Modern architecture taking over Toronto
Let’s be honest, most of us aren’t really crazy about contemporary architecture, especially contemporary residential architecture. Except for rich patrons willing to suffer in the splendid emptiness of minimalist trophy homes, we prefer houses from the 1800s or early 20th century. Without a pitched roof, gables and a bay window, they’re not properly domestic. That’s why so much postwar suburban housing looks like an endless series of cheap Victorian knock-offs.
But now there are signs that modernist architecture is finally finding favour with middle-class buyers. Across Toronto, flat-roofed, big-windowed, steelframed dwellings are popping up as never before.
Though they don’t always fit into their neighbourhoods, which, in Toronto, tend to be old, they are true to the times. Mostly, they occur as one-of-akind infill projects or as townhouses.
One of the earliest examples was a townhouse development on Gilead Place, a short, narrow street just east of King and Parliament Sts. in the old city. When Brian Kucharski bought the site in 2005 to build townhouses, many thought him mad. Who in this city would want to live on a laneway in a row house that came right out of the modernist playbook?
As it turned out, a lot. Torontonians were hot to trot. The problem, Kucharski explains, wasn’t the market, it was city hall, specifically the planning department, which, true to form, projected its suburban sensibilities onto the downtown core. The answer was no.
“Site plan approval was a nightmare,” he recalls. “Toronto planning staff couldn’t get their heads around the project even though Gilead was legally a street, not a laneway, because it had a sidewalk and a fire hydrant.”
And as Kucharski makes clear, “Buyers knew the vision. Everyone wanted modernist design. They were looking for a cool vibe. I knew the product would sell. People wanted an alternative to faux Victorian living. Toronto was coming into a new age.”
From the start, he realized that his project had to offer something beyond the ordinary. It had to be unique. Many
purchasers bought early enough to customize their unit. The unusual split-level layout eliminates hallways; instead every landing has a doorway.
In 2009, Kucharski finally got approval from the Committee of Adjustments. Then the neighbours took him to the Ontario Municipal Board, where he won. The red tape out of the way, construction started. Along with that came a whole new set of problems.
“Because it’s a steel structure, not wood-frame construction, we had trouble with the trades,” he explains. “It would’ve been much easier if we’d proposed another row of fake Victorian townhouses.”
A decade later, Kucharski worries that, “Modern architecture is just a marketing theme.” The danger now, he argues, is that modernism has become a cover for developers who build “cheap boxes.” But that has been the case since the modern movement swept the world starting a century ago. Like everything else, it can be done well or badly.
But even in a city defined by the extremes of bay-n-gables housing and supertall glassand-steel residential towers, small-scale schemes such as Gilead stand out.
The contrast between the rigid geometry of side-street modernism and the more traditional decades-old surroundings can still startle. As more such projects appear, that will change. Already mod- ernist dwellings can be seen in Little Italy, Trinity-Bellwoods, Regent Park and, more unexpectedly, Monarch Park.
One row of townhouses on Broadview Ave. north of Danforth Ave. replaced what was a parking lot attached to a paint store.
As Kucharski points out, the boxiness and orthogonal esthetic of 21st-century modernism, which should perhaps be called neo-modernism, lends itself nicely to the demands of infill. It is well suited to restricted sites and contemporary lifestyles that emphasize transparency and the fluidity of connected interior spaces over the conventional hierarchy of rooms.
Most interesting is how this new wave of modernist build- ing represents a departure for an architecture historically associated with worker housing and residences for the rich. This application for the urban middle class allows for a degree of pragmatism that could encourage architects to move beyond the comfort of the familiar. In a city where building sites are expensive, awkward and increasingly hard to come by, it allows architects much-needed flexibility. And now that modernism has lost the dogma that originally came with it, architects are no longer expected to save the world.
That means it’s OK to give mom, dad and the kids not just the housing they need, but the housing they want.