This blog has gone the way of many of my older blogs, and while it served a purpose once, it has since been replaced by something that fits slightly better.

Life! Constantly evolving.

You are more than welcome to read everything I’ve left here, though.

If you are looking for more, I am still blogging about built, cultural and natural heritage (And other things) here:

http://leafbeaten.posterous.com

Happy Guy Fawkes Night everyone!

This year I got to watch an effigy of Guy Fawkes burn at Old Fort Erie. The spectacle is coupled with their annual Halloween Historic Ghost Tours, something mindbogglingly spooky in itself.

I managed to get some pretty fantastic video. Enjoy

Think of it as Yule Log, but for Guy Fawkes Night.

One of the benefits of having historical interpreters as friends is that they are all licensed to handle explosives.

I wasn’t too surprised that some of the more interesting people I follow on Twitter pointedly did not attend Nuit Blanche this year. It has become too big and too corporate and there were too many people to casually enjoy the art infused cityscape. Lines, lines, everywhere lines and all that.

But I am kind of disappointed. Has Nuit Blanche has jumped the shark? (No! It was great! More behind the Cut:)

Thanksgiving was its usual shuffle between my hometown and Jesse’s family farm. I woke up early on the holiday Monday to explore the three late 19th and early 20th century barn structures on the property. Ontario Barn trivia and more pictures follow the cut:

There are three distinct barn structures on the property. The smallest and most recently constructed is the Drive Shed, used primarily for storing farm vehicles and other equipment.

The oldest part of the complex was probably built in the 1850′s or 60′s. You can tell it is a Bank Barn, the most common form of barn in Ontario, because of the earthen ramp to the second level at the rear. Bank Barns are loosely based on the Mennonite Barn and like all early Canadian architectural styles they are uniquely adapted to handle the harsh Canadian winter.

The foundation is made of rough field stone, rubble stone, aggregate and lime mortar.  Ontario barns of this age that are still standing today all have one thing in common: their foundations extend below the frost line. If it was embedded above the frost line the freeze/melt cycle of the upper layers of soil would have destabilized the foundation, causing large cracks, moisture penetration and ultimately failure of the overall structure.

The newer addition to the bank barn has a poured concrete foundation with metal flashing to dissuade moisture from permeating the building envelope. The new addition is not a bank barn, but meets the older barn at a 90 degree angle, forming a “L” shape. It was probably built at the beginning of the 20th century.

Like all buildings, the best way of ensuring preservation is meaningful and ongoing use. Jesse’s Dad uses this space for a lot of different projects (as you can see).

The second floor loft would have been used to store hay and house chickens. Now it is used as a fort, jungle gym and camp out cabin by Jesse’s little brother. Usually it is a problem when a building isn’t heated in the winter. Heat helps keeps moisture out, barns don’t have this problem because what they do have: plenty of ventilation. In addition to letting in streams of sunlight the single wood plank walls also let in the prevailing winds (there are several wind farms nearby), this helps keep the barns dry and cool all year round.

These barns are post and beam constructions, meaning that the stability of the structure comes from a series of thick, heavy, interlocking posts (vertical) and beams (horizontal). This wood is hand hewn and untreated and is actually worth a lot of money in the world of architectural salvage.

After early Canadian farmers realized that the supply of trees in Upper Canada was, in fact, not infinite, they stopped building resource heavy post and beam barns, and started building lighter and more complex frame barns. The gambrel roof barn (the kind kids draw when they draw barns) was invented because it allows for more space to store hay, while also using less wood.

What I like about the barns at Jesse’s family farm is that they are two different kinds of barn, from two very different times, overlapping in a unique way. There is lots to explore and discover.

Back to Nuit Blanche:

What I really enjoyed about Nuit Blanche this year is that (because of its scale and increased importance) some of the more monumental architecture of Toronto was used as exhibition space.

Union Station, the CN Tower, New and Old City Hall and the entire Financial District (temporarily turned into carnival grounds) all played a part in the all night art festival. Anything that encourages people to look up, and appreciate the city around them is okay in my books.

