Ideas & Issues

Birnbaum on Toronto’s landscapes

by ERA Architects

On Wed. May 21, Charles Birnbaum from The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) spoke at Toronto’s Arts and Letters Club. This “Inside the Planner’s Studio” event was sponsored by the City of Toronto and attended by City staff in Parks, Urban Design, and Planning, as well as numerous professionals in architecture and landscape design. Charles introduced...

“Dr. Brick” returns to Toronto

by ERA Architects

Dr. Gerard Lynch, master mason and acclaimed scholar in heritage masonry, has returned to Toronto to lead a new series of workshops hosted by ERA and Historic Restoration at Evergreen Brickworks. One of this year’s courses, Advanced Topics in Lime Mortar, focused on the importance of using traditional lime-based mortars when restoring or repairing heritage...

Michael McClelland at the Getty: Toronto Towers

by ERA Architects

Michael McClelland spoke in 2013 to the Getty Conservation Institute’s “Colloquium to Advance the Practice of Conserving Modern Architecture.” The presentation discussed Toronto’s unique development of tower neighbourhoods in the context of modernist planning principles and modern heritage conservation. ERA advocates for an approach to the conservation of these neighbourhoods through a considered process of...

Jane Jacobs Prize to Graeme Stewart & Sabina Ali

by ERA Architects

The 2014 Jane Jacobs Prize has been awarded to Graeme Stewart of ERA and Sabina Ali of the Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee. According to the creators of the Jane Jacobs Prize, Ideas that Matter, this honour “celebrates individuals who contribute to the fabric of Toronto life in unique ways that exemplify the ideas of Jane...

Big Idea Forum w/ Christopher Hume

by ERA Architects

Monday March 24th, ERA’s Graeme Stewart will be joining Christopher Hume and guests for a forum on the future of Toronto. The discussion begins at 6:30 pm, Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave, Toronto. The forum follows up on the Toronto Star’s Big Ideas series, in which local urbanists, activists, researchers, and citizens share their...

Ghost wall: casting a heritage façade in concrete

by ERA Architects

As part of the development of the Bay Adelaide Centre East Tower, ERA is working with KPMB, Adamson Associates, and Brookfield Properties to conserve and refurbish two facades of an impressive four-storey masonry building constructed in 1850 and heavily renovated in 1910. Part of the interpretation of the history of this site involves making moulds...

The material library

by ERA Architects

A material library is a cataloged collection of real-world materials kept for research and reference. Often the library consists of recently released, innovative, or unusual products, but can also include more commonly used materials that are important to combine, compare, contrast etc., in their full materiality. As heritage architects, our library also contains reference materials...

The Star’s Big Ideas: GTA’s future in high-rise suburbs

by ERA Architects

Throughout the first part of 2014, the Toronto Star is running a series called “Big Ideas“, asking Torontonians to think big about the future of the region. What type of Toronto do we want to create in the years to come? For our contribution to this series, we discuss Tower Renewal as the key to...

Military infrastructure designation, UK

by ERA Architects

Prior to joining the office, ERA’s Alex Rowse-Thompson spent several years as a Conservation and Design Officer in Gosport, an ancient naval town in the UK. As part of this work, Alex advocated for the heritage designation of an unusual piece of 20th century military infrastructure in Gosport: No. 2 Cavitation Tunnel. Recently, this advocacy...

Infrastructure: new vision for Ontario

by ERA Architects

Provincial Transportation Minister Glen Murray is proposing exciting changes to the way infrastructure is planned and designed in Ontario. The proposed “Infrastructure for Jobs and Prosperity Act” contains important new criteria including sustainability, greater alignment with existing provincial plans, longer-term and more complete ROI rationales, and, we are pleased to see, the mandated inclusion of...

Toronto / Sweden: Resilient Urbanism

by ERA Architects

Over the past several years we’ve had the pleasure of an ongoing exchange with colleagues in Sweden regarding urban design. This has included a series of research tours, participation in the neighbourhood design project Selma in Göteborg, and various events in collaboration with the Swedish consulate here in Toronto. The aim of the exchange is to tackle the challenge of achieving...

Designed landscapes: Ground Magazine

by ERA Architects

Ground, the magazine of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects (OALA), recently published a new article by ERA’s Michael McClelland entitled “Sites of Value: Designating Modern Cultural Landscapes in Ontario.” The article looks at Queen’s Park Complex, designed by Sasaki Strong Associates, as an early example of landscape conservation efforts in Canada. Using the Complex...

