1. U of T's Ambitious Development Program: Has the Time Come for Ontario Capital Precinct Planning? Catherine Nasmith
Banting Institute, 2019, Building at Risk, photo Catherine Nasmith
University of Toronto’s current ambitious building agenda has run into severe opposition on the Planetarium Site with the proposed Centre for Civilizations, Culture and Cities, (Diller Scofidio and Architects Alliance) and has hit a second roadblock at 100 College Street, with a designation report for the Banting Institute adopted at the most recent meeting of the Toronto Preservation Board, a site which U of T intends to redevelop for the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre. (Weiss/Manfredi withTeeple Architects). The Best Institute, by Mathers and Haldenby was torn down in 2019 to make way for Phase 1, throwing countless tons of material in the dumpster.
Proposed Schwartz Reisman Centre for Innovation, rendering by WEISS/MANFREDI
The situation for the University and the City of Toronto is complicated, with several agendas at play…heritage, rising numbers, a fixed downtown campus, the sense of place for the campus, addressing climate change and other social issues. The COVID pandemic is changing everything. The University, because it is a civic leader and a research hub, must lead by example in whatever it does.
In the 90’s a heritage triage of the buildings on U of T campus was undertaken by the City with ERA as the consultants. Buildings of high architectural merit would be kept, and others with less value would be permitted to be demolished. In other places in Toronto many of the buildings which were identified as potential development sites would certainly have been designated, but the University has such a wealth of excellent buildings the standards on campus shift. The Planetarium, the Best Institute and the Banting Institute were all in the redevelopment sites category. But times change, thinking changes…
One of the arguments being made by the community opponents of the Centre for Civilization, Cultures and Cities is that it doesn’t fit into the historic context around it. They are arguing for a Heritage Conservation District to ensure that new buildings fit. The Planetarium will be lost, along with its significant embodied material and cultural resources. Falconer Hall is saved, but genuflecting to it and the Royal Ontario Museum heritage is producing a new building that is out of scale, pushed back and up to create heritage breathing space.
Proposed Centre for Civilizations, Culture and Cities, (Diller Scofidio and Architects Alliance)
In 2010-11 Ontario’s Capital Precinct Working Group argued for comprehensive consideration of U of T, Queen’s Park, University Avenue, from Queen Street to Bloor, and over to Toronto City Hall as Ontario’s Capital Precinct. (I was a member, along with my husband Robert Allsopp and representatives of several neighbourhood associations in the vicinity) We did succeed in having limited views protection implemented by the City of Toronto for the Legislative Assembly Buildings, but ran out of steam trying to get further work done in an inter-jurisdictional context. The argument was that the larger area, including the University Campus needs something equivalent to the National Capital Commission to ensure that development evolves in a dignified way, instead of the impossibly unpredictable approach to City building that Toronto has been subjected to in the recent intensification years.
The Banting Institute Building at 100 College Street, by Darling and Pearson is a building that I have long admired for its evocation of an earlier scientific era. The interior is matter of fact, but with tall wooden doors, transoms, fine materials make it easy to picture the medical scientists who it was named after and others who followed. ERA wrote to the Preservation Board countering the staff report that the building had little architectural merit that warrants a designation, and U of T lawyers were out in force asking for a deferral. By the time the designation report reaches Toronto East York Community Council there will be a letter from Max Allen for the Grange Community Association arguing for refusing designation in favour of redevelopment. “We submit that the only outstanding aspect of the building is its name.”
Interior Ground level, Banting Institute, solid masonry interior and exterior, photo Catherine Nasmith
It might be that the Institute is not the most architecturally significant building on the campus, where there is such a wealth to choose from, but there is more to this designation than architecture, the building is associated with the one Canadian scientist everyone in Canada knows about, paying tribute in masonry to the discovery of insulin. In any other location in the city, the Banting Institute would have been protected long since.
