Uncle Teddy
Senior Member
By Christopher Hume
Urban Issues, Architecture
During his lifetime, architect Peter Dickinson was merely a legend, now he has ascended to myth.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/751745--hume-peter-dickinson-a-towering-figure
The arrival of John Martins-Manteiga's lavishly illustrated biography, titled simply Peter Dickinson (Dominion Modern, 304 pages, $50), proves it.
Though his name may not be as celebrated as some, during his tragically brief career in the 1950s and early '60s, he remade the Toronto skyline.
Martins-Manteiga, the indefatigable documenter and defender of things modern, has produced a work that despite its frankly hagiographic tone makes for interesting reading. In case you've forgotten, Dickinson was the English architect who came to Toronto in 1950 and died just 11 years later, aged 35.
During that short period, he designed a number of landmarks here and in Montreal. His best work remains fresh: Think of the Sony Centre (formerly O'Keefe Centre), the Education Building on College St., the juvenile courthouse on Jarvis and the Continental Can Building on the southwest corner of College and Bay Sts.
On the other hand, many of Dickinson's projects fail to impress. Though much lauded at the time, to contemporary eyes they look repetitive, formulaic, even churned out. One mustn't forget that the age that produced Dickinson had some strange ideas – cars with fins, slab towers and social housing that didn't quite turn out according to plan. Much of Regent Park, in which Dickinson played a significant role, is currently being torn down and rebuilt (though his own structures, which pioneered two-storey aparments, still stand).
The modern era's failings are not all Dickinson's fault, but we are reminded that one generation's heroes can be villains to the next.
AT THE SAME TIME, how sad it is to walk past one of Dickinson's masterpieces – O'Keefe Centre – and watch large parts of it being dismantled in a city-sanctioned act of vandalism. To add insult to injury, it is being torn apart to accommodate a condo tower.
The great shame is that had the 1960 facility survived just another decade or two, it would have been celebrated as a landmark in the city's architectural history. As it is, it's too recent to be seen as heritage, which most identify as dating from the 1800s. In time, Torontonians might learn to love these early modernist pieces, but to most they are dull, boring and cheap-looking.
Though he was no extremist, Dickinson had big ideas about his profession. "The architect," he once told the Star, "should be the most important man in the community, because he controls the environment in which everyone lives and works."
Who amongst us today would make such an argument, even if he believed it?
But then there was Dickinson, the man. With his boundless energy and effortless creativity, he dashed off designs in a way that now seems almost cartoonish.
Martins-Manteiga quotes one of Dickinson colleagues who was deeply impressed by what he saw.
"He would take (a project) home one evening with a roll of sketch paper and he'd come back in the morning with the thing designed and finished. He's the only man I have ever met in my professional life where this could be done."
All the while, Dickinson and his acolytes sipped martinis, smoked one cigarette after another and held endless parties. They loved beautiful women, fast cars and work. Though it would all fall apart eventually, the practice of architecture was changed forever as was architecture itself.
The old-style gentlemen's club that characterized the profession until the '50s disappeared along with stripped classicism and stockbroker Tudor.
Dickinson and Co. would work flat out to keep up with demand. And although a gentleman should never be seen to be working, he never had an office of his own, preferring instead to be with his employees.
"It was very short-lived and very inventive and very productive," recalls architect Rod Robbie, who would later become famous for SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre), "and it couldn't last the way it was going . . . It was a frenetic work pace, producing buildings mixed in with wild partying in the most orgiastic level you can imagine. We came from Ottawa; my wife and I were shocked by that."
But Toronto developers loved Dickinson, who seemed to understand exactly what they wanted. He would sketch as they talked and come up with something on the spot. Even when doctors discovered cancer, he continued to work. Isadore Sharp, of Four Seasons Hotel fame, describes how Dickinson designed the Inn on the Park in two or three days while dying in hospital.
IN THIS SENSE, THERE was something almost Mozartean about the architect. Like the great composer, who also died young, it was all in his head. He seemed to be able to summon up a project in its broadest strokes and smallest details.
The fact remains, however, that this is not a time that has much affection or interest in modernism. To most, it was an aberration, a low point, a movement that began nobly but ended in boredom and banality.
What we have forgotten was that generation's urgent need to lift itself out of a world order that no longer made sense. The past wasn't simply over; it was to be avoided. The future stretched ahead gloriously for those willing to meet it half way.
Tomorrow doesn't seem so appealing today, a time of global warming and economic weakness. Had Dickinson lived, he'd be an old man. But some things wouldn't have changed.
As he said in a 1953 speech: "Three or four generations of immigrants have made Toronto the biggest and most prosperous English-speaking centre of Canada. It is a capital city.... Yet Toronto is shabby, dreary and ugly."
