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Dirty Magic Proposed by: Hal Ingberg (Hicham El-Fakir) Summary:
The Dirty Magic installation occupies the edge of a sidewalk on a part of the Esso service station property at the corner of Mont-Royal Avenue and Boyer Street. It incorporates two telephone booths and an incongruous pine tree. In appearance, this unusual assembly is fundamentally “invisible”, residing in a space somewhere between pathos and unintended humour. Dirty Magic wraps up the grouping in an ambiguous membrane of gold glass with a metallic beehive motif. Our perceptual understanding of the installation will be constantly shifting, shaped by the play of natural light.
publisher The association for non-profit architectural fieldwork [Alberta]
contributors Johan Bass Katherine Bourke Jean-François Brosseau
Florian Maurer John McMinn Peter Osborne Graham Owen Marco Polo David Vera Lois Weinthal
editor Stephanie White
Anthony Butler Julian Haladyn Miriam Jordan Kerr Lammie
issue 12 winter 2004/5
design + production Black Dog Running
printer Emerson Clarke Printing Corporation Calgary Alberta
published with the assistance of the Canada Council Grants to Literary and Art Magazines
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Calgary Alberta Canada T2G 0Z5
Public machines Ivan Hernandez Quintela
everything that throws or is thrown is by principle a weapon Deleuze and Guattari
Taking Deleuze and Guattariís definition of a weapon, Is an architectural project a potential weapon?
Can the construction of architecture become a projectile thrown towards the State machinery? Is the current state machinery the condition of Globalization? Ludens, a design studio working in Mexico City, is currently interested in generating architectural interventions that might act as weapons against forces that limit, control, or attempt to define the correct use of public spaces. We are convinced that public space must be heterogeneous, informal, flexible and open. Thus, we are in a constant search for illegal, informal, or highly individualized uses and appropriations of public space. We believe behind these ìmisuses,î lies a direct critic from the users towards existing conditions of the public space generated by architects who consider themselves specialists. However, the architect does not necessarily have the absolute knowledge of what is correct or necessary. It is possible to think that to generate more successful public spaces, a collaboration between users and architects must take place. Therefore, we generate structures inspired by these public misuses as a way to counterattack several conditions we associate with the formal, the globalized, the universal. We are interested in improvised architecture, vandalic architecture,informal architecture. Machine 1 : Exchange of information A structure waiting for information A space that is constructed as it is used. The information hanged become its contour. A meeting point where people can search for or leave information, ìlooking for, for sale, in search forî, and excuse to talk to the person standing next to you
Machine 2 : Piece of shade A hanging umbrella in a street corner. A piede of shade while one waits for thelight to turn green
Machine 3 : inhabitable boxes Apparently left-over packaging boxes With the capacity to be used as informal furniture
Ivan Hernandez Quintela is principal of Ludens, an architectural studio in Mexico City
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on site review 12 : local architecture in a global world
contents
graham owen
Ivan Hernandez Quintela | Public Machines Roger Mullin,Ted Cavanagh, Richard Kroeker | le Theatre Petit Circle, Cheticamp, Nova Scotia Florian Maurer | Ethos Open Hands, Craiova, Romania Dave Vera | Valparaiso, Chile Lois Weinthal | Berlin renovated Kerr Lammie | Niagara International Airport, Niagara Falls, New York Anthony Butler | Context in Hamilton, Ontario Jean-François Brosseau | St Vincente-de-Paul and the Bioteck Development Centre, Sherbrooke, Quebec Marco Polo, John McMinn | Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, Merrit, BC BDKI | TransAlta Tropical Africa Pavilion, Calgary Alberta Peter Osborne | Tropical Asia Pavilion, Calgary Alberta
2 4
florian maurer
8 12 14 17
tony butler
peter osborne
marco polo
lois weinthal
20 24
dave vera
30
john mcminn
john bass
roger mullin, ted cavanagh, richard kroeker
36 40 43 46 50 52
Miriam Jordan, Julian Haladyn | Teahouses Graham Owen | Architecture + Globalisation Katherine Bourke | Looking North John Bass | Massive Change
jean-françois brosseau
stephanie white
julian haladyn and miriam jordan
kerr lammie katherine bourke
Le Theatre petit circle Le Troisième Congrès mondial acadien Cheticamp Nova Scotia Roger Mullin, Ted Cavanagh, Richard Kroeker
Setting:Any place where amazing winds blow, the local people give them a name. In Cheticamp, Nova Scotia the springtime southeasters are called Suettes. As often as five times a month the winds in Cheticamp reach speeds of 200 kilometers an hour.They speed down off the plateau and whip across the old playground behind the school.All shingles in the town are battened down, double nailed and tightly overlapped.Trucks with semi-trailers stop traveling on the roads. The town of Cheticamp in Nova Scotia was officially founded by Acadians returning a generation after their 1755 expulsion by the British.Their deportation to Louisiana and other French colonies is described by Long- fellow in his epic poem Evangeline. In Cheticamp, stories are told of Aca- dians avoiding deportation by living in the valley out of sight of the British Navy — land left unsettled by the British because of the wind. Over time the French-speaking community has developed a fishing economy and a way of dealing with the windy landscape. In 2004, the town hosted Le Troisième Congrès mondial acadien cel- ebrating 400 years of European settlement in Canada. Festivities were organized in support of one hundred family reunions throughout the province. In Cheticamp, the church and the adjacent school contain three indoor spaces suitable for festival performances. Organizers added some temporary outdoor sites. and talked optimistically of a permanent summer theatre camp in the old playground behind the school.
