Jack Diamond makes an interesting claim, in this interview in the new
Wholenote, that if the TSO musicians sat on risers like the musicians in his new hall in Montreal do, the sound would be much improved:
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Written by Pamela Margles
Wednesday, 30 May 2012
When you head down to David Pecaut Square for this year’s Luminato festival you will notice something new — and altogether different. An immense blue ribbon will sweep overhead from one end of the square to the other. Along its course it will wind around the stage and make its way past a group of balletic windsocks.
After the square was renamed last year in memory of the co-founder of the festival, it was officially designated as the festival ub. Thus inspired, Luminato inaugurated a program of architectural installations in the square. The architect Jack Diamond, of Diamond Schmitt Architects, was selected to create this initial design, which is being called Windscape.
Diamond is best known to Toronto-area music lovers as the architect of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. It’s been the home of the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet since its unveiling in 2006 with Wagner’s Ring cycle. Diamond has designed buildings across Canada, the U.S. and around the world for all sorts of uses, from academic and medical institutions to the Corus Quay building on the Toronto waterfront. But it’s his innovative performing arts centres that I wanted to talk to him about. His New Mariinsky Theatre is about to open in St. Petersburg, Russia, and last fall the Montreal Symphony debuted in their new hall, La Maison Symphonique de Montréal. Then there are the Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre in Medicine Hat, Alberta, the Burlington Performing Arts Centre in Burlington, Ontario, and Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, D.C., just to name a few of his most recent projects.
Diamond was born in 1932 in Piet Retief, South Africa. After graduate work at Oxford, he studied with the legendary Louis Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania. Diamond came to Toronto in 1964 to direct the new Master of Architecture program at the University of Toronto’s architecture school, started his own firm, then partnered with Donald Schmitt in 1989 to form Diamond Schmitt Architects.
I interviewed Diamond in April at the offices of Diamond Schmitt Architects in the Queen-Spadina area of downtown Toronto. On the outside, the red-brick heritage building looks traditional. Inside, the ultra-contemporary offices are full of light and pulsing with activity, with open work spaces and glass walls. For me, this interview represented a broader approach to the experience of attending a concert or opera than offered by the performers, composers, conductors and directors I usually interview. It turned out to be all the more rewarding since Diamond was so eloquent, passionate about what he was doing, and delightfully candid.
We began by talking about Windscape.
Jack Diamond: The whole idea of Luminato is to have art transform the city emotionally, intellectually and artistically — for people to experience the city in a much more intense and different way. So the idea for Windscape was to transform David Pecaut Square — the nucleus of Luminato — just as Luminato transforms the city.
How do you transform this space without putting up walls or barriers?
The way we’ve done it is to have a great blue banner running through the space. But the banner is not enveloping the space — it’s enhancing it by defining the boundaries of the public space. Our eyes are naturally attracted to movement. Second-hand car dealers know that, and that’s why they’ve got whirlygigs all over. So it will be animated by wind — natural and artificial. We have some big fans.
How will the banner interact with the concerts that are being presented on the stage?
Because Luminato is offering music, dance, drama, all of that, what we are trying to do here is create a sense of their convergence. To reinforce that, we’ve invited composers and choreographers to control the movement of the banner with light and sound. So architecture will bring them all together here.
Does Windscape represent a new direction for you?
Perhaps …
I’m thinking along the lines of Christo’s large-scale installations.
This is not a Christo. What Christo does is to envelop something and use it as an armature for his stuff. This is not enveloping the square — it’s enhancing and illuminating it, making people aware of the space in a way they hadn’t thought about before.
Would you, for instance, design sets for opera?
I would love to design a set. A very long time ago, when I was a student, I designed sets for student productions. It was fun. One was for an annual pantomime the school of architecture put on, and there was also one for an amateur theatrical.
When you talk about the way Windscape illuminates the city, does that relate to the way the huge glass façade of the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto illuminates the city?
