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- [00:12]
David Winterson
Toronto's gone through an incredible scale busting boom in the past 20 years. I think we can boast having the most number of small scaled heritage buildings as podiums for super tall condominium buildings and glass skyscrapers rising behind them. So we're trying to make sense of that. Can we make that a beautiful city?
- [00:31]
Andrew Tuck
How is North America's fastest growing urban centre shaping up? This is the Urbanist Monocles programme, all about the cities we live in. I'm your host Andrew Tuck and this week we put the focus on Toronto. We look up at Canada's tallest ever building, Pinnacle Sky Tower, which is set to open this year. Explore a new development which is using indigenous knowledge and techniques to ensure it retains a sense of place and and a connection to the land that it sits upon. And we learn about an overlooked Edwardian icon of the Toronto built environment. That's all ahead right here on the Urbanist with me, Andrew Duck. First up today we look to the skies as one tower in downtown Toronto has literally reached new heights in Canada. The Pinnacle Sky Tower recently became the first building in the country to reach 100 storeys. It's also taking on its high flying neighbors to the south as the first ever hundred storey residential building in all of North America. So is Toronto becoming a city of super tall structures? Well, Monocle's Carlotta Rebelo caught up with Anson Kwok, Vice president of Sales and marketing for Pinnacle International, the real estate group behind the Sky Tower. Anson began by giving us an overview of the project.
- [01:53]
Anson Kwok
So our Pinnacle Sky Tower project, it's located in downtown Toronto and right now it's the tallest building in Canada and it really just adds a little bit more definition to a very busy skyline. So we have this great postcard view of the city and you know, we've really spent a lot of time building over the last 20 years, 40 and 60 story buildings. But now we need some height peaks in there and Pinnacle sky tower is that 100 story. Now it's 106 story building that kind of adds and articulates that skyline.
- [02:25]
Carlotta Rebelo
Now 106 story is quite a remarkable figure. How do you build for residential, for living at such great height?
- [02:33]
Anson Kwok
You know, we have quite a bit of experience building across North America. So layouts are the most critical components of it. Making sure that the layouts are livable and enjoyable for the people experiencing the building and obviously for a vertical community, having enough elevators, looking at logistics in terms of where people collect to get into the elevators, having separate lobbies to help expediate people coming in and out of the building are really critical components for us planning our buildings.
- [03:03]
Carlotta Rebelo
Well, let's dive a bit deeper into that because I was looking at some of the images as well and it's kind of almost like a sculptural object, the tower itself. And you know, all I keep think thinking is, you know, what quality of life is like there. And obviously you mentioned there the amazing views and the fact that it really is trying to be this anchor for tall living in the city. Tell me a bit more about that human centric approach to design.
- [03:29]
Anson Kwok
Yeah, I think, you know, my principal has always thought of this as a piece of public art back to the city. So I think that sculptural component that you talk about is bang on in terms of our conception of the building and obviously us delivering the building. But in terms of the nitty gritties of living in the building, I think we've put a lot of thought into, obviously it's a different type of building compared to places around the world. To start off with, it is a tall building, but it's also a 12,000 square foot floor plate. So you also see that the proportions of the building are quite nice. It's not a skinny tall tower, it's an elegant tall building. And then for us, we put a lot of thought into kind of how people will experience the building. So we start off from the ground floor. We've actually, especially for the ground floor, we actually turn the elevators, the low rise and the high rise to face outwards. So you don't have that congestion of people waiting for the elevators and coming off the elevators at the ground level, being clustered and congested with the elevators facing each other. So we did that step just so that people can experience a better whether they're waiting for the lift or coming down from the elevator. And then upstairs, you know, we made sure that we had. It's quite common in terms of making sure the buildings are secure and so forth. On different floors. We have 12 units per floor and we broke up the building in half so that the people living from 56 down have five elevators and units above 57 up have four elevators. And it's well elevated for this type of living.
- [05:01]
Carlotta Rebelo
It's also integrated within the community itself because it's not just about thinking about what goes inside the tower, but it's also how it's incorporated in the nearby area in the neighborhood and how it can give back to the city. As you were mentioning just there.
- [05:17]
Anson Kwok
Yeah, I think this one's also unique in many ways because yes, it is a tall building, but it's part of our master plan community. And for us there's a lot of mixed uses in it. We've already built a 50,000 square foot community center that has a full six lane, 25 meter pool in it as well as a full basketball court. Inside we have retail. We're building a 223 room Lemurian hotel. That's the bottom of Sky Tower as well. But you know, we put a lot of thought into parks, public spaces, really making this community very permeable and accessible to everyone around.
