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This week, Nigel Terpstra of UrbanToronto sits down with TACT Architecture's Prishram Jain. The firm recently won an Ontario Association of Architects Award for Best Emerging Practice.
Prish, where did you grow up?
I'm from Toronto – not too far from our old office on Queen – on a street known commonly as ‘the landing strip’ – Jameson Ave. My parents and I came to Canada in 1970 with the typical immigrant story of the parents giving up everything for their children. This sacrifice drove my siblings and I to excel in our pursuits because of what our parents had given up for us.
Why did you decide to pursue a career in architecture?
Thinking back, it makes sense that I would pursue design, but it was never obvious that it would be architecture. My father is probably partly responsible as he’s a writer and an investor. As a youth, I remember discussions around the dining room table…there was always debate about the empirical versus the intangible; discussion of finance and art…and the relationships between the two. It does make sense that what I have chosen to pursue is something that lets me express myself, yet still be true to the endeavour of my parents sacrifice. In hindsight it makes perfect sense, but it was never obvious at the beginning as many simple things are not.
Do you recall any specific buildings or architectural experiences which were formative in that process?
One of my earliest favourite buildings was the Bulova Tower. I remember as a child thinking ‘why can’t all buildings look like that?’
The George Robb tower at Exhibition Place?
Yes, I remember I was out of the city or immersed in my education when it came down and now in hindsight, I can’t imagine why there wasn’t a huge outcry.
Another building I love, and again it’s an older building, is the Bacardi Building right off the exit ramp at Highway 410 and Steeles. It’s low-profile, it doesn’t scream but it’s just a handsome example of early modernism that still resonates.
Why did you decide to study at Cornell? Did you apply to other schools as well or was there something about Cornell’s program in particular that attracted you?
My decision was rooted in a philosophy of ‘do the best you can.’ If you’re going to spend the time and the money and the effort, then do the best you can. Go to the best school you can possibly go to. I decided on Cornell because it had fantastic professors, a very competent rating and a solid non-stylistic approach to design. It was a school that let you emerge as opposed to the school having a very specific and established aesthetic which they imparted. Several colleagues went to Sci-Arch, Columbia, Harvard and other schools where there’s a very specific design language and set of expressions. But for me Cornell seemed most appropriate and in the end, I got out of it exactly what I had hoped.
You travelled to New York, Paris and Rome upon completion of your studies. How did you use architecture to travel so extensively and why did you choose those particular places?
Cornell is a school with an excellent international reputation and because of the calibre of the institution, students have access to studios and professors all around the world. So I did a studio in Paris where for four months, our design reviews were conducted in the US embassy and we had professors from other leading schools and practicing architects show up to critique our work. I did another four month studio in Rome where we had access to a fantastic studio space on the Via del Corso, right in the heart of the old city. Again, high-calibre, local and international architectural practitioners, professors and critics would come to look at and review our work. Travelling and studying in very small groups is a very inspiring way to learn, so, after graduating, I took another year to travel and decide where to come back; where to put down roots.
When you were in Paris and Rome, were you studying the history of each city or how one might intervene and add to that city?
Studying in a place like Rome, you realize that there is room for ‘modern architecture’ interspersed among thousand year old buildings. There's a way to do it right because there's a qualitative element to interpreting the form and materiality of the older structures and reflecting them in a modern language. I’ve found that in heritage preservation, if you destroy the purpose of a building, it becomes frozen in time and stops evolving. If however, you let the building evolve and adapt, it starts to play a role again and it reasserts itself back into the urban fabric of the city. The discursive aspect in terms of the conversation between heritage preservation and new construction is what Rome taught me. I think that the relatively small number of heritage structures in North America is one reason we are so protective of them and as a result, we are inherently not as progressive with their adaption as they are in Europe. There, they mix these two qualities together and you end up with some beautiful and sensitive interventions. For example, I was in Switzerland, in a little town called Bellinzona where they have an interpretive centre carefully inserted into a medieval fort on the crest of a hill.
In this intervention, they had retained the entire historical structure – a tower constructed from huge blocks of honed stone – and within it they had removed the original, unsound, wooden stair and inserted a beautiful modern steel and glass tensile stair which was set away from the walls by 8 to 10 inches. It was incredibly powerful because it didn’t take anything away from the preservation of the building, but instead progressed and pushed the structure from having no use as a fenced in heritage monument, to having a vital new role as part of the social and urban fabric of the town. It’s therefore been given a new life, it’s evolved and it’s back contributing to the everyday. Not to mention the wonderful aesthetic quality of the interaction between thousand year old, hand honed stone and machine fabricated stainless steel - it’s just a beautiful intervention and an example of an alternate and progressive approach to heritage preservation.
In that vein, the idea of incorporating the facades of existing buildings into new ones is something which is hotly debated on UrbanToronto. Some argue that the practice only pays lip service to the city’s history while others contend that it is an appropriate way to incorporate our city’s heritage into the structures which replace it. How would you describe TACT’s approach? Perhaps you can relate this to your experience with King+ Condos at King and Sherbourne?
Well our original approach which unfortunately didn’t get to see the light of day was to interpret the heritage facades in a very non-obvious way. It was an approach not dissimilar to what we did on Two Gladstone. There we used aspects such as the window shapes and overall proportioning systems from the old Gladstone Hotel to inform the design of our proposal. Similarly, at King+ we initially interpreted the facades using the language of the original, three-storey National Hotel with its single-storey base, two storeys above that with a capping wood cornice. Essentially referencing the old but also adapting it to something new and updated. Unfortunately, this interpretive approach was immediately unsatisfactory in Toronto and we were told that we had to retain the two heritage facades.