]]> http://laurenarcher.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/nuit-blanche-thanksgiving/feed/ 2 Lauren UnionStation InBarnGlowing MeinBarn TheBankBarn FieldstoneFoundation BarnComplex TheBankBarn FieldstoneFoundation PourandFlashing InsideColour InBarnGlowing BarnInside1 InBarnRed LoftBarn MeinBarn BluelightBuilding http://laurenarcher.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/re-canadian-arctic-sovereignty/ http://laurenarcher.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/re-canadian-arctic-sovereignty/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:46:58 +0000 laurenarcher http://laurenarcher.wordpress.com/?p=1060 ]]>

19th Century Canadian Art: An Iceberg, a Ship and Some Walrus near the Entrance of Hudson Strait, from the Archives Canada website.

I’ve been working for the Cabbagetown-Regent Park Museum for about a month and a half now. It’s really given me a chance to get to know Cabbagetown, an area I had hardly visited before I started working here. One of my favourite gems of the area is Riverdale Farm, a gorgeous city-owned-and-run working farm and living museum found along the old course the Don River, just east of downtown Toronto. (Located 3 blocks east of Parliament Street along Winchester Street.)

Riverdale Farm started its life like most of arable Ontario: As an actual farm. The land was purchased from the Scadding Estate in 1856 with the intent of building a jail (What would become the Don Jail) and, to keep the prisoners busy and well fed, a Jail Farm. In 1880 the land was designated parkland, although it was still maintained by Don Jail inmates, and became known as Riverdale Park.

In 1888 Daniel Lamb, a Cabbagetownian and prominent Toronto councilor, donated a few deer and wild birds to the Park. He encouraged others to donate animals and, in 1894, the Riverdale Zoo officially opened. By 1902 the Zoo contained sixteen pheasants, two ocelots, a male camel, a female dromedary, a buffalo bull, six pens of monkeys, a Siberian bear, a young female crane, some lions, and a hippopotamus.

Like many zoos of its time, Riverdale Zoo consisted of a collection of iron cages and cramped enclosures – dismal conditions by today’s standards. By the 1950′s it was considered entirely inappropriate for a City Zoo. Toronto Metro Zoo didn’t open until a few decades later in 1978, but at when it did all of the animals in Riverdale Zoo were transferred and almost all of the facility was demolished. The area was reestablished as Riverdale Farm, an urban farm used to teach city children about food production and our rural history.

The farm is open free to the public and is a great place to walk through and enjoy, with 7.5 acres of pathways through wooded areas, a duck pond, and a butterfly-herb-flower-vegetable gardens. They have cows, horses, donkey, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and rabbits. During the Toronto municipal workers strike this summer the responsibility of milking the cows, collecting the eggs and feeding and caring for the animals fell on the lap of upper management!

Of all the curiosities found at the Riverdale Farm (and there are many) the Zookeepers Cottage is the most intriguing. One of the few remaining traces of the old Riverdale Zoo, the Zookeepers Cottage is a Queen Anne and Arts and Crafts style influenced Victorian Farmhouse built around 1902 by Don Jail inmates. It looks like it was assembled lovingly out of scraps, burnt reclaimed brick, river stone, half-timbering on one side and more than a few different foundations. The building has served many functions: A residence, an animal hospital, a temporary morgue for the Toronto Necropolis across the street, and now a staff area and weekend museum space!  The Cabbagetown-Regent Park Museum utilizes the Zookeepers Cottage as an exhibition space and is open every Saturday and Sunday, as long as the Farm itself is open. You should drop by if you get the chance!

Just to prove I am, indeed, alive, I have a new, albeit quick, post up at Spacing Toronto.

Evergreen Brick Works (nee Don Valley Brick Works) is looking for people to share their interesting stories about their experiences, be they through work or play, with business or family, on purpose or purely by accident, in order to better interpret the public history of Evergreen Brick Works.

If you are interested in sharing your stories about what you’ve been up to in and around the Lower Don Parkland and Don Valley Brick Works you can contact: heritage@evergreen.ca or 416-596-1495 x 550

Or, if you would rather, you can recount your own experiences in the comments section over in the original Spacing post.

Last weekend I had the chance to attend the 2009 Ontario Heritage Conference in Peterborough, Ontario. I had decided that I wasn’t going to post anything about the conference because a) the content, however inspiring/educational, was just so amazingly overwhelming I wouldn’t know where to begin and b) I forgot my camera and didn’t think my prose alone could do the conference justice.

But since I’m writing something up for the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario anyway, I figure I might as well post some of it here:

James Howard Kunstler, New Urbanist and author of “The Geography of Nowhere” was the first keynote speaker of the conference. I was excited, because I had seen his TED lecture (online, obviously) and had an idea of what an enigmatic and brilliant speaker he is.

