Re: Architects from 70 Countries bidding for Absolute Projec
Mississauga aiming higher
Architecture is looking way up thanks to design contest for condo tower
Jan. 31, 2006. 01:00 AM
CHRISTOPHER HUME
Pretty soon we won't have Mississauga to kick around any more.
For decades, this unlovely bedroom community built around a shopping mall has been shorthand for untrammelled suburban sprawl, the very model of a late 20th-century car-based community.
No longer. In the future, if Mississauga gets its way, it will become a real city, not one of those ad hoc population centres formed at the crossroads of highways where land is cheap and plentiful. Those days are over.
Yesterday, two builders, Cityzen Development Group and Fernbrook Homes, announced the finalists of an international competition to design a 52-storey condo tower on the northeast corner of Hurontario St. and Burnhamthorpe Rd. It will be the fourth and most prominent of a five-tower complex called Absolute.
Of the 92 submissions received, six have been chosen for the second phase of the competition.
Such a competition is unheard of, especially for a condo, especially for Mississauga.
The short list includes Toronto's Quadrangle Architects and the Zeidler Partnership, Boyarsky Murphy Architects and Studio MWM from the U.K., the MAD office from the U.S. and rojkind arquitectos of Mexico City.
The proposals range from the elegant conservatism of the local firms to a remarkably sensual offering from MAD and Michel Rojkind's strikingly multi-faceted tower.
The American entry, instantly dubbed the "Marilyn Monroe Building," could well be the closest architecture has ever come to replicating the female form, with the possible exception of Frank Gehry's "Fred and Ginger Building" in Prague. This singular structure curves and twists as it rises provocatively Ñ sexily Ñ from its glass-enclosed atrium.
By contrast, Michel Rojkind has wrapped his building in an enormous asymmetrical "mesh" of concrete and steel. It looks organic, though in a machined way, sculptural and vase-shaped, not simply futuristic, but post-futuristic, post-apocalyptic even.
In either case, the result would be an architectural icon that would alter perceptions of Mississauga once and for all. Perceptions being more important than reality, this project could be the one that leads to the suburbs' new urban future.
The winner won't be announced until March, and the developers, or rather the jury, can take the safe way out and still have done its job honourably.
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`The new Mississauga has started. It's still preliminary, but as the city has grown we need to change'
Edward Sajecki, jury member
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Even if they do, however, the competition is the most visible sign to date that it's not business as usual in Mississauga. Though a vast amount of work has yet to be done Ñ much of it rehabilitation Ñ better late than never.
"The new Mississauga has started," declared planning commissioner and jury member Edward Sajecki. "It's still preliminary, but as the city has grown we need to change. The old Mississauga was car-oriented. Now we have to get rapid transit."
As Mississauga city manager Janice Baker pointed out: "The question is how do you create a city centre out of all these parking lots? It's clear the future will be dense, vertical and transit-based. In the past the market for that wasn't there, but now that market is there. The time has come. The challenge for us is to manage where growth goes."
The first clue that Mississauga wanted to change course came way back in 1986 when that city's civic centre opened. Designed by the now defunct partnership Jones and Kirkland, it stands out on the anonymous landscape of Canada's sixth-largest city, one of very few instances of genuine architectural excitement in Hazelville.
Speaking of Hazel McCallion, the longest-serving mayor in the known universe, she also showed up at yesterday's press conference. "We had an opportunity to build a city," she said, almost wistfully, "and maybe make it different."
She also reminded her audience that Mississauga's city core "started 35 years ago in a hay field."
Some would say those fields should have been left as they were, but those days are gone. Though McCallion and her bunch made a hash of it, now it seems the lights have finally gone on. If Mississauga is to remain viable, it has to change and change fast. It's exactly the kind of abjectly auto-dependent suburban centre threatened by gridlock and rising fuel prices.
Paradoxically, one of Mississauga's assets now is the ocean of parking lot that surrounds the Square One mall. Once big enough to accommodate 8,000 cars, it seems poised to become ground zero for much of Mississauga's urban future.
More evidence of Mississauga's growing desire for urbanity comes tonight when a discussion of public spaces Ñ Placemaking Ñ will be held at the Noel Ryan Auditorium, 301 Burnhamthorpe Rd. W. The session, which goes from 7 to 9 p.m., will examine how to make the city more pedestrian-friendly.
And just last year, Mississauga City Council approved the largest high-density development in its history. The scheme will include 5,300 units in 30 buildings, one a 50-storey tower.
As McCallion noted yesterday without any trace of irony: "It's so easy to build a box."
She should know. Now it seems even Her Worship has embraced the need to look beyond that box.
