From the Globe:
An artist's touch: design inspiration
Lisa Rochon
Globe and Mail
Mar 29, 2008 R5
To rock people's world is the job assignment of any artist. To rock it while bowing to the constraints of site, structure and budget falls to the not-so-lucky, slightly beleaguered architect. Both may be creative types, but because of the nature of their work, artists and designers have to think differently. Which is why artists such as Douglas Coupland and Jill Anholt, both of Vancouver, are being asked to lend their unfettered minds to the making of parks and civic architecture.
Undoing conventions of design is a necessary kick in the mind. Introduce a celebrity artist and watch how condo units will sell faster than it takes for the paint to dry. Witness the West Village condominium in New York designed by artist and film director Julian Schnabel, dolled up with arched windows and painted a lurid pink - a move which apparently tickles the fancy of those willing to pay $4,000 per square foot to get inside, and horrifies those occupying the minimalist glass towers down the street.
In Canada, the designs of some parks and structures are being invigorated by artists, not as afterthoughts, like pieces of public art that get plopped in the middle of windswept plazas, but as key members of the design team. For a civic square outside the main entrance of the Olympic Speed Skating Oval in Richmond, B.C., Janet Echelman - an American sculptor who shapes urban space - has created a water-sky garden featuring a diaphanous, monumental net suspended over a storm-water collection pond and a series of other water features.
Coupland has been engaged by developer Concord Adex to provoke conceptual ideas for Cityplace, a park which occupies a crucial parcel of land alongside the Gardiner Expressway at the heart of a massive condominium tower development in Toronto. Over the course of a half-dozen meetings, Coupland deviated from the convention of imagining a coherent landscape narrative with respect for water drainage and eco-systems to push, instead, for iconic ideas such as a towering toboggan run or a Terry Fox miracle mile. He stacked old books which he had spray-painted and arranged them on a large table as a series of topographic grades and plateaus.
Though the park is still waiting approvals, some of Coupland's original energy has made it to construction drawings, including a massive bluff on the park's western flank, a land form to be topped by an abstracted canoe created by Coupland.
Despite the delays, the design process produced some mind-releasing experiences and the realization that design doesn't always have to play it safe. At one point, together with Vancouver-based landscape architects Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg, Coupland played in giant sand boxes built to scale to mimic the configuration of the actual park. "That was a hoot," recalls principal Greg Smallenberg. "Rather than using a foam-core model, working with the sandboxes was much more free-form and fun."
The creative team responsible for designing Sherbourne Park, also on the Toronto waterfront, has distinguished itself for its seamless and exhilarating collaboration. The eight-acre park includes a stand of birch trees and some water channels that stretch from the edge of Lake Ontario north across Queen's Quay to Lake Shore Boulevard.
As well, the park reinforces the civic commitment to sustainability through innovative storm-water capture by the public agency, Waterfront Toronto. Anholt, a public artist who teaches at the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver, worked on the park competition scheme with Smallenberg from the outset and contributed her ideas of creating art from a water filtration system over the course of design development.
The storm water for what's called the East Bayfront development will be filtered and cleaned in a large city reservoir. The elimination of bacteria, however, will be accomplished not in an underground chamber but within the park in an ultraviolet filtration system for all to see. A sheet of glass covers the water at the point of filtration to protect visitors' eyes from harmful UV rays. "Sherbourne Park is really an expression of sustainability," says Anholt, who has designed several steel chutes some 10 metres high which peel up from water channels. The purified water then drops down large metal scrims as a clean water curtain and, at the south edge of the park, runs into the lake.
The visible storm-water treatment in a public space is one of the achievements, effortlessly accomplished, at Sherbourne Park. What's more, a modest requirement for a café, washrooms and storage of tables and chairs have been magically interpreted by Teeple Architects with a kind of highly charged landform pavilion that looks peeled up from the ground. A warped arch and stainless-steel cladding give the building considerable heft.
The pavilion is set against a large water feature - during the winter it becomes a skating rink for about 200 people - and connects to a pathway running across the park and to the watercourse that runs down to the lake. Architect Stephen Teeple says he didn't want to create an "iconic" object in the park, but something that links the major elements of the civic space.
The integration the art is changing the face and complexity of civic developments. "Years ago, when I'd get these public art calls," recalls Anholt, who was trained both as an artist and as an architect, "there'd be an X on the site that somebody had decided was an appropriate spot for a work of art. It was very difficult to work from that."
Anholt was engaged by Vancouver architect Peter Busby to consult on the development of the Centre for Interactive Research and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia to create an off-the-grid, beguiling building. She worked on ways to layer extra meaning into the façade by specifying an electro-chromic glass technology that allows the pixilated image of a tree to appear in the glass and to slowly change colour during the day. The project is currently on hold, but, should it be built, sustainable architecture will be lyrically enhanced.
And so, at last, artists have been brought to the table. They're working with architects, landscape architects, graphic and lighting designers, sustainability experts and engineers. Sure, collaborations can mess up schedules and lead a client into a minefield of egos. But there are unexpected pleasures. When a celebrity writer or artist is involved, suddenly people start to listen up. Extra credibility is given to ideas that a developer or city bureaucrat might have previously rejected out of hand.
"I don't think the collaborations set out to be good or bad," says Smallenberg. "It's just the energy that people bring to them. For Sherbourne, the initial meeting said that the distinction between the landscape and the art has to be blurred. Jill has brought a deeper conceptual thinking."
AoD