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Every July, instructors in our school guide stu- dents through a short design/build project. In 2004, a group of three instructors combined forces to construct a permanent building — an outdoor children’s theatre suitable for the festival and the future theatre camp. On day one we had a surrealistic derelict playground on a twelve foot high plateau behind the school, two thousand dollars and twenty- seven of us ready to design, build and raise money for the theatre. On day fifteen we had a theatre designed, built and nearly paid for.
Dalhousie University School of Architecture ARCH 4002.08 B6 Freelab Summer Term 2004 student builders: Velma Anelo Derek Brennan
Kagiso Jobe Keemanao Kekobilwe Mark Lee Etienne Lemay Zihuan Lin Colin Merriam Benno Rottlaender Weronika Rybacka Michelle Sparks Michael Thicke Christine Thornton Robert Toth Keith Tufts Mareike Wellers Vincent Yen sponsers: Canada Wood Council Cheticamp Credit Union Cheticamp Co-op
Kingman Brewster Katrin Desjardins Colin Gash Lynden Giles Alexander Graf Deana Hall
Local wharves were constructed with wood cribs containing rock ballast. This cultural reinforcement persuaded us to build using rock-ballasted wooden cribwork for the walls and to create a permanent theatre with mini- mal wind resistance.
Facts: Le Theatre petit circle is dedicated to the memory of Colin Gash, one of its designers and builders. Overall dimensions: 180 seats, 12 foot by 20 foot stage, overall length 75 feet, overall width 30 feet. Walls: 16 foot vertical ribs laminated one by fours on wood blocking, diagonal one-by- three spruce each side screwed to ribs, rock infill for ballast. Floor: smooth gravel six inches deep. Stage: one-by-four floor deck on one-by-tens with suspended rock infill. Seats: recycled bleachers and new lumber. Other: Playground slide doubles as entry. Long axis oriented southeast to head into prevailing winds. Discussion: We started on day one with no predetermined design and presented a number of options to the local school and theatre group. Based on their feedback we developed two strategies — a theatre that could be disassembled and hinged down for winter storage or a permanent theatre that was ‘transparent to the wind’ heavy enough yet perforated to reduce the extreme wind load.
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This method of design development sur- prised the students. Studio projects had not prepared them to elaborate options for the client nor to develop a number of design strategies in parallel. By day five, the students no longer suspected that there was a secret design prepared in advance by the instruc- tors, and more importantly, they realized that the developing designs would be considered in terms of building performance evaluated by experiment and experience. From that point forward, the students became designer- builders sorting out details and working on sub-projects nested within the developing design framework. This framework evolved based on a set of pragmatic and aesthetic considerations. For example, it was important to ballast the struc- ture; so mass was added low, suspended from the structure but not touching the ground. In another example, the siting of the theatre was a subject of some debate. Explorations of the slide revealed a huge concrete foundation — plans to bring the slide to the theatre were discarded in favour of keeping the slide where it was and the theatre was located around it. The rain that filled the excavation became a way of levelling it. The crib work became its own scaffolding. The curvature in plan was based on the maximum the 1 x 3s would toler- ate — luckily they were still fairly green. The amazingly short ten-day building period generated real excitement in the community and strength of purpose in the architect/ builders. There is a sense of ownership by all. These indications of its success are based in the architecture, but also based in the fact that it’s a children’s theatre, located in a unique French-speaking town and part of a very significant festival. The theatre people are impressed by the acoustics and the way the building tempers the climate. They already planning night time musical shows and imagining various lighting effects. Many qualities of the theatre resulted from design decisions that synchronized the immediacy of construction, the mediation of climate and the reflection of local culture. The theatre awaits its first full-blown Suette, constantly heading to the northeast, travel- ing towards its second summer season. We will be up in Cheticamp next spring to repair the leaks and make it shipshape for the next theatre crew.
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Roger Mullin teaches design and construction at Dalhousie University, School of Architecture, and is concerned with material investigation and material culture through modes of design-build and archi- tectural representation. Ted Cavanagh teaches studio and history at Dalhousie and publishes on the history and sustainability of wood construction. Richard Kroeker’s work and teaching at Dalhousie focuses on tectonic issues and their relationship with natural and cultural contexts. Alden Neufeld gradu- ated from Dalhousie University School of Architecture in 2004.
