Aboriginal Architecture
First Nations people produce unique architecture, both temporary and permanent. In the first category are ephemeral constructions such as igloos, wigwams and tipis. Then there are semi-subterranean houses and woodenlonghouses. These buildings are not only technically ingenious and original, but also reveal deep-rooted cultural belief systems that make them the repositories of a rich religious and spiritual meaning. Of course, Aboriginal architecture created prior to first contact with Europeans will change as a result of this contact. However, contemporary Indigenous architecture is still practiced, and encompasses both traditional and contemporary forms and materials. A good example is the Manitoulin Hotel & Conference Centre on Manitoulin Island, or the future Anishnawbe Health Complex in the West Don Lands area of Toronto.
Here we must mention the architect Douglas Cardinal. Born in Calgary and now based in Ottawa, his style is inspired in part by his Aboriginal roots and incorporates graceful organic forms that often defy the most advanced engineering standards. Two of his best-known creations are the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau (Quebec, just across the street from Ottawa) and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. (United States).
Legacy of the past
Although there are fine examples of French Ontario's heritage in the province, such as the Jesuit missionary centre Sainte-Marie-au-pays-des-Hurons near Georgian Bay, Notre-Dame de l'Assomption Church (Our Lady of the Assumption Church) in Windsor and Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica in Ottawa, it was mainly English influence that left its mark.
After the English conquest, the influence of England became preponderant and would gradually modify the architectural landscape. The arrival of the Loyalists, just after the American Revolution, will also contribute to populate the province, which will see its architecture develop following their immigration to the country. The model is now the Anglo-Saxon house, with massive chimneys and a slightly sloping four-pitched roof. The shores of the St. Lawrence River became the vacation spots of a wealthy bourgeoisie. As such, the Kingston and Ottawa residences are representative of early 18th-century architecture. The Palladian style, borrowed from the 16th-century Italian architect Palladio, was highly prized by the English, and dominated the architecture of Canadian cities during the first quarter of the 19th century. Inspired by the antique model, it favoured pediments, pilasters, Doric or Ionic columns and moulded cornices. The most beautiful examples of this style are The Grange, with its broad pediment overlooking beautiful central bays, and William Campbell House, both in Toronto, as well as several other outstanding examples of this style in Kingston and Perth, for example.
This sober style paved the way for the neoclassicism found in public buildings such as Osgoode Hall in Toronto and Kingston City Hall. While power buildings retained the neo-classical style, private residences and industries gradually turned to the highly eclectic Victorian style. The Distillery Historic District in Toronto is the largest example of industrial architecture of the Victorian era. Also in Toronto, the superb houses in neighbourhoods such as Cabbagetown, Yorkville or Rosedale allow one to admire a typically Toronto Victorian style, the bay and gable style, characterized by a wide bay window in the façade and a high gabled roof, a reference to Gothic verticality and a shape perfectly adapted to the narrowness of the plots.
In short, Canada's architectural heritage, established during the 19th century, still reflects the styles in vogue in Great Britain at that time. For example, the Parliament of Canada in Ottawa and many of the universities built at that time (Hamilton, Toronto) are of Gothic Revival inspiration.
Birth of the Metropolis of Toronto
A fortified Iroquois village with palisades and longhouses, then a French trading post (the legendary Fort Rouillé): the city lived many lives before becoming a key town in the province of Upper Canada created in 1793, under the name of York, by the English, who applied a strict military grid pattern to it. From the 19th century onwards, the city that became the capital began to grow.
At the end of the 19th century, Toronto became a powerful industrial and commercial centre. In architectural terms, this resulted in the use of historicizing styles, a kind of romantic vision of an idealized past, especially for buildings of power. The Romanesque Revival, or Romanesque Revival, with its powerful arches and stone ornamentation is very popular. This style was favoured by Richard Waite for the imposing Ontario Legislature, the vanishing point of the great University Avenue. But the great architect of the period is E. J. Lennox, who designed the old City Hall, the Gladstone Hotel and especially the incredible Casa Loma overlooking Davenport Hill. This house is a real architectural medley of Norman, neo-Gothic and late Romanesque styles in a complex inspired by the Scottish castle of Balmoral. While the styles are historical, the comfort is resolutely modern: the house has electricity! Lennox even gave birth to another Toronto style, specifically in The Annex neighbourhood, called the "Annex House" style. Turrets and mansard roofs characterize these superb brick homes, which borrow as much from Romanesque Revival as from the more subtly ornamented Queen Anne style, also found in the rows of red brick houses east and west of downtown.
