Last year, the main-line Toronto firm Quadrangle Architects celebrated its twentieth birthday. There was much cracking-open of bubbly, all of which, for some reason, I missed.
But when I realized the big anniversary parties had slipped by, I made up my mind to talk eventually with Quadrangle founding partner Les Klein. He's been in Toronto's residential real-estate game for a long time — which meant, it seemed to me, that he might have a strong opinion or two about the city's architectural history and prospects.
When we met recently at Quadrangle's downtown Toronto offices, I wasn't disappointed.
"Toronto is a unique city," Mr. Klein, 57, told me. "It has almost no geography —just the lake, the escarpment and, beyond that, the greater Golden Horseshoe, which was coveted by the Americans in 1812 for its great farmland. It's not Calgary, with the Rockies in the distance. It's Omaha on a lake. Our challenge has always been to find excuses for designing."
Top, Les Klein, principal of Quadrangle Architects, outside one of the company’s developments in the Fort York neighbourhood, which he sees as a successful public-private partnership. Below, A view of St. James Town’s housing towers from Wellesley Street. Mr. Klein says the housing project clouded the development debate in Toronto for decades. (GLENN LOWSON / LOUIE PALU/THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
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Quadrangle has found such "excuses," or design cues, in Toronto's built urban form, especially its tradition of architectural modernism. Though we have no ancient, picturesque quarter for architects to draw inspiration from, designers have a ready style source in our modern, strictly business downtown, which has survived tidal waves of urban change.
"Toronto was created to be a seat of government," Mr. Klein said. "Then the railways came. The lucky thing for us is that, because the banks and the railways owned the centre of town, they pushed the factories off to the periphery. So we didn't suffer the gutting of the downtown core during the era of the rust belt, as American cities did.
"We had the financial core and the waterfront, which would always be protected because there were vested interests in doing so."
Out in Toronto's Victorian suburbs, however, a certain complacency about development reigned well into the twentieth century. Then, in the 1960s, came a jolt that the city has never really recovered from. It was St. James Town.
"The single biggest element that defines the [recent] development of Toronto is fear of St. James Town — that we're going to create another anonymous high rise ghetto. For years, you only had to use those three words in a public meeting, and you'd bring the house down. St. James Town created a number of things — the 'save our neighbourhoods' mental state, the notion of ratepayers protecting neighbourhoods, and the identification of areas that were appropriate for development and not appropriate."
One result was a new regime of city-initiated planning that was, and is, a mixed blessing.
"There's a lot of it, some of it good, some of it a horrible nightmare. The great success that grew out of that period was the St. Lawrence community. It was primarily public housing, but mixed with private housing.
"It was designed, initiated and, for all intents and purposes, financed by the city of Toronto.
"It was a huge success. Everybody recognized it, then they were struck by the reality that we could never afford to do that again. So what happened next was what we are now facing: public planning and private implementation."
One area of the city where Mr. Klein believes public-private development partnership is working is the historically sensitive Fort York neighbourhood, in which Quadrangle has played important roles as both strategic planners and residential architects.
"The first plan was developed by the city in complete isolation from any involvement by the private sector. That plan was literally turned upside down, and through a process involving the city, the community and the private sector, a buildable plan was created. I think that's going to be a huge success."
Small-scale planning, however, is one thing. The more important ingredient in Toronto's future development is the new Official Plan.
"It sets out a broad vision. It basically says there are areas of the city we will develop — big industrial areas.
"The more interesting part [prescribes] the enhancement of avenues, the creation of housing along the avenues. This is a pipe dream of the city of Toronto. Nobody can build that stuff. It's not economical. And yet the city is counting on X-number of thousands of people to move house along the avenues."
Whatever the economics of the situation, however, Quadrangle has recently designed exactly the kind of housing envisioned by the Official Plan for four sites in the Corktown neighbourhood along King Street East. The developer is Les Mallins.
"They are six- to eight-storey condo buildings, all glass, and no neo-Victoriana. The scattered sites will be formed into one condominium [complex], with shared parking and shared amenities. So with a little bit of creativity, you can build things that solve the problem."
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