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Imagine standing in the centre of a small triangular plot in a city built of grey, crumbling concrete. You are staring into a hole in the ground filled with black water. A three storey adobe-like brick wall of a neighbouring building is overhanging the property line about two feet. You are anxiously eying the masonry anchors that keep it from top- pling over. It is winter and the brambles clinging to it offer no foliage to cover the generous helping of candy wrappers on the ground.
Lack of housing leads to the unregulated construction of these dwellings on the perimeter of the cities. This woman, her two children and her husband live in this 2.5x2.5m dwelling without water or sanitation.
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A Romanian Experience another side of globalization? Florian Maurer
“I don’t think so!” I said, to my client’s question whether this was a good property on which to build the headquarters for their social work in Romania. This is how my relationship with Ethos Open Hands began, a privately funded Swiss Christian aid organization. Craiova, a city of close to a million in the flatlands of the Danube, west of Bucharest, was the site of diverse industries which all failed when the blessings of the market economy arrived 14 years ago. It has not recovered since and now combines the poverty of a typical Third World country with the ecological debt and depressing ambience of a decaying industrial city. Ethos Open Hands does not believe the illusion that developing countries could ever attain the wealth of consumer goods and access to energy of the G-7 countries. On the contrary, once poor countries wake up and refuse to play the game as providers of cheap labour and resources, it will be the wealthy countries that will have to re-think their ways. Hence Ethos Open Hand’s strategy is to teach self reliance through neighbourly networking, and self esteem through accepting responsibility and meaningful work. They do not cooperate with governmental organizations that will have us believe that a new aluminum smelter or assembly plant for Daimler Chrysler will solve more problems than they create. Instead, their projects are at the scale of growing food, bicycle repair and sales, construction and education. People’s immediate and urgent needs must be taken care of first, thus the first project I was involved with was the construction of the Mission House — a commercial bakery and kitchen for their soup kitchen and meals-on- wheels programs, a kindergarten, and the offices of the organisation. True to the goal of self reliance, a restaurant and bakery shop generates revenues to support their work and to teach business sense. The building was a conversion of an existing masonry structure in a central location. The existing roof of ultra-thin and sagging acacia-wood rafters was taken off, seismic upgrading was carried out, and a new third storey with roof terrace was added. It was planned as a Canadian wood frame structure because of the limited bearing capacity of the underlying structure, but we soon encountered cultural resistance. Romanian authorities did not have provisions for wooden buildings, the population knew wooden buildings only from their slums, if at all, and the Swiss client thought 2x6s were just too thin to be used in buildings. The need for the building was urgent and there was no time to embark on a slow education
The mission house, Casa Ethos, before and after the renovation. The second hand windows in the new third storey come from an old hotel in Basel/Switzerland. Unfortunately the construction crew cut down the beautiful mature trees before we had a chance to intervene.
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process, so we ended up with a structure in more traditional Swiss/German carpentry techniques. Another reason for promoting Canadian timber framing has to do with self reliance: the communist era concrete and masonry structures require a high degree of social organization and large investments for machinery, cranes, vehicles, mixing plants. No wonder the former Eastern Bloc countries are now littered with large unfinished structures! In Canada, someone with a Skil saw, a few other tools and a pick-up truck cannot only help themselves, but even be an entrepreneur: a radical step from the big brother culture of communist times! So, our next project was designed as a demonstration and teaching project in stick framing. It is a housing development of 30 units in duplexes and triplexes at the periphery of Craiova. The units are large three- and four-bedroom houses for families that volunteer to foster street children. The problem of street children in Romania is not only a function of poverty, but also a direct result of the unsustainable economies of massive construction in the new market economy. In the resulting extreme housing shortage, families of six very often live in apartments consisting of a living room/ kitchen and one bedroom. It is easy to see why children just can’t bear this situation once they reach an age of ten or so, and leave.
In this project, the units are simple boxes with shed roofs not only to stretch the private donors’ funds, but also to make the teaching environment easier to understand. Funds saved on the lack of complexities were diverted to amenities: large rooms, balconies, generous glazing and sun shading devices of local acacia wood. The balconies are not accessible from the east-facing bedrooms upstairs, but from the single loaded corridor on the west side with views over the city. It was our feeling that a balcony better serves as a meeting place than as an appendage to a bedroom. Steering a 30 unit housing development in wood framing through a bureaucracy that doesn’t trust wood and is still dominated by former communist functionaries took us three years and countless modifications, but our patience was rewarded in the end and the development is now under construction. Some concessions to cultural preconceptions still had to be made: —studs are 60x160 mm, because the Swiss consider 2x6s (38x140 mm) unfit for walls. That goes for partitions, too. —the wall elements are fabricated on an assembly platform and placed by crane, because the Swiss construction manager does not trust the precision that can be achieved by nailing walls together on the spot. —all units have a full concrete basement, even though Romanian codes do not allow gas- or oil-fired appliances below grade. A house just isn’t a house without a basement in these parts of the world. However, we’ve come a long way and for our next project, a home for disabled and elderly persons, we have already done away with the basement. Maybe I can even nail a wall together on the spot, if I get the opportunity
Note the crane as a concession to European timber framing tech - niques
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to be on site when framing starts! Romania is a country with large timber resources and we are convinced that developing them for construction and manufacture of value-added products would bring benefit to the country. We hope that our projects can contribute to this goal. With globalization I first think of massive corporations abusing the disappearance of economic barriers by moving to countries with doubtful labour- and environmental standards, creating economic difficulties at home, dragging everyone down to the lowest common standards. ‘Globalization’ has created many enemies. In architecture it expresses itself in luxury resorts in Saudi Arabia and through cities’ vying for attention by having star architects designing flamboyant civic buildings. Architecture follows humanity’s drifting apart into a vast majority lacking the bare necessities, and a handful of demigods who will soon be able to genetically insure themselves against the afflictions of mortals — disease, stupidity, ugliness and depresssion. The rich countries have better things to export than greed. We have learned to be practical, self reliant, thrifty and optimistic. There is a place for architects on that side of globalization, too.
