Tower Renewal
Planting for an elevated bioswale in Scarborough
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On a recent pleasant day in June, ERA joined green roof expert Atom Cianfarani and a group of community youth to plant a nursery in preparation for the future construction of an unusual green-roof shade structure at the East Scarborough Storefront. Over the past year, we have been working with the Storefront, Sustainable.TO, ArchiTEXT, various...
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United Way AGM: Graeme Stewart’s Keynote Address
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On Thursday, June 21, ERA’s Graeme Stewart addressed United Way’s AGM as keynote speaker. In 2010, ERA and CUG+R published Tower Neighbourhood Renewal in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, which looks at a broad range of historical trends, planning issues, sustainability concerns, social needs, and opportunity for renewal in and around Toronto’s tower block neighbourhoods. In...
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East Scarborough Storefront: Wood Inventory Part II
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As we have mentioned previously on this blog, ERA Architects is collaborating with ArchiTEXT and Sustainable.TO on the exciting Community.Design.Initiative at East Scarborough Storefront. Over the course of an intensive 19-week mentorship semester we worked with community youth on the design of a kitchen garden and patio, a unique green-roof pavilion, a bee and butterfly...
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Miles Glendinning Lecture, May 3rd, 2012
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ERA Architects and the Toronto Society of Architects present the 2012 Modern Heritage Visiting Lecture, Miles Glendinning: The Hundred Years War: A Century of Mass Housing ‘Campaigns’ Across the World. Join us May 3rd at the Art and Letters Club at 6:00pm for cocktails and lecture at 6:30. For more information and to RSVP, click...
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East Scarborough Storefront – WOOD INVENTORY
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Starting in January 2012, ERA and partners ArchiTEXT and Sustainable.TO have been leading the 5th semester of the Storefront’s Community.Design.Initiative (CDI), a weekly mentorship program for youth in the Kingston – Galloway – Orton Park (KGO) neighbourhood of East Scarborough. This semester the team is working with the youth to design a shade and naturalization...
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Metro Morning on Tower Renewal
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Matt Galloway with Priti from the NBF’s HIGHRISE, Image Courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada This week CBC’s Metro Morning is taking to the Kipling strip north of Finch to talk tower renewal, in an area of aging concrete towers that were typical all across Toronto during the early 1950s and ’60s. On...
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Concrete Ideas
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The book Concrete Ideas: Material to Shape a City was launched in January, 2012. Edited by Pina Petricone, the book considers new approaches to concrete architecture by exploring a variety of new technologies and possibilities for the material. First introduced by Pina’s article in Concrete Toronto, the book is a compilation of ideas, articles and...
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Tower Renewal + NFB feature on Metro Morning
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This week Graeme Stewart discussed ERA’s ongoing work related to Tower Renewal and working with the NFB of their film documentary with the metro morning team. You can listen to his interview in full here.
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The Millionth Tower
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The Millionth Tower web-based documentary has launched! This weekend the project was featured on the highly-respected Wired.com site, and is already making significant waves re-imagining the way emerging web-based technologies can help to tell highly personal stories in our increasingly connected world. We are all very proud to have been involved – please see the...
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Tower Neighbourhood Renewal article in the APT International
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ERA is featured in the summer edition of the International Journal for the Association for Preservation Technology (APT), in an article examining the Tower Neighbourhood Renewal initiative. From the introduction: In 2008 the City of Toronto initiated its Tower Neighborhood Renewal program. The program looks at the significant impact of post–World War II construction in...
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ERA x Sweden
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This month a number of ERAers took a trip to Sweden, in order to kick off a neighbourhood rejuvenation project at Semlal Lagerlöfs Torg in Gothenberg. Following the extensive site tour and project brief, the team visited precedent projects in Stockholm, Malmo and Copenhagen to view the latest in housing design and neighbourhood renewal from...