- [05:54]
Carlotta Rebelo
And let's stay on that topic of this idea of densification that is happening in Toronto. How does this fit into the landscape of super tall buildings in Toronto?
- [06:04]
Anson Kwok
Well, I think it's a great piece of the puzzle. You know, in Toronto there's always been a lot of talk about traffic and infrastructure and we're fortunate enough to have a site and a location which is close to a lot of things downtown. So when you talk about the restaurants, the arts, all that is nearby. But we also have the accessibility of both the highways, the train system here, the transit system, we're close to the local city, Billy Bishop Airport as well. So, you know, you got planes, trains and automobiles and it's all just right outside your door. So I think that's one of the critical components of building a master community is knowing that there's a lot of benefits to the city, having the population close to all the important things to people living in everyday life.
- [06:52]
Carlotta Rebelo
And tell me, when it comes to this densification, we know that Toronto is growing at pace by several metrics, it's one of the fastest growing cities in North America. Does that inspire you and the team, considering, you know, this project, that perhaps this is the way to go and similar projects might follow?
- [07:09]
Anson Kwok
You know, I think for us there was a lot of limits, kind of mental limits on how high you can go in the city. So I think it kind of pushes through that glass ceiling that, you know, height can be achieved, but it's also unique in the sense that it is a busy city. So there's definitely a lot of projects around. But you know, tall buildings to this scale, you know, super tall status also need to have be in the right location as well. I think land is obviously always a tricky thing. So you can't say every site is, you know, prepared to be a super tall site. But you know, it's something that I think people are actually exploring now just because it's possible here. I think that sometimes we don't know what we don't know. And now they've seen it in action, which kind of changes the mentality quite
- [07:51]
Carlotta Rebelo
a bit, of course. And just finally, I'm curious, I don't know if you live at height, but if you don't, what is the thing that fascinates you about living at height?
- [08:01]
Anson Kwok
Well, actually I lived in high rise buildings for over 20 years, so I, you know, I love the height. You know, there's a lot of great components. Just exploring the view of the, what you see from outside is a very different perspective. But you know, the vertical community is just one thing that I really enjoyed. I always joked that I was the vertical commuter for a really long time. I used to just take the elevator and walk across the street. So that's kind of how I lived for about 20 years. So I think it's just a different peaceful environment. I think when you come home and you're living in a place where a, it's the centrally located location and without the traffic, you're home way before everyone else is. So you can really enjoy that downtime. And being in Toronto, we just had experienced a really big snowstorm here and not having to shovel snow and do all that fun stuff is, it's also brilliant and you can see all the snow from out your window. But I think it's a really kind of great way to live. You know, you really have a lot more sense of community. Elevators, people on ground floor. You do experience a lot more community and then obviously a lot more private space when you're up on your own floor. But I think it's a great mix for everyone, for introverts and extroverts because there's a lot of possibilities to interact with people in your community because you live in the same building versus, you know, sometimes spread out in a different subdivision or something different, you don't really see people as much.
- [09:20]
Andrew Tuck
And thanks to Anson Kwok there in conversation with Carlotta Rebelo. Next we unpack some of the history of Toronto's built environment through the works of one often overlooked architect. David Winterson is an architect and the author behind a new title, Toronto Edwardian Frank Darling, Architect of Canada's Imperial Age. The book chronicles Darling's extensive portfolio of works in the city and his importance in shaping Toronto's urban landscape. David joined me to discuss the book and he began by explaining the significance for Torontonians of Frank Darling's work.
- [10:00]
David Winterson
Frank Darling was a Toronto born, London trained Canadian architect and he led several firms from Toronto and they amassed over 360 known projects across Canada and about a third of those were in Toronto. He's not quite a household name in Toronto and I'm hoping with this book that we can kind of resurrect an architectural hero so people can identify his buildings and just know about the architectural culture of the period. And he was, he was born in 1850, he went over to London in the 1870s, came back. So he was active in the Victorian era, but really became important in midlife, as so many architects do at the turn of the century, the rise of Edwardian architecture and the rise of the Canadian banking system. He became Canada's establishment architect, really.
- [10:44]
Andrew Tuck
And we should point out the book is called Toronto Edwardian, highlighting the period which you're focusing on. Give us a couple of the things that he built and why you think they're such a part of what makes Toronto Toronto.