An axonometric view of the proposed home for disabled and elderly persons, Strada Bucura. The simple buildings avoid an institutional ambience and share details with the hous - ing develop - ment to streamline con - struction.
conceptual sketches for a K-12 school which will com - plete the devel - opment Strada Bucura.
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Dave Vera Chile
How are we to enrich our creative powers? Not by subscribing to architectural reviews, but by undertaking voyages of discovery into the inexhaustible realm of Nature! — Open your eyes, burst the straight-jacket of professional discussions! Devote yourself so wholeheartedly to studying the meaning of things that architecture spontaneously becomes an inevitable conse- quence. - Le Corbusier I traveled to Chile two years ago to live and work as part of a school term for four reasons. One: because I was born there and had always wanted to visit family and travel the country. Two: because I was genuinely interested in the culture and knew if I came to a better understanding of it that I’d have a better understanding of myself. Three: because I had seen some examples of tremendous design coming from the country and wanted to know more. Four: because my thesis term was arriving and I wanted to have it influenced by what I learned in Chile. What I encountered was like nothing I had ever experienced before in my life! I found work in a government architectural office, in the city of ValparaÌso, making enough money to pay for my cab fare to and from work each day. This did not matter since I had plenty of family willing to feed and provide shelter. In the office I focused entirely on social housing and learned a great deal of how their system works in providing the basic necessities to people. Initially, this was the driving influence for my thesis but, as in most cases, thoughts change. The real influence became the city itself. I have an uncle who is an engineering professor at the Technical University of Federico Santa Maria, a spectacular neo-gothic campus protected by the UN. He took me through the campus and around a few bends until we got to the school of architecture. The entry was homogenous with the rest of the campus but things changed the further into the building we went. I was amazed to find an open steel truss like space extending out into the city! I had to stop but only for a second since my uncle was taking me to meet the director of the school, Roberto Barria. He was delighted to tell me that his school was designed by Oliver Lang and Cynthia Wilson of Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture (LWPAC) from Vancouver. I was even more astounded! Here I thought I was entering a country full of rich culture and a passion for good design and one of my first examples comes from Canada. The school itself had embraced computers and used them extensively as a tool for information gathering and architectural communications. On my way out I decided to let my uncle go ahead so I could walk around the building and look at the detailing. I interrupted one of the critiques in the main event space between a group of Chileans and a visiting class of Norwegians.
I lived one block up the street from a second school of architecture. This one was part of the University of ValparaÌso and is somewhat infamous for its teaching philosophy and style. The initial quote by Le Corbusier at the beginning of this paper describes this quite well. I visited
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the school periodically and had a chance to chat with a professor who told me that no school in the world is like theirs. Why? Because they have the students go out and draw the city over and over again until they understand it. They design spaces for people. I can still hear him telling me this and is the reason that I now draw people in all of my drawings at work. Here they say we don’t need to draw people in an elevation because it is implied. Is it? Is it possible a new mean- ing could arise if our designs were populated? This school’s humanistic approach to design is directly influenced by poetry. The city has inspired poets for centuries so it is a relevant factor to consider in a design.
