ERA Initiatives
Scott Weir presents at Society of Architectural Historians
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Last week ERA’s Scott Weir presented at the 68th Annual Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) Conference in Chicago held from April 15-19. The SAH conference brings together innovative thinkers from around the world to examine major currents in architecture and urban design with a mission statement “to foster the understanding and appreciation of architectural history...
Read MoreThe community that could: The Storefront shares its story
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Recently the East Scarborough Storefront published a report documenting a number of aspects of their path to neighbourhood renewal. Since the Storefront’s approach has proven so successful, this report is very valuable for other communities interested in making some positive changes to the neighbourhood. Since the late 1990s, the East Scarborough Storefront has been facilitating...
Read MorePowers of Towers: New video starring Graeme Stewart and Sabina Ali
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ERA’s Graeme Stewart and Sabina Ali of the Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee are featured in a terrific new video by Spacing. The video, which also includes interviews with ERA’s Michael McClelland, is entitled “Powers of Towers,” and profiles the efforts of Graeme and Sabina to transform Toronto’s aging suburban high-rise neighbourhoods into livable communities that...
Read MoreNewfoundland field research (by guest blogger Kathryn Douthart)
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For the past five years, ERA’s Culture of Outports team has been working with rural communities along Newfoundland’s coast to foster liveable communities through research, design, and planning. In the summer of 2014, Culture of Outports worked with Mitacs, a not-for-profit organization that builds working relationships between academia and industry by placing research interns with organizations...
Read MoreArrival 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...
Read MoreAfter 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....
Read MoreTower 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...
Read MorePechaKucha 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...
Read MoreAllan 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...
Read MoreEmmy 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...
Read MoreToronto 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...
Read MoreSept. 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...
Read MoreRAC 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...
Read More1960s 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...
Read MoreMichael 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...
Read MoreJob 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...
Read MoreJane 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...
Read MoreNew 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...
Read MoreBig 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...
Read MoreBotwood 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...
Read MoreLight 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)...
Read MoreWe’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...
Read MoreThe 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...
Read MoreThe 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...
Read MoreCharrette: 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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