That’s somewhat different. When you are inside, you do have a new view of the city. But what we’ve done there is to dissolve the external wall, so the public areas inside are extensions of the city’s public areas. The sidewalk in front of the opera house goes right into the room. We enclose it with glass so that it is climate-controlled, but it is entirely transparent to the street. Then the city offers a different experience — it’s framed.
Yet it’s the opposite of the traditional opera house, which you enter through a door in a very solid wall. In a way that was very elitist. This is easy to enter, and accessible. It’s not intimidating.
With all that going on, how do youkeep the focus on what’s on stage — the reason people are there?
Inside, there is an opaque wall, and when you cross through it you are in another world in which the city is excluded. It’s the world of opera and ballet. It’s where disbelief is suspended, where, in fact, you have entered into the realm of the artists’ creations. It’s a very different world, and the architecture is very much a reflection of that. There’s a dramatic contrast betweenthe transparent rectilinear shapes and straight lines of the public spaces and the opaque, curvilinear shapes of the internally-focused building inside.
How does the fact that there is an audience involved affect the basic design of the opera hall?
With an Italian horseshoe-shaped hall [like the Four Seasons Centre] you always have a sense of the audience. People are lining the walls, and containing the building. During the performance you can see and hear them react as you do — it’s enhanced by the sense of community. You are not alone in that room. That’s why the architectural form of the enveloping horseshoeis very good for the audience.
What about the performers?
It’s even better for the performers because they have really close contact. They are being embraced by the audience. And they are conscious of the audience. There is an enveloping — in fact in many concert halls when the choir is not there people sit behind the stage and surround the orchestra.
I noticed that the orchestra sits on risers in your new hall for the Montreal Symphony — was that your decision?
Of course.
Do you think the risers improve the sound?
No question. The first rule of acoustics is that if you can see well you can begin to hear well. You hear with your eyes and you see with your ears. So seeing is good. But risers don’t only give visibility. There’s also an acoustic reason for them — in my view there’s always an acoustic basis that should drive design. So I like to put the timpani and brass on risers because I think it helps dampen the sound slightly. Then when you put the strings on a hard surface in front, you get more reflectivity. So that hall is particularly responsive to strings.
Do you think if the Toronto Symphony sat on risers it would improve the sound in Roy Thomson Hall?
No question.
After hearing the Montreal Symphony in their new hall, I couldn’t help wishing we had a symphony hall in Toronto which sounds like that one.
You can draw your own conclusions about this, but when an architect with a romantic view about architecture chooses an arbitrary shape as an artist and then says to the acoustician, “Fix it!â€, the best you can get is six out of ten — the best. If, however, the architect works with an acoustician and starts out with the physics of sound, so that the shape of the hall is a derivative, you get an eight or nine. You can then tune the hall by moving curtains and so on, though I don’t believe in too many moving parts — I think you should design a hall, period.
As good an architect as Arthur Erikson [the architect of Roy Thomson Hall] was, his personal talent got in his way. For me it’s not only more satisfying to be driven by necessity, but it’s ultimately more gratifying. You create a more sustainable design if you are driven by necessity.
Like good sound?
That’s one, but there are others. I believe that the true secret of design is making virtues of these necessities. Take them and celebrate them.
I like your word “celebrate.â€
I really like to celebrate the needs, the technology. And then, in the end, if you make the form out of the demands of sound, and the decoration out of the technology itself, you get a design that you couldn’t have thought of on your own.
So the proverbial sketch on a napkin doesn’t take you very far?
You know what the problems with all those are — they are just sketches on napkins. You should wipe your mouth after the meal and throw the napkin away. There’s a wonderful short-hand in a drawing, but the conception should be based upon knowledge of the technology. Then you find a clever way of improving the conception. When you’ve got limited means and a real demand, that’s how innovation comes about. You can’t intuit a complex problem if you have no knowledge of it. So you must first figure out the issues involving the physical demands, such as sound attenuation.
