To many, the old Toronto Brick Works factory in the Don River Valley is a showpiece for sustainable living. To artist Jubal Brown, something's been lost. He misses the fire, the mayhem, the all-night danger.
In the late 1990s, Mr. Brown (a multimedia artist who once made headlines by vomiting on paintings in New York's Museum of Modern Art) staged a late-night event in the rusting warehouses nestled next to the Don.
The Brick Works may have been out of commission since 1984, but there was still life in there, hidden from the city. During the all-nighter, artists and guests shot off explosives and played with soaring flames in an anarchic spree of performance art and juvenile stunts. The immediate land in the valley, although it was started to be cared for by conservationists, also had a reputation as a place to smoke and even grow marijuana.
Yet, as the new documentary Brick by Brick details, the old warehouses and the filled-in clay quarry have since evolved from dereliction to a gentrified state after Geoff Cape, executive director of the non-profit environmental and sustainability organization Evergreen, which now operates the land, got involved in its restoration back in 1996.
Sustainability is featured at every turn, from solar-thermal energy to onsite water treatment. Office windows, unlike most buildings, are open in the warm weather, adding the smell of flowers to the workplace. The entire concept is to remove the divide between the urban and the natural.
Leading urban thinker Richard Florida calls the $55-million renovation of the old brick works "the single most important project in Toronto, and it might be the single most important project of any [of this kind anywhere]."
Rather than being simply a park or ecological development separated from the city, the Brick Works is very much trying to incorporate city functions within a park-like setting, Mr. Florida explains. Other leading proponents of sustainable living, including Prince Charles, have visited the site as the renovations continue.
There's a farmers' market, along with eco-conscious office space and community programs. Yet the aim is to keep the soul of the old warehouses intact, explained Mr. Cape.
The site is actually owned by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, which leases the buildings to Evergreen under a long-term contract for a token $1 a year. The land falls under the TRCA's jurisdiction since it is designated an ecological area, partly because it is in a flood zone among the ravine lands.
"Given what's going on with the city right now – around trying to create new ways of addressing problems of delivering services – it's actually a spectacular solution," Mr. Cape said.
"Everything from the Toronto Zoo to Riverdale Farm to Casa Loma are all going through a really complicated reinvention process right now," Mr. Cape adds, in which ideas have been bandied around for privatizing these kinds of sites and services.
The Brick Works doesn't cost the city a cent, Mr. Cape argues. And city hall isn't losing any income from a possible sale of the land, because its designation as a site of environmental and historical importance means it legally can't be sold.
Evergreen first became involved in the area in 1996, through small replanting and nature-conservation projects. Plans for the renovation of the buildings were first drawn in 2001.
From the start, maintaining the sense of history inherent in the buildings was key. The bricks from the factory built the new and expanding Toronto from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1904. At its height, the factory was producing tens of millions of bricks a year. And now the project is being seen by proponents as model for a Toronto that's to come.
"It's a venue to explore the future of this city, the future we want to build for ourselves," Mr. Cape said.
Still, there's a risk of losing some of the old, grittier essence of the site. Photographer Michael Quigg notes in the documentary how his interior shots of the warehouse, with impossibly rich, rustic colours and almost biblical rays of lights coming through holes in the walls and ceiling, gained him wide attention.
And as Mr. Brown, the multimedia artist, says, "I loved the decay and the absence of civilization … it was very romantic and beautiful, and more fun than a farmers' market."
He adds: "I think it's kind of funny that's it's being turned into this environmentalist carnival. Throw $55-million at it, and you're just going to turn it into another embarrassing conscience pad for rich people and their organic zucchinis."
"Having those sorts of places," Mr. Brown says, "that are abandoned or derelict and falling out of the control of civilization and the control of society is really important … it was wonderful the way it was."
Mr. Cape says Mr. Brown's comments in the documentary were brilliant, and "I agree with him on so many levels … the site was perfect before we got here. I feel that way with absolute conviction. Except it was perfect for a very, very select few, who could gain access to a building that was boarded up and illegal to occupy.
"Our challenge has been to open it up, create public access without destroying the magic that was here."
Brick by Brick airs on OMNI Sunday evening at 9. It will also screen at the Planet in Focus environmental film festival on Oct. 15, 4:15, at the Royal Ontario Museum.