The Globe and Mail - Lisa Rochon Columns

Far from elite street, a back lane gets gussied up

Sat, 4 Oct 2008 00:00 EDT

All too often, civic leaders, cultural mandarins and speechifying architects fuel the illusion that a cultural renaissance belongs to them and those lucky enough to support their vision. It's become commonplace in a city such as Toronto to assert that the engine of culture belongs to blockbuster festivals or major public galleries and museums.

A new wave for Toronto's waterfront

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 00:00 EDT

You need to get past the pretentious language - and the awkward placement of the seating - to fully appreciate the WaveDeck at the foot of Spadina. The brief from Waterfront Toronto claims that this new wooden object, wedged between a lovely wetland to the west and the clunky Harbour Terrace condominium to the east, is inspired by the contours of Lake Ontario's shoreline.

A vision of grief's depths: Will it be built?

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 00:00 EDT

Out of the darkest moments come painful shards of clarity. For Michael Arad, the first one came on Sept. 11, 2001, after seeing the north tower of the World Trade Center billowing with smoke and then, from his apartment rooftop in East Village, watching the south tower being slammed by a plane and realizing then that this was no freak accident but an act of terrorism.

Defending design: the Ground Zero memorial

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:43 EDT

A vision of grief's depths: Will it be built?

Higher education, with yoga

Sat, 6 Sep 2008 00:00 EDT

The beer-swigging and all-night games of caps will never die. Maybe it's harder to flunk out of university these days. But whether they're bleary- or bright-eyed, the truth of the matter is that university and college students in Canada and the United States represent a powerful class of taste arbiters. And once they unpack at university, they're a captive audience for at least four years.

Lust and light, shadow and steel

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:00 EDT

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Where playful, irreverent designs blossom

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:00 EDT

Summertime and the gardens are growing. They're growing up, lush and green, with all of this rain, and growing up, too, as the latest temples of design. Once considered a hallowed preserve of flowers, shrubs and trees, the garden has become a three-dimensional plaything manipulated by architects, landscape architects, graphic designers - even sound engineers. At the stunning Jardins de Metis in the Gaspesie and in the heart of Quebec City, the garden designs being presented this summer are defined by their playful irreverence and dark irony. So much for the peony.

A G-G winner bows to the power of landscape

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:00 EDT

Canadian architect Ian MacDonald designs architecture provoked by the rise and fall of landscape. His private homes push up like outcrops of rock, they float planes of green roofs above the ground or they compress deep down, capturing light from slots in the earth. For his own family home in Toronto's Wychwood Park, winner of a 2008 Governor-General's Medal in Architecture, there are zones of defensible private space: walls of dry-laid sandstone or poured in place concrete which define intimate courtyards and privileged views of the enveloping forest.

So many promises: Were they just a tall tale?

Sat, 7 Jun 2008 00:00 EDT

A skyscraper that British architect Norman Foster promised would deliver innovation and urban vitality to Calgary's downtown has suffered some serious blows. The cuts to the original design vision - elimination of suspended sky pods and the filling in of a soaring atrium - may satisfy the owner's bottom line, but they will also hurt the city's attempt to ride its economic boom in style.