ValparaÌso robbed me and subjected me to its domain, to its foolishness: ValparaÌso is a heap, a bunch of crazy houses. - Pablo Neruda
These two schools each demonstrated the impact of architecture by the city. The first is a bold, almost crazy move, through use of computer design, to help enlighten groups of growing minds. The second is a passive human scale approach of discovery in which meaning is attained through the act of letting go. I find both vital. For my thesis I chose to combine these two trains of thought: technology and poetry. The search was for a building that reacts to and is influenced by its distinctive place. The use of comput- ers was intentional. An extension of the MIT Media Lab was proposed for South America to be situated at the end of the Valparaiso’s main axis. Why? Because I know that Chile has embraced the new technological frontier. The Media Lab has extensions in both India and Ireland with a logical move being another creation in Chile. Working with government, industry and the uni- versity the lab asks the questions of technology in a place. The building is placed at the end of Avenue Argentina to reunite the street with the water in a poetic way. The building is a metaphor of the sea with the Humbolt Current that runs up the coast of Chile providing more than enough background and inspiration. During the six months I was in Chile I didn’t choose a site or idea for the thesis. It was only after I had walked up and down the streets for months taking pictures and just enjoying the city that I could make a good decision for my next step. With the help of computers I continued to learn from my home in Canada. I am glad that I was subjected to ValparaÌso for that short time. It will be a huge influence as I start my career here in Canada. Is this the new globalization? One place influencing another place? Let’s hope so. In my case I feel the term globalization is blurred; I am both a Canadian and a Chilean. If there is an architecture for each of these countries, to which am I bound? Again, I go to Le Corbusier when he states a devotion to the study of the meaning of things. If you are in a place and study it well, good architecture will always be a consequence.
David Vera holds a Master of Architecture degree from Dalhousie University and is cur- rently interning at the Calgary office of Kasian Architecture Interior Design Ltd.
Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian, The Road That Is Not a Road: and the Open City, Ritoque, Chile (Cam- bridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996), 53. Pablo Neruda, ValparaÌso: Where the Imagination Lives On (ValparaÌso: City Hall of ValparaÌso, 2002), 2.
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figure 1. Alexanderplatz: 1986 and 2003
Berlin: a renovation of postcards Lois Weinthal
Vintage postcards carry a sense of nostalgia as they capture moments from another time. This project begins with a collection of vintage postcards from the former East Berlin that are merged with current views of the cityscape as it is seen today under western influence. The 1961 construction and 1989 demolition of the Berlin Wall acts as the time frame for the postcards in this project, capturing East Berlin before the fall of communism in the Eastern Bloc. They also frame other clues to the larger political and economic realm of the German Democratic Republic under Soviet sector influence, seen in its monuments, political markers, building typologies, advertisements and clothing. These images are re-inserted into panoramic views revealing the contrast of the former east with the current migration of western capitalism.
figure 2. Bode Museum on the Museum Island
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figure 4. Schönhauser Allee: 1970 and 2003
glass buildings, western commerce such as Starbucks, advertising, new automobiles and construction sites. The postcards chosen to generate these images are located throughout central Berlin with an emphasis on Alexanderplatz, a social- ist node in East Berlin, which was rebuilt after World War II ( fig. 1 ). This socialist-designed plaza was meant to stand in contrast to the classical node of the Museum Island with its cathedral, museums and Humboldt Univer- sity ( figs. 2 and 3 ). The desire of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to establish a
new modern city centre was partly due to the continued tension between East and West Berlin, which acted as a microcosm to the larger realm of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The tension between east and west Berlin still exists, but for different reasons. The fall of the Berlin Wall brought increased taxation to the west in order to rebuild the east. Simultaneously, easterners began to migrate to the west. This westward migration has resulted in abandoned factories, housing and increased unemployment throughout the east.
These images act as a double exposure converging two eras in one location, with the contrast of details that have either changed or remained static. Most recently, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the diffusion of western ideol- ogy and capitalism have changed the cityscape of the former East Berlin, while retaining buildings from both pre- and post-World War II eras. Renovations, demolitions and re-building reveal the disappearance of East German markers, including mass-produced concrete housing, empty lots, monuments of leaders, Trabant cars, beige and brown and political symbols. New appearances include
figure 3. Humboldt University: 1964 and 2004
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figure 5. Strausberger Platz: 1969 and 2003
The postcards highlight areas of East Berlin that promoted a positive image of the east during the Cold War. These areas were in the spotlight as the Berlin Wall fell and capitalism moved eastward. One such location is seen in a 1970 postcard of Schönhauser Allee, an S-bahn transit stop in the former East Berlin ( fig. 4 ). It was not far from here that demon- strations for reform in the GDR took place, followed shortly by the first East Berlin couple to walk through the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. This postcard docu- ments the types of apartments built in the east after World War II, and reveals a subtle layer of information in the the image on the stamp and its price, reflecting the differences between two economic and political regimes divided by one wall. Since unification, the once gray and dismal streetscapes in the original city fabric of East Berlin such as Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, are giving way to scaffolding and brightly painted facades. As the residents of the former east acclimate to a new political and economic system, architecture mediates between the old and new, between the previous places made by the occupants in their memories and the imposition of a new space transformed by the change in political systems.
A view to the Fernsehturm — the East German television tower as seen from
Traces of Berlin’s political history are evident in the facades, courtyards and interiors of its architecture. The quiet markings on these buildings are so commonplace for its occu- pants, yet as a visitor, these markings over- whelm with a sense of history — war-marked façades, the names of former East Berlin busi- nesses. There are cranes across the skyline and scaffolding across façades —everything in Berlin is changing as people live within the process. This project will find an end but the city will continue to change.