Entrance Banting Institute, photo Catherine Nasmith
Both the Banting and Best buildings are part of a formal edge to the University of substantial red brick buildings with deep setbacks and lawns, part of an idea from the 1920’s that Larry Richards describes in his guidebook to U of T.(pg 49) "To establish a consistent style and character to the public face of the institution, the administration had mandated since 1920 that all new buildings along College and St. George streets (which were the west and south boundaries of the campus) be "Georgian in character". Larry Richards, P 49
This stretch of College Street between Bay Street and Spadina Avenue is one of the few major public streets in Toronto that demonstrates such a coherent design idea, built out over a period of over forty years. The cohesive masonry buildings and the deep lawns and setbacks along this stretch not only make a dignified presentation of the University to the community, but they quietly frame University Avenue, and the Legislative Assembly at Queen’s Park. The removal of the red brick buildings began with the building of the Clarke Institute by John B. Parkin, 1964, but the front lawn and deep setbacks were respected, as they are in the Schwartz Reitman Innovation Centre.
Georgian Revival style for institutions harks to an era when Canada strongly identified with the British Empire. It is not as relevant to us today. The idea of Toronto as a red brick city has been out of vogue recently, yet it has an honourable history. Red brick is the material of the Don Valley, and the red brick buildings at U of T reflect that sensibility.
The Georgian Revival style was stretched to modernism by Mathers and Haldenby at the Best building. The Banting Institute with its massive scale, deep masonry, robust columns and heavy doors in my mind flirts with the Beaux Arts with smidgeons of Art Deco. The red brick buildings that remain were built in different eras by Toronto architects of note: the FitzGerald Building (1925, former School of Hygiene) Mathers and Haldenby; the Royal College of Dental Surgeons (1909, later the Architecture Faculty building and now the Student Commons) Burke Horwood and White; the Mining Building (1905) Darling and Pearson and the Wallberg Memorial Building (1949) Page and Steele Architects. The existing solid masonry buildings with openable windows are well built, and arguably better suited to offer safe space than the sealed climate controlled buildings that are replacing them. COVID has put into question a lot of received wisdom about mechanical design in everything from airplanes to office buildings.
Of late, U of T has had a love affair with international architects, using their star power to sell buildings that are breaking out of the traditional height and materiality of the University of Toronto campus, perhaps intentionally eroding the earlier solid self-image of the University with the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy (2006) by Sir Norman Foster at the corner of University Avenue and College Street, and the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (2005) Behnisch, Behnisch and Partner of Stuttgart, Germany, in collaboration with Architects Alliance. Yet, what is being lost with these dramatic new buildings is a clear urban design idea for College Street and U of T that endured for half a century, extraordinary in Toronto where planning rarely outruns development pressure.
The proposed Ontario Capital Precinct zone contains an extraordinarily rich wealth of architectural landmarks, government buildings, important institutions including the hospitals and the University of Toronto, who have all built well. The institutions need to grow and change and evolve. Now, during the time of COVID, might be just the right time to hit the pause button and think about the significance of this area, and whether the developments we have been designing for the past twenty years as well as our planning process are right for the future that is arriving with such shocking speed.
2. Death of Kathryn Anderson Celebrating a 30 year Career in Heritage Planning at the City of Toronto
The obituary posted by Kathryn Anderson’s family only hints at the contributions of the woman who worked for 30 years researching and writing more than 2000 listing and designation reports, in fact there were years where she was the sole heritage researcher for the entire megacity.
Her departmental colleagues were great supports during her battle with cancer. Playing a lead role in her commemoration at the City of Toronto was Tamara Anson-Cartwright who quarterbacked a nomination for a CAHP Lifetime Achievement Award and a nomination for the newly minted Carlos Ventin Award for outstanding municipal officials of the Architectural Conservancy Ontario. Anson-Cartwright was able to share the contents of the nominations, including many tributes from colleagues, with Ms. Anderson shortly before she died.