- [10:59]
David Winterson
One of the most obvious architecturally is his plan for the University of Toronto. So before Darling got involved, the University of Toronto was a smattering of Victorian pavilions in a park like setting. And then the plutocrats of Toronto really wanted to improve higher education in the province of Ontario. So they tapped, well, first of all, they got political and got money from the provincial government. But then they tapped Frank Darling to design a new campus or revise the old campus and design several new faculty buildings, including the chemical and mining building, convocation hall, a physics laboratory, a thermodynamics building. And the imprint of Darling on University of Toronto campus is still quite visible and quite important. So, you know, we can talk about it as an Edwardian ensemble and that's the most visible thing. A little less visible, or maybe it's a more kind of urbanistic scale is this idea of the Canadian banking system and that Darling was instrumental in reifying the banking system in the sense that he designed hundreds of banks for five of the six chartered banks in Canada. So what that means is the Canadian banking system meant that you could have a chartered bank that could have an unlimited number of branches. So they really used this system to spread across the country. And Frank Darling was their architect. So in many towns, big and small, at important intersections, in all these towns is a Frank Darling bank building, or at least there was a Frank Darling bank building. So a lot of people, their first exposure to capital a architecture in these small towns was an Edwardian bank building by Darling and Pearson.
- [12:35]
Andrew Tuck
What made you fascinated by his work? Is it very particular what he did in Canada and Toronto? Because as you said, he's from a generation of Edwardian Architects. And when I look at some of the images that you have chosen for the book, and of course there's some echoes of what was happening in London and in other cities which were touched by empire architects. But actually some of the scale of the things he seemed to be putting up in Toronto almost seemed as though they, they looked a bit south across the border to the likes of New York or something. They were bigger and bolder perhaps than some of the things that we associate with Edwardian architecture.
- [13:09]
David Winterson
That's right. And that was actually an observation made by Professor Riley from Liverpool. He was kind of astounded that Canadian main branches were bigger than what you would see in London and even in New York. And so that's the result of the Canadian banking system once again, that these few chartered banks became immensely wealthy and they spent a lot of money on their main branches in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg. So they have some of the most astounding banking halls on the continent.
- [13:37]
Andrew Tuck
And tell me, how long have you, as it were, been living the life of Mr. Darling? Because I understand this is a project you began a long time ago. We're speaking to you on the day that I understand that the first boxes of the books are going to arrive.
- [13:50]
David Winterson
It's been a journey.
- [13:52]
Andrew Tuck
When did you first, you and Mr. Darling first set off on this trip?
- [13:56]
David Winterson
Well, you know, back in the late 90s when I started my architectural career. I'm a licensed architect in Ontario and New York State. And I ended up working for a firm called ERA Architects, which at the time was a very small heritage firm. We helped church ladies fix up their steeples and fixing brick walls and chimneys and things. And now we're a firm of 130 people. But we touched on a lot of the older buildings in Toronto and became apparent to me that, oh, that's by Darlene Pearson. Oh, that one too is by Darlene Pearson. And it became obvious that this firm had an outs impact on the architectural production in Toronto. And really the institutional core of Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Toronto General Hospital, all these buildings and institutions had their first iteration through Frank Darling here in London.
- [14:44]
Andrew Tuck
Whether you know about architecture or not, or don't give two hoots about it, in a way, London still shapes you and shapes how you feel about a place. And much of the architecture that dominates here is plenty of Edwardian things, but it was the Victorian era, you know, that's when we got our Houses of Parliament, that's when we got many of the museums. And I think it still does shape in people's minds, the kinds of city they live in, even if they're young and incredibly modern in their outlook. Do you think that the buildings of Frank Darling still shape the way that people feel about Toronto?
- [15:18]
David Winterson
I think they do. You know, people are walking past Darling and Pearson and Frank Darling buildings all the time. Like I said, the most prominent example is bank architecture. And to the extent that it's almost like a cartoon pictogram of a. A Greek temple fronted bank building is a bank. But Darling was the one that really kind of made that a Canadian type. The university buildings are important. He was also, the firm was also instrumental in bringing skyscraper architecture to Canada. Canada's first true skyscraper was in Winnipeg. And then they took what they learned from Winnipeg and brought it back to Toronto and really kind of developed a skyscraper row in Toronto's business district.
- [15:56]
Andrew Tuck
I know this is a book about architecture and we're keen to talk to you about how it impacts on the city. But it was interesting when I was reading a clip about your book, I understand that it was hard to find factual details sometimes because there'd been several fires in his offices. I don't know if that was because they were all smoking pipes in the archives, but something was going on there. And you bring a little bit of his life to Page as well. He was a bit of a bomber vivant. He was a man about town. And I understand you hint at his sexuality as well. You say that he was a very. What they'd have said in the time, a confirmed bachelor. What significance did that mean for you when you began to kind of look at his life?
