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O C A D

will alsop by Pieter Sijpkes, Montreal

When I went to visit the Ontario College of Art's new Sharp Centre for the first time, I asked the taxi driver to drop me off a few blocks before, so that I could take in the neighbourhood, round the corner of McCaul street, and get a leisurely first impression of the building. I had taken the same care when I arrived in Paris several years ago, to see the Centre Pompidou. And indeed, seeing the Sharp Centre’s huge pixillated box hover above the very ordinary Toronto city scape below was just as shocking and exhilarating as it was to see the Centre Pompidou’s constructivist bulk bursting out of the narrow Parisian streets that surround it. Chalk one up for effect, Alsop!

OCAD Centre Pompidou Paris OCAD close upHowever, where Centre Pompidou’s shock is created by the muscle and brawn of the exposed structure and colourful ducts, Alsop’s shock is the result of a much more dainty frisson. First, to anyone familiar with powerpoint presentations, there is a feeling of fleetingness created by the box's pixillated skin. And, as with powerpoint images on my computer screen, I almost expected the box to disappear into the clouds, or magically change into something else. It was as fleeting as a blimp. The great flatness of the

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box also struck me. (I saw it on a sunless day). The work of Gustav Klimt, who managed to express much voluptuousness in collage-like paintings of remorseless flatness came to mind. Alsop’s origin as a painter seems to me to explain this similarity. I asked him whether he was not sad to see the crisscrossed structural members of the box covered up like a toy in a box. He liked the way it came out he told me, and looking at the many studies for the exterior of the box, none referred to the powerfully diagonally braced frame that forms the box, top bottom and sides. Even though there is a structure as expressive as the famous diagonals of the Hancock tower in Chicago inside the bulky walls, we get Klimt's flatness instead. That is one of the amazing aspects of the OCAD project. It sings its own tune, and goes against the grain, and it does so in an eye-opening, refreshing manner.

OCAD "The Kiss" Gustav Klimt

OCAD construction Column-Box joint Coming closer.

“The high heels are stuck in the sand, rather than clicking on the sidewalk", I murmured to myself as I


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walked past the first leg of the building at sidewalk level.There are many ways for a column to reach the ground and I feel that an important opportunity was missed here, not exploiting and celebrating the joint between the legs and the foundation. Alsop could have followed the example of the expressive column footings of Dutert's Gallerie des Machines, (compared by Siegfried Gideon in Space Time and Architecture to Manet's painting, The Dancer, of a woman delicately balancing on her toe). Or he could have referred to Viollet le Duc's early iron-stone details, which display joints of anatomical precision, or, he could have looked at any woman on heels walking down the sidewalk. Instead, the giant columns have their pointy ends mutely stuck in concrete, not at all conveying the drama of the tons of weight being transferred from the tip of the column to the foundation at that critical point.

OCAD construction photo OCAD detail

Gallerie des Machines, Dutert High heels Viollet le Duc


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The interesting question about the OCAD project is how did Alsop (in partnership with the firm of Toronto architects Robie/Young + Wright) manage to have the Ontario College of Art and Design agree to use the daring 'overhead' option for their expansion of 5600 square meters while there was plenty of space for a traditional, lateral, addition below.? After all, the empty lot South of the Ontario College of Arts building was the obvious and expected place for expansion. But Alsop succeeded in convincing the College, and the public living in the area (who were quite involved in the decision making process), that the vacant land should be left fallow, and used for access to Grange park, which is situated behind the College. Alsop’s proposal was to put an elongated box over the existing building, supported on slanted, 9-storey- high structural legs, pushing the box enough up into the air to allow condominium owners across McCaul street to keep their cherished view on Grange park over the roof of the existing buildings and below the floor of the addition. I ask the question how Alsop convinced the client, because the much vaunted access to the park across the site left vacant is not there. When I visited, a chain link fence crudely blocked access to the park, drawing into question the whole premise of the project. Legal wrangling of some sort with the neighbouring Art Gallery of Ontario appears to be the reason for the offending fence, but as long as it is there, it surely puts into question the gymnastics of putting the addition so high in the sky.And rather than being a logical answer to a question of program, it seems to me more likely that the real reason for the elevation of the OCAD box is that the elevation of Alsop's Peckham Library was such a runaway success; doesn't every architect want to repeat the pet elements of his last succesfull building in the next one? Even the placement of the word LIBRARY on the Peckham building was echoed in the word OCAD topping the early Toronto designs. Looking for precedents, Alsop’s design does not only bring up memories of the Peckham library; the slanted legs of both Peckham Library and Ocad echo the spidery tentacles of the designs of Archigram, a movement that Alsop knew intimately from his days as a student at the Architectural Association in London. And, to show that there are precedents everywhere, look what structures proliferate a few blocks south of the hotel in the harbour of Old Montreal, where I met Alsop to interview him about the OCAD building. From Archigram to Peckham to, who knows, Montreal Harbour to OCAD, the Toronto street scape is greatly enriched by the Sharp Centre's presence, whatever precedent inspired it. Architecture works that way, carefully venturing beyond what worked last time, carefully moving from experiment to experiment. Gothic architecture, for instance, moved forward for centuries, taking one step after another, the next effort slightly more daring from the last..

