But the building isn't just a passive piece of information on a dusty shelf. It's a building that has thousands of people passing through it each day, and people are having actual experiences of the circulation, the learning space, the offices. I don't see why people should have to deal with poor conditions just because those poor conditions were "the way things were". Do we also remove the accessibility features, because that's how people lived then? Do we allow smoking in the lecture halls? Should we remove the IT infrastructure? How far back are we supposed to roll the clock in the name of context?
Again, I'm not denying that buildings can be both structures and edifices, and I'm certainly not saying that we ought to bulldoze everything to replace it all with what's faddish or what's more utilitarian. I grant that there's some noteworthiness to Sid Smith, but there needs to be some possible allowance that sometimes buildings outlive their usefulness. And once a building has outlived its usefulness it isn't unreasonable to want to talk about the range of actions and interventions we can take. There has to be some balance between use and context, and in this case the demands of use seem to far outweigh the value of the context.
I guess I'd hold up the University College revitalization as a counterpoint. I don't think it's as much about the historical context as you think. Yes, the building has tremendous historical context, but does the average layman really understand the difference between University College and Casa Loma? Yes, UC gets love because people see it on postcards and think "Oooh, Hogwarts!", and yes, there's a popular sense that "old" automatically equates to "valuable", but how many of those people could tell the story of UC's significance? But then, the building has survived all this time because fundamentally, it's a much better building than something like Sid Smith. The spaces, the circulation, the light, everything about it. UC has a design that is remarkably conducive to the kinds of activities that one would want to engage in in a liberal arts school. I'm struggling to see how you could say the same thing about Sid Smith.
(a) You're the one leaving the information on a dusty shelf..
(b) Re University College vs Sid Smith: I'd offer a "both/and" argument. Which isn't so much about the *future* of Sid Smith per se, than about a broader, richer, and more nuanced preemptive reading of our preexisting built environment. That is, UC and Sid Smith as mutually...augmenting? As parts of an existing campus fabric, begging to be "read" in conjunction with one another. A "diversity our strength" interpretation of the U of T downtown campus; rather than as dumb standalones.
So for the sake of argument, let's strike the average lay person from the equation; particularly as that's where we start sliding into analogous lay arguments over how Boston Government Center can't hold a candle to Back Bay or Beacon Hill when it comes to being "activity-conducive" and being just plain pleasant to look at and be in. (And if you're of the POV that Boston Government Center should therefore be blown up as a gesture to said lay persons, then you can eliminate yourself from the discussion this second. Never mind that the aesthetics there might be more Robarts than Sid Smith, or none but the most Brutalist-bro of its defenders would suggest blowing up Back Bay or Beacon Hill.)
And with that, my point of attack would be to explore the genesis of the West Campus; and the fact that the whole Ramsay Wright/Sid Smith/Lash Miller/McLennan stretch ought to be viewed as an ensemble, united through its recognizably early-to-mid-60s Modernist aesthetic. And also the element which, following various incremental additions over the years, signified U of T's boldest, most uncompromising thrust into the modern age--for better or worse; because it's *always* had that "International Style sterility" rep to live down. And that Sid Smith's always felt strangely underwhelming as a hub for Arts & Science really emanates from that "Organization Man" era of campus building thinking (and perhaps the whole West Campus served as a dress rehearsal for UPACE's design-by-committee approach to York U and other Ontario suburban campuses in the 60s and 70s--and with many of the same firms involved, Parkin not excluded). Whatever you may think of it, it's fascinating to reflect upon, and fascinating to explore, how all of this came to be.
Personally, I think a lot of Sid Smith's bad rep emanates from how it has been by far the most intensely overused of the West Campus ensemble--and singular because of how it superserves Arts & Science; that is, for those students who go there over and over for classroom after seminar after classroom, the rest of the West Campus might as well be out of sight out of mind except maybe for certain desire line paths or end-of-term exams. And said overfamiliarity breeds contempt--a contempt compounded by, well, incuriosity or hostility t/w the "how it all came to be" part.
But also re the "how it all came to be", Sid Smith is also an artifact of a distinctly postwar, post-ivory-tower, egalitarian way of thinking--a moment when U of T became less college-centric and more centralized and the notion of "higher education for the masses" set in. Even the notion of "arts & science" as an all-of-the-above catchall fed the notion--almost like university went from ivory-tower haughtiness to, simply, a next stage after high school as an alibi for dissolute Boomers to put off adult responsibility for another few years.
And indeed, maybe that's how Sid Smith is best understood--as the most sublimely overgrown version of a postwar Modernist high school there is; a typology that the Parkin firm knew well (and that Alex Bozikovic knows well, having curated the "New School" on-line exhibition last year). Indeed, at this point it's outlived, or "out-integritied", a lot of significant real-life elementary and high schools of that period in Ontario.
But because of its function, Sid Smith got clapped-out quite early--always a workhorse, but constantly beaten to the ground by its users taping and pasting flyers to every available surface. Already by the age of 20, it was like a weary hair-curler-and-slipper mom juggling several bawling and holy-terror brats.
And I have to admit: the last time I actively "used" Sid Smith was something like 25-30 years ago--right before technology changed everything. Things *may* be different now; whereas back in the 90s, we were still using (or at least just starting to transition away from) a lot of typewriter-and-land-line "60s tech" and thus Sid Smith might not have seemed *quite* as obsolescent as it does today.
And in some ways, maybe if Sid Smith seems especially tired now, it's an echo of the fundamental loosey-goosey dillettante tiredness of the "Arts & Science" catchall in our more STEM- and career-oriented educational era (something the other West Campus buildings are more equipped to address--by comparison, even the "Science" part in "Arts & Science" might as well be impractical "soft science"). It's baked into the soul of the place.
And...that's what makes it interesting.