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Stars, Imports and Other Phenomena A Reflection on an Aspect of the Evolution of Architectural Culture in Toronto

George Baird is the Dean Emeritus of the >Ge o r g e Ba i r d John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. He has published and lectured widely throughout most parts of the world. He is co-editor (with Charles Jencks) of Meaning in Architecture (1969), and ome recent architectural controversy (with Mark Lewis) of Queues Rendezvous, Riots Sin Canada has focused on the fact (1995). He is author of Alvar Aalto (1969) and that many of the major architectural pro- jects completed in Toronto in the past The Space of Appearance (1995). Most recently, decade have been designed by architec- his researches in architectural theory have tural firms based elsewhere. Pessimistic focused on the question of the political and social observers have even regarded this as status of urban public space, and on debates ominous for the ongoing development revolving around subject of “critical architecture.” of architectural culture here. Such pro- His consulting firm, Baird Sampson Neuert, is the jects as Will Alsop’s Sharp Centre for winner of numerous design awards. He is a Fellow the Ontario College of Art and Design, of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Daniel Libeskind’s addition to the Royal Ontario Museum, and Frank Gehry’s and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy additions and alterations of the Art of Arts. He has been the recipient of numerous Gallery of Ontario are usually cited awards and distinctions, including, most recently, as cases in point. At a public event in the 2010 Gold Medal of the Royal Architectural Vancouver some years back, the author Institute of Canada. of this paper was even challenged by a Vancouver colleague to explain why so many of the important projects from the era in question were designed by out–of-town architects, when, the ques- tioner suggested, comparable projects built in Vancouver during the same period had largely been designed by locally-based architects. This short paper will seek to contextualize and historicize the discussion of this sensi- tive cultural question.

In the first instance, it is important to recognize that architectural firms based outside of Toronto have been design- ing buildings here for a very long time. For example, the fine 1911 headquar- ters building for the Bank of Toronto, located on the south-west corner of King and Bay Streets (until its demo- lition in the 1960s for the creation of the Toronto-Dominion Centre), was designed by the well-known New York firm of Carrere and Hastings (fig. 1). Fig. 1. Bank of Toronto circa 1913, designed by Carrere and Hastings. | Image courtesy of Peake and Whittingham Collection, The Public Archives of Canada.

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Similarly, the 1929 head office build- ing of the Canadian Bank of Commerce (still standing today as Commerce Court East), just east of the south-east corner of the same intersection, was designed by the New York firm of York & Sawyer, in collaboration with the Toronto firm of Darling & Pearson (fig. 2).

Then too, Toronto has been welcoming architects as immigrants to this city for almost as long as it has had architects from elsewhere designing buildings here. Notable examples of such immigrants are Peter Dickinson (from Britain) in the early 1950s, John Andrews and Macy Dubois (from the United States) in the late 1950s, and A.J. Diamond and Barton Myers (also from the United States) in fig. 2. The contemporary Canadian Imperial fig. 3. The 1957 addition to the Park Plaza Hotel the late 1960s. First as a lead designer Bank of Commerce complex in downtown (recently renovated beyond recognition), at Page & Steele Architects, and later in Toronto, showing to the right the original designed by Peter Dickinson during the headquarters building of the Canadian Bank period when he was the design architect his own firm, Dickinson designed such of Commerce from 1929-1931, designed by at the firm of Page & Steele. | Image courtesy major Toronto projects as the Benvenuto York & Sawyer from New York, with Darling of Canadian Architectural Archive, University of Calgary. & Pearson from Toronto. | Image courtesy of estate Place Apartments, the addition to the of William Dendy and Oxford University Press. Park Plaza Hotel (fig. 3), and the Ontario Teachers College. John Andrews and Macy Dubois submitted a joint entry to the 1958 competition for a design for a new Toronto City Hall while they were students at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and on the strength of their hav- ing placed as finalists in the competition

