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Toronto Reference Library Renovation (Moriyama + Teshima)

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AlvinofDiaspar

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From the Globe, Toronto Section:

'Every project is a struggle'
Renovating the Reference Library is a family affair for Raymond Moriyama and his son

VAL ROSS

Ajon Moriyama was 14 when the Toronto Reference Library, designed by architect Raymond Moriyama, opened on Nov. 2, 1977.

"I was looking down from the second or third balcony, watching my dad," he says. "Seeing the excitement of the people, I understood the importance of the dynamics of the building."

Before long, he and other students at Upper Canada College "took ownership of this building. We had a table on the fourth floor we always went to -- it was our clubhouse."

If anything, Raymond Moriyama tried to discourage his children from becoming architects. "It's such a struggle to educate clients to do something great," he says. "And Toronto suffers from having no sense of greatness. It's always, 'This is good enough.' "

But when Ajon Moriyama enrolled in arts at university, he couldn't help noticing that the architecture students had more focus and passion than other students. He wanted to be part of that, as did his brother, Jason. In 1988, "the three Ms," father and two sons, undertook their first group project, the redesign of Bay Bloor Radio, for which they won a Governor-General's citation. Now, Ajon Moriyama, a partner in his father's firm, is working on the evolving renovation of his father's library.

In the almost three decades since the opening of the reference library, the flagship of North America's busiest public-library system, people have got used to the idea that the building does a good job serving as Canada's largest public reference collection: Its 4.4 million items are consulted by 1.16 million visitors every year.

Few library users who look up to gaze across the five-storey central atrium give much thought to the miraculous way that all kinds of people -- visiting scholars, frantic high-school students, lonely immigrants, street people -- find something of what they seek in the library's serene, soaring, dignified civic space. And most visitors aren't aware that Canadian Architect magazine named this library as one of the country's most important public buildings of the past 100 years.

Nor do they know that this place was born amid such contention -- Toronto city council rejected Mr. Moriyama's original design, and some members of council such as John Sewell kept urging Toronto to stick with the old Central Library on College at St. George Street -- that the architect's children said, "Dad, why don't you quit? It's not worth it."

Raymond Moriyama says, of the whole process, "Every project is a struggle. But that library was a real struggle, because the politicians were thinking so small."

Now, there are big plans for the library. Strolling across the busy main floor, Linda Mackenzie, TPL's director of research and reference libraries, says, "This place is well loved. But libraries had changed a tremendous amount and we wanted to reflect that change in the design and use of the building."

Since work began in 2000, the building has had about $6-million worth of upgrades, including mechanical work and basic repairs. So far, it has all been accomplished without the fuss accompanying Toronto's other cultural infrastructure projects, financed largely out of library capital budgets.

But it will take $20-million to complete the job, and only half will probably come from the public sector.

The first stage began with a $600,000 grant from Torstar Corp., which allowed Ajon Moriyama to redo the newspaper reading room. Located in the lower level, it is a large and bright space enclosed within transparent walls lightly etched with the front pages of yesteryear. Computers link readers to periodicals all over the world, as other readers pore over papers at large transparent lecterns designed to look like open broadsheets. Leading from the reading room to the main floor, Ajon Moriyama has designed a sculpture of newspapers blowing in the wind.

If this son differs from his father, it may be that he gives more rein to playfulness. Or it may simply be that times have changed.

When Raymond Moriyama proposed his original design for the reference library, city council rejected it as too transparent. They saw the library as a walled-off sanctuary from the streets and requested a redesign that incorporated brick walls.

Ajon Moriyama is now adding windows and opening up the library, to create a new relationship with Yonge Street. "I'm articulating some of the thoughts [my father] had at the time. But I also wanted people to see right in, to see the richness and vitality of what's inside," he says.

Not everyone is happy with these changes. By pushing the library's windows outward -- in effect, glassing in the former overhang -- he has eliminated an area where street people once found shade. (TPL is working with Councillor Kyle Rae to help find them other shelter.)

"I wanted to keep my father's concept of the empty cup; the emptiness inside to be filled by the people with imagination," the younger Moriyama says. But the atrium had become chopped up and felt cluttered, so the architect replaced its central information kiosk with a pale wood curve of public stage, for author readings, performances and community meetings.

The computer commons previously had 12 terminals; thanks to the generosity of Bill and Melinda Gates, there are now 124. Ajon Moriyama has arranged them on tiers, like bleachers, to increase the users' sense that they, too, are part of the library community.