The crux of the keynote address, beyond his initial arguments for the end of the car and suburbia as we know it, was that we have forgotten how to build places worth caring about, and have ceased to make places adequate for every day human activity. We need to protect our heritage streetscapes because they are not only excellent examples of built environments that work but are the only places we have that still do. As the large-scale industrial economy collapses we need to return to small-scale locally driven building projects that emphasize quality, craftsmanship and functional solutions to community needs.

While pre-war architecture was designed to be familiar, logical and comforting structures that facilitate long-term use and revitalization cycles, celebrated post-war architecture was designed to unhinge and disturb, to completely redefine everything we feel a building is and should be. Buildings designed since the advent of our car culture, from 75 storey skyscrapers to  squat one storey pizza huts, were designed for one purpose only and will not experience cycles of adaption and re-use like so many of our surviving Victorian buildings have. They were also built to fall apart, at a time when energy and materials were cheap and nobody was thinking beyond the new ideas of the day.

Kunstler is fascinating, passionate and intelligent. His keynote address was an invaluable experience for heritage professionals and enthusiasts alike. His speaking style was clear, directed and he easily wove the most pressing issues humanity faces today, such as the failing industrial economy, global warming and peak oil into a tapestry supporting the protection and revitalization of our built heritage.

His flamboyant and exaggerated performance emphasized the most extreme repercussions of our current lifestyle in a way that made them seem inevitable. He is the sort of speaker who can convince even the most determined skeptic that it is, indeed, time for us to reevaluate how we allocate our resources.

He was unique at the conference in that he didn’t play it safe, emphasizing the controversial and stimulating quite a bit of heated discussion amongst delegates. Overall the moderation of the speakers and presenters was excellent. Discussion and presentations were consistently interesting, intelligent and informative throughout the conference. There was, however, a lot of repetitive discussion. Because there were so many public figures, (including Glen Murray and Adam Vaughan! *faints*) on the panel there was a tendency for panelists to attempt to out-eloquent each other. Too many of the panelists agreed on the fundamentals, so all conflict and subsequent discussion was over small details. In some cases, the panelists were merely preaching to the choir, speaking about the issues and perceived solutions that many heritage-minded individuals already agree on, as opposed to exposing delegates to new ideas.

That is always the challenge when organizing a conference of like-minded individuals. In an attempt to appease everyone sometimes the real issues are lost. Heritage folks don’t agree on everything, to the contrary, there is a vast amount of argument over best practices between Municipal Heritage Committee members, heritage planners, architects, municipal council members and heritage developers, all of whom are truly passionate about our built heritage. These integral differences fuel passionate discussions every day in the heritage sector, and, in my opinion, should be what we are trying to come to terms with at a conference like this.

Next year I’d like to see a few panelists who are known to be anti-heritage to explain their point of view, for example, someone who regularly who votes against heritage initiatives or a developer who is known to demolish rather than re-use, one what supports façadism, or one that has tried to adaptively reuse a heritage property, but has found it too difficult.

All in all, the conference was probably the most innovative in years. Its interdisciplinary focus on Municipal Cultural Planning and its well-known keynote speakers and panelists attracted a wide variety of people in record numbers.

I had an amazing time, what I’ve written here doesn’t even begin to describe all that the conference offered. But, unfortunately I have more awesome work to do for the ACO, and have to stop for today. Lately my writing has been neglected, mostly due to my fulfilling but heritage-related tome draining job.

Hopefully I’ll be writing more soon!

Doors Open Ontario is a series of cultural heritage festivals that take place between late spring and early fall in municipalities across Ontario every year. This year nearly fifty municipalities will literally open the doors of their buildings of architectural, historic, cultural and social significance and invite residents and visitors alike to discover first-hand Ontario’s hidden heritage treasures, some of which have never been open to the public.

I’ve never attended a Doors Open event before. I’ve joyfully volunteered (and will again this year) at quite a few across Ontario as a tour guide or property supervisor, but I’ve never actually had the chance to spend an afternoon poking around the great heritage buildings of a place.

If you live in the GTA  you’ve probably noticed that this weekend is Doors Open Toronto. There are people everywhere; wandering around, taking pictures, paying uncommonly apt attention to their surroundings. I suspect that Doors Open appeals the the deep human desire to see what people are really up to behind closed doors.

We are an inherently nosy species.

