For 35 years, ERA Architects has been a strategic thought leader in understanding the ever-evolving phenomenon of heritage. As the firm evolves, so does our approach to working with heritage.
Our interdisciplinary talents, insights, and relationships to the existing built environment lead us to understand places as living through time. As people, communities, values, and societies change, it’s essential to form new avenues and ways of interpreting the places they experience and value. Through our diverse perspectives, expertise, and passions, it’s equally important to remain constant in our stewardship of the relationships between people and their environments.
To showcase how ERA’s studios approach this work in different yet complementary ways, this series of conversations between culture critic Alessandro Tersigni and the firm’s principals will showcase where we’ve been, where we’re headed, and how this array of practices both enriches and productively complicates our approach to understanding and working with heritage in the 21st century.
Alessandro Tersigni: What’s your role at ERA?
Scott Weir: I’m an architect and principal at the firm, and I’ve been here for 25 years as of a few weeks ago. I was attracted to ERA because of its interest in continuing the lives of things that are already interesting. I love that we do that by working with other people in our field, clients, collaborators, and people who we can learn from.
AT: What kind of work does your studio do?
SW: My team has found ourselves focusing on a range of projects — hotels, private clubs, cottages, custom residences, and landmark developments. What ties them together is a sensibility of trying to be respectful of what’s there and design a restoration that harmonizes with it and brings forward what’s already interesting about the place. We do a lot of work as prime architects, and most of my team is architecturally based.
AT: Tell me more about the idea of continuing the life of places that are already interesting.
SW: One thing I’ve always loved about ERA is that we get into really interesting buildings. We’re often brought into them because they’ve lost their reason to exist. Whether it’s the Loblaws Groceteria, Casey House, or Maple Leaf Gardens, these buildings were at the end of their lifespans because their structures had worn out or they had lost their original use. We get to try and stitch a new life into these places, and that can be a highly creative process. For example, while working on College Park, we found that The Carlu’s designer, Jacques Carlu, had at one point designed a restaurant that was never built for the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in New York City, which we can now draw on for inspiration in Toronto 100 years later. There are all these architectural conversations out there, and our job is to be as open as possible and see where there are ways to draw out something new and complementary from what we’ve already got by telling a story.
AT: When you’re telling those stories, do you ever come up against irreconcilable values, wants, or needs?
SW: Our clients certainly sometimes have ideas that are at odds with what they’ve got. In those cases, we’re trying to find ways to bring them around to the potential of the site and, in turn, to bring the site around to meet the needs of whoever owns or is managing it. There’s the added dimension of learning these things over time. Since I’ve been at ERA, we’ve developed new understandings about where we’re building, how we’re building, how it’s impacting the environment, how it’s interacting with a neighbourhood, how our methods are helpful or not helpful, and who has long-term claims on these spaces. All of those lenses have changed significantly in the last 25 years. Our goal is to interact with those many layers in ways that are positive, perhaps especially when they’re at odds with each other.
AT: How does the work you do interact with broader social and cultural ecosystems?
SW: ERA has always had a deep interest in context and cultural stewardship. My team started out working on the Ojibway Club, a Georgian Bay landmark in Pointe au Baril. From our involvement in that community, some of whom have been with each other for about 100 years and others who have been there for many centuries, we’ve worked on a number of residences and cottages in the area. As architects working in that landscape — Pointe au Baril is part of the UNESCO Georgian Bay Mnidoo Gamii Biosphere Reserve — we focus on designing to support clients’ interests while respecting and protecting its fragile and important ecology. The people who live there appear to have always had a deep appreciation for how building footprints impact trees and wildlife. There’s an Indigenous caretaker component when you’re building on the waterline, and many in the teams of builders we work with are from the Shawanaga First Nation. Those particular interweaving understandings are different than when we’re working on a ski chalet or city house, for instance. We usually need to make an effort to understand the local context and navigate getting that kind of buy-in from a client or a neighbourhood.
AT: Do you think heritage is relevant because it’s what exists or because it’s a lens that we bring as a firm?
SW: I think it’s both — our work fits within what’s here, but we’re also trying to make something better. Heritage is a weird word that can mean a lot of things, but ultimately, it’s what’s around us that might have value, which changes over time. I see our role as understanding the world and then bringing it together to make it accessible, legible, relevant, and interesting.
AT: What do you see in ERA’s future as it continues to grow and evolve?
We’ve got momentum and many different opportunities out there. I’m very curious what Canada’s place in the world might be as the Carney-era unfolds. Will we have new partners in the world other than the United States? Will we have a greater ability to do the kind of work we do here elsewhere? We’re interested in understanding what’s happening locally and what people’s concerns are in a particular place. What draws them to that desert or that ocean? How do we respond appropriately to that site in our work? I’m excited to see where that could take us.
Portrait photography by Mina Markovic
