wood. Lessons learned on plywood can transfer to a more exotic wood with less fear of failure; building one version and truly understanding how the hinging works informs different shapes and hinging options. Architecture is no different, details and material selections need to be used and experimented with over the course of several projects if one hopes to develop their capabilities. As much time as I spent thinking about, drawing and modelling my design, it was construction where the real action was. The construction of the shelf, not the concept, shaped the final appearance. No matter how good construction documents are, it is the spontaneity and creativity on the job site that can either hide mistakes or ensure that a detail is built correctly. The success or failure of the design is dependant on both the skill of the designer and the skill of the builder. Even good ideas can be constructed poorly. Proceeding with the transient shelf, I quickly realised just how much time is spent on finishing. I spent as much, if not more time sanding and varnishing surfaces as I did cutting and assembling the major components. The big moves and decisions are, generally by measuring twice and cutting once, easily accomplished. In one day with a table saw I had all the panels I needed for the shelf. Building design is no different – large gestures such as overall massing are easily achieved, but it is the subtlety of the detailing that defines the quality of the final product. On a piece of furniture, the time spent finishing a surface is critical; it is what the user encounters, touches and engages. In buildings it is the handrails, wall finishes and corners that people come in contact with, not the bird’s eye perspective rendered to look like a photograph. These are also the building components that need to be worked through on site with the contractor, or mocked up with the craftsmen who are doing the work. Learning from my little mistakes, I have been able to glean big lessons about just how much people affect the process of design and construction. The way architecture is currently presented, with a virtual context and a memorable image, removes people from the process. But, no matter how much of your building is computer-manufactured and assembled with the help of GPS surveys, it will be a person with a paint brush touching up your steel that will determine its final appearance. v
As architects we make a living from drawing our intentions. We provide a set of instructions which are interpreted by a contractor who builds our design. Designs are envisioned virtually, as 3-d models or hand sketches; a design idea is often divorced from the construction process. There is a tradition of architects experimenting, often with furniture, as a way of informing their architecture. These small objects can provide big lessons about construction, materials and process. To engage this tradition, I set out to design and build a shelf. A student at the time, my living situation was always changing: one semester in a bachelor apartment, another with classmates in a house – I never knew what kind of space I would next be in. The shelf had no specific requirements other than to accommodate future site changes. With this vague set of design parameters, I put pen to paper on the transient shelf. I quickly realised that it would be my own ability to build the shelf that would be the limiting factor in its design. David Pye in The Nature of Design said, ‘The only considerable technical limitations on design are imposed by our ineptitude at processing materials’. 2 In the end, my ineptitude in woodworking drove the design. The final forms are rectilinear jointed with biscuits; the boxes have no hardware other than simple hinges because that was easiest to build. Plywood was the primary building material because it was economical, structurally stable and easy to work with. Other forms could have been sexier or more experimental, expensive hardware may have changed the way the boxes were hinged, but I may not have been able to process the materials. The idea that the design of furniture is limited by our ability or inability to process materials is transferable to buildings. It is important to realise that at some point a person is going to have a direct effect on your design. It will be the mason’s, the drywaller’s or the painter’s ability to process material that will be the limiting factor to the quality of the final building. Like my simple biscuit joints, using common construction techniques can ensure intended details are carried out. Studying local vernacular building techniques that are well known to local craftsmen can allow for a richer architecture with a tectonic connection to place. Vernacular building techniques do not
1 David Pye, The Nature of Design . London: Studio Vista, 1964. p 86 2 Pye, The Nature of Design . p 47
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