Don Jail, pictured above, is a massive pre-Confederation prison that was designed to facilitate reform instead of repeated incarceration. The revolutionary design by William Thomas provided each inmate with access to daylight, heat and ventilation.  This October it will be completely renovated and restored, Doors Open is one of the last opportunities to see it before it is adapted for modern use. If Twitter is any indication a lot of people planned on touring the eastern properties today, and incidentally that was also my plan. The lure of a Victorian Gaol followed up by fresh Mill St. beer was far too tempting.

Past the cut you’ll see some of what I got up to today:

I didn’t wake up very early today. This would ultimately be undoing when it came to touring Don Jail. By the time Jesse and I walked up to the jail from the Distillery District the site was closed off to additional patrons due to an estimated four hour wait. Apparently people started showing up at 6 am to wait in line for a tour!

I didn’t expect such a crowd. Because the building interior has deteriorated significantly since the building was closed in the 1970′s, the number of people allowed in the jail at one time was limited. Alas. With 175 buildings open to the public across the city there is more than any one person can possibly do in a weekend anyway. I did manage to get couple of nice exterior pictures of Don Jail.

Around the Don Jail grounds a cafe culture had emerged, fueled by  a hot dog stand and ice cream truck that had flocked to the high density of hungry folks.

As people waited, their volunteer would-be-guides regaled them with stories of days-gone by. They were quite knowledgeable, and obviously very passionate about the history of the city.

Of course, I was more interested in what is behind the jail: Riverdale Hospital.

An architectural splendor and famed Toronto landmark the Riverdale Hospital is scheduled for demolition later this year.

Built in 1963, this whimsical modernist building is a delight to the eye and more importantly, is perfectly structuraly sound. The fight to Save Riverdale Hospital was a long and arduous one an ultimately lost, sited as due to an ‘acute condo shortage’ in the area. Huh? Frankly, the Riverdale Hospital would make an awesome condo.

The decision to demolish Riverdale was framed, essentially,  as a choice between Riverdale Hospital and Don Jail. It is, apparently, unacceptable to expect a developer to sensitively adapt more than one building.

Anyway.

After a walk around Riverdale, Jesse and I returned to the Distillery District for whisky memories and beer times. This building was originally used as a whiskey barrel storage facility.

The internal supports are all still in place! It was quite dark, very musty and a little scary inside. I loved it.

There was also a collection of junk forming inside.

The Distillery District is one of the finest examples of adaptive reuse in the city. This collection of previously abandoned and deteriorating of 19th century industrial buildings have become a cultural hub and prime tourist draw for the city.

There was a craft festival cleverly scheduled for the same day.

After our tour of the district we decided to stay for dinner a sampling at our favourite micro-brewery.

Across the way from Mill St. is a little bakery that makes its own ice cream. The Chocolate tasted like real cocoa!

This is arguably the best public art installation I have ever seen. Despite being made out of metal puzzle pieces it was incredibly lifelike and appeared ready to attack at any time!

Hopefully I’ll be about to get out tomorrow as well, I’m planning on visiting the Wynchwood Barns first and maybe wandering downtown from there.

Last night I braved the eastern wilds of the Distillery District to go to the fifth annual Toronto the Good party, an event in honour of fair city Toronto organized by the amazing folks at ERA Architects Inc, Spacing Magazine, Toronto Society ofArchitects and [murmur].

Despite a plethora of social blunders (on my part, for I have the social grace of a yak) I really had a great time. 

I got the chance to meet a lot of the people that I usually admire from afar, something new for me, but something that I think is going to be kind of important in the future.

This summer I’m hoping to get a lot more involved with what is going on in the City proper. For the first time since I’ve moved to Toronto I’ll be downtown regularly,  working as an Architectural Conservation Assistant for the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (!!!!!).  I really think it’ll make a difference. I love where I live in Etobicoke, but it is a hell of a trip downtown and back, especially in the evening after the regular commuters and their more rigorous transit schedule have left!

I had a bit of free time downtown this afternoon so I decided to check out What Has Architecture Done For You Lately? (WHADFYL?), the newest exhibit at the Design Exchange. 

Curated by Zahra Ebrahim, the founder and Executive Director of archiTEXT, the exhibit encourages all people, not just architects, to join in a discussion of architecture + the economic, equality, emotional, health, and environmental challenges facing our global cities today.

By utilizing an accessible vernacular, visual art and audience participation, Zahra Ebrahim has very successfully created a stimulating show that has the potential, in my opinion, to both challenge the professional architect and inspire those who are just developing an appreciation for the built environment. 