Alongside these European influences, architecture inspired by American trends is also developing, starting with the Beaux-Arts style, with its neo-classical rigour and elegance, used in public buildings and especially banks, which, with their pediments and colonnades, become the temples of the new century that is about to begin. A very beautiful building in the Beaux-Arts style is the Union Station, with its wide façade and long Doric colonnade framed by porticoes. Another current coming from the United States, the commercial style and its first skyscrapers. The most famous is the Confederation Life building (designed by architects from Chicago, where the skyscrapers were invented) with its metal frame still hidden by a Romano-Gothic façade. Toronto is home to the largest number of skyscrapers in the country, most of them concentrated in the Financial District. Among the future towers not to be missed: The One by Norman Foster in the Yorkville district which, at 309 m, will be the highest skyscraper in Canada.
Modernity is on the march, as evidenced by new thinking in domestic architecture that is part of a return to a more naturalistic current inspired by the simplicity and rusticity of the English Arts and Crafts movement and the first garden cities whose creation on the outskirts of the city is being encouraged, as shown by the work of Eden Smith who designed the housing in the very bucolic Riverdale Courts.
Modern and postmodernist currents
The metal architecture that triumphed in the United States with the School of Chicago (early 19th century) in turn conquered Ontario, particularly Toronto, heralding the era of skyscrapers and elevators. The Art Deco style followed in the 1930s, with buildings such as the Commerce Court North in Toronto's financial district (1931). After the Second World War, the International Style continued to dominate until the 1970s. Forms were oversimplified - one could almost speak of boxes -, glass, concrete and steel were used systematically, and function took precedence over ornamentation. One of the most prominent achievements during this period is the Toronto-Dominion Centre (or TD Centre) designed by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the 1960s. It was at this time that the building boom began across the country, but also in the suburbs, including the town of Don Mills north of Toronto, with its architecture inspired by the very pure Bauhaus style. It is the first new city truly designed on the model of the garden cities, where primacy is given to the human being. Then came Brutalism, which stemmed from modernism and brought together all the hard and imposing concrete constructions, generally institutional, school, commercial and residential buildings. A good example is the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, opened in 1969 and designed by architect Fred David Lebensold (the NAC underwent a facelift a few years ago), or the CN Tower in Toronto, built between 1973 and 1976 by brutalist Australian architect John Andrews. At the same time, heritage neighbourhoods and buildings are being rehabilitated, as was the case with the Queen's Quay Terminal, a former warehouse on the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto. In the 1980s, a postmodernist movement dominated the landscape, a movement that would decline in the early 2000s. It was then that architecture diversified and saw superb achievements such as Daniel Libeskind's extension of the Royal Ontario Museum (a magnificent steel structure clad in aluminum and punctuated by large bay windows), will Alsop's Sharp Centre for Design (a table covered with black and white pixels supported by 26-metre high multicoloured steel pillars) and Frank Gehry's renovation and expansion of the Art Gallery of Ontario, all in Toronto, or the reconstruction of the Shaw Centre, the Ottawa convention centre, by the Ottawa firm BBB Architects. The new building has received LEED Gold certification for its green and sustainable design.
About Frank Gehry (born in Toronto in 1929), he is considered one of the greatest architects still alive and is also a professor of architecture at Yale University (USA). Among his famous buildings are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the University of Art in Toledo, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Cinémathèque française in Paris and the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building in Sydney. He is currently working on the construction of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, on the island of Saadiyat in the United Arab Emirates, a museum of contemporary art whose opening has been delayed. In 2014, Frank Gehry was named Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honor in France.
Contemporary renewal
Ontario, especially Toronto, very quickly attracted the greatest thinkers in architecture and urban planning, starting with the famous philosopher and urban planner Jane Jacobs, who always protected historic neighbourhoods from a brutal urban renewal that she believed created soulless spaces. On the contrary, Jacobs advocates the richness and complexity of multiple-use neighbourhoods welcoming modernity while preserving the rich heritage. Another component of postmodern architecture is the integration of the constraints of the environment, which gives rise to cities within the city imagined to guard against the rigours of the climate. The best example is Toronto's Eaton Centre, a vast system of multi-storey, glass-covered courtyards connected to the subway and outdoor streets.
This architectural renewal is accompanied by an urban renewal. Former industrial sites are being rehabilitated and transformed into housing or shops, with an emphasis on public spaces and pedestrian walkways. Today's young architects are following in this footsteps, while promoting a style that emphasizes linearity, sobriety and natural materials.
These include the future Place des Arts in Sudbury, designed by the consortium of architects Yallowega Bélanger Salach Architecture and Moriyama Teshima Architects, with its emphasis on Northern Ontario geography and Francophone culture, and the new Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, which will be built using sustainable construction with LEED Silver certification. And Toronto, a city in constant motion, is imagining the future with amazing projects promoting sustainable architecture. In 2022, it will be the great Renzo Piano who will carry out his first Canadian project with the new Toronto courthouse designed according to the principles of transparency and sustainability. Then in 2023, Centennial College is expected to see the first solid wood, zero-carbon university building, with a structure that will borrow from Aboriginal and Western cultures in the spirit of truth and reconciliation. For its part, the 3XN agency has drawn up plans for the largest solid wood office building in the emerging Bayside district. And that's just the tip of the iceberg...
