With summer fast approaching, we’ll be seeing more and more people out on the streets, hanging out, talking, eating their lunches and generally enjoying being outside – as Canadians tend to do when fine weather brings us out of winter’s clutches. But where are they doing all these things? Surely we’re not all standing around on street corners, loitering in front of doorways or squatted on the pavement?

No, it’s this time of year when finding a plum bench or seat in a nice location at lunch time is something like trolling the streets looking for a parking space. But is the culprit just too many people in a concentrated area all out at the same time, or is it really that we have a sadly deficient amount of seating in public areas in Toronto? And I don’t just mean benches – seating walls, stairs, ledges, chairs, window wells – people will sit on almost any horizontal surface within reach (as the couple in the photo above show in such intimate fashion).

It certainly seems as though in many of the most bustling parts of the city there are hardly any places to sit along streets or at intersections where all the action is happening. I hope that we can improve on the current situation in future, and sincerely hope that the current transformation of Toronto’s waterfront will provide ample (nay, over-ample!) seating of every kind and for every occasion.

Photo: Couple seated in a wall along Balmuto Ave opposite the Manulife Centre

The TWRC announced yesterday that the Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. (MVVA)/Behnisch Architects/Greenberg Consultants/Great Eastern Ecology team won the Lower Donlands Design Competition. More information on the team’s entry can be found at the TWRC site.

The full team included:

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. (MVVA), New York & Massachusetts, USA
Limno Tech Inc., Michigan, USA
Applied Ecological Services Inc., Wisconsin, USA
Great Eastern Ecology, New York, USA
Greenberg Consultants Inc., Ontario, CANADA
Behnisch Architects, Los Angeles, CA, USA & Stuttgart, DEU
Transsolar Energietechnik, New York, USA & Stuttgart, DEU
RFR Engineering, Paris, FR
Totten Sims Hubicki and Associates (TSH), Ontario, CANADA
ARUP, Ontario, CANADA

Congratulations (and commiserations) should also go to the other teams for very fine submissions, particularly the Weiss/Manfredi DTAH scheme which I’m sure was a very close second.

Just back from Houston, a city which, despite its problems, has some fine moments and some beautifully detailed parks and streetscapes. This stepped edge of a pond in Hermann Park simply uses subtle carved words to ask people not to enter the water. In case you think people should be allowed in the water, there was an area for that too!

Too often, it’s easy to forget how signs (particularly restrictive ones) can clutter and dominate public places. While there’s plenty of place for sign clutter on heterogenous and chaotic streetscapes, their intrusion into more passive and contemplative spaces can seem offensive and misplaced.

Hermann Park, re-masterplanned with design projects ongoing by landscape architects Hanna/Olin (now Olin Partnership) and SWA Group (including Keiji Asakura, now of Houston-based Asakura Robinson) and funded by a non-profit group, is a stand-out example of quality urban park refurbishment that practices restraint and holds the line against the commercialisation of public space.

The designs for the Lower Don Lands from the 4 shortlisted teams in the “Innovative Design Competition for the Lower Don Lands” being run by the TWRC were released today in conjunction with an exhibition (including lovely models) at BCE Place. The Exhibition Launch and Public Forum is on Monday April 16 from 6-9 pm at the Allan Lambert Galleria in BCE Place (181 Bay Street). PDF’s of the full display panels are available from the TWRC website.

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STOSS INC./Brown + Storey Architects/ZAS Architects

STOSS INC., Boston, MA
BROWN + STOREY ARCHITECTS, Toronto, ON
ZAS ARCHITECTS Inc., Toronto, ON
Brookner Studio
Nina-Marie Lister
Applied Ecological Systems
Pine + Swallow Associates
Nitsch Engineering, Inc.
Moffatt + Nichol
ARUP
Kidd Consulting
Consult Econ, Inc.
The Map Office

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MVVA/Behnisch Architects/Greenberg Cnsltnts/Great Eastern Ecology

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. (MVVA), New York & Massachusetts, USA
Limno Tech Inc., Michigan, USA
Applied Ecological Services Inc., Wisconsin, USA
Great Eastern Ecology, New York, USA
Greenberg Consultants Inc., Ontario, CANADA
Behnisch Architects, Los Angeles, CA, USA & Stuttgart, DEU
Transsolar Energietechnik, New York, USA & Stuttgart, DEU
RFR Engineering, Paris, FR
Totten Sims Hubicki and Associates (TSH), Ontario, CANADA
ARUP, Ontario, CANADA

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Weiss/Manfredi & du Toit Allsopp Hillier

Weiss/Manfredi, New York, NY
du Toit Allsopp Hillier (DTAH), Toronto, CANADA
McCormick Rankin Corporation
Golder Associates Ltd.
Biohabitats, Inc.

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Atelier GIROT/Office of Landscape Morphology/ReK Productions

Atelier GIROT, Zurich, Switzerland
Office of Landscape Morphology, Paris, FRANCE
Jürgen Mayer H., Berlin, GERMANY
ReK productions
Arup, California, USA
Philip Ursprung
Applied Ecological Services

A friend just sent this around, and what a doozy! Props to Gaston!

