Steven Mannell Professor BES, BArch (Waterloo), NSAA, OAA
The Toronto Water Works Extension Project, 1913-1955 This major study looks at the interplay of engineering process with architectural expression and landscape form in the design of the Toronto Water Supply system. The Toronto Water Works Extension is a multiple site project including one of the earliest major rapid sand filtration installations in Canada, a major covered reservoir and park, and subsidiary pumping and distribution facilities. The various built elements of the system are noted for the expressiveness and material richness of their beaux-arts classical architecture. The research looks at the public policy, design and construction history of the system, and its relationship to larger visions of the public space system and urban form of the City of Toronto. The project includes digital and physical modelling of various parts of the project, both built and unbuilt. These models are intended to describe the physical relationship between the architectural expression and engineering operation of the water works. Other models will describe the evolution of the design of the Victoria Park site, which went through four distinct designs between 1913 and 1955. Models and drawings will also be prepared to describe the ornamental vocabulary of each component and of the Water Works extension as a whole. The research is funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Light Building and Improvisational Architecture Lightweight construction technologies in North America have become highly developed techniques for the organisation of repetitive piecework, in the form of contemporary wood house framing as well as current steel deck and open web joist construction. In both cases, the techniques have evolved towards no-skill, no-supervision execution on a highly repetitive basis by a work force that can be easily replaced on a daily basis. The potentials of such lightweight construction methods might as easily be directed towards completely different ends: of highly expressive spatial forms achieved by economical means, or an architecture open to direct improvisation on site by a designer less constrained by the contract documents. Such spatial freedom inherent in lightweight construction techniques was recognised by a number of Modern projects, including R.M. Schindler's "Schindler Frame," Gropius & Breuer's New England frame houses, Walter Segal's self-build manuals, and Jean Prouve's prefabricated systems. More recently, the B.C. Matthews Hall project at the University of Waterloo by Stephen Teeple Architects demonstrates the rich spatial possibilities of long-span steel deck and lightweight hollow sections. Study of these techniques and examples will enable a re-assertion of the architectural possibilities latent in ordinary, economical and repetitive building techniques. • Rudy's Cabana: A Study of "The Schindler Frame" as Method, 1998 - present • Prouve "Propped-type" re-enactment, 2000 The research is funded by the Canadian Wood Council, Barrett Lumber and Dalhousie University School of Architecture. |
