Every once in a while architecture that takes up permanent residency in our consciousness comes along. The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics by Saucier + Perrotte Architectes is a memory that sticks not only because Prime Minister Paul Martin attended the recent gala opening along with several Nobel laureates but because this is where the fundamentals of the universe are studied, in a building that is, itself, about the fundamentals of architecture.
Some physicists at the Perimeter contemplate exotic objects such as supernovas and black holes. String theorists entertain questions about the ultimate building blocks of matter: Do we live in 11 dimensions? The Perimeter Institute references the symbol for pi. How to reference the breadth of the project at the Perimeter without resorting to kitschy gestures? The answer lies in the good lessons of modernism translated by the Montreal-based Saucier + Perrotte in the way that seamless connections are made between the building's interior and the exterior. It has to do with their hard-edge palette of materials, particularly the black aluminum composite panels numbering about 1,500 that clad one of the most formidable elevations this critic has seen in Canada.
Bizarrely, this story comes to you from Waterloo, Ont., a city of surpassing ugliness. The Perimeter sits downtown behind the red brick Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery designed in the 1990s by Vancouver's Patkau Architects and across from Silverlake, an artificial construct of nominal visual interest. In keeping with the strategies of car-dominated planning that have created Waterloo's version of dystopia, the Perimeter is pushed well back from the street and fronted by an extensive parking lot. That's a predictable scenario, if painful.
The Perimeter's landscape is pure invention carved from the dirt flats: Saucier has imagined it to alternate between disturbed tectonic plates and still waters. A monumental reflecting pool butts against the ground terrace of the building's north elevation to bounce light into 44 research offices. Three-storeys of the zinc-clad offices are cantilevered above the ground floor and over the reflecting pool in a dynamic, restless composition, like the minds of those who labour within them. A long concrete wall creates a private court of meditation, a gesture of atonement for the crass commercial strips of Waterloo. Here, the influence of the great Japanese modernist Tadao Ando is most strongly felt. Not in terms of the quality of concrete; Ando is one of only a few architects in the world who can give reinforced concrete walls the texture of silk. What is shared is the use of concrete to order space and bring a heightened awareness of the body. Ando has written in the past of how the body articulates the world and, conversely, how the world articulates the body. The cold, hard fact of concrete underscores the warm softness of the human body.
So it is at the Perimeter where elements of the Earth -- concrete, wood, fire and glass -- ground the scientists even while they're imagining the cosmos. The main atrium has been conceived at a generous human scale, big enough to allow people to think better of themselves than ordinary spaces but small enough for scientists to call out to each other, or happily travel from north to south on any one of the three catwalks. Fireplaces and wooden ceilings distinguish communal spaces such as lounges or the fourth-floor bistro restaurant. A bank of concrete stairs descend like a kinetic sculpture along one side of the atrium, designed by Blackwell Engineers to appear to cantilever from a wall of tinted glass before descending to the ground through thin air. Movement through the 65,000-square-foot building is transparent -- a community forms -- scientists are pulled out of their offices, exchanges happen, equations of exquisite beauty are scratched over the blackboards.
The Perimeter occupies a fringe territory somewhere between reality and abstraction. The architects, including Gilles Saucier as design architect, André Perrotte as partner in charge and Trevor Davies as project architect, riff on this theme in a variety of ways. The south wall is not merely a skin on the building but a three-dimensional volume that slams its blackness through the two-storey library on the south side of the building and through the parking garage. Many of the windows on the south side are actually stainless-steel apertures with a side panel in stainless steel to emphasize the depth of the recess and heighten the bounce of southern light. The panels are delineated from each other so that they appear more like shark fins; kudos go to the small but dedicated subcontractor, Ontario Panellization. The administrative offices in the south wing receive most of its light from the sky-lit atrium that occupies the building's core.
Without Mike Lazaridis, the founder, president and co-CEO of Research in Motion (RIM), the Perimeter would not have helped to distinguish Canada. RIM is the company behind the Blackberry and the reason why Lazaridis was able to personally donate $100-million to building the Perimeter. Together with his partners Jim Balsillie and Doug Fregin, and with contributions from the federal and provincial governments, Lazaridis formed the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1999. It occupied the old post office in Waterloo for three years.
There are institutes for theoretical physics around the world in Iran, Denmark, Japan and the United States. The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) in Santa Barbara, Calif., is distinguished not only for its work in basic science, but also for its dedication to architecture and art. The legendary postmodernist Michael Graves designed the Kavli Institute; an artist-in-residence program has been established there. What's most unique about the Perimeter is the concentration of physicists hired to simply contemplate the beginning of time. Artur Ekert of the University of Cambridge who sat next to me at the gala dinner explained this to me. Ekert is one of the members of the Perimeter Institute's advisory board whose expertise is in quantum information theory. Thankfully, he also has a sustained interest in architecture.
In fact, judging by the number of times the building and architects were toasted at the opening, architecture fascinates theoretical physicists. Where so often the authors of three-dimensional form are sidelined or forgotten, there was a genuine outpouring of affection for the Perimeter's design expressed not only by Howard Burton, the director of the Perimeter Institute but during speeches delivered by Lee Smolin, a founding member of the Perimeter Institute and author of The Life of the Cosmos, and Sir Roger Penrose, a British mathematical physicist who has contributed importantly to cosmology and the notion of spin networks.
Saucier + Perrotte are currently representing Canada at the Venice Biennale for Architecture. How the land can exert an influence on architecture -- shaping, consuming, releasing it -- has been a powerful influence on the firm's portfolio of public and private commissions. For the Perimeter, Saucier + Perrotte have delivered a building about the flow of light and the directions we can take. With this in mind, a word about the west elevation, the one that looks over a field and a biking trail: From this pastoral obscurity a narrow flank of concrete stairs rises up a hill to lead into the Perimeter's discrete outdoor courtyard. A large blackboard sits there with the immutability of a Richard Serra sculpture, except this one is covered with chalked formulas, just fresh and rubbed out. A visitor can take that path into the heart of the Perimeter, or be content to look at the staircase that appears behind a wall of sandblasted glass. It marks a gentle zig-zag behind the veil of glass -- heading up, but where it ends isn't clear.