Strausberger Platz, acts a focal point along Karl-Marx-Allee ( fig. 5 ). This grand boule- vard, which began construction in 1951, was known as Germany’s first socialist street, providing apartments for its citizens. 1 These apartment buildings were East Germany’s first attempt to provide mass housing. As construction continued, the cost exceeded the budget; consequently this building type was discontinued and replaced by a mass- produced type called Plattenbau. A few blocks north of Strausberger Platz, is the Platz der Vereinten Nationen (United Nations Square) formerly called Leninplatz. Postcards of the original Lenin statue that stood in front of a series of Plattenbau housing structures can now be found at flea markets. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the monument to Lenin was removed. 2 In its place now stand boulders from different countries referencing a new international relationship. This act of eras- ing the former socialist regime through the removal of monuments can also be seen in Wolfgang Becker’s 2003 film, Good Bye Lenin! .
1 Ladd, Brian. The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997, (186) 2 ibid. 197
Lois Weinthal is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin. She teaches architecture and interior design and continues to explore the space of interiors through peripheral disci- plines. This project was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the DAAD.
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Ottawa International Airport, terminal building interior
On the Borders
Kerr Lammie
Architectural expression through any ap- plied methodology engages and informs place through a specific dialogue. The act of enclosing place provides a boundary condi- tion, an edge, which gathers and focuses that narrative into generative ideas or forms that can be explored and defined through architectural exploration. A prescriptive method cannot capture and redistribute the nature of a specific dialogue from one place to another. Rather, a philosophical stance on place must be defined to guide research on its development. This approach as it relates to airports is based on the particulars of each city or country as opposed to the specifics of the physical site. Airport sites are usually chosen for their aerodrome capabilities, and as such are located on reasonably flat sites physically removed from their source of inspi- ration; the city. Their own context is neglect- ed in favor of the functional requirements of the aircraft and their movements, leaving the terminal to become a vertical impertinence within a horizontal plane. An immediate lack of context mixed with notional civic ambition is the usual starting point for most terminal projects.
Often borders are thought of as passive objects, or matter of factly just edges. However a border exerts an active influence. —Jane Jacobs
Airports are borders to our countries and cit- ies. The architecture of airports therefore can be representative of an entrance or portal to a certain place, the beginning and the end of journeys. The conception of airport terminals buildings has changed as their governance models devolved from federal to municipal and private entities, and with that change a greater civic dimension and a focus on self sustainability was added to the airport ter- minal. This in turn has the airport exerting a more active influence on the cities they serve.
Ottawa International Airport, waterfall
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The geographical, geological, cultural, and historical nature of a country or a city can be engaged or disengaged to extract a narrative that combines the adventures of flight with the specifics of place. Removed from the city and to some degree its site the airport is on the border of place and imagination, often be regarded as non-places, abstracted by the excitement and anxiety of flight and travel, and by the limited amount of time spent in the airport itself. The idea of creating place here on the borders is about slowing that process down and embodying elements that speak to, of or about that place. In Niagara Falls, New York the form of the roof was generated from a series of vignette models of the falls, the movement and nature of water, and the act of bridging the falls and nations. The client team was clear on a ‘gateway’ vision based on the falls for the terminal. The design team initially looked for other ideas of regional inspiration; the two streams of thought converging in a building with its roots in the geology of the region. The stratification of rock under two flowing roofs express the basic condition of the Niagara river and gorge, the combination of which creates one of the seven wonders of the world. Interior architecture furthers the ideas expressed in the form and structure of the building, through a series design elements or focus areas. Departing and arrivals processes expose travellers to memorable spaces: in Vancouver the Haida Gwaii statue, in Ottawa the three-story water fall. It is through the expressive use of specific build- ing materials that the narrative of place is accentuated and reiterated. Though the boundaries of these airports are remote from the city, the edges of the two may eventually intertwine, as they do in larger metropolitan centers. Airports which encapsulate an idea of the city are subsumed by the city itself, becoming part of the lay- ered construction that constitutes the urban fabric. When this occurs additional pres- sures such as residential concerns, intermo- dal connections, and commercial interests increase and interact more fully with airport terminals. To abdicate place as an idea and experience altogether excludes airports from acting as a remote representative of the city it serves, and eventually to represent the city from within its borders.
Regina International Airport, rendering of sundial
Edmonton Inter - national Airport, structural derrick
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To incorporate an idea or sense of place in no way constitutes a resolution that will
necessarily make that connection meaningful nor is it the only
way to address the architectural challenges of airport terminal buildings. It does though provide a way to engage airports in a meaningful architectural discourse about life on the border.
Niagara Falls International Airport model, view from the south, above.
View from the south-east, below
Kerr Lammie is an associate at Stantec Architecture, Vancouver, British Columbia. He has been known to work for lattes.
