Archiseek CANADA Architecture News

Dan S. Hanganu wins 2008 RAIC Gold Medal

2008-04-08

The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2008 RAIC Gold Medal is Dan S. Hanganu, FIRAC. In choosing Mr. Hanganu, the Gold Medal Selection Committee noted: Dan successfully transcends the professional and academic worlds as well as having an extensive body of internationally published articles and project reviews. He understands the impact that architecture can have on people; his work successfully balances function and feeling in a very strong straight-forward way; not showy but significant and successful as highly useable environments.

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Architect gives retail project thumbs up after seeing for himself

2008-04-07

A prominent Canadian architect has decided to back a controversial development in the old east-end neighbourhood of Leslieville, saying that federal NDP Leader Jack Layton misled him into opposing it. In a letter to Mr. Layton, who was once the councillor for the city ward in which the project is located, Jack Diamond said that the impression he got about the development from a telephone conversation with Mr. Layton "was of a large box surrounded by surface parking."

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Bay Street is awash in banality

2008-04-05

Every generation looks back and sees evidence of a time when everything was better. It may not be true, but in this regard we are no exception. Still, it's hard to wander around this city and not become convinced that the quality of architecture has deteriorated badly in recent decades. That's not to say there aren't spectacular things being built; it's more that the level of design of the non-landmarks, the background buildings, of the urban fabric has never been worse. Perhaps it's that only the best of the past survives, but by contrast the bulk of work done by architects today is appalling.

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New wine for the old ceremonies

2008-04-03

Niagara-on-the-LakeUse it or lose it. In the case of heritage buildings, truer words were never spoken. Historic buildings that are still with us today tend to be those that still serve a purpose, even if it's not what was originally intended. There are countless examples in towns and cities around the world, but in Niagara-on-the-Lake, architectural recycling has enabled the community not just to survive but thrive. The streets of this town are lined with buildings designed for one thing but now doing something quite different.

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Book store facing final chapter

2008-04-02

Toronto may be a city that reads books, but not one that goes to the store to buy them. After 29 years on Markham St., Ballenford Books, the city's best architectural bookstore, will close its doors. "I was delusional," says owner Susan Delean, "because I hear from people I like. But it's got to the point where it's become a personal thing. I'm putting my family in a situation where they're in financial jeopardy." According to Delean, a store like hers can no longer survive the onslaught of the Amazon.coms of the world.

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Aga Khan's cultural centre crown jewel for Don Mills

2008-04-02

Perhaps the Aga Khan knows something we don't. Why else would the spiritual leader of the world's 15 million Ismaili Muslims have chosen a 7-hectare site near Don Mills and Eglinton to build his $200 million community centre/cultural campus? Most Torontonians would have dismissed that location without a second thought; after all Wynford Dr., where the old Bata and Shell corporate sites were located, is more a drive-by corner than a destination.

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Some downtown buildings we wouldn't miss

2008-03-30

Is it my imagination, or have we been through a dark age in architecture? I am thinking of some of the buildings built in our cities over the last 30 or 40 years, replacing much older and more awe-inspiring structures. The decade of the 1970s was an especially dismal period, influenced heavily by an architectural style known as brutalism, the word coming from a French term, beton brut, or concrete with no formal finish. The form is massive in outlook and minimalist to the pocketbook.

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Should the Revue's marquee be restored?

2008-03-30

Witness the power of pictures. Take the one directly right. Are happy memories triggering? Are you yearning to swing over there this afternoon in a wire-wheeled sedan with sidemounts, to take in a movie? "Nothing lights up a street . . . like a movie marquee," theatre historian David Naylor has written, in praise of the movie business's long-running, on-the-spot architectural advertising. So evocative is this particular view that it is fueling a debate about the theatre itself, which is the much-loved Revue cinema on Roncesvalles Ave.

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