Appropriately, Ms. Anderson was further honoured by her department colleagues at the most recent Toronto Preservation Board meeting, August 27, in a formal presentation prepared in City Report form, which included an wonderful map that showed all the properties she had contributed to over her career, that started in 1989 with the Toronto Historical Board. The two things that come up in all notes about her are her professionalism, her meticulous and careful research which was relied upon by decision makers in Toronto and at the appeals tribunals, and her sense of humour, not readily apparent to anyone like me who admired her only in her formal professional roles.
Ms. Anderson resided in Aurora. She started her career as a member of the Aurora LACAC, where her early reports are still relied upon and admired.
Her death creates a big gap in the Toronto heritage community, she will be missed by many.
Editor's Note: Thanks for this note from Susan Schappert at Oakville with a correction: just a note – Kathryn Anderson lived in Newmarket, not Aurora. Firsthand knowledge, she was our neighbor for over 40 years. She lived with her mother in a white house on Bayview Avenue and then stayed there after her mother passed a few years ago. She was just making plans to sell the house when she passed away.
Not sure how she got on Aurora LACAC, but she definitely wasn’t a resident.
Sue Schappert
3. York Square Video by Old Toronto and ACO Toronto Catherine Nasmith
Title Page for ACOToronto/Old Toronto Video
The latest ACOTO/ Old Toronto video on York Square, has a ton of great stuff on the history of York Square, Yorkville in its heyday, and footage of Jack Diamond discussing the design and construction. And then there is a cameo of BHN editor Catherine Nasmith at 15….
4. BlogTO: U of T proposal for Centre for Civilization, Cultures and Cities on Planetarium Site Becky Robertson
Toronto Neighbourhoods Oppose U of T Plans for Landmark Building
Rendering of proposed new Centre for Civilization, Culture and Cities by New York Architects Diller Scoffidio in collaboration with Architects Alliance
A massive construction project forthcoming from the University of Toronto has a lot of the city talking right now — but not for good reasons.
In stark contrast to the brutalist dome structure that residents rallied to try and save, the new Centre for Civilizations, Cultures and Cities building will be immense and ultramodern, with sleek, sharp geometry and a striking metallic exterior.
Adjacent to the ROM, the hub will also have sustainability features and will include an event space and music recital hall, room for the multiple school faculties, and will incorporate U of T's existing Falconer Hall law building — which is 120 years old — into its design.
But, it seems that not just one, but eight associations representing nearby citizens are not exactly thrilled with the building's proposal or how its distinctive architecture will (or, rather, won't) mesh with the historic landmarks in the area.
It’s hideous. Toronto architecture has become lazy and boring. Set in the same block as the ROM, this is awful.
Editor's Note: For more pictures of the project go to: https://updc.utoronto.ca/project/centre-for-civilizations-and-cultures/
5. Old Toronto: How you can share what you know about Toronto Buildings on TOBuilt Catherine Nasmith
Want to Help Save Toronto Heritage
Morgan Ross explains how to post to TOBuilt, ACO Toronto's amazing database of over 11,000 Toronto buildings, indexed by architect, neighbourhood, style, date, with all kinds of reference documents.
All you need to start an entry, is to join ACO for free, and post a photo and an address. Of course ACO hopes you can provide research as well. https://acotoronto.ca/
You didn't hear it from me, but can Ontario Built be far away?
6. Globe and Mail: A last crumb of heritage in fast moving Toronto Alex Bozikovic
Heritage rules and development pressures create an explosive mix in downtown Toronto
“Maybe it wasn’t important to keep it. Is that what we’re saying?” Geoff Kettel asked at a recent discussion of the Toronto Preservation Board. He was referring to the decision that the façades of a 1942 loft and a 1927 office building slated to be demolished must be preserved and grafted onto a proposed 37-storey development on Front St. East.
He and other board members, who advise Toronto City Council on heritage matters, agreed that these two structures were nothing special. “These were second-rate buildings within a larger framework,” said member and architect Robert Allsopp. “[Here,] they’re the last crumbs of heritage.” board chair Sandra Shaul called them “very modest little buildings.”
So why conserve pieces of them? Much of this neighbourhood – and its counterpart on the west side of downtown Toronto, the King-Spadina district – have now been designated heritage conservation districts, which list hundreds of buildings and places as having cultural value, either in themselves or as part of a larger context.
