Architecture as Mentor

Ian Chodikoff

One of the most inspiring aspects of architecture is the ability to serve as a “mentor” by positively influencing its surrounding context. A building’s impact on its context changes over time. Similarly, urban contexts influence a building’s character, affecting the way it presents itself to the street and persists in remaining an active participant in daily urban life. The ongoing relationship between a building and its context is the basis for a rich architec-tural dialogue that can influence a building’s program or establish a precedent for future urban development. From my personal observations, several projects guided by the lead-ership of Raymond Moriyama, and his Toronto-based firm Moriyama & Teshima Architects, exemplify an “architectural mentorship” that guides effective city-building.

It is evident that Moriyama has led a number of projects whose architectural value has ap-preciated over time due to an ethos contained within their designs that have positively mentored their surrounding contexts. Such examples include the Bata Shoe Museum, the Toronto Reference Library, the civic centres in Scarborough and North York, Ottawa City Hall, and the Canadian War Museum. Any design strategy is only speculative until the test of time plays itself out but the design strategies contained within these projects understand the potential long-term impacts on their contexts.

The Bata Shore Museum is an example of an architecture that mentors by establishing useful precedents for future development. Opened on the corner of Toronto’s Bloor and St. George Streets in 1995, the building’s volume was driven by the need to maximize its building envelope--a 13.4-metre-high building height limit established a datum for subse-quent development along Bloor Street, as can be seen by podium of the architectsAlliance-designed Woodsworth College Student Residence completed in 2004. The Bata Shoe Museum also established a gateway condition for the University of To-ronto’s, signaling a renewed interest in St. George Street as a central bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly street into the university’s central St. George campus.

When Moriyama was selected to design Toronto’s new Reference Library in 1974, he could never had anticipated the context for subsequent alterations required to evolve the rele-vancy of a library. With the addition of the Bram & Bluma Appel Salon in 2009 and altera-tions to the Yonge Street facade, the importance of the original Moriyama building endures while reinforcing the value of the original building as a civic address for learning and the ways in which it interfaces with the general public.

Architecture can serve as a mentor even it its context is underdeveloped. When Moriyama & Teshima Architects (with Griffith Rankin Cook Architects in joint venture) completed the Canadian War Museum in 2004, the museum’s LeBreton Flats context was relatively bar-ren. This remains true to this day. Nevertheless, the museum’s stoic horizontal expression achieved through canted site-cast concrete walls, along with a thoughtful landscape de-0Ian Chodikoff

May 30, 11:39 AMDeleted: r

signed by Williams, Asselin, Ackaoui & Associates Inc. helps define an evolving cultural context that will only heighten the significance of LeBreton Flats in the future, along with the potency of the adjacent ceremonial route leading into the nation’s capital.

Long-term strategic thinking is a big component to architecture that acts as mentor. Com-pleted in 1990, the Ottawa City Hall is a civic building whose context has matured consid-erably. Initially known as the headquarters for the Regional Municipality of Ottawa Carleton, this building’s design was intended to fit within its historic and nationally significant loca-tion. In rightfully attempting to acknowledge its historical context and extending the street grid through the project, the building successfully designed an internal pedestrian corridor that forms the basis for the building’s central atrium, thereby linking a changing residential neighbourhood to its south with Marion Dewar plaza to its north, a central site for festivals and special events.

As a final point in understanding “architecture as mentor,” the Scarborough Civic Centre and North York Civic Centre both have become more interesting as they age, largely due to the rapid growth and intensification of high-rise development within these two suburban contexts. In the case of Scarborough, its presence functions as steadfastly optimistic ur-ban anchor, albeit one that has matured into a moment of unrelenting civic ambition amidst the inhospitable terrain of highways, parking lots and high-rise condominium buildings. In the case of North York, its original intent as well-defined edge to Mel Lastman Square con-tinues to this day, and has perhaps seen its performance as urban backdrop vastly im-proved from when it was first completed, especially given the significant amount of devel-opment and intensification completed within its immediate context over the past decade.

Under the guidance of Raymond Moriyama, the nature of the architectural ethos support-ing the work of his firm has been both multidisciplinary and multicultural in composition. This has not only contributed to a richer dialogue amongst members of the firm, but to the cultural value of the architecture produced. Under Moriyama’s leadership, many of the firm’s buildings operate as architectural mentors that influence the development of the city, while enhancing the value of the firm’s work.