Some are still saying the same thing today.
Urban Issues, Architecture
During his lifetime, architect Peter Dickinson was merely a legend, now he has ascended to myth.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/751745--hume-peter-dickinson-a-towering-figure
The arrival of John Martins-Manteiga's lavishly illustrated biography, titled simply Peter Dickinson (Dominion Modern, 304 pages, $50), proves it.
Though his name may not be as celebrated as some, during his tragically brief career in the 1950s and early '60s, he remade the Toronto skyline.
Martins-Manteiga, the indefatigable documenter and defender of things modern, has produced a work that despite its frankly hagiographic tone makes for interesting reading. In case you've forgotten, Dickinson was the English architect who came to Toronto in 1950 and died just 11 years later, aged 35.
During that short period, he designed a number of landmarks here and in Montreal. His best work remains fresh: Think of the Sony Centre (formerly O'Keefe Centre), the Education Building on College St., the juvenile courthouse on Jarvis and the Continental Can Building on the southwest corner of College and Bay Sts.
On the other hand, many of Dickinson's projects fail to impress. Though much lauded at the time, to contemporary eyes they look repetitive, formulaic, even churned out. One mustn't forget that the age that produced Dickinson had some strange ideas – cars with fins, slab towers and social housing that didn't quite turn out according to plan. Much of Regent Park, in which Dickinson played a significant role, is currently being torn down and rebuilt (though his own structures, which pioneered two-storey aparments, still stand).
The modern era's failings are not all Dickinson's fault, but we are reminded that one generation's heroes can be villains to the next.
AT THE SAME TIME, how sad it is to walk past one of Dickinson's masterpieces – O'Keefe Centre – and watch large parts of it being dismantled in a city-sanctioned act of vandalism. To add insult to injury, it is being torn apart to accommodate a condo tower.
The great shame is that had the 1960 facility survived just another decade or two, it would have been celebrated as a landmark in the city's architectural history. As it is, it's too recent to be seen as heritage, which most identify as dating from the 1800s. In time, Torontonians might learn to love these early modernist pieces, but to most they are dull, boring and cheap-looking.
Though he was no extremist, Dickinson had big ideas about his profession. "The architect," he once told the Star, "should be the most important man in the community, because he controls the environment in which everyone lives and works."
Who amongst us today would make such an argument, even if he believed it?
But then there was Dickinson, the man. With his boundless energy and effortless creativity, he dashed off designs in a way that now seems almost cartoonish.
Martins-Manteiga quotes one of Dickinson colleagues who was deeply impressed by what he saw.
"He would take (a project) home one evening with a roll of sketch paper and he'd come back in the morning with the thing designed and finished. He's the only man I have ever met in my professional life where this could be done."
All the while, Dickinson and his acolytes sipped martinis, smoked one cigarette after another and held endless parties. They loved beautiful women, fast cars and work. Though it would all fall apart eventually, the practice of architecture was changed forever as was architecture itself.
The old-style gentlemen's club that characterized the profession until the '50s disappeared along with stripped classicism and stockbroker Tudor.
Dickinson and Co. would work flat out to keep up with demand. And although a gentleman should never be seen to be working, he never had an office of his own, preferring instead to be with his employees.
"It was very short-lived and very inventive and very productive," recalls architect Rod Robbie, who would later become famous for SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre), "and it couldn't last the way it was going . . . It was a frenetic work pace, producing buildings mixed in with wild partying in the most orgiastic level you can imagine. We came from Ottawa; my wife and I were shocked by that."
But Toronto developers loved Dickinson, who seemed to understand exactly what they wanted. He would sketch as they talked and come up with something on the spot. Even when doctors discovered cancer, he continued to work. Isadore Sharp, of Four Seasons Hotel fame, describes how Dickinson designed the Inn on the Park in two or three days while dying in hospital.
IN THIS SENSE, THERE was something almost Mozartean about the architect. Like the great composer, who also died young, it was all in his head. He seemed to be able to summon up a project in its broadest strokes and smallest details.
The fact remains, however, that this is not a time that has much affection or interest in modernism. To most, it was an aberration, a low point, a movement that began nobly but ended in boredom and banality.
What we have forgotten was that generation's urgent need to lift itself out of a world order that no longer made sense. The past wasn't simply over; it was to be avoided. The future stretched ahead gloriously for those willing to meet it half way.
Tomorrow doesn't seem so appealing today, a time of global warming and economic weakness. Had Dickinson lived, he'd be an old man. But some things wouldn't have changed.
As he said in a 1953 speech: "Three or four generations of immigrants have made Toronto the biggest and most prosperous English-speaking centre of Canada. It is a capital city.... Yet Toronto is shabby, dreary and ugly."
Some are still saying the same thing today.