This is a fine idea, in theory. But these are also two of the areas where the city is growing most intensely. Toronto‘s official plan, unfortunately, bars new development in 90 per cent of the city; the remaining land has stuff on it, often old buildings.
”The city plan’s expectations [for new development] and little heritage buildings don’t mix very well,” Ms. Shaul said.
Indeed. And this could be a real problem for the city in coming years. Ideas about cultural heritage have become increasingly broad. And city heritage planning staff are now willing to go to the mat to conserve some very undistinguished structures – while also beginning a heritage survey that aims to touch every corner of the city.
Will Toronto’s buildings be captured in amber? If heritage conservation combines with the city’s already-strict planning regulations and NIMBY politics, will the city have room to grow?
The St. Lawrence neighbourhood has seen a running dispute between the city and a host of private landowners and developers. The city declared the area a heritage conservation district in 2015; this was recently appealed to the provincial Local Planning Appeals Tribunal, and in a decision in early 2020, the LPAT allowed the policy to stand in a modified form.
While lawyers were arguing, city heritage planners mounted a spirited defence of the two buildings at Front and Sherbourne streets when they came up for redevelopment. This required some stretching. Of the 1940s fur warehouse, a city report cited “the building’s brick cladding, planar façade with minimal ornamentation, and large windows … designed to provide access to light – rather than engage with the sidewalk.” In other words, it’s a 1940s industrial structure built on the cheap. If this is heritage, everything is.
Editor's Note: An excellent piece on the challenges of heritage preservation with the development forces in Toronto...in this case too little and much too late. Alex Bozikovic's twitter feed also worth following https://twitter.com/alexbozikovic/with_replies?lang=en, this week all about forces precluding modest intensification in downtown neighborhoods, with HCD's in his crosshairs.
7. Globe and Mail: Westinghouse Facade Rehabilitation in Toronto Dave LeBlanc
A small gift to the pedestrian at the site of Toronto’s former Westinghouse building
Architect Philip Evans is standing at the exact centre-point of a building site at the southeast corner of King Street West and Blue Jays Way in Toronto. Above his head, two condominium towers – one rising 44 storeys the other 48 – are mostly complete; in fact, Uber Eats couriers and furniture delivery trucks interrupt the pedestrian flow regularly on this Tuesday in late August.
But it’s this steady flow of people, bicycles and vehicles at ground level rather than the tall towers of “King Blue” that has his attention. Once temporary construction fencing is removed, openings in the complex’s podium will allow pedestrian-only access from the north and south, and mixed-use access to the east and west. The east-west corridor, Mr. Evans explains, was a city-owned laneway that the developer, Greenland Group, was allowed to incorporate into the plan since the city was “pushing” for more activity and life there.
“This is a quadrant idea,” he says as a jogger leaves the glassy lobby for an evening run. “So you have the four main quadrants of the site all coming together in this courtyard, and the idea is that everybody would have some kind of address, or some way of facing this courtyard, which is a new, unique feature to the block. … I can’t really think of many spaces like this, intentionally.”
Not only does this intentional, cross-shaped path create a new, sheltered, and urbane approach to city living, it allows residents, hotel guests and museum-goers (the complex will include a hotel and the Theatre Museum of Canada) to get up close and personal with a relocated “Westinghouse” logo that once sat 3½ storeys above the sidewalk.
Architect Philip Evans shows off the preserved Westinghouse logo.
“Isn’t this great?” he asks rhetorically as he runs his finger along the ‘n.’ “You can see the quality of this: It’s not washed out, it’s not rubbed away. … We had such a light touch on this.”