The exhibit proposes that for architecture to be a vehicle for social change all people, young and old, need to have the chance to actively participate in the design process. This wall, spanning a significant length of the exhibit space, is as a pink sticky forum, inviting all patrons to become a part of this process.

I added my own set of stickies advocating for adaptive reuse!

One of the best characteristics of this exhibit is its sheer accessibility. Not just for the visually impaired (too often museum exhibits use impossibly small, dense text) but also intellectually. It is quite a feat for an exhibit based largely around visual art installations to have no hidden message, the focus is very clearly and loudly displayed (this room focuses on the effects of architecture on our health) and addresses themes and concerns that that everyone can form a strong, completely valid opinion about.

My favourite part of the installation was in the last room I encountered. Here, eerie washed out models of our residential architecture are accompanied by large bins filled with brightly coloured ping pong balls.

Each colour represents a certain demographic, such as student, low-income family, gay couple, or senior citizen, while each bin represents a type of residence such as semi-detached home, farmhouse, apartment or condo. The idea is to pick out your demographic ball from a large, central bin and match it to your residence style.

The results are really neat! In many cases there are clear demographic trends visible in each bin. For example, a lot of gay couples (green balls) appear to live in farmhouses, a lot of young professionals (pink balls) appear live in condos and a lot of students (light blue) and low-income families (dark blue) appear to live in apartment buildings.

The result is a really fun, stimulating and worthwhile way  to spend an hour downtown, especially if you are stuck at Union waiting for a GO Train, and for five bucks (four with a student card) it’s not too pricey either. If you get a chance, check it out! WHADFYL? is on display until May 31st at the Design Exchange, located at 234 Bay Street, Toronto, Ontario.

If you are interested, I have another post up at Spacing Toronto.

“Save Our (Heritage) Schools: The adaptive re-use of our dying institutional buildings” is largely derived from my notes for the Preserving Heritage Schools workshop organized by the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario and Community Heritage Ontario that I attended last Februrary.

Enjoy!

Just because I am suffering from a hideous bout of bloggers block doesn’t mean I’m not up to a lot of interesting things. I have about five half-finished (quite-interesting) posts sitting in my drafts queue that I, for the life of me, can’t seem to finish. I suspect the fact that I have once again run my computer into the ground, causing it to run like molasses and making even the most simplest of tasks arduous and painful doesn’t help.

Last Saturday and Sunday I attended Part One (of Two) of the Heritage Planning Workshop run by the University of Waterloo School of Planning and their infamous Heritage Resources Centre. So far, the workshop has been amazingly helpful. It started off with an international review of heritage, built heritage and conservation legislation and finished off with an in depth analysis of the Ontario Heritage Act and the Ontario Planning Act and the tools this legislation provides municipalities for protecting our cultural heritage landscapes.

The workshop takes place here, at The Grange in Mississauga, a place I had never visited but that I’ve encountered many times before on the Ontario Architecture website!

Also known as the Robinson-Adamson House, this gorgeous Regency style summer home was built for John Beverly Robinson in 1833. We were told that the facade consists of more window than wall!

The long french windows found on most Regency style homes are not at all suited for harsh Canadian winters; they let a lot of heat escape. These windows are particularly elaborate, and particularly unsuitable for anything but a summer home. At the time that this house was built there was no local glass producer. The small panes used to construct these windows were probably transported at great expense from Montreal, the US, or perhaps even directly from Europe. Such elaborate fenestration was probably meant as a symbol of wealth, power and prosperity. 

The wooden and glass transom and windows all have decorative Neo-Classical moulding. The building also sports a Neo-Classical frieze and an oversized cornice. All of the decorative wood elements have survived to the extent a which they have because of a brick cladding which covered all of these elements until the building was restored in the 1970′s.

The low cedar shingled hipped roof is typical of the Regency style, but these dormers were probably added later in the 1850′s.

Here you can see the original tree lined laneway, a tell-tale sign of a former farmstead.  A ‘Grange’ is essentially a gentleman’s farm, they are often used to entertain guests and conduct business. This house was never really meant to be a permanent residence and was used more as a summer retreat for the well-off businessman.  

The interior of the home is almost hilariously crooked, there are very few right angles to be found. The building is currently used by the Mississagua Heritage Foundation as exhibition and meeting space.

And who is that dashing young mannequin in the background?

