ERA Initiatives
Arrival City: Bookclub and Webinar, Mar 13
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ERA’s Graeme Stewart is pleased to be participating in a webinar presented by Cities of Migration and Centre for City Ecology as part of their Citybuilders Bookclub. The Bookclub is global in reach, aiming to foster a deeper understanding of how cities work, and brings together a diverse group of thinkers and writers from around...
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After Empirical Urbanism
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ERA’s Graeme Stewart is participating in the weekend symposium “After Empirical Urbanism” at U of T, Friday Feb. 27 to Sunday Mar. 1. The three-day symposium is organized by faculty members of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, including Dean Richard Sommer, Michael Piper, Ultan Byrne, Roberto Damiani, and Mauricio Quiros....
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Tower Renewal crash course, update on “Showcase”
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Recently ERA’s Graeme Stewart and Evergreen Cityworks‘ John Brodhead presented a webinar on Tower Renewal in partnership with the Social Innovation Generation and Cities for People. The webinar presents an impressive picture of the last eight years of Tower Renewal efforts, and includes discussion of Toronto’s unique built form in relation to other cities, its...
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PechaKucha of the day
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Recently PechaKucha selected a Graeme Stewart talk as a “Presentation of the Day.” We thought, What better reason to repost the presentation? It’s a great crash course in Tower Renewal, an interdisciplinary program that is reshaping how we think about Toronto’s post-war residential apartment tower neighbourhoods. This 7-minute talk covers half a century of Toronto’s history, right up...
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Allan Gardens Harvest Festival
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On September 28, the Friends of Allan Gardens (FOAG) hosted its first Urban Harvest Festival in one of Toronto’s most historic parks. Three hundred people joined us to celebrate autumn amid the colouring trees and early-20th century greenhouses of Allan Gardens. With the generous support of TD Bank, FOAG collaborated with Food Forward, a food...
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Emmy to Short History of the Highrise
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The NFB project A Short History of the Highrise recently won the “News and Documentary” category of the Emmy Awards. ERA and the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R) had the pleasure of working with director Kat Cizek on this project, which examines the current conditions and future potential of post-war high-rise living around the...
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Toronto the Good: Great!
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Toronto the Good 2014, our tenth annual public party, was a big success. We had attendance exceeding 1000 people, and, according to accounts, a good time was had by all. Beer and wine flowed, music spun, people danced, and a great deal of urban-minded mingling occurred. ERA has been privileged to host and co-host this...
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Sept. 11: Toronto the Good Party!
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Toronto the Good is a party thrown each year by ERA Architects and friends to celebrate Toronto and contemplate its history and evolution with fellow architects, designers, thinkers, and urban-minded people. This year: Election Theme! Co-hosted by Dave Meslin and RaBIT Thursday, Sept. 11, 7 to 11 pm at The Fermenting Cellar in the Distillery...
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RAC Zoning Approved for 500 Sites
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This June, Toronto City Council approved the proposed Residential Apartment Commercial (RAC) zone. Following a process of nearly two years of research, public consultation, policy development, and advocacy in partnership with United Way, City of Toronto and Toronto Public Health, the RAC zoning will take effect by summer’s end, (barring appeal), in nearly 500 Apartment properties...
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1960s Canada: An interview with Vincent Massey Tovell
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Vincent Massey Tovell passed away in May 2014. He was a talented broadcaster, a remarkable thinker, and a tireless supporter of the arts. In 2006, for the publication Concrete Toronto, ERA conducted an interview with Mr. Tovell on the subject of the modernist architecture of Toronto and the nation. Below we re-present this interview as...
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Michael McClelland at the Getty: Toronto Towers
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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...
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Job Shadowing: Architectural Conservancy of Ontario
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ERA recently participated in the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s Second Annual Job Shadow Program, organized by the ACO’s NextGen group. Megan Rolph, Golsa Kheirmoghadam, Josie Harrington, and Amy Calder shadowed various members of the ERA team, attended meetings, visited job sites, studied current projects, and took part in our end-of-week office social. Special thanks to...
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Jane Jacobs Prize to Graeme Stewart & Sabina Ali
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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...
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New opportunities through zoning reform: Your feedback needed
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The City of Toronto wants to bring more vitality and convenience to its Apartment Neighbourhoods. In March and April, a number of public consultations will be held to incorporate the ideas of community members. A new zoning type, “Residential Apartment Commercial” (RAC), has been created to provide more amenities and more usable public space in...
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Big Idea Forum w/ Christopher Hume
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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...
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Botwood build: complete
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As part of the Culture of Outports initiative, Andrew Pruss, Alana Young, Jordan Molnar, and Shelley Ludman recently collaborated with six Ryerson architecture students and residents of Botwood, Nfld. to design and build an intervention in the local landscape. The “Viewfinder” is a wood-frame, open-plank pavilion that serves as a shade structure, windbreak, and a...
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Light show on air field: Botwood, Nfld.
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As part of the recent Culture of Outports project, our team of ERAers and Ryerson students has been collaborating with residents of Botwood Newfoundland for several days. In addition to meals, tours, history lessons, and collaborative design charrettes, the team got together to install dozens of ice candles (made by residents especially for our visit)...
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We’re off to Botwood, Nfld.
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As part of the Culture of Outports initiative, ERA’s Andrew Pruss, Alana Young, and Jordan Molnar are heading to Botwood Newfoundland from Feb. 15 to 22. Together with a group of Ryerson Architecture students, we’ll be collaborating with the community on a number of events, as well as the design and construction of an intervention...
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The material library
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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...
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The Star’s Big Ideas: GTA’s future in high-rise suburbs
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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...
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Charrette: Healthy Corner Stores
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On Saturday January 18, The East Scarborough Storefront hosted a public design charrette with partners United Way Toronto, Toronto Public Health (TPH), Sustainable TO, Architext, and ERA. Saturday’s discussion focused on TPH’s new program “Healthy Corner Stores,” a project that proposes to give suburban communities better access to fresh produce, and other healthy food options,...
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Culture of Outports to Botwood, NL
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The Culture of Outports program is about to start up again, for our very first winter community build, in Botwood, Newfoundland. Culture of Outports is a series of projects that uses research, design, and planning to make modest interventions that engage with, and help support, livable communities undergoing economic and cultural change after the decline...
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Detroit-Toronto Party & Symposium: Carlu, Oct. 25
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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...
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Transformative potential of Tower Renewal: Globe & Mail
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Alex Bozikovic, Toronto-based writer on architecture and design, recently provided an update on Tower Renewal efforts in the GTA. The article describes the uniquely Canadian and Torontonian inventory of high-rise post-war tower apartment neighbourhoods, and recent efforts by local architects, not-for-profits, and city departments to rethink these neighbourhoods. With aging buildings in need of maintenance...
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Shipbuilding in NFLD: a book
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ERA’s Philip Evans and grandfather Calvin Evans are about to launch Master Shipbuilders of Newfoundland and Labrador, Vol I, a detailed account of one of maritime Canada’s oldest traditions. The book, published by Breakwater Books, will be launched at 3:30 on Sat. Sept. 14 at the St. John’s Chapters. Philip and Calvin Evans will be...
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