Detroit-Toronto Party & Symposium: Carlu, Oct. 25

by admin

Oct. 25 @ the Carlu, Toronto: A special presentation of the Toronto the Good party: It normally occurs in the spring or summer but has been moved this year to coincide with the Detroit + Toronto Symposium. Attend one or the other, or both! 8:30 am to 5:30 pm Detroit + Toronto: Drivers for a...

Rountable: Toronto’s Suburbs

by admin

On Monday Sept. 30 at 9:30 am, at Toronto City Hall, ERA’s Graeme Stewart participates in a Chief Planner Roundtable called “The Shape of Toronto’s Suburbs.” The Roundtable is a public forum for Torontonians to discuss key city-building challenges. Civic leaders and industry professionals familiar with the discussion topics convene for each roundtable session to...

Slabs vs. points

by admin

A new article in Satellite Magazine on Toronto Towers by ERA’s Graeme Stewart, Josh Thorpe, and Michael McClelland. The article compares Toronto’s two high-rise housing booms, which have generated housing in volume and distribution unlike anywhere else in North America: first, the suburban tower boom in Toronto’s post-war period, and next the contentious condo boom...

Concrete Toronto on spacing.ca

by ERA Architects

ERA is pleased to announce that this summer spacing.ca will be republishing several articles from our book, Concrete Toronto: a guidebook to concrete architecture from the fifties to the seventies. The book, published by Coach House Books in 2007, reconsiders Toronto’s large inventory of concrete buildings and infrastructure from the perspective of a diverse group...

Seoul: its heritage and its future

by ERA Architects

ERA’s Sharon Hong was recently published in Transforming Asian Cities, a new book edited by Nihal Perera and Wing-Shing Tang for Routledge. According to Perera and Tang, Asian cities are too often thought of as “following global models” and “Western-dominated urban hierarchies and spatial structures.” This new publication, however, aims to provide “inside-out” interpretations of...

The Future of the Glass Tower?

by admin

Tuesday, April 30, 6 pm, Art Gallery of Ontario, Seminar Room 1 (Weston Family Learning Centre) ERAer Graeme Stewart joins David Pontarini, Sam Crignano, and moderator Mathew Blackett for a Pug Talks presentation and discussion on the glass tower in the GTA. Toronto has 143 buildings 10 storeys or higher under construction, more than doubling...

Micallef: Canada’s identity, modernist architecture

by ERA Architects

If there is a character that unites Canada across its many regions, says Shawn Micallef of Spacing, it could well be our huge stock of post-war modernist architecture. From well-known innovations such as Montreal’s Habitat ’67, Toronto’s CN Tower, or Burnaby’s Simon Fraser University; to the thousands of lower-profile urban and suburban low-, mid-, and...

w/ Erik Freudenthal

by admin

We are pleased to announce a visit by Erik Freudenthal, the Director of Information for Hammarby SjÃ¶stad, Stockholm, who will present recent initiatives in leading low-carbon neighbourhood design. In addition to providing insight into the case study of Hammarby SjÃ¶stad, the event will be an opportunity to examine locations in Toronto with the potential for...

On Scarpa’s Castelvecchio

by ERA Architects

Having returned from a trip to Verona, ERAer Ryan Love recently presented to the office on his experience of the amazing Castelvecchio, a fine example of medieval Gothic architecture, completed in 1355. The castle was built as a fortified home for the Lord of Verona, Cangrande II della Scala, and has over the years seen...

Serra’s Shift to be designated under Heritage Act

by ERA Architects

In February, Council for King City, Ontario voted to designate Richard Serra’s Shift under the Ontario Heritage Act. This represents a great step forward in formalizing the cultural significance of the work of art, and sets context to establish guidelines for its conservation. ERA wrote a letter in support of designating the work earlier this...

Append & tweak: Rethinking heritage in our suburbs

by ERA Architects

An article by ERA associate Joey Giaimo was recently published in the latest APT Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology International. The article, “Append & Tweak: An Approach for Preserving the Evolving Suburban Landscape,” asks us to re-evaluate how we regard and manage heritage resources in suburban contexts, and argues for a cultural landscape...

The Red Mason

by ERA Architects

Recently, as part of ERA’s ongoing interest in preserving and applying traditional building crafts, we were happy to be involved in heritage masonry workshops led by Dr. Gerard Lynch. Dr. Lynch is an internationally acclaimed historic brickwork consultant, master bricklayer, educator, and author. He is considered the world’s leading authority of gauged brickwork, and affectionately...

Graeme Stewart on “Imagine a City”

by ERA Architects

This autumn, United Way’s Imagine a City blog is hosting a series of guest writers to discuss a number of important programs related to Toronto’s future as a livable city. Recently ERA’s Graeme Stewart blogged on his vision for Tower Neighbourhood Renewal, a program we have been working on in collaboration with partners including the...