Why it’s Rudy (Rudolph) the solider, one of four of such mannequins to be made for one of the Ontario Fort’s (I forget which) in the 1920′s. His name is sewn on the back of his head. I made a pass at him, but he declined. (He is obviously saving his heart for my good friend Kate, a seasoned soldiers wife at Fort Erie.)

I am very slowly learning the geography of Toronto on foot.

I spent yesterday evening marching up and down Front Street playing ‘name that architectural feature’ and harassing a series of coffee shops and pubs with my laptop and piles of printouts, while Jesse attended a training session at the Rogers Centre in preparation for the upcoming baseball season.

Good news: It looks like Blue Jays Toonie Tuesdays will be back this year.

Bad News: All of two dollar seats will be in a designated dry zone due to several ‘alcohol related’ fights last year.

Alas, the over-passionate belligerently drunk fans were always the best part of sitting way up in the nosebleeds.

I really love when the seasons change. Whether it be from spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter or winter to spring, I always feel inspired. Yesterday I decided to take a break from my job search and took a trip on the 501 Queen Streetcar to Birds and Beans Cafe, my preferred Etobicoke caffeinating station. It’s one of those places that doesn’t mind if you come in to work or read, they have free wifi and organic, fair-trade, bird friendly coffee that they roast and grind themselves. These people know coffee like wine-lovers know wine, they even have a giant coffee flavor descriptor wheel hanging on the wall. If you are ever in Mimico, I highly suggest you check it out. Anyway.

As I left I decided I could avoid work for a longer time if I walked home, so I did. While snaking through the short streets between Lakeshore Blvd and Lake Ontario I happened across Norris Crescent, an attractive looking federally administrated housing co-op that leads to a little lakeside park. Now, I know what you are thinking: ‘attractive looking’ and ‘housing co-op’ are seldom used as mutual terms, but believe me this place was nice, affordable low-income housing.

The narrow street with parking along its right side had little traffic and the wide sidewalks were populated with several troops of playing kids (although I managed to get a picture without any children in it, for obvious reasons.) The two-storey alternating red and yellow brick buildings are set close to the street, with low ‘cast iron’ fences around the front lawns and a row of aging trees lining the street. It reminded me of the familiar layout of many of the 19th century neighborhoods in my hometown.

The large windows that dominate the facades of these buildings give the impression that there is always someone watching the street, and I got the feeling that someone always is. All of the front stoops contained a couple of chairs and, at the time, most of the front stoops were being used by teens and adults for socializing. It’s a really warm and welcoming neighborhood, and although I have no data on the socio-cultural reality of life on Norris Crescent, it was definetly a nice place to be on a spring afternoon.

At the end of Norris Crescent is Norris Crescent Parkette, the western termination point of Phase 1 of Mimico Waterfront Park, a 10.6 million dollar waterfront revitalization project that opened to the public last June. This curved, paved boardwalk was being used as a launching point for two girls on roller blades. 

The park is a part of a two phase initiative to provide west end Toronto residents with lakefront public green space in areas that previously lacked public access to the waterfront.

Mimico Waterfront Park was constructed through a lakefilling process along a narrow section of the existing shoreline connecting the existing Norris Crescent Parkette with Superior Avenue Parkette in the east. From the park you can see downtown. Beautiful views of Lake Ontario and the city skyline were one goal of the Mimico Waterfront Linear Park initiative, but what I was most interested in were the cobbled beaches that lined the park.

The craftsmanship of these beaches and the use of cobbling led me to initially suspect that these beaches were historic, possibly related to the early Mimico shipping industry, but upon closer inspection the stones were too precisely and cleanly laid, without the patina of long-term waterfront wear. 

When I got home I discovered that restoration of the shoreline and enhancement of terrestrial and aquatic habitats were a big part of the Mimico Waterfront Park initiative. The lakefront elements were designed to protect aquatic plants that haven’t been able to thrive along the Mimico waterfront since it was stripped of lumber and rock for building materials in the 19th century, but can survive once again thanks to a breakwater island, new sand dunes and these cobble beaches.

Now that’s inspiring.

These were taken off of my balcony, looking west into Mississauga.

Bruce Mackay, 1976, 17 min 23 s
A 1976 documentary about innovative housing and community design as a way to conserve energy. Two planned mining towns, one in Quebec and another in Manitoba, are examined, as well as solar-heated homes in Ontario and Prince Edward Island. This film was produced by the NFB for the Canadian Habitat Secretariat, Urban Affairs.