fig. 5. John Andrews’ Scarborough College for at such a young age, moved from Boston fig. 4. Design submitted to the 1958 International the Scarborough campus of the University to Toronto (Andrews being an Australian Competition for the design of a new city of Toronto, 1965. | Image courtesy of Ken Bell, hall for Toronto, by John Andrews and University Advancement and University of Toronto Press. who was studying there) to launch their Macy Dubois. | Image courtesy of Helga Plumb. professional careers (fig. 4). Andrews went on to design such celebrated pro- jects as the original Scarborough College for the University of Toronto (fig. 5), and Dubois, the studio addition to Central Technical School (fig. 6), as well as a new building for George Brown College’s Casa Loma campus. For their part, Diamond and Myers, while in partnership, designed such unprecedented projects as fig. 7. York Square Shopping Complex, Toronto, the Dundas-Sherbourne housing project 1968, designed by A.J. Diamond and Barton fig. 6. Studio Addition to Central Technical School, for the City Housing Department created Toronto, by Macy Dubois. | Image courtesy Myers. | Image courtesy of estate of William Dendy of Helga Plumb. and Oxford University Press. during the David Crombie mayorality, the

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York Square retail complex in Yorkville Scaramouche restaurant that continues (fig. 7), and a new headquarters build- to be housed in Peter Dickinson’s ing for the Ontario Medical Association. Benvenuto Apartments building. After the breakup of their partnership, A.J. Diamond went on to create numer- For their parts, A.J. Diamond and Barton ous projects in Toronto, such as the city’s Myers made what are among the most downtown YMCA (fig. 8). For his part, important contributions ever to the Barton Myers designed—among many state of architectural and urban design other projects—two much admired steel culture in the city of Toronto, through houses in Toronto (one of them for him- their deeply engaged participation in self and his family, fig. 9) and the King the activities of the so-called “reform James Place infill office complex on King council” launched under the leader- FIG. 8. The downtown Toronto YMCA, 1985, designed by A.J. Diamond. | Image courtesy of Diamond & Schmitt Street East in Toronto. ship of Mayor David Crombie in 1972. Architects International. Myers’s contribution to the culture is Of this set of five distinguished immi- probably best summarized in the spe- grant architects in Toronto, two (Peter cial issue of Design Quarterly from 1978 Dickinson and Macy Dubois) lived out the (edited jointly by Myers and myself, and remainder of their lives in Toronto, two entitled “Vacant Lottery”), focusing on (John Andrews from Australia and Barton the shifts in design culture in the city Myers from the United States) eventually introduced during the Crombie era.1 returned to their home countries, and For his part, Diamond has gone on for one (A.J. Diamond) continues to practice many years to argue against the so-called here (now in his late seventies). But each “international star system” in architec- and every one of them made a profound ture, and in favour of a commitment by contribution to architectural culture in architectural professionals in Toronto to the city. Dickinson remains to this day a strongly local sense of responsibility to FIG. 9. House at 19 Berryman Street, Toronto, one of the two most admired pioneers of the public design issues in the city. designed by Barton Myers for himself and his family. | Image courtesy of estate modernism in architecture in the city— of William Dendy and Oxford University Press. competing for the top position in this The obvious difference between the regard only with one other contender, “stars” enumerated in the first paragraph that being John B. Parkin Associates. of this text, and the “imports” discussed a local, Johnsonian architectural sub- subsequently, in regard to the evolution culture, despite his being so definitively For his part, John Andrews not only of architectural culture in Toronto, is that located in New York City himself. But such designed canonical buildings such as the “imports” in question became, over examples are, as far as I know, extremely Scarborough College in Toronto, as well time, deeply embedded in that culture rare. It certainly cannot be said that as the new building for the Graduate and, in turn, subsequently contributed Alsop, Libeskind, or Gehry have made a School of Design at Harvard University deeply to it, in ways that the “stars” sustained contribution to architectural (from which he had himself graduated in in question could not, and did not do. culture here. Their episodes of recurring 1958), he also agreed in 1967 to take on There are probably a handful of histor- participation in such a culture to date the important academic responsibility ical cases of architects “from away”—as have simply not been frequent enough, of the chairmanship of the Department the Newfoundlanders would put it—who or extensive enough, for “embedded- of Architecture at the University of have contributed to the evolution of a ness” to set firmly in. Toronto, and launched a controversial local architectural culture anywhere in pedagogical experiment that is much the world—I think for example of Philip Yet the fact that none of this group has discussed to this day. Macy Dubois went Johnson who, on account of an ongoing contributed significantly to the culture on to design a whole series of admired series of commissions for residences in of architecture in this city does not mean buildings, including the Ontario Pavilion Houston and Dallas (TX) in the 1950s that that culture has not continued to at Expo ’67, as well as the much-loved and 1960s, seems to have engendered evolve and mature. I want to conclude

