the best from all three projects. First of all, you would never get those ideas unless you did that process, never. Second, you’ve created ownership within the design of everybody which means that’s what really saves money in the end of the project, because everyone knows where everything comes from, no surprises, everyone understands. When- ever we suggest something, you know, it’s great because they can catch us leaving the process. They are the ones that keep us true, keep us honest about our design. It’s a very open-book process. Tom:And this process saves money. Talbot: Not only does it save money, it actually ensures against changes and extras that we’re not going to be able to see because you don’t know what they’re thinking about. It’s not on the con- struction budget that we’re talking about where you save money. It’s a saving of everybody’s time, of our time, the client’s time, the crisis meetings that halfway down the road… Tom: …end up costing thousands. Talbot: That’s one of the untangible savings I guess; can’t put a real number to that right now. Tom: So when you come in 15% under budget on this building as you did, you can’t claim,‘this is because of this workshop process that we go through’.This is something that’ll happen later and make everyone feel good about the building. At the end of the day it’ll be an on-time and on-budget thing.
Talbot: Well, it does affect the construction budget somewhat, but the big one is the schedule. This is a tight schedule and the only way we ran it was by participatory design. In a way, because we just went through all those workshops where everyone understood everything, there were no surprises, no going back. It just went very fast. Tom: So Brian’s acting as a manager in this? Talbot: Facilitator. Tom: He takes his skills as an architect to turn this information — this data — into a building. Talbot: That’s it. But in all honesty, he’s still got to layer his knowledge of architecture, his grammar, his way of thinking about architecture onto these people’s schemes you know, letting their schemes influence and move his grammar around. It just can’t be a free-for-all and they design whatever they want and we draw it. The architect’s not taken out of the process. It’s highly controlled, highly motivated by the architect. The clients are getting educated. It’s a huge educa- tion along the way. What’s good is that in meetings you get some people saying, ’well I think we should do this’, and other people saying ‘well no, that will violate the concept of the building’. Tom: Define the concept for me. Talbot: Everyone knew it was a grove of columns from the beginning. Tom:That’s the architecture — the grove of columns. Talbot: That’s what it was. And it sort of morphs
then, it sort of develops: it turned into columns plus bars. Tom:Through the interactive workshop process? Talbot: Exactly, the bars developed. The site is a big thing. There’s the John Andrews’ building — this brutal architecture that hugs the ravine edge. We used the analogy of the hill town for those buildings, our building was up on the plateau with a piazza and a grove of columns. In the first meeting Brian said,‘you need the mosque of Cordoba’, and he drew it on a chalkboard. The mosque of Cordoba — I think it’s 1,300 columns — and over the years the Christians and the Moors each had a go at it, and you can see they each basically used the infrastructure of the building. There’s a cathedral built inside this 1,300-column grid; it’s an extremely flexible system, right? It’s just a big grove of columns and then we developed the idea of bars, a modular of concrete block that everything stems from. There’s hardly any interior finish in this building other than concrete block. That’s one of the budget things I played with. For the trades — get a good concrete person, a good steel person and a good skin person — you’re done! There’s not much millwork in it either. I can get down and dirty with the detail; I appreci- ate the details which is the Toronto trend — high, high craft, right, almost like jewelry. But we believe architecture can stand any material because the architecture is the infrastructure. If you go
Tom: Alors, il s’agit de votre deuxième grand immeuble, votre bureau change et puis vous déménagez dans un nouvel espace de bureau. De quelle façon votre façon de procéder a-t-elle été influencée, après tout ce que vous avez appris dans le domaine de la construction de maisons, en ce qui a trait aux plus grands immeubles? Talbot : Nous voyons les petites maisons comme si elles étaient des immeubles publics. Brian
Il s’agit d’une conversation entre deux jeunes architectes,Talbot Sweetapple de Halifax et Tom Strickland de Calgary, au sujet d’un immeuble ARC à l’Université de Toronto qui, une fois le projet de soumission complété, s’est retrouvé en dessous de 15 % du budget initial ? ceci provenant d’une firme reconnue pour ses charmantes demeures précieuses et son réinvestissement dans les traditions vernaculaires. Comment y sont-ils arrivés?
conçoit, au départ, quasiment sans échelle ou grammaire de conception, comme je le ferais. Le tout, par contre, se pro- gramme à l’échelle assez rap- idement. Nous pratiquons ce qu’on appelle la conception participatoire, soit en obtenant tout le contenu des immeubles des clients. « Qu’avez-vous de besoin? » « Vous avez besoin de pièces? Vous avez besoin d’une cuisine? Vous avez besoin d’une salle de conférences?»
Vous voyez, on se trouve assez rapidement au niveau du pro- gramme. Nous avons rarement une idée préconçue de quoi que ce soit — nous n’avons pas une image de ce que nous voulons faire avant un bon bout de temps, tout au long de la program- mation et de la préconception. Brian ne veut pas être influencé par une image. Il travaille le concept aussi longtemps qu’il le peut, jusqu’à ce qu’il soit
T ransformations
O n S ite review
21
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator