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York University: Pond Rd. Residence (aA) COMPLETE

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THE ARCHITOURIST: ARCHITECTURE

Downtown sophistication up at York

The university's Pond Road Residence by architectsAlliance is Ontario's first 'green' student housing, but it also offers a dash of the city's sexy 'condo style'

By DAVE LEBLANC

Friday, May 27, 2005 Page G13

It's safe to say that the door to any "middle of nowhere" jokes about York University slammed shut once and for all in 1991. That's when what many consider to be the campus's much-needed "front door" -- Raymond Moriyama's Vari Hall -- opened directly in front of the imposing, brutalist Ross Building, and began a transformation of the country's third-largest university into a much friendlier place.

Since then, the Keele campus has been a hotbed of new construction, resulting in pedestrian-scaled streetscapes and public spaces where there were once windswept and weedy fields, in essence creating a "somewhere" within its boundaries.

In 2000, the campus got two other things it might not have known it needed: a "gatehouse" in the form of Stephen Teeple's Honour Court/Information Centre nestled snugly into a fork in the eastern arterial road, and the Computer Science Building, the university's first structure by the highly regarded firm of architectsAlliance (in collaboration with Busby and Associates Architects).

Last September, York got its second architectsAlliance building and, with it, an instant dose of sexy downtown condo sophistication: the deliciously candy-coloured, curtain-walled Pond Road Residence. Unlike the University of Toronto's tight city lots, York's wide-open spaces allow architectural ideas to spread out. (Even with all the recent SuperBuild projects there's still room.)

At the Pond Road Residence -- a C-shaped building cradling a semi-private courtyard -- the ideas of the architectsAlliance team have spread a full 300 feet along Pond Road, where the structure is five storeys, then along Atkinson Road, where it is joined to a nine-storey tower.

Built in just 15 months, the building wouldn't be out of place next to Finnish architect Eero Saarinen's award-winning and exquisitely modernist General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Mich. (1951-57). The residence is a long, rectangular, concrete-framed "box on stilts," cantilevering over the highly transparent ground-floor common area. It is at once a deft stroke of international style crispness combined with a dash of the new, playful "Toronto condo style" invented, pretty much, by architectsAlliance under the direction of Peter Clewes.

It's also a place that idealistic 18- to 22 year-olds can feel good about living in, says architectsAlliance's project co-ordinator, Mara Nicolaou, since it's the first "green" student housing building in Ontario. "One of York's mandates from the very beginning was to try to make it as green as possible," she says. "It was wonderful to work for a client that would look at paying a premium."

Among the building's features are:

A living roof on the five-storey portion (the wild grasses and flowers actually form a better insulation and extend the lifespan of the roofing membrane).

Radiant slab heating and cooling on all floors (eliminating costly maintenance of forced-air systems.).

Heat Mirror windows (a two-pane system with a thin, clear layer of coated film suspended in-between that has an R-value of nine).

A grey-water heat recovery system that uses the shower's hot draining water to heat incoming cold water.

A system that recovers heated air from rooftop exhaust vents.

Compact fluorescents on motion-detectors.

The fact that the firm was able to pack in all these features for a grand total of $158 a square foot speaks volumes about York's vision and architectsAlliance's ability to deliver it cost-effectively.

All rooms are double-occupancy, have full kitchens and bathrooms, and approach downtown condo size at a whopping 460 square feet. Although, if given the choice, students would probably choose a single room, "if you actually do pair them with somebody, they form at least one friendship and they end up happier," York housing director James Brown says. The twist here is that, unlike in other dormitories, each student gets his own private bedroom, sharing only the kitchen and bathroom. "This is the best of both worlds," Ms. Nicolaou says.

These are not your grandparents' dorm rooms: 50 per cent of each wall is devoted to window (some with solar "fins" mounted outside to keep rooms from overheating), there is a cheery yellow and bluish-grey paint scheme, as well as custom, solid maple furniture designed by Ms. Nicolaou and built by local father and son company Mala International.

Indeed, it was decided that traditional bookshelves were not needed in the new world of Internet-based research, so Ms. Nicolaou created "The Cube," which can play the role of bedside table, stool or, in rare cases, even bookshelf.

In the 7,500-square-foot, ground-floor common area, where students can watch a big-screen TV while they do laundry, the custom theme continues. A "pop art" motif of circles is offset by movable square seating done in black Ultrasuede, also designed exclusively for the building. "If you can't do something fun in a residence for 18-year-olds, where can you?" Ms. Nicolaou says.

All soft blues, canary yellows and, in a certain light, even a mauve-like tint on the Heat Mirror glazing, the 442-bed Pond Road Residence is certainly a fun building. It's also a serious architectural statement of where York University finds itself these days: somewhere rather than nowhere.

Dave LeBlanc hosts The Architourist on CFRB Sunday mornings. Inquiries can be sent to dave.leblanc@globeandmail.ca.
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Too bad the building isn't open for Doors Open - it's one of the out of the way places I really wanted to visit. It's pretty amazing how they managed to do all that (even a partial double skin facade) at the cost mentioned. Take note, condo developers.

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