Sutyagin House, Arkhangelsk, Russia

This imposing building is believed to be the world’s tallest wooden house rising 13 floors to reach 144ft. The house is also crumbling, incomplete and under threat of demolition from city authorities who are eager to end Nikolai Sutyagin’s 15 year project. Driven to inspiration by his formative years spent in a Soviet communal flat, Sutyagin felt lonely living by himself. Building began in 1992 and was only going to reach two stories high, however, convinced by a trip to see wooden houses in Japan and Norway, he decided he had not used enough roof space efficiently enough and decided to keep building. He firstly added three floors, but was not keen on the outcome, so he added more floors and just kept goind, he calls the finished project a “happy accident”. For the one-time gangster, who has spent four years in jail on racketeering charges, Nikolai Sutyagin’s home is certainly different. Not only would his house be a perfect love nest, but it could even accommodate the 18 executives of his construction company. Now penniless Sutyagin lives in four poorly heated rooms at the bottom of his wooden log cabin with his wife. Many neighbours consider the building a monstrosity, others feel it is a glorified barn, fire hazard and eyesore but Sutyagin is determined to save his building and has erected a roof around the second floor that he says allows him to claim that everything above is decoration.

Note the lookout tower for those pesky planners

A friend’s Portuguese cousin sent these awesome images to him and he duly forwarded them to me. The title really says it all: Favela Japonesa indeed! Of course, perhaps a more flexible usage of the concept is required than the english equivalents shantytown/slum – my mind’s drawing a blank, but in spanish, the word barrio, while carrying the same connotations (particularly in Venezuela), also simply means district or neighbourhood. Whatever the word should be, we like where this idea is headed… for something mildly related, don’t forget to check out the Personal Container Management post from November, and to see 50 selected projects utilizing shipping containers try fabprefab.com.

Addendum (May 2010): a commenter indicates that this is actually a Dutch student housing project at the University of Utrecht called Spacebox – 300 units have been built

Statistics Canada has started to release data from the 2006 census at the City level – including population figures for Toronto and the GTA (or at least the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), mapped above). By this measure, the GTA has grown 9.2% since 2001, with a population of 5,113,149 – that’s an increase in population of 430,252 in five years. The City of Toronto itself accounted for only 21,787 of this increase (with a very modest growth rate of 0.9%, and despite what most of us would think of as a significant high-density condo boom) which gives you an idea of the massive pressure on land development at the edges of the city.

To put that in perspective, the increase is equivalent to adding the entire Kitchener CMA (which includes Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge)(451,235), or the entire London (ON) CMA (457,720) to the GTA in the last five years. That’s very nearly the entire population of Newfoundland and Labrador (505,469), and eerily near the population of the City (not CMA) of Vancouver (578,041).

This only emphasizes the critical importance of GTA-wide planning along the lines of the Places to Grow work being done by the Province, but also makes one wonder where this type of planning was 10 or 20 years ago when we really needed it. If this kind of growth keeps up, the Provincial target to have 40% of new residential units inside the current urban boundaries is going to be a real challenge.

Plant Architect & Shore Tilbe Irwin were announced the winner of the Nathan Phillips Square competition. For more information on the competing schemes see the Spacing Wire post or the City of Toronto’s website.

The rest of the team members were:

• Peter Lindsay Schaudt Landscape Architecture, Inc. (landscape design collaborator, Chicago)
• Adrian Blackwell (urban design collaborator and art consultant, Toronto)
• Blackwell Bowick Partnership Limited (structural engineering, Toronto)
• Blanche Lemko van Ginkel (historical guidance, Toronto)
• Crossey Engineering Ltd. (integrated mechanical and lighting systems design, Toronto)
• Enermodal Engineering Limited (environmental and sustainability design and integration, Kitchener, Ontario)
• Theatre Projects Consultants (theatre consultant, S. Norwalk, Connecticut)
• Vermeulens Inc. (quantity surveying, Richmond Hill, Ontario)

The Toronto Star is announcing on its front page that a final $697 million from the federal government has sealed the Spadina Subway Extension deal (see their article here). The money comes as part of a large package of funding for transit in the GTA including:

A Mississauga transitway, a bus-only road along Highway 403 and Eastgate Parkway from Burnhamthorpe Rd. to Eglinton Ave. E.

Brampton’s $280-million Acceleride project, meant to speed bus service. Ontario has already committed $95 million for the improvements.

An expansion of York Region’s Viva bus system. York Region officials want to get buses on to dedicated lanes.

The widening of Highway 7, in the amount of $55 million.

An environmental assessment to extend Highway 407 eastward to link up with Highway 401. This would go through federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s Whitby-Oshawa riding.

A $5 million study of rapid transit in Durham.

For those unfamiliar with the $2 billion Spadina Extension proposal, it continues the Spadina subway line north to York University, then beyond Toronto’s boundary at Steeles to connect to (the future) Vaughan Corporate Centre at Highway 7 in Vaughan. I include a map below from the TTC’s website on the matter – more information can be had here.