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The Case for Contextualism Anthony Butler
right: Cataract Power Com - pany, c1896. Northeast of the Hamilton General Hos - pital. West elevation look - ing south.
far right: Hamilton General Hospital, 1991; Anthony Butler Architect Inc.: archi - tect for design develop - ment, documentation, and contract administration. Detail of south elevation of nursing wing; recessed masonry infill where win - dows are not required; chamfered top of founda - tion wall is raised to second floor level, to accommodate gentle rise in grade along south side of building.
Like most Ontario communities, my own city, Hamilton, has a strong tradition of masonry construction. Stone, originally quarried from the Niagara Escarpment which runs through the length of the city, was the material of choice for important public buildings and for many fine houses. Good quality local clay was also readily available, making brick the dominant building material for other types of buildings, including the rich heritage of early industrial structures. Many of these still survive; their strong presence throughout the older parts of the city establishes the defining quality of the cityscape and has had a significant influence on my own practice.
The brick masonry construction of early industrial structures in Hamilton reflects the simple functional requirements for exterior walls enclosing a post and beam internal structure. Load-bearing masonry piers, aligned with interior wood or cast iron columns, are expressed externally; thinner membrane wall panels provide lateral support to the piers. The outer face of the foundation walls is flush with the piers and capped between piers with a number of weathering courses of chamfered solid bricks, like inverted corbelling, at the transition to the recessed infill panels. The infill usually
incorporates window openings; when windows are not needed, slightly recessed masonry panels are inserted in the openings to maintain the regular rhythm. Masonry corbels at the top of the building support the thicker construction of the parapet and are frequently decorated by crenellations. The special brick shapes found in 19th and early 20th century masonry buildings were easy to make when each brick was individually moulded by hand prior to firing. Bricks produced today using modern technology are extruded and cannot reproduce hand-
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The older buildings found in Canadian cities and towns possess rich architectural qualities in form, materials and details, characteristics which architects would do well to study. Many Canadian architects recognize this and design new buildings which exhibit a respectful, contemporary response to the strong vernacular qualities of the local environment. Directly opposed to this view is globalisation, which is overwhelming the special sense of place found in most Canadian communities. Globalisation is most disturbing when international ‘star’ architects are imported to design major buildings, but its effect is probably more pervasive in the everyday adoption by lazy architects of design ideas copied from other parts of the world. Too often, the star architect is selected for a trade-mark style, transplanted inappropriately into a Canadian setting, where its shock value is expected to create the buzz that the client seeks. Is this the kind of arrogant intrusion that our communities really need? Are we so insecure in our own design abilities that we should acquiesce in the face of clients who, seduced by the glamour of the latest architectural fashion, believe that a dramatic new building, however wrong for its setting, will automatically enhance their status? Canada doesn’t need this kind of showpiece architecture, particularly when we have so many creative architects whose excellent contemporary work makes skilful use of regional materials and complements local vernacular and traditions.
moulded shapes; furthermore, they are penetrated by the vertical holes required by the extrusion process. Special shapes can still be obtained, but it is difficult to justify the expense of importing all the brick for a major public building to obtain a small percentage of custom shapes. We devised the technique of trimming off one corner of the clay as it extrudes from the press to make a chamfered corner; the chamfers are laid uppermost in soldier or rowlock courses, recalling the character of the earlier brick masonry buildings.
We first used this detail in the exterior design for the Hamilton-Wentworth Police Administration Building, located in central Hamilton, in an area where major industrial enterprises once occupied entire city blocks. Masonry piers define the structural grid. Courses of chamfered bricks at the top of masonry spandrels between the piers form sills below the windows; where windows are not required, the openings are filled in with recessed masonry panels. The chamfered courses at the top of the parapet walls will become the typical window sill detail, if completion of the top floor of the building ever becomes necessary.
The replacement of the Hamilton General Hospital provided an even more challenging opportunity to explore masonry detailing reflective of nearby 19th century industrial architecture. The hospital first opened on its site in 1882, in what was already becoming the heavily industrialized part of the city. The site area available to us for the new building was severely restricted by the need to maintain existing hospital facilities in operation throughout construction. This forced us to locate the 14m high main (south) elevation of the first three storeys, plus the
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Hamilton General Hospital, 1991. above: detail of south elevation of three-storey sec - tion; recessed masonry infill where windows are not required. right: south elevation of eight-storey nursing wing.
end of an eight-storey nursing wing, right at the property line, for a total length along the sidewalk of 120m. Such a placement was commonplace for industrial buildings, of course, so the decision to recall the characteristics of those buildings was logical, since their common design elements are particularly appropriate for elevations which are normally observed from an acute angle. For this project, the masonry panels between brick piers are recessed, in the same manner as in the early industrial buildings; the top of
the foundation wall is chamfered inwards to meet the face of the recessed panels; evenly- spaced window openings are fitted with windows, or infilled with masonry where they are not needed (this was particularly useful when designing elevations to floors with different plans having widely divergent window requirements); the top of the wall is chamfered out again, creating a positive termination at the parapet and framing the recessed masonry panels. The resulting elevations have not met with uniform approval from the community (who were
probably unaware of the siting constraints we faced). The elevations have a strong presence along the street, however, with a subtlety of detail which the alert observer can learn to appreciate, particularly when the family resemblance with the sturdy local masonry tradition of the 150 year-old buildings around the site is recognized.