Archigram drawing Peckham Library Montreal harbour OCAD Putting buildings on legs is not a new thing in Canada. Montreal witnessed a spectacular example of putting legs under 150 year old Christ Church Cathedral, to create an underground link between two


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department stores adjacent to the church. This underground domain is part of Montreal's 'an indoor city', extending for many kilometers. following Montreal's example, Toronto also has a substantial 'indoor city' ; the OCAD building is the first overground extension to be constructed in that city.

Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal Stilts underneath

The interior

To the first time visitor, the exterior of the OCAD project promises a lot: there is the unexplained super-elevation of the box, there is the bright red diagonal slash, connecting the roof of the existing building with the bottom of the box. There are the colourful legs that have a very strong presence when seen closeup, at sidewalk level, (seeming to work as 'attractors' of students, always standing around talking and smoking cigarettes), as well as far off where their sheer size makes them almost independent sculptural elements. And there is the indeterminate scale of the box: is it one story, ..two..three? So, after finding the entry (an elegantly designed infill of what was an open air atrium between the two sections of the existing building), one enters by descending several steps. Lowering this new entrance level several feet below grade is a nice touch: the OCAD project celebrates "freedom from the obsession with traditional floors" not only by rising high above the street, but also by casually lowering the entrance level, thus increasing the height of the impressive entrance hall.Just as an aside, it would have been exciting if this large hall had also been connected with the OCAD pavillion across the street by an overhead walkway link; it would have strengthened the role of the hall as a the central node of the College, and a glass-clad tube veering across McCaul street, (complicating the overall scheme,) would have brought gladness to the heart of any Archigram devotee. Look at the VanNelle factory in Rotterdam, how much the slanting walkways make the building more interesting.


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. Van Nelle Factory, Rotterdam Overhead connections

After these heady musings in the entrance hall, a series of painful disappointments awaited this excited visitor. Expecting motorized ascent to the great heights above, in 'Centre Pompidou, Beaubourg' fashion, going up the red inclined ramp turns out to be impossible. The red diagonal tube is a sealed fire escape, not a fun escalator. Instead, the trip up has to be made by conventional elevators, which drop you of at one of the two floors of the 'box'. And coming out of the elevator you experience the biggest disappointment: you know you're in the box, but you have no way of confirming it! Yes, you can see that you're high up, by looking out of the deeply-set, colourfully framed windows over the city and over the park. But you wouldn't know if you're on the top floor of the box or on the bottom floor, or whether you're in a regular office building or in a spectacularly elevated art school. Where is the glimpse from one floor to another ? Where is the peek through the floor to experience this dizzying effect of super elevation that has cost such a bundle? Or where even can we step on top of the table top, and let the wind blow through our hair and feel the drama of it all? The answer is nowhere! "Budget restraint" or "fire regulations" do not explain this lack of bravura. Anyone who can convince Toronto that their building addition has to be on 9 story stilts could have also convinced them of the need for an elevator with a few windows, or for the need of an escalator-with-a-view , or a roof-top deck . Somehow Alsop, the knight in shining armour, brush in hand, lost heart at this point. And that's too bad.

That's too bad, because the OCAD addition is one of the more uplifting buildings of modern times, potentially outshining its rival Toronto projects by Gehry and Libeskind, both now in preparation. OCAD has heart, OCAD has colour, OCAD has humour, OCAD is young. During the day a black and white collage on sculptural legs, at night OCAD is a huge shimmering multicoloured mirage floating against the dark city sky. But what could have been a "musical mystery tour" in 3D inside and out, literally falls flat inside for lack of transparency. Splendid experiences are now not to be had for lack of a few well-placed windows..

I have always doubted whether or not those Klimt women would be fun to be with in flesh and blood. Alsop's very exciting and seductive project may give the answer by not delivering the goods. But as a new insertion into the urban fabric the box is sensational. The box got legs- legs that came all the way


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across the ocean to cheer up a whole neighbourhood in Toronto, to become not only an icon in the fabric of OCAD's buildings, but also in the fabric of all of Toronto.

OCAD has humour


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