- [16:35]
David Winterson
You know, it's interesting, there's several layers to it. I'm indebted to Bill Dendy, who was a gay architectural historian in Toronto in the 80s and 90s, who was the first one really to delve into Frank Darling's life. I think he was also kind of cocked an eyebrow about the bachelorhood. And we can't confirm it or deny it because he was a bachelor. There aren't any family records or anything like that. But he, he was nevertheless embraced by the elite culture of Toronto, the elite Edwardian culture. He was a member in most of the clubs. He had the trust of the most important plutocrats operating in the country. They went to him to design their houses, their summer houses, their banks and whatnot. So he thrived regardless of if there's any internal struggles, I guess.
- [17:22]
Andrew Tuck
And just tell me finally, do you think there's still a role for an architect like this who can come along and help shape a developed city, an American city, a Canadian city. We know that Mies van der Rohe came to Toronto and had an impact. There have been contemporary Canadian architects that have had an impact. But do you think that anybod has the potential to really shape people's understanding and in their imaginations what a city stands for in the way that Frank Darling did?
- [17:51]
David Winterson
I mean, I'd like to think so. With the caveat that I don't think any single architect in Canada could get the same kind of patronage moments that Frank Darling enjoyed. So, you know, I'll take that question and think about it in terms of are there architects who can do what Frank Darling did, which is, you know, demand architectural quality both in the core and the periphery of the country and to privilege Canadian materials and equipment and technology, which Frank Darling did with a real mission to provide quality, interesting architecture throughout the land and really enhance the public realm with well scaled and detailed buildings with lovely interiors. I don't think it's going to be down to one architect. I think it's more about an architectural culture. And one of the things I'm underlining in the book is that there were maybe three different tribes of architectural ideas happening in Toronto at the time, but they weren't in opposition. It was a collegial group of architects and they developed an architectural culture and if not a pure consensus, they developed a vision of a city that they wanted to build and make beautiful. You know, as you know, Toronto's gone through an incredible scale busting boom in the past 20 years. I think we can boast, quote, unquote, having the most number of heritage, small scaled heritage buildings as podiums for super tall condominium buildings and glass skyscrapers rising behind them. So, you know, we're trying to make sense of that. Can we make that a beautiful city?
- [19:18]
Anson Kwok
Maybe.
- [19:18]
David Winterson
But part of what I want the book to do is develop a conversation about a city's architectural culture and if that can kind of lead to a consensus and to a more beautiful public realm.
- [19:27]
Andrew Tuck
My thanks to David Winterson for that conversation and his new book Toronto Edwardian is available to pre order now. Finally today we visit a 440,000 square foot mixed use development in Toronto's Canary District which integrates housing, education, childcare, employment training, cultural programming and also commercial space. The project called Indigenous Hub was spearheaded by Designers2Row with support from BDP Quadrangle Architects and Stantec and it aims to create a place of healing, ceremony and community. Les Klein is the co founder and studio head at BDP Quadrangle and he recently joined Carlotta Rebelo to share more about this project. Les began their conversation by setting the stage for Indigenous design in Canada.
- [20:18]
Les Klein
Most people imagine that most Indigenous people in Canada live in the far north or on what the Americans call reserves. But in fact, more than 50% of the indigenous population in Canada lives in cities. Toronto, in fact, has the fourth largest Indigenous population overall. As a result of that, we have some challenges and I think some incredible opportunities to reset the discussion about Indigenous architecture, Indigenous design, and in fact, the whole notion of truth and reconciliation and how it plays out in an urban context. So the primary purpose of the Indigenous Hub was to create an Indigenous oriented health center that is purpose built in the center of the city. There have been numerous Indigenous health centres built, but this is the first one that began at first principles to design it in such a way that Indigenous people will be able to feel comfortable and at home and within an iconography and a language that is familiar to them, rather than feeling that they are being surrounded by cultural approaches to health that are different from theirs. The evolution of the Indigenous Hub is an interesting one because the site itself, which is a 1 hectare site on the east side of the downtown of Toronto on basically abandoned industrial land and which sat for 25 years vacant, was ultimately given to the Indigenous community for the purpose of creating an Indigenous hub, including health center and other Indigenous uses. The challenge was, while there were funds available to build the center, there really wasn't an opportunity to create a larger agglomeration of uses because simply there wasn't the funding to operate many of those projects that were intended. It was only when the development evolved to include residential uses, which is when we got involved, that there was an opportunity to create something that was financially viable. With the Indigenous community owning the land, land leases were able to be established which would provide an ongoing stream of income to run the Indigenous operations.