This fascinating National Film Board documentary starts with a quick history of Canadian construction and settlement planning before launching into a series of innovative 1970′s approaches to creating sustainable and livable Canadian communities. Passive heating and cooling, solar energy, mixed use of public spaces, dense and diverse town centres, economic diversity, and household agriculture are just a few of the ideas built into the mining towns of Leaf Rapids, Manitoba and Fremont, Quebec and experimental design homes, such as Provident House in Aurora and The Ark of PEI.

What’s most striking is that we are still struggling to integrate a lot of the concepts presented by the Canadian Habitat Secretariat, Urban Affairs into Canadian cities thirty-three years later.

I guess overcoming the challenges of the past, and planning workable, thriving Canadian municipalities isn’t as easy as we thought it was going to be.

Also interesting, although I’m not quite sure what make of it, is the new Toronto Star map of Toronto Neighbourhoods. I’m interested to see how the City reacts to being categorized in such a way…

You’ve certainly aged well, old friend. 

If you are reading this you might be interested to know that I’ll be occasionally contributing to the Spacing Blog from now on! 

My first entry, “Amalgamated Heritage: The Lost Streetscapes of Bronte”, is really just an edited version of a post you can already find here. (Although I prefer the Spacing version, hands down.)

Photo by Squeakyrat

Last Saturday I attended a mini-conference on the adaptive reuse of heritage schools.

I’ve been chipping away at a more substantial post on the topic, but for now here’s some of the pictures I took along the way.

“Preserving Heritage Schools”, presented by the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario and Community Heritage Ontario, addressed many of the issues surrounding the preservation school buildings with cultural heritage significance in Ontario communities.

The workshop took place at Kensington Market Lofts located at 21 Nassau Street. Kensington Market Lofts is itself the former Provincial Institute of Trades and was at one point part of George Brown College.

At the end of the day we were given a tour of the facility, including a trip up to one of the third floor rooftop decks! 

“This growing dissent within the architectural and preservation communities represents the paradigm shift now in progress as the grip of historicist doctrine is gradually broken. In its place, a new conservation ethic is emerging, drawing together traditional architecture, new urbanism and historic preservation in pursuit of a built environment that is beautiful, sustainable and just. In the new paradigm, the architecture of our time will be the result of a critical engagement with the architecture of place, seen as a continuously self-renewing field of character and civility.” -Steven Semes, “New Buildings Among Old: Historicism and the Search for an Architecture of Our Time.”

This Saturday I attended an Old Home Restoration Workshop hosted by the City of Burlington, Heritage Burlington and Edifice Magazine, the only magazine in Canada dedicated to owners of old homes.

Christopher Cooper, Editor-in Chief of Edifice Magazine, facilitated the workshop. Starting from  the chimney top and working down to the basement, Chris Cooper guided/chided his way through an examination of proper repair methods, restoration best practices and general maintenance of a heritage home. The workshop was primarily targeted to homeowners, but also catered to contractors, craftsmen and heritage enthusiasts.

I don’t own a house myself, nevermind a heritage home, but I did find the workshop extraordinarily useful. I especially valued the diagnostic tools that were presented, such as how to recognize a salvageable wood window and how to identify and eliminate the causes of dampness and decay.  Chris himself is an amazing resource, offering instant advice backed by 25 years of research and experience. The workshop was designed to provide homeowners with the knowledge base needed to properly repair and care for their heritage homes, but the same training will allow me to more confidently assess the needs of the heritage property owners I’ll be working with in the near future.

And hopefully, someday, I will have the chance to buy a heritage home with cracked plaster, painted shut windows and failing masonry all of my own.

Building On History is currently on display in the architecture gallery at the York Quay Centre, one of the many buildings that make up the greater Harbourfront Centre. Three Canadian architecture firms that specialize in restoration and adaptive reuse were invited to create installations in response to the idea of ‘building on history’. The result is a really interesting collection of exhibits that explore some of the questions and misconceptions that the public generally has about heritage conservation.

Jesse and I also went for a lovely walk along the harbourfront. A lot of the facilities in use at the Harbourfront Centre are historic structures formerly associated with the shipping industry that have been adapted to suit the needs of a community cultural centre. 

Look behind the cut for a more detailed account of the Building On History exhibit and my journey about the Harbourfront Centre:

The first exhibit we came upon was called The Redemptorist Project: Studies in Risk, Conservation and Architectural Response designed and installed by Taylor Hazel Architects Ltd.