In the Toronto opera house, the hall is a separate piece that doesn’t touch the outside. Aesthetically you get an egg sitting very gently in its nest. The inside is curvilinear, the outside rectilinear. No sound audible to the human ear penetrates it. The reason that’s important is that the quieter the room, the more audiences can appreciate the nuances of the sounds generating the music. That whole building is on rubber pads, and it has huge, heavy walls and beams that stop both airborne and structural-borne sounds. How could you do that with a little scribble on a napkin? Those principles shape the design. So that’s what I mean by necessity.
You were put through the wringer during the planning stages of the opera house by some — not primarily opera-lovers, I think — who wanted a landmark signature building by someone like Frank Gehry.
He’s a talented guy.
But I imagine you thinking, who do they think I am, a nobody?
Exactly.
I recall that Bradshaw was always adamant in his support for your design.
And his people who had been working with me said, “No way.†I have great admiration for Gehry. He has a plastic talent that’s brilliant. The problem is that it’s idiosyncratic. You can’t develop a school out of that, so the works of his disciples, like the new art gallery in Edmonton, are not as good as his. Everybody else who tries to follow that principle is a second class Gehry, because it’s artistic.
Do you consider your work equally artistic, only that you are starting from the inside out?
I hope so, but what drives the aesthetics — its structure and foundation — is a rational base. It’s much more satisfying aesthetically than starting from an arbitrary base, where I make any shape that I choose. For me that doesn’t have authenticity, because it’s arbitrary.
While the opera house was being built, Bradshaw always talked about the sound and the sightlines, rather than how striking and beautiful it would look.
That’s right. No question, he knew what the issues were, and I agreed with him absolutely. Those are the fundamentals, otherwise it’s not a good opera house. It’s like the Sydney Opera House — it’s a great symbol for Sydney, but it’s a lousy opera house. The architect chose shapes which are intriguing and beautiful, and it’s a lovely piece of sculpture. But it’s not delivering a great opera house. So what’s the purpose of that building? Its iconic and symbolic aspects, with its location on Sydney harbour, are very important, but they should not be at the expense of its primary purpose, which is an opera house. My point is that a beautiful building and a workable building should not be mutually exclusive.
In fact, this architectural practice that we have here is based upon the resolution of those two — perhaps not a resolution, since that sounds like they are in conflict. It’s that one informs the other. The function is all-important, and it’s expressed in a way that is wonderful. To me that’s the essence of great architecture. Whether it’s Gothic architecture or Greek architecture, it’s really that it works, that its technology is inherently authentic.
You mentioned making people aware of a space in ways they hadn’t thought about before — what are some special details in the Four Seasons Centre that people might not be aware of?
There are so many details in that building, there really are. The glass staircase — when people are moving on it, is like an animated choreography. Then there’s the huge skylight — it’s not an indulgence. It brings enough light into the hall so that it becomes transparent, because glass is not transparent during the day, and it lights the back of the hall. We have aisles where people can socialize — but for the top rows we have continental seating, because an aisle in the middle would be too steep. With the aisles along the walls, people can hold on safely. [And there’s]the sweep of the floor — the floor actually changes elevation around the corners to provide good sightlines.
I enjoyed Valery Gergiev’s remark when he first saw the open performing space on the second floor, “They’ve made an auditorium out of the lobby — which is great!â€
When the chief architect from St. Petersburg was here to review the Mariinsky designs, we were sitting in a lunch-time concert there, and he turned to me and said, “You know, the music here is the backround. The real show is the city when you are sitting in the lobby.†I thought that was an interesting reversal, that while he was listening to the music he was looking through the glassand seeing people in streetcars and automobiles and trucks going by, and the clouds changing, and so on.
I’m not so sure the performers would be happy about that.
It was interesting, though. (He laughs.)
How is the Mariinsky different from the Four Seasons?
It’s not different in the sense that it has same DNA, the same horseshoe plan, the same focus. But it’s in St. Petersburg and not Toronto. The context is hugely important for me, responding architecturally to the principles of the tradition and not violating the continuity of the streetscape. It’s very important not to disrupt the long and powerful history, but to reinforce it.
