Toronto George Brown College Waterfront Campus | ?m | 8s | George Brown | KPMB

It's a fetish for a lot of architects, mostly students, but shipping container 'architecture' is one of my biggest peeves.
 
aA's Pier 27 is another one, and with the gen-u-ine, still-functioning Redpath complex between it and Corus - and Teeple's angular little Sherbourne Common Pavilion - the affinity to industrial architecture becomes a collective statement rather than an exception.
 
Modernism is already an homage to industrial architecture - and industrial materials - in and of itself. It's redeeming grace (through Mies) was to use fine materials and a skilled hand to elevate it to art. Through LeCorbusier - already a painter - it was through raw, poetic use of materials to invoke an intellectual and emotional sense of place. Good modernism was never content to be merely industrial, it was created by artists to redeem the productions of the age.

That the scabrous patch of aluminum on GB is industrial, in an industrial area, needs no new comment. What is a problem is that the way it was handled, which leaves it as a clumsy, overbearing compositional and stylistic error on an otherwise well-made building.
 
Last edited:
CanadianNational said:
Nice try. Modernism is already an homage to industrial architecture - and industrial materials - in and of itself. It's redeeming grace (through Mies) was to use fine materials and a skilled hand to elevate it to art. Through LeCorbusier - already a painter - it was through raw, poetic use of materials to invoke an intellectual and emotional sense of place. Good modernism was never content to be merely industrial, it was created by artists to redeem the productions of the age.

That the scabrous patch of aluminum on GB is industrial, in an industrial area, needs no new comment. What is a problem is that the way it was handled, which leaves it as a clumsy, overbearing compositional and stylistic error on an otherwise well-made building.
Click to expand...

+1
 
Urban Shocker said:
Redpath is entirely industrial, and entirely good Modernism. There is no shame in adopting it as a model
Click to expand...

Redpath was modern utilitarianism in it's day, not modernism. There was no attempt at refining or developing any kind of formal language through it's design. That's not to discredit it in any way.
 
Urban Shocker said:
Redpath is entirely industrial, and entirely good Modernism. There is no shame in adopting it as a model
Click to expand...

Umm...isn't there a lake, with water and islands and a harbour and stuff, that these and future buildings in East Bayfront should perhaps be responding to? Is "industrial" the only thing Modernism can do?
 
neubilder said:
Redpath was modern utilitarianism in it's day, not modernism. There was no attempt at refining or developing any kind of formal language through it's design. That's not to discredit it in any way.
Click to expand...

Actually, there was conscious architectural effort there that went beyond banal "modern utilitarianism"--indeed, you can say the same about a lot of supposedly style-free c20 functionalism, from Behrens and Gropius (and even Albert Kahn) on down...
 
Modernism in architecture began as many things - abstraction rather than historicism and decoration, for instance - yet we've moved on from the world of Le Corbusier and the design language has evolved too. All of the buildings from Pier 27 to the Sherbourne Common Pavilion, including Redpath, represent different expressions of the Modernist idea - none of them slip back into an earlier mode by expressing Gothic, or the Classical, or the world of the Pharaohs for instance. Pier 27 references waterfront pier architecture, shipping containers, and nautical forms; Redpath's a set of buildings that are logically placed on the site to clearly expresses "machine" and "process"; Corus Quay is pared-down, sleek and minimal, and the Pavilion's like an angular little metal widget from a mass-production line. As an ensemble there's an underlying logic to them, including the George Brown building.

As for the cladding on the north east corner of the George Brown building, which seems to have a few peoples' knickers in a knot, it is identical to the cladding that runs in strips along the north west corner of the building from the roofline down to the ground, and which runs along the entire west side of the building, and is used on the south west corner of the building in strips from the roofline down to the ground. All KPMB have done is set it at 90 degrees to differentiate it - and that makes perfect sense given Kuwabara's penchant for making the occasional Mannerist statement, particularly in light of his acknowledgement of the influence of the ideas expressed in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture on his work.
 
I'm not sure that just because George Brown isn't an Egyptian pyramid makes it a particularly good anything, and certainly not a particularly good 'expression' of modernism.
 
adma said:
Actually, there was conscious architectural effort there that went beyond banal "modern utilitarianism"--indeed, you can say the same about a lot of supposedly style-free c20 functionalism, from Behrens and Gropius (and even Albert Kahn) on down...
Click to expand...

The Redpath's ribbon windows, the stylized supports for the conveyors, and the conveyors themselves suggest an awareness of the 'International Style', but for the most part the Redpath plant appears to have been designed by engineers, not architects.

That was the biggest oversight of International Modernism - it took the art of building out of the realm of artisan's and placed it firmly in the hands of engineers and accountants, thus rendering architects almost redundant. Such is the state of most architecture (building) today.
 
neubilder said:
The Redpath's ribbon windows, the stylized supports for the conveyors, and the conveyors themselves suggest an awareness of the 'International Style', but for the most part the Redpath plant appears to have been designed by engineers, not architects.
Click to expand...

Uh, actually...not. Or at least, the engineer and the architect's sensibility worked quite closely in tandem here--and besides, you're doing injustice to the engineer, or for that matter, to "industrial archaeology" in general.

By this standard, the only thing about Albert Kahn's factories worth cherishing is anything with "architectural decoration"; and we might as well wave bye-bye to C.D. Howe-style grain elevators, too.

That was the biggest oversight of International Modernism - it took the art of building out of the realm of artisan's and placed it firmly in the hands of engineers and accountants, thus rendering architects almost redundant. Such is the state of most architecture (building) today.
Click to expand...

And I'd upend that argument by suggesting that without International Modernism and all of that, we wouldn't have industrial archaeology and the kinds of sensibilities that allow us to appreciate, well, stuff like Redpath.

Besides, sometimes, the unfettered work of "engineers and accountants" can be preferrable to when "architecture" (or some debased version thereof; y'know, EIFS schlock and all of that) enters the picture...
 
I don't think we disagree - my point is just not very clear. I have a strong appreciation for 'industrial archeology' or the 'industrial vernacular'. In many respects it's more authentic than 'high' architecture. I'm also strongly in support of it's preservation. And I love the fact that redpath can function harmoniously next door to $1000/psf condos and a faux beach.

My point was a general comment that is only loosely related to this discussion, but I threw it in anyways. Compare the Gooderham & Worts buildings with modern light industrial sheds or big-box stores in the suburbs. Buildings that have been value engineered to achieve their intended function with absolutely zero embellishment. This in many respects was the inadvertent by-product of the early modernist movement, except that Peter Behrens or Walter Gropius must be turning in their graves with how it turned out. But intentionally or not, modernism facilitated this transformation; taking the act of building out of the hands of the artisan and placing it in the hands of industry and mass production, a mode where engineers and accountants could then strip the process of all cultural and artistic associations in the name of efficiency. (Many big box stores are clad using EIFS, I might add.)
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top