This installation was built out of a very familiar material, something that both Jesse and I have a lot of experience with but did not know the history of: Paisley buff clay brick. Jesse’s family farm is built out of Ontario red and buff clay brick, as is most of the other farmhouses in the area. These bricks have been manufactured in Ontario and upstate New York since the early 1800′s. Every community, including many Toronto-area villages, had their own brickworks utilizing the naturally occurring clays as an inexpensive building material. Unfortunately, these bricks slowly ceased to be manufactured as small brickworks were replaced by larger plants and the bricks themselves went out of style. 

However, the structures that were originally built using these uniquely Ontario bricks are aging and buff and red clay bricks are once again in demand for restoration projects. In the case of the Redemptorist Catholic Church, which was originally built in 1850, this brick is not needed for restoration but for a completely new project. The intent is to build a new structure on church grounds with materials and design consistent with the other buildings on the property, in order to maintain the cultural heritage value of the church landscape. In response to this need Taylor Hazel Architects Ltd. sought out one of the last small brickworks with access to buff clay pits in Ontario, Paisley Brick and Tile Company. This family- owned business is located in the small Village of Paisley, just minutes from Jesse’s family farm in Chesley, Ontario. While the Paisley Brick and Tile Company had the facilities and access to the clay, they hadn’t made buff brick in over a generation. After an extensive trial and error period the brick was successfully able to be replicated!

The second exhibit, perhaps the best advertised, is Found Toronto, installed by E.R.A. Architects Inc. 

I really enjoyed this exhibit because it challenges one of the common misconceptions about historic buildings with heritage value  in Toronto: That they are all Georgian or Victorian beauties. In reality a lot of the designated buildings in Toronto are not necessarily easily recognizable as such and can often be over looked.

Kudos to the exhibition team at E.R.A. Architects Inc. for using a matte grey background to display these ‘polaroid’ style pictures. Grey is ideal for photographing, visually alluring as an exhibit colour, and gives the installation a rich, professional appeal. The E.R.A. Architects Inc. exhibit is definitely the best designed of the three and adheres closely to museum industry standards. Impressive!

The polaroid snaps are correlated to references within an early Toronto directory as well as pin pointed on the 1858 Boulton Atlas of Toronto, one of the earliest available city maps. This map is stunning in its detail, with the number of storeys written on each structure and material used indicated by colour. (Red for brick, grey for wood, white with black lines for stone.)

It was interesting to see how the grid pattern has changed in Toronto, how the streets have been moved and names have been changed to match up across the city. Even Jesse had trouble finding a few Toronto landmarks without consistent street names. It was also neat to see what hasn’t changed in Toronto, even after all this time.

This is a picture of Old Fork York, specifically taken for Kate, who is married to Fort Erie. I had a hard time finding Fort York on a map when I first moved  to Toronto because I assumed it was on the water. Little did I know that so much of the shoreline has been filled in since the Fort was in use!

The final exhibit, Take 2, designed by Goldsmith Borgal & Company Ltd. Architects, focused on adaptive reuse in a consumer driven economy. This hanging display illustrates the difference that a little restorative work can make on a historic window. 

The transformation from a disused warehouse to historic lofts, a restaurant, a cultural centre or theater is not only economically profitable, but also environmentally responsible and culturally desirable.

Goldsmith Borgal & Company Ltd. Architects illustrated adaptive reuse by using elements of a previous exhibit to build a Star Trek transporter! Awesome!

I couldn’t resist recolouring my jackets: Gold for command, blue for science red for engineering! (Note: I am also Scotty.)

After I was done playing ‘Landing Party’ Jesse and I took walk along the harbour only to discover free skating! There were a ton of families out enjoying their day off. In the background you can see The Power Plant, which has been adapted into exhibition and indoor performance space.

I grew up in a city on the shores of Lake Erie so I feel very comfortable in a harbour setting. It reminds me of home. It’s strange because as much as Toronto, cut off from Lake Ontario by the Gardiner Expressway, is not seen as a harbourfront city, I’ve always felt a strong connection to the lake. Although, it probably helps that our apartment is about 150m of park away from the lake.

This supertall ship has the CN tower as its mast! 

I am fascinated and terrified by the ice. Growing up in a great lake/canal city has made me wary of the dangers of playing where I ought not to. It looks a little thin.

Finally, it was Jesse’s birthday yesterday: Happy Birthday Jesse!