The library is evolving -- future plans include the complete renovation of upper floors, crowned by a new special-collections centre, an expanded art gallery and a cultural-event centre to accommodate large groups and programs.

Meanwhile, Moriyama & Teshima seems to remain serenely constant. The architectural firm has been located on Davenport Road, in an airily expanded former service garage, since 1967. The fish pond, which Raymond Moriyama put in where the garage's grease pit used to be, is crisscrossed by ancient goldfish that have grown so fat they are now as big as trout.

The firm's reputation is also undimmed. The new Canadian War Museum, jointly created by Moriyama & Teshima and Griffiths Rankin Cook Architects, just won a Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland prize and was shortlisted for the inaugural Royal Institute of British Architects Lubetkin Prize.

Still, the library remains one of its proudest achievements. And it's now in the hands of someone with special insight into the original architect's intent. "I don't tell Ajon what to do," Raymond Moriyama says. "But he does all the right things."

AoD
 
That's good that they're updating the inside. I still don't love the outside though. It's too closed off from the street...
 
mtatrlnight.jpg
 
This is good news. It's unfortunate that this building is the flagship branch. The interior is fine but the street level is atrocious.

library.jpg
 
^ 3D, is that an official render? If so, I'm disappointed - throwing the city 45 degrees off its grid was one of the few brilliant strokes of the original design. It's not so apparent from the outside, but from the inside, seeing the towers of Yonge and Bloor from a skewed angle always makes me do a double-take and ask what city I'm looking at. It shows Toronto at a whole new angle.
 
The interior is fine but the street level is atrocious.

Agree! So many times I have walked by thinking "it's a library, it's a library," as if that were the appropriate excuse.
 
Ajon is described as more "playful" than his father and the best he can do is a boring glass cube? I'd really like to see Ray's Council-rejected plans for the library - I doubt that a glass cube articulates his original thoughts. I'd imagine it probably would have had sloping glass slicing down towards that corner with or without the Council-mandated brick masses. The glass cube doesn't make the library more transparent, it just emphasizes the blocky flanks.
 
Flawed, maybe; a touch afterthoughtish relative to the interior, and a compromise from original plans; but while I'm not opposing the present plans, I don't find the existing exterior *that* horrific, considering. Even *it* is pretty with-it and humane (and yes, suitably Moriyama-esque) for the 70s (granted, *anything* 70s can look good next to the overpowering nearby presence of the "2 Bloors").

In this case, "atrocious" is a metaphor I'd expect from extreme Prince Charlesian carbuncle-haters--or maybe, jumping a generation with a dollop of irony, the general modern-day backlash against anything 70s and red-brick and lowrise (cf. the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood)
 
I agree with adma...I was going to say that one reason I don't mind the exterior is because almost everyone that goes to the library (and me, every time I've gone myself) approaches from the south along the east side of Bloor - they never see it from the angle of Ganjavih's photo and they never experience the supposed awfulness along Yonge. You pass Tim Horton's and Starbucks, cross Asquith, and, boom, you're already inside - you really have no time to admire the outside since there's not much space around it. You'd be inside the glass cube even quicker, maybe 45 seconds after leaving the subway train.
 
In this case, "atrocious" is a metaphor I'd expect from extreme Prince Charlesian carbuncle-haters--or maybe, jumping a generation with a dollop of irony, the general modern-day backlash against anything 70s and red-brick and lowrise (cf. the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood)

Note: the word "atrocious" is being used as an adjective and not a metaphor. There is a difference. Everything that follows is a baseless opinion.
 
"Baseless" is kind of the problem with the current library. The square cube at the corner is atrocious (will there be an Apple Store underneath?), but I was kind of hoping they'd glass in those overhangs.

Inside, what drives me nuts about the library is how hard it is to move between floors. There's a winding staircase at one end, two incredibly slow elevators at the other, and no convenient way to nip up and down if you're on the wrong side of the atrium.
 
SNF:

Inside, what drives me nuts about the library is how hard it is to move between floors. There's a winding staircase at one end, two incredibly slow elevators at the other, and no convenient way to nip up and down if you're on the wrong side of the atrium.

Completely agree. Using the stairs is a complete pain given the way they're organized within the atrium. The way they loop around it also disorient the user as well.

AoD
 
Oh, come now -- you don't actually want to use books at the library, do you? So very 20th-century of you, Sir N.

Seriously, I agree.

The similar, later North York Central Library solves the circulation problem, sort of, with smaller centrally placed stairs (and better elevators).
 

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