Was it a problem for you that the historic old Mariinsky Theatre is right beside your new opera house?
No, on the contrary, that’s what I’m saying — the continuity is very important, of the streetscape, the height, the scale, the materials of the surrounding buildings in St. Petersburg.
Do you refer to them architecturally?
I do, absolutely. (He shows me some designs for the new Mariinsky.)The colours, the masonry, the porticos, the columns, the vertical windows … all the elements are there, but with a contemporary expression.
There wasn’t much space for landscaping in Toronto — will there be more there?
It is a huge site, a whole city block, and the opera house is the same size, 2000 seats. But [unlike Toronto] all the production facilities for both houses are there as well. I’ve done a master plan for the whole precinct. I’m changing the present square and making a new boulevard and bridge over the canal connecting to the Conservatoryand the old Mariinsky and the little concert hall that Valery has already done. This becomes one of the premier performing arts districts in the world. (He points to the drawings.) Here is a statue of Rachmaninoff, and that’s Glinka — they were both directors of this opera house. Russia has this extraordinary heritage. I think Gergiev’s clear ambition is to rival Lincoln Center and the Southbank and all those.
Russia has a great advantage — it has the music.
It has the music and it has Gergiev. He’s amazing, an astonishing guy.
When you were designing the Maison Symphonique did you work with Kent Nagano [the music director of the Montreal Symphony] on the design?
I didn’t work with Nagano. It was a peculiarity of this design competition. They were terrified about us getting some advantage over our competitors, so it was done without the orchestra.
Was the situation different with Richard Bradshaw [the artistic director of the Canadian Opera Company at the time]?
Very different. We were very close — he was great. But the strongest input Richard had was regarding the orchestra pit. The pit was his focus, and correctly so.
Of course that’s not surprising, since he was a conductor.
And we really were much influenced by him on the design of the pit. The rest came from the acoustician and myself. But he was a good client in the sense that he knew when to intervene and when not to intervene. Without Richard that building would never have got done.
With your design?
It wouldn’t have got done, period.
In your recent book of sketches and writings, you make it clear that the music itself is important to you.
Absolutely. Next to architecture music is my love. In fact my thesis for my bachelor degree was a concert hall design.
I noticed a drawing of Tafelmusik performing at Trinity-St. Paul’s in the book. What kinds of concerts would I be most likely to see you at?
At the top of my list are chamber music and choral music, baroque music, the voice … I’ve come to almost enjoy Wagner, but I did it through Mahler, the wrong way around. And it’s very hard to beat Bach, Handel and Mozart. Then, going earlier, Cherubini and Charpentier. People like Philip Glass intrigue me, and Arvo Pärt, I think he’s fantastic. His Für Alina really gets to me. Gorecki I like a lot. His Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is amazing. There’s a lot of good contemporary stuff, better now because it’s melodic. That period between Shostakovich and Glass left me cold, I have to say — the atonal crashing and banging.
What projects are you working on right now?
There’s the renovation of the whole Banff Centre. We’ve already accomplished quite a bit, the master plan and two buildings. Now I’m working on the old theatres and the art gallery.
You’ve influenced the whole experience of going to a concert or opera in Canada — and around the world.
Not enough, not enough. (He laughs.)
What would you do next, if you could choose anything?
Don’t get me started on that — there’s lots to be done …
Windscape is open from 11am to 11pm at David Pecaut Square during Luminato, which runs from June 8 until June 17.
The free concert programming on stage at David Pecaut Square is listed on the Luminato website:
www.luminato.com.
Diamond Schmitt Architects have a detailed website:
www.dsai.ca.
Here are two books, one by Diamond and one about the work of his firm, Diamond Schmitt Architects:
–Sketches from Here and there: Words and Watercolours by A. J. Diamond (Douglas & McIntyre)
–Insight and On Site: The Architecture of Diamond and Schmitt (Douglas & McIntyre). This contains an extensive bibliography on Diamond.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Pamela Margles is a Toronto-based journalist and frequent contributor to The WholeNote.
