Insites: Architecture Corner

There is constant foot traffic at the corner of Erb Street West and Caroline Street North, an intersection at the edge of downtown Waterloo, Ontario, close to both the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University. That’s how I originally came to know this area, meeting it on-foot as a self-important undergrad taking the scenic route home from the WLU library in the mid-aughts. In overt ways, the place contributed to my education, and it has followed me around ever since.

Of the buildings on this corner, four have been recognized with Governor General’s Awards for Architecture. The first of these was given in 1986 for a renovation and expansion of what was then the Seagram Museum; the most recent was given in 2014, for a new building: the home of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). The other two award-winners are the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery (awarded in 1997) and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (awarded in 2006). Over the 38 years from ’86 to the present day, the surrounding neighbourhood has densified significantly, defining an area now referred to as “Uptown Waterloo.” Within this context, the intersection of Erb and Caroline acts as a transition for pedestrians between a well-used public park and the nearby commercial thoroughfare of King Street. 

There are other places where you can find similar high densities of nationally recognized architectural projects (the University of Toronto’s Mississauga Campus springs to mind), but Erb and Caroline is distinct in that it isn’t a campus presided over by a single client group or mandate. Its buildings were each designed for different organizations, all of them with their own missions, goals, and personalities; and this is legible within the finished work. It’s as though clients and designers quietly conspired that nothing would cut it for this corner except for thoughtful, elegant buildings. 

The Seagram Museum—the site’s original award-winner—was designed by Barton Myers Associates, and is a deeply unusual mash-up of postmodernism and adaptive reuse. I don’t levy that as a criticism; it’s more-or-less a statement of fact about a project that I like. The building also includes one of the most indelible spaces that I’ve ever encountered: a five-storey atrium ringed by preserved barrel-racks from the Seagram distillery’s adjacent historic warehouse. The wood is rich and warm, and the place has a welcoming intricacy about it, like a now-stagnant Rube Goldberg device that could conceivably end its protocol by pouring you a glass of rye. 

The Seagram Museum closed in ’97, but the building still stands today. It was repurposed as an early home for CIGI (before the completion of their more recent facility) and then repurposed again as commercial office space for a couple of Waterloo’s well-known tech companies. Happily, the Museum’s original atrium is still there.

Of the four Governor General’s Award-winning projects at the Erb and Caroline intersection, the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery (Patkau Architects) is unquestionably the project that I know the best. That knowledge comes honestly from time spent with the building. I volunteered at the gallery as a student in my 20s, helping to take down and set up exhibitions. Then, I was hired as a part-time bartender for weddings in the space, and then hired again as the gallery’s Marketing and Development Assistant (my first “real job” out of university). 

When I say that I know the Gallery, I mean that I’ve helped to repaint its walls in exhibition grey. I’ve worked in its offices. I’ve tended bar in its cylindrical concrete interior gallery. I’ve been there late at night and early in the morning. Throughout all that time, the design of the place never stopped working on me. The building made the art better, and the art returned the favour. The people too (in my estimation) recognized they were working in a special environment and allotted their care accordingly. 

The Gallery was a spectacular venue for events. Only a few years after Canada legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, I bartended a wedding between two men who shut the place down dancing together in one of the happiest moments that I can ever remember witnessing: the slow-dancing couple, laughing under the lights within this elegant space, surrounded by ecstatic onlookers. I was only an observer, but I remember it still. Part of that comes down to history. Part of that is sentimentality and the genuine happiness of the moment. In my mind’s eye, that scene was also beautifully framed by the space.

By chance, when I visited last year, the Gallery was in the midst of a show to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The place was largely as I remembered, in a way that made me conscientious of how much I had changed (me now in my late 30s, nervous about my two boisterous young children in a gift shop full of highly breakable items). This will always be one of the best tricks of the built environment: it moves through time ever-so-slightly more slowly than we do: “I’m an aging mortal, but these custom wood doors are just how I left them.”

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) is a building in two distinct parts. The original structure, completed in 2004 and designed by Saucier + Perrotte, was awarded a Governor General’s Medal for Architecture in 2006. In 2012, the Institute was expanded with an addition-renovation project designed by Teeple Architects: the Stephen Hawking Centre, an award-winning project in its own right.  

I largely remember the original PI building from the outside, looking in at night. I remember a sense of “we’re all still up at this hour” solidarity with anybody I observed working out in the facility’s first-floor fitness centre, or puttering away in their meticulously considered office modules. The latter are visible as distinct rectangular “particles” when viewed from outside. Looking at the Institute in this way taught me lessons about how the details of a workplace can be better designed for its functional purposes. Within PI’s offices, walls were painted as chalkboard, a medium (apparently) unmatched for considering problems in theoretical physics. I think about this every time I have occasion to set up a new workspace for myself, and I’ve never managed anything half as clever. Chalkboard paint walls are more common now than they were at the time, but PI is their best potential use. There’s something beautiful about extremely advanced physics problems that you don’t get in other chalkboard paint applications (like say, coffee shop menus or a child’s bedroom accent wall). There’s also an admirable clarity to the original building. It puts something normally inaccessible to people on display in a way that is appealing, making the incomprehensible feel legible, inviting even.  

Shortly after the completion of PI, Waterloo was recognized as the world’s “Top Intelligent Community 2007.” Not all the credit for this belongs to the buildings at Erb and Caroline, but a couple of them were mentioned in the press release I found on CIGI’s website. I remember the news being mentioned in a staff meeting in 2007 when I was working at the Gallery. Even though I’m prone to cynicism, I wore this news like a mental badge of honour. 

The CIGI building, designed by KPMB, is a well-considered addition to the site, clearly caring about both its context and being a respectful neighbour. CIGI is a non-partisan think tank founded by former Blackberry execs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, and operates collaboratively between Waterloo’s two universities. Influenced by campus design, the building boasts handsome materials and a robust structure that feeds its sense of belonging on this site. In seeing the finished building for the first time last year, I thought about its designers, and their determination to realize a continuity of design excellence for this special place. I think they were successful. 

What does it take to cultivate this type of distinct little corner? There are the obvious things—the backing of willing money, decades-worth of time, and a continuity of focused attention by talented designers. The culture and history of Waterloo is also a contributor to the overall DNA of the place. The intersection is a veritable history lesson in how a former industrial site can evolve beautifully into a place focused on technology and academics. You could also see it as a city’s architectural expression of the importance of art, governance, science, and technology. I think both outlooks are valid. There is something utopian about the place, and I chalk that up to the architecture. 

Personally, this intersection served as my introduction into the workforce. Moreover, it showed me the care and importance that people place upon their wildly different professional disciplines, across hundreds of years of history: from distillery barrels to theoretical physics. The corner framed this notion with some of the best designed buildings that this country has to offer. To the extent that a street corner can shape a personality, I think this one transformed me for the better.

Jake Nicholson is a writer based in London, Ontario, with extensive experience working on proposals for architectural and engineering firms.

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