Made of glazed terracotta (just like the long, cream-coloured bands that trace the windows) the letters were saved during the controlled demolition of the 1927 building, which saw two of four façades retained, in situ via a steel cage, while the rest was cleared away for new construction (a three-storey building in 1927, three more floors were added in 1934-35, and if one looks closely the transition is apparent). And while many in the heritage community might see this as a loss, Mr. Evans offers that, save for steel beams, wooden floors, a freight elevator and a “modest” bit of tile in the foyer, nothing from the 1920s remained. So, he adds, better to consider how our city, during the incredible construction boom of the last two decades, is allowing for new building forms to emerge.
Editor's Note: This article is behind a paywall, if you can afford it, the Globe has excellent architectural coverage.
The depth and breadth of Doug’s passion reached beyond the bricks, mortar and masonry of Toronto’s architecture.
“Since I was a boy, I have been captivated by history that’s rich in romance, adventure and murder in historic buildings and landscapes,” he has said.
He was a member of the faculty of the Lakeshore Teachers’ College (York University) and the Ontario Teacher Education College, where he says he “had the opportunity to share my love of history with promising young teachers-to-be.
“Today, I hope that they have forgiven me for the sin of believing that history, especially Toronto’s, is fascinating.”
During the 1970s, he was among the first to conduct walking tours of Toronto’s historic districts. Chinatown, Kensington Market, and the historic town of York and its cemeteries were popular sites on his trips.
Sneaky Dee’s fans oppose development proposal that threatens popular venue
The days of Sneaky Dee’s at its iconic College Street location may be numbered as a new development proposal was submitted to the city on Friday.
A proposal to build a 13-storey mixed-use building with 169 residential units as well as retail or commercial storefronts at ground level was posted on the development projects page of the City of Toronto website. The proposal covers 419, 421, 423, 429 and 431 College Street, which encompasses much of the block on the southeast corner of Bathurst and College.
The posting did not include the name of the prospective developer.
Sneaky Dee’s has been a mainstay at Bathurst and College for the past 30 years. Its upstairs concert venue has played host to numerous local and touring bands, from Arcade Fire to Broken Social Scene. Downstairs, the graffiti-laden dining area has long been a popular spot for late-night nachos and other Tex-Mex favourites.
If Sneaky Dee’s moves, it wouldn’t be the first time. The bar was originally located near Bathurst and Bloor, across the street from Honest Ed’s, before moving to its current location in 1990.
Editor's Note: This case, along with the Matador and other lost music venues in Toronto argues for intensification away from main streets. There is a great discussion happening on Urban Toronto and on Twitter about the value of these cultural institutions, which are not preserved when a building is declared "heritage". A post from London England notes that London requires developers to re-instate space for such businesses or galleries in redevelopment, Toronto has a mixed success rate negotiating such deals.
10. Globe and Mail: Vancouver proposes as of right intensification on single family lots Canadian Press
Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart seeks to permit up to six properties on one residential lot
Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart is launching a bold push to create cheaper forms of housing in Vancouver’s single-family neighbourhoods by calling for the city to allow up to six units on any residential lot.
The catch is that two would have to be rented or sold at below-market rates permanently.
That could be a first for Canada and is only outdone by Portland, Ore., which recently passed a similar policy in mid-August except that it required three “affordable” units if there were six built on a lot. Fourplexes would be allowed outright under Vancouver’s new proposal.
Most other U.S. cities looking at housing reform in single-family neighbourhoods have not proposed anything beyond allowing triplexes.
11. Canadian Architect: Check out this issue Catherine Nasmith
Interesting material on Indigenous Architects, Architectural Education in the Age of COVID
Formline Architecture is one of four Indigenous-led practices working with the National Research Council of Canada to develop prototype housing for Indigenous communities in remote regions of Canada. Courtesy Formline Architecture
The good news and bad news is that most architectural education will be remote this term, making it easier to hear from teachers from all around the world....but the energy and idea factory of studio learning will be limited if not going extinct. The next topic is indigenous architectural practice, questioning what that is, why there are few practitioners, what the profession is doing about it. If anything is place based, it has to be indigenous architecture. But if the world can only be experienced remotely, does place have any meaning in these strange times.
An interesting issue, thanks to Elsa Lam the editor who is making Canadian Architect so much more than a fashion digest.
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