This stipulation led to the challenge of how to design a building that doesn’t blend in and disappear yet still is contextually responsible. So the tower that sits atop that podium is mostly glass and metal with masonry located at the base in the heritage building and the two modern wings which flank it. We didn’t want to emulate the heritage building or its facades by continuing it's language and thereby make the rest of it blend together. Instead, we wanted to emphasize the distinction between one and the other and not blur the boundary between what’s heritage and what’s not.
Now in that particular case, again, you’ve got all kinds of politics at play. Sitting on the Toronto Preservation Board, there were often more cultural reasons for assigning a heritage designation than aesthetic ones. Often, you could have a building that has little unique aesthetic heritage value, say a poorly preserved warehouse or a historical home, but it is deemed to have cultural value…cultural significance and is thereby is also considered worthy of preservation.
A local architect who has never minced words about his attitude towards historical simulacra in new architecture is Peter Clewes of architectsAlliance. He also happens to be a former employer of yours, so what led you to work at aA and what did working in that office teach you?
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to design several of Context Development’s early buildings when I was at architectsAlliance. I started there when it was still called Wallman Clewes Bergman and I literally had to coerce Peter to hire me. When I first went to their office on Booth Street on the east side of the city, there was just the three of them – Peter, Rudy and Ralph – and they had recently downsized from the crash of the late 1980s. I was led to aA when I was finishing at Cornell. After travelling, I decided to come back to Toronto and I started looking for the most attractive tall residential building in the city; at that time, there weren’t too many. I wonder if you can guess which one stood out at that time?
The Indigo?
Exactly, The Indigo. In the Indigo I saw proportion, scale, language and style…and I said to myself, ‘that is who I want to work with and learn from’.
So I sought them out, called Peter and was told: ‘No, were not hiring anyone.' So I called him every other day for a month. He finally said: ‘Prish, I can’t pay you every day, you have to bring your own computer and we may not have anything for you to do.’ That was back in 1997. By the time I left in 2003/4, I was a Senior Associate in a firm which employed 60 people. It was a great place to apprentice because aA [at that time] was all about perfecting and pushing residential architecture with a specific focus on mid and high-rise structures. My last building there was 18 Yorkville and upon completion, I decided it was time for me to learn about the other side of the equation. So after nearly seven years at aA, managing a full residential portfolio, I knew I needed to learn about the development side of the process.
The thought of moving from architecture to development had first come to me during a lunch-and-learn lecture at KPMB Architects where I used to work. The presentation was given by a trained architect who had gone back to school to earn his MBA in Real-Estate and Finance with the aim of eventually becoming involved in land development. His talk focused on the role of the architect within the larger equation of constructing a building and as part of that presentation, he put up a slide which showed a financial pro-forma.
Buried within that elaborate, 100-line spreadsheet was a single line-item: architect. It was a transformative moment for me because it was a clear indication that if you want to be a better architect, you need to be able to understand that original equation and the division of responsibilities within it. I recall there were perhaps only 10 people in that presentation. In an office of 60 people at that time, it’s a clear indication of how uninterested or unavailable most designers are about such discussions. Fortunately, the person who gave that definitive lunch-and-learn several years back was by then the senior VP of Development at Concord Adex, Alan Vihant. He called me and asked how I liked it there and if I felt it was time to move on yet?
Tempting you almost?
Exactly, it was perfect. From there I spent about four years at Concord Adex and in that time I learned everything I could about the development process, from pro-formas to budgeting to planning to approvals, public art, marketing and sales… down to retaining architects and interior designers. I also believe that no one design practice is perfect at all aspects of design… so I wanted to try to introduce Concord to a new concept which was hiring a design team and marrying them with a good construction firm. I went to one of my former employers, Shirley Blumberg, and I told her that Concord would like to hire the firm to design what is now Montage and Neo but back then was just ‘Block 24.' Concord was very apprehensive because until then, they had just been using full production, complete service firms such as Page + Steele and HOK. So here I am saying ‘I want to hire KPMB and marry them with Page + Steele' and while they were open to the idea, they insisted I show them a complete breakdown of the fees and scenarios and convince them that they weren’t going to be paying more. I managed Block 24 from its conception right up to the start of construction; from the seeds to the interior design details. It involved much coordination work which fell outside of the usual practice at Concord. Ultimately, the result speaks for itself.
Now, TACT Architecture handles the architectural and interior design components of client-driven projects as well as playing the role of developer of a number of its own ventures; how do you conceptualize the firm and its operation?
Well as you mentioned, aside from aesthetics, aside from style, our primary significant difference from other architects is that we are also developers. Even though we only do small scale, infill projects, there’s a paradigm shift where when you are also operating as a developer - you know down to the bolts how much things cost. But contrary to our architectural training, gone are the days when we were taught to believe that the architect is the master / builder…or the social developer…or the urban developer…or the aesthetic developer. Gone are those days.
At TACT however, that is our mission: we are architects who know how development works. We don’t make our own aesthetic the essence of our dialogue with clients because the essence of that dialogue is trying to understand everything they are concerned about. Financial issues, constructability, economics, saleability, maximization of efficiencies and so on. Within that context, we embed a very sound, very thought out, and very specific aesthetic.
So I think that is the fundamental difference at TACT: we try to understand things from more than a purely aesthetic point of view. Ultimately I would love to see us designing and building our own development projects where we decide what brick to use – whether it should be a Roman brick or a standard brick; we decide whether it should be clear anodized aluminum or whether it should be painted aluminum….and so on.. Ultimately, the aesthetics of a project are not that difficult to get right…there are many talented architects out there who demonstrate that. But to understand a project from a residential developer’s point of view requires getting your hands dirty and knowing what they are experiencing first hand.
Our interview with Prishram Jain continues next Thursday
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