- [22:34]
Carlotta Rebelo
One of the things that struck me when I was, you know, looking at images of the project and reading a bit more about it is this idea of, you know, taking traditional elements and traditional materials and how the architectural language that we see throughout the site has reinterpreted those. And this is from the brickwork to some of the natural ele, and I'd love if you could delve a bit into those. And how do we see the architectural language reinterpret these traditional materials?
- [23:02]
Les Klein
Absolutely. We worked through a lot of interesting issues and a lot of it was framed by a process of learning. What we learned working with Indigenous communities is that don't lead the process as architects, which is very tough for a type A personality, I will admit. But we learned that indigenous decision making is about consensus, and it's about ensuring that everyone around the table had a chance to express their opinion and their ideas, and that no one says no to somebody else, but simply accepts those ideas, absorbs them, and ultimately consensus arises out of that very, very respectful, humble, slow, and deliberate process. So in all of these situations that we dealt with, obviously we were ultimately trying to build a building or a series of buildings, but we had to recognize that the process came first. And several times we were kind of pulled back to say, no, no, no, slow down, we're not there yet. A couple of examples that I can put on the table. You mentioned the brickwork. All of the other buildings in this area, called the Canary District, all of the other buildings are clad in brick. This is a very important element in the urban design of this area that the city really wanted to see continued. So when we went to our clients, we said to them, of course we're going to use brick to enclose the building. And Matthew Hickey from Two Row Architect, came back very quickly and said, you can't use brick. And we said, what do you mean we can't use brick? He says, to our community, brick means residential schools. These are schools that were built in indigenous communities with the explicit purpose to integrate indigenous communities into the larger population and essentially to strip them of their identity as indigenous people. It has a terrible history with many, many scandals about it. So Matthew said, you can't use brick. And we said, but we have to use brick. In the process of this discussion, we ultimately came up with this idea of we will use brick, but we won't use it in the colonial traditional style of horizontal rows of brick built up from the ground up. But we instead created a design where we used brick to create a basket weaving pattern on the building, essentially wrapping the entire block on three sides with a basket or even a blanket. All of those kinds of symbolisms became actually very, very powerful. And one of the goals that we set ourselves out in the design of the entire block was to spark questions. Why is that building? Why is that brick designed in that way rather than in all the other ways? Every time you ask a question, it elicits an answer. And hopefully in the process, it elicits understanding of an indigenous way of seeing.
- [26:02]
Carlotta Rebelo
It was really interesting to hear you describe that there, because this idea of how the materiality and the thought process behind it kind of wants to foster this understanding right between communities. And I really wanted to ask you about that, about, you know, the role that you see through this project, that it can help bridge the different ways of design and therefore also by bridging that divide, could we also promote healing in that way?
- [26:28]
Les Klein
Absolutely. The notion of healing in a physical sense, in terms of the health center, but the notion of healing in a social sense, of bringing people across Canada to a notion of reconciliation, where I will call them the wrongs of the past while they can't be undone, we can actually work together towards a common vision of what it means to be Canadian. The idea of reconciliation doesn't happen by fiat. It happens by discussion and understanding and by allowing people to enjoy the visual interest of the building, but also to engage in asking why it is that way and what kinds of things can be learned from it. We think that this ultimately is the contribution that we make not only to this immediate area, but to the larger conversation.
- [27:19]
Carlotta Rebelo
And, Les, just finally, I would like to ask you, what are some of the key learnings from this particular project you'll be taking into future developments?
- [27:28]
Les Klein
We really hope that the idea of Indigenous design doesn't remain on the fringes. That in fact, mainstream architecture, if I can call it that, can actually very comfortably incorporate Indigenous design principles. The principles of understanding seasons, of understanding building orientation, of recognizing the importance of where the sun rises and the sun sets, the connection between the sky and the earth, the connection between health and comfort. It contributes to a healthy society. It allows everyone to be a constructive member of society that contributes in their own particular ways and to their own particular abilities. I believe that architecture needs to be an engine for social change. And I think that we, along with all of our architectural partners, as well as the developers, and most importantly the Indigenous community who are our clients on this project, have gone a long way from where we started to an understanding of process and how that turns into product.
- [28:36]
Andrew Tuck
And thanks there to Les Klein speaking with Carlos Rebelo. And that's all for this week's episode of the Urbanist. You can follow us for new editions of the show every week. And you can subscribe to Monocle magazine for reports on all things design, architecture and urbanism, too. Just visit monocle.com the Urbanist is produced by Carlos Rubello and by David Stevens, who edits this show. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye and thank you for listening, city lovers.