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Gothenburg Renewal
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ERA has been invited to participate in a parallel commission for the neighbourhood renewal of Selma Lagerlöfs Torg in Gothenburg Sweden. Sharing many similarities to Toronto’s Inner suburbs, the neighbourhood renewal program will incorporate many of the strategies developed in Toronto for Tower Renewal…
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East Scarborough Storefront
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Community Design – Image courtesy of Expect Theatre / Spark Productions The East Scarborough Storefront is a community agency offering multiple services in a tower neighbourhood in East Scarborough. Containing a community kitchen and garden, market, resource centre and access point to over 50 different agencies such as job search support and literacy service, the...
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Kipling Community Build
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In July, ERA got into the building spirit as part of the Tower Renewal project at the Kipling Towers in North Etobicoke. Kipling Towers is one of the City’s great apartment neighbourhoods, with a cluster of nineteen towers perched along the western bank of the Humber River. Previous posts with more information about the neighbourhood...
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Learning from Europe
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Over the past several years, the Tower Renewal team at ERA and CUG+R have conducted a series of study tours throughout the European Union, visiting numerous cities and neighbourhoods, and meeting with local experts to learn about best practices in tower refurbishment and neighbourhood revitalization. Many of these findings have been compiled in the report...
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Yonge Street
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Michael is currently featured on the Yonge Street website, where he discusses postwar Toronto architecture. Usually, even when people like a building, that initial appreciation declines and it continues to fall for several decades. After 40 years, it hits an all-time low. But if a building can survive past that 40-year period, then there will...
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The new Standard
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Graeme is featured on the cover of the brand new Toronto Standard online daily news portal, with an extensive interview covering the Tower Neighbourhood Renewal initiative. This is a 20-year project. We’re talking about a huge number of buildings, hundreds of neighbourhoods and over a million [residents]. It’s about a gradual process of improvement. For...
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Toronto the Good
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The 2011 Toronto the Good party was a great success! For more details, please visit www.torontothegood.org and stay tuned to our ERA Office Blog for event photos and discussions of the issues raised at the Tower Neighbourhood Renewal symposium. ERA started the Toronto the Good parties to bring together a broad cross-section of Torontonians who...
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North York Modernist Favourites, Volume One.
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In compiling the revised inventory for the North York’s Modernist Architecture Revisited publication, ERA staff traveled to each site and photographed the current condition of the building. Through this process a number of projects stood out and became quiet favorites, and over the next few weeks we’ll be highlighting a few of these under-appreciated, little-known...
Read MoreVertical Poverty
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The United Way released a report today outlining the current state of apartment – tower living in the GTA. The report’s finding are based on several thousand interviews with tower residents, and contains important recommendations to improve the livability of apartment neighbourhoods. ERA has long been involved with these Tower Neighbourhoods, and has championed the...
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The Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R)
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ERA Architects and planningAlliance have launched the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R) website. CUG+R is a non-profit research organization formed in 2009 to conduct cross-disciplinary research to further knowledge about the creation and renewal of sustainable urban, suburban and rural environments in Canada and elsewhere. CUG+R’s objective is to develop research to enhance...
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The Millionth Tower
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ERA (in association with the Centre for Urban Growth + Renewal) has been working with the National Film Board on their documentary project HighRise, which looks at the experience of living in post war concrete towers around the world. Currently, ERA, CUG+R, and the National Film Board are working with the Kipling Towers community in...
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10 reasons the GTA, not just downtown Toronto, is getting better all the time
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The Mayor’s Tower Renewal project was included in a list of notable GTA projects in a recent article by Toronto Star columnist Christopher Hume. To read the full article please follow this link: 10 reasons the GTA, not just downtown Toronto, is getting better all the time – thestar.com
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National Urban Design Awards
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The Tower Renewal Opportunities Book was awarded a Special Jury Award in the 2010 National Urban Design Awards, presented by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, the Canadian Institute of Planners and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects. Congratulations to the project team including ERA Architects Inc., the John H. Daniels faculty of Architecture, Landscape...
Read MoreA Suburban Future of Concrete and Gardens-Nice. Right?
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Article written by Julia Levitt Photo taken by Jesse Colin Jackson Please follow the link below to read the full article: A Suburban Future of Concrete and Gardens — Nice. Right? – worldchanging.com
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