By LISA ROCHON


Wednesday, January 2, 2002 – Print Edition, Page R5

Invigorating architecture needs strong defenders. It needs communities of people inspired and committed enough to reject built mediocrity in this country.

Thankfully, because of those dedicated communities, higher standards of design are playing out in academia and spilling gracefully onto the streets.

Behind every success story of such design is an individual who wants to tell it. Larry Richards, dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto (where I lecture as an adjunct assistant professor), started telling the story of the influential architect and historian Eric Arthur back in 1997. Arthur was a professor of architecture at U of T from 1923 until his death in 1982. He was a tireless promoter of architecture sensitively woven into the historic and contemporary fabric of the City of Toronto. He wrote the influential book documenting the built legacy of Toronto, No Mean City, and he served as the professional adviser of the New City Hall competition (1958), which catapulted a forgettable metropolis into the big leagues.

In spite of his extraordinary prescience as an architectural maven in Canada, little had been done to celebrate Arthur's contribution. "There was no institutional memory," says Richards, "and no recognition among students of who he was."

The idea to build a permanent gallery of architecture at the faculty, and name it in Arthur's honour, began to take shape in 1997. The story of Arthur's significance was circulated within academic circles by Richards; people quickly came onside, as did Arthur's children, Jean Leach and Paul Arthur. A master plan for the renovation of the faculty building was launched and a formal gallery was conceptualized by Kohn Shnier Architects to fit as a transparent volume against it.

The gallery has been slipped discreetly into the eastern flank of the faculty building, located on College Street near Spadina. Kohn Shnier has designed the exhibition space to open generously to College Street by way of a two-storey bay window, part of which reads as a transparent shadow box, part of which as an opaque one. The faculty's second-floor Shore + Moffat library has glass walls providing views directly into the exhibition space -- in this way, the library seems to float above the gallery.

The inaugural exhibition at the Eric Arthur Gallery, Eric Arthur: Practical Visions, is significant, showcasing the experimental work in architecture spearheaded by Arthur and his contribution both as a historic preservationist and an innovative modern architect. The faculty has never had an architecture gallery before, and it reaches out to the public and shares the idea of architecture in a way that has long been part of the tradition at architecture schools at universities such as Harvard or Yale.

In addition to the commitment of people like Larry Richards and others at the university, some 50 architecture firms have donated a total of $270,000 to the gallery, which cost $690,000. As well, small miracles were worked by Tye Farrow of Salter Farrow Pilon Architects, who orchestrated donations of lighting and the gift from a floor supplier of Mexican limestone, a lyrical alternative to the concrete flooring originally proposed.

That kind of design ambition is faltering within the ranks of the city. A new City of Toronto director of urban design has yet to be appointed months after a decision was expected. And important, highly visible interventions on the street are being constructed without design reviews. The nasty piece of work at the intersection of College Street and University Avenue, at one of the downtown's busiest corners, is the latest example of the city bureaucracy run amok. The Toronto Transit Commission saw fit to provide extra exits to its subway lines, including the College Street station on the University line. Rather than working within a community of people dedicated to function and form, the TTC blasted ahead on its own and produced a masterful example of mediocrity -- a bunker rather than an enlightened addition to the street.

In the hands of other more sophisticated minds, however, there is lightness, thanks to an initiative led by the private sector. Hundreds of glass bus shelters grace the streets of Toronto and Mississauga, designed to match the elevated standard of street furniture in cities such as Paris and London. This story of design is about securing market share for Viacom, previously Mediacom, which controls the majority of long-term advertising contracts for bus shelters in Canada. Blair Murdock, vice-president of development for Viacom, led the initiative. "He had the confidence to retain us," says Jeremy Kramer, president of Kramer Design, which designed the shelters. The contracts were coming due and Viacom wanted to ward off competition by producing a more aesthetic brand of shelter. Mississauga took the lead on what standards of design it would accept; Toronto saw what was being built and happily signed on.

In Barcelona, glass bus shelters typically cost between $15,000 and $20,000 to build with today's intricate ad displays that can involve scrolling technology. The cost of design and construction in Europe is shouldered by the advertising agency and a certain fee is also paid back to the city. The same financial arrangement has been applied in participating Canadian cities.

The challenge for Kramer Design was to produce a shelter that could withstand user abuse, snowloads and invasion by the homeless population. Remember that Viacom is out to sell ads, not to help the plight of the homeless. The structures are three walls of tempered glass with a plastic roof made from a continuous mould with a reflective property to reflect the rays of the sun during the summer. The injection-moulded benches in the shelter are warm enough to sit on, but the armrests prevent the bench from becoming a bed.

In Vancouver, Pattison Advertising has already transformed many of its shelters into glass in the race for advertisers. The City of Vancouver's urban-planning division, in collaboration with city roads and transportation departments, has also engaged Kramer to begin preliminary design work on an entire package of street furniture, including public toilets, telephone booths and garbage cans. Toronto is not there yet, although, eventually, it might catch up to Vancouver's larger commitment to design on the street.
lrochon@globeandmail.ca