YORK MADE GLORIOUS
Latest addition to the university’s Schulich Business School is beautifully built with actual people in mind,
The first thing you notice is the silence. Without the dull roar of fans, a heating and cooling system, the whole clangorous machinery needed to make our buildings inhabitable, these rooms are exquisitely quiet — not just a treat, a luxury.
Add to that the sunshine pouring through the glass walls and you have that rarest of architectural creations, a structure made for human occupation.
We’re talking about the new addition to York University’s Schulich Business School, the McEwen Graduate Study and Research Building. Designed by Toronto’s Baird Sampson Neuert Architects, it’s not just proof that contemporary architecture can offer more than empty spectacle, it also addresses environmental issues typically ignored.
When it opened last week, the McEwen Building raised the architectural culture of a campus that has come a long way since the nasty brutalist days of the 1968 Ross Building. That structure’s most famous feature was an enormous entry ramp that was hardly ever used.
By contrast, the McEwen isn’t just designed to be used, it’s designed to be used comfortably and happily.
“This is home for the people who come here,” says James McKellar, an architect and professor of real estate and infrastructure at Schulich Business School.
“When people walk through the door, they should be able to see immediately what we stand for. There has to be a message. We wanted a building that shows our commitment to creativity. We didn’t want it to look like a copy of the original (2003) building. We also wanted to move the yardstick on sustainability.”
The basic ingredients, McKellar argues, are fresh air, natural light, excellent acoustics, physical connection, transparency and lots of spaces to sit and talk.
The building also has a social mandate, as architect Barry Sampson explains: “We designed it to encourage people to bump into one another.”
This continues a trend that has played out in architecture for several decades. The old hierarchical model that sees the school as a fortress of knowledge has been replaced by a new paradigm that approaches learning as a commu- nal process, a shared experience in which all participants are entitled to equal accommodation.
For example, the standard classroom with a sloped floor that keeps students focused on a teacher standing at a lectern has become a flat-floor space that lends itself to endless different arrangements and more interactive forms of learning. What makes the McEwen Building significant is how this new-found sense of equality has been incorporated into the fabric of the structure. It is in the hallways and classrooms as well as the heating and lighting.
It’s also in the details: a narrow wooden ledge that runs along a waist-high glass partition on the second floor, perfect for a cup of coffee or a laptop; the Algonquin limestone floor tiles; the copper arcade that extends along the front of the building.
Just as important is what’s not there — most notable in their absence are the ventilation ducts that clutter the ceilings of countless such structures. Their purpose is to move large volumes of air through those countless buildings carefully isolated from natural systems.
Thanks to a 30-metre-tall solar chimney, some highperformance technology and basic principles, the air at McEwen circulates because it rises when hot and falls when cool. Not only will this save millions in operating costs, it serves users’ needs better than any manner of mechanical device.
“Our buildings are concerned with human well-being,” Sampson says. “And it’s a priority for our firm to contribute to stopping global warming. In this building, the two enhance one another.”
As McKellar also points out, the benefits of excellence work on many levels. Not only does it attract teachers and students and help them do better, it appeals to donors who are drawn to the excitement of a project that stands out from the same old, same old.
But success comes with a price.
“We can’t get people out of the building,” McKellar says. “They’re here sometimes until 2 o’clock in the morning.”
There was a time when it took a major snowstorm to get students to spend that much time on campus.
In a city where most new buildings are condos, the McEwen comes as a welcome reminder that there can be more to design than phoney glitz and ersatz glamour. That’s easy to forget at a time when architects would rather devote their talents to giving people what they think they want not what they know they need.