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this brief text with a few remarks on to include no representatives from Notes the question of the emergence of a Toronto—took it upon itself to shut “Toronto school,” or a “Toronto style” in Toronto almost entirely out of that 1. Myers, Barton and George Baird, 1978, architecture, such as has been discussed particular annual round of awards, on “Vacant Lottery, Design Quarterly, no. 108 (published by the Walker Art Centre, by Professor Rodolphe el-Khoury of the the rumoured grounds that the designs Minneapolis, Minnesota). University of Toronto, in a conversation submitted from Toronto that year were 2. Kuwabara, Bruce, Tom Payne, Marianne with the partners in the firm Kuwabara too alike, too familiar, and too predict- McKenna, and Shirley Blumberg, 2004, “A Payne McKenna Blumberg, in a mono- able. A rumour such as this lends cre- Conversation with Rodolphe el-Khoury,” in graph on the work of that now very dence to the hypothesis that like earlier Phyllis Lambert, Detlef Mertins, Bruce Mau, and Rodolphe el-Khoury, “The Architecture prominent Toronto firm. Interestingly previous art-historical epithets such as of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg,” enough, this is a firm whose partners “mannerist” and “impressionist,” the Birkhauser, Basel Berlin Boston, p. 211-215. are the four senior associates from term “Toronto style”—if it ever does so the Toronto version of Barton Myers definitively—will accrue its eventual his- Associates; the four having decided to torical status as much as a term of scorn launch their own firm in the wake of as one of admiration. And whether their Myers’s decision to relocate his practice views are positive ones or negative to Los Angeles at the end of the 1980s. ones, future interpreters of this debate Avowedly deeply in debt to Myers’s will find themselves forced to ponder architectural ideas, Kuwabara Payne the extant state of architectural cul- McKenna Blumberg have gone on to ture here, in order to justify their own become a major firm in Toronto and position in the matter of any putative in Canada in their own right, and it is “Toronto style.” not surprising that the term “Toronto style”—if it is considered to be applic- Finally, a short—but I hope thought-pro- able to any firm of architects—would be voking—commentary on the editorial considered to be applicable to KPMB. policy of a very fine “local” architectural At a minimum, it is clear that el-Khoury publication from Barcelona in the 1970s makes an interesting argument for the and 1980s: Arquitecturas Bis. Its editors consequential development over time made it their usual practice, when pub- of the distinctive and consistent design lishing a project or a book by a “local” production of the firm, not only in terms figure, always to have the project or of its characteristic formal approaches to book in question commented upon by architecture and urban design, but also a notable “international” figure from in its typical systems of fabrication, and outside the local Barcelona architec- its employment of a consistent stable tural scene. By the same token, projects of local suppliers of specialized building and books discussed in the magazine components.2 that were from outside Barcelona were usually discussed by figures from that It is true, of course, that other com- local scene. It has always seemed to me mentators have expressed skepticism that this simple, yet ingenious editorial in regard to the perceptibility of this policy constituted a major contribution so-called Toronto style; hence it cannot to the evolution of an influential—if be considered to be an accepted histor- indisputably “local” architectural cul- ical reality at the present time. Yet, that ture in that important regional city. It having been said, it is also true that a seems to me that it is an example that jury assembled for a recent annual we Torontonians might still be able to Canadian Architect Magazine awards learn from—even a quarter of a cen- programme—a jury that happened tury later.

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