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Hamilton-Wentworth Police Administration Building, 1975; Anthony Butler Architect Inc. above: closeup of typical bay; chamfered courses at top of para - pet will become window sill if third floor is added. above right: detail at top of parapet; special 90x90x190mm dou - ble-chamfered soldier bricks used at corner.
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two projects by Cimaise Jean-François Brosseau Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Sherbrooke, Quebec
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Since its original construction, many expansions and transformations were performed in a haphazard manner, often trying to imitate the architecture of the past, and scarring the original building. Our goal was to allow our new expansion to establish itself in a genesis of contemporary architecture on that site. The chaotic circulation around the perimeter of the complex was reorganised by moving the main entrance and allowing the new volumes to express themselves. The contemporary language used allows for a better understanding of the buildings
new entrance Cimaise in partnership with Jubinville & Mailhot.
and establishes another era of evolution in the history of the centre in an honest and authentic manner. Characteristics: -Major building recycling project; -Complex multifunctional program; -Successful integration in an urban setting;
A city symbol on the east side of the St-François river in Sherbrooke, the 1902 Saint-Vincent-de-Paul hospital closed its doors in 1997. The recent recycling of the building relocated and now houses various health sector organisations such as a permanent care institution of 225 beds, the physical re-adaptation centre of the Eastern Township Region and regional social health services.
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hydrotherapy pool An integral part of the St-Vincent-de-Paul renovation project is the therapeutic basin used by the Eastern Township Re-adaptation Centre. It was built on the old hospital multi- story carpark. Leftover spaces have become a park. Located between the wings of the original hospital building, the pool takes the role of a park pavilion, with a roof that tilts up, open to a view of the city. This maximises the natural light within its spaces — this flood of daylight
acts as a reflecting pond in the interior spaces. Geometrically patterned windows and the layout itself recall a playfulness long forgotten that helps in the general atmosphere and treatment of the patients. The use of masonry, similar to the surrounding buildings, and the introduction of new building materials such as zinc and architectural blocks help create a definitely clear contemporary language in a more
resolute setting. This intervention marks the era of the construction period.
Characteristics: -Technical complexity of the therapeutic basin; -Successful integration into a diverse urban setting; -Originality of the design.
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Q:why is it important to Cimaise to use this very beautiful contemporary architecture to mark this era, given that we have just had 20 years of polite contextualism. What is it that you see in your region, or in Quebec, that tells you that it is important to make that break now? A: Because of its French origins and being a French speaking minority located at the border of the US, I think Quebec is very open to the world, particularly Montreal, a cosmopolitan city with a strong european sensibility. It’s a way to preserve our identity while becoming a citizen of the world. Architecture follows this trend, which is why there is a lot of neo- modernist architecture directly inspired from what’s done in Europe is being built in Quebec right now, mainly in Montreal. But there is a big difference between Montreal and the other cities of Quebec...even with Quebec City. Again, the muli-ethnical culture found in Montreal is quite unique and the density of population there is much higher than in the rest of the province: there’s a lot more people there open and willing to new ways of doing. These factors give more possibilities for experimentation in that city. Sherbrooke is about 160 kilometres east of Montreal, in the Eastern Townships. It takes about an hour and a half to travel by car between the two cities — very close neighbours, but two very different personalities. Sherbrooke is much closer to the conservative spirit of the northeastern states of the US than to the openness found in Montreal. This can be easily seen in the recent architecture built in Sherbrooke: bad traditional New England or Victorian style imitations. There is a strong nostalgia for the past and a kind of political correctness that rejects contemporary
references. It’s a city that lives in its architectural past. A lot of it is probably the result of the ignorance of architectural culture, this subject being absent from popular interests and cultural teachings found in schools—a major problem present in all of Quebec. Architecture is the ‘enfant pauvre’ of cultural education. And what is there to say when we know that culture is often discarded as an unimportant accessory and is certainly not a priority of the education system. I’m not sure about the rest of Canada, but I suspect that we are not alone in this situation. We at CIMAISE believe that we have to react to this. Call it ideal or illusion, but we think that as architects we can change things — we cannot be indifferent, which is why we always try to introduce contemporary architecture in what we do. It’s a way of saying what we are today as a society and
of showing what is possible and where architecture is at the begining of the 21st century. It’s opening the cultural boundaries of our city to what’s taking place in the rest of the world. And it’s contributing, we hope, to the architectural education of the people, whether by publicly talking and explaining contemporary architecture or in debate when one of our buildings is the talk of the town because of it’s difference. It is not an easy task and we are deceived often, but as architects who respect our profession and what we studied for, we couldn’t do anything else. And when we are succesful in our attempts to produce good contemporary architecture without too much compromise, we are proud and think that all the efforts for that little step forward was worth it in the end.
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