bloody, simple building. The plan — people look at it and go ‘this is a joke’ Some things, like the new ROM or whatever, they look at it, they don’t know how to price it, they’re going to put in a factor like the unknown factor, you know. The 300% that they all add on because they didn’t see that the reveals between the brick were actually ebony. But they look at our building and it’s just a bunch of concrete block and concrete. ‘We can whip this up in a day— get the structure up in three weeks — this whole thing is just one big lift’.The super-ratio- nal infrastructure, the systematic approach, which is a modular, is probably the main thing. Materiality was another one of the big things, artic- ulation of form was another. We really tried to articulate this building as five trailers; they’re all in rows like the Kimball, and that was costing a bomb right? So all we did was shorten them, put a roof over it, put some clerestories in and that was one of the major shifts in the design. A $4 million shift. We had to do it. Tom:And when did that happen? Talbot: Probably at the end of schematic design. Tom: So you’d had all your workshops by that time. Talbot: Yeah, it didn’t change anything. Didn’t change plan, just the formal expression. It was the same thing at the CSB. The skin was almost ready to go up and we had all these reveals in the tartan and the client asked the cost estimators ‘how much does this reveal cost?’ and he said ‘Each one is $40,000’. Well, $40,000 times 5 is $200,000. ‘Ah…,let’s get rid of those’. As soon as you put a price tag on something like a feature or an item, it’s up for grabs, right, and that’s what they did. We said,‘okay we can do without it’. Maybe the building benefitted from it. Tom: As you are going into this process, is there an
they’re trailers with a big roof over them. Imagine you have five trailers banked next to each other and an 8’ crack in between each one, and that crack is basically extruded all the way up and those cracks all have skylights — the crack in between solid forms. So what we did, we took those solid forms and it was like taking your pants down: we just skinned it down to the 17’ mark. Basically when you’re standing on the second floor, it’s up to your waist in height. We took that skin down. Tom (very cautiously): Okay. Talbot: The skin of those trailers got pulled off and dropped down to railing height on the second floor. So now, if you isolated one of these trailers and you’re standing on the second floor there’s no walls above the 3’-mark, anywhere. But your columns stayed where they were and then we put a big flat roof over everything. When you’re inside this building now, the concrete block always stops at the 3’-mark on the second floor: you’re going to be able to see about 300’ on the second floor. They’re all open study lofts. Tom:A nice expression. It may even be nicer than if were they closed. Talbot: Yeah, I think so. Tom: Really dramatic. Talbot: We had great clients for the ARC building, couldn’t ask for anything better. These guys were amazing. They were raising the bar for us every meeting. Always asking us,“are you sure?”We had to cut the budget all the way through. Everytime we’d do something, they’d say ‘sure you’re not compromising the design? Sure you don’t want us to go raise more money for this?’They were really good.
idea that the roof might not make it to the end and so you are already starting to think of options or do you think of it as that happens? Talbot: W e figured we had it right and the Class D estimate came in and it was well over budget and we had to drastically think how to reduce cost. We knew it wasn’t a material question at that point, it was ‘okay we’ve got to change the form a bit to save some money’. We had copper parapets, we had all sorts of things that were gratuituous. It was expensive. We made it simpler. Tom: How long did it take to decide to go with the roof change. Talbot: One hour. I did a sketch, Brian said that’s what we’ve got to do. Tom: Did you sit down together? Was it like a charette or something? Talbot: Nah. It was a Sunday night before I was flying to Toronto on Monday and we did a sketch and figured it out and we just went and got a price and saved a lot of money. Tom:The roof over top of the theatre — that didn’t change? Talbot: It got articulated a little bit differently. The theatre is actually a big wrapper that went over two of the trailers. Tom:What about on the inside, these roofs over the trailers were peaked? Talbot: No. They were just flat little bars with little parapets: five of them. Tom: Really the only expression that anyone experi- ences as far as change is concerned is… Talbot: …the roofscape. What you see from a distance is the major thing. We tried to keep the concept as strong as we could, right? So now Project: University of Toronto at Scarborough Academic Resource Centre Design Architect: Brian MacKay-Lyons Architec- ture Urban Design Design team: Brian MacKay-Lyons (Principal),Talbot Sweetapple (Project Architect), Melanie Hayne, Justin Bennett, Dean Poffen- roth, Chad Jamieson Prime Consultants: Rounthwaite, Dick and Hadley Architects Rob Boyko (Partner in charge), Dave Premi (Project Architect), Momine Hoq, Carlos Tavares, Daniel Herljevic, Kevin McCluskey Structural: Peter Sheffield & Associates Ltd. Mechanical: Keen Engineering Co. Ltd. Electrical: Hidi Rae Consulting Engineers Inc. Size: 9,300 sq. m
Talbot Sweetapple is a project architect at Brian MacKay Lyons Architecture and Urban Design and has taught at Dalhousie, Syracuse and Arkansas.
structure. Tom : Il pouvait alors se trans- former en charpente d’acier et en cloison sèche? Talbot : Exactement. Il aurait quand même une apparence monolithique et solide. Il aurait pu s’agir de bois ou de n’importe quelle autre matière. Nous ne serions pas contrariés pour une question de change- ment de matériel. Je crois que
l’immeuble se tiendrait quand même. Tom : Il existe un grand nombre d’occasions, en ce qui a trait à cet immeuble, de couper les coûts, puisque vous n’attachez pas une grande importance aux détails stylisés. Talbot : Ce facteur peut jouer tant en votre faveur que contre vous auprès des clients.Tout ce qui nous importe c’est « que
ce soit solide », « que ce soit moins solide », « que ce soit un matériel lourd », « que ce soit un matériel léger », ou encore, « voici une gamme de matéri- aux légers, voici une gamme de matériaux lourds et voici certains liens qui font que le tout fonctionne bien ensemble ». Alors, on n’attache pas vrai- ment une grande importance à ce qu’ils sont.
Tom : Alors vous êtes arrivés à 15 % en dessous du budget? Que s’est-il produit? Talbot : C’était, d’abord et avant tout, une question substantielle. Tom : La beauté modeste. Talbot : La beauté modeste, voilà! Vous savez, il ne s’agit que d’un immeuble de ciment avec quelques extras. Son recou- vrement est de cuivre qui, à l’heure actuelle, n’est pas
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O n S ite review
T ransformations
I ssue 7 2002
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