Serving up a tasty architectural treat
Change happens quickly these days; just take a look at the George Brown School of Hospitality and Culinary Arts. Though only 25 years separate the department’s two buildings, they couldn’t be more dissimilar.
The older of the pair, which opened in 1984, is a handsome late-20th-century response to the impressive Victorian architecture that abounds on Adelaide St. E. Made of traditional red brick, it includes a peaked roof and a clock on the front façade.
The second building, which opened in 2009, is almost the reverse.
Instead of masonry, it’s glass. This shift from opacity to transparency, so nicely illustrated here, forms the subtext of architecture going back 1,000 years.
Designed by Toronto architectural firms Kearns Mancini and Gow Hastings, the newer of the two structures sums up contemporary attitudes to architecture and education.
Gone is the traditional notion of learning as a rigidly hierarchical experience conducted by a teacher standing in front of a room full of students, all of them taking notes.
Today, the idea is that we learn by doing, and so in George’s Brown’s 21st-century addition, every student has a cooking station of his or her own. And because the new building has a glass front, pass- ersby can see in and insiders can see out. At night, when the building is illuminated from within, it becomes a lantern, and a window into a space of learning.
There are other differences, smaller but equally profound, between old and new; for example, the ground floor is now at street level. In the original structure, it was reached via a stairwell that extended up from the sidewalk. The result is a stronger sense of connection; the school seems more a part of the larger community. Gone is the feeling that you leave the world behind when you enter the building. “They wanted quality,” explains architect Jonathan Kearns. “That’s what the industry is demanding. Chefs are celebrities now. You’ve gotta go for the glamour. Putting the kitchen in the front window was something the school was really keen on. It’s literally a window into the college.” The three-storey addition is hard to ignore; as well as what’s going on indoors, the brightly coloured glass panels — yellow, green, red and blue — give the building a strikingly sculptural quality. Of course, unlike the ’80s building, this one deliberately imparts the idea that learning can be fun. In contrast to the first school, which took its cues from the architecture of the surrounding city, No. 2 makes no effort to fit in. Though its scale keeps to local precedents, it is unabashedly modern, and unstintingly dedicated to the needs of students. The same sort of logic can be seen at every turn. Cultural institutions — art galleries, museums, opera halls and the like — have undergone a similar metamorphosis. In a world as competitive as ours, the architects are under increasing pressure to create spaces that attract people, that cater to their wants as well as their needs.
Inside, where surfaces are enlivened by swaths of colour, the objective was to engage students and keep them aware that this is not just a place where they study, but where they belong.
As institutional citizens go, George Brown ranks among the best in Toronto; it has transformed a part of the old city that, because of its age, has unusual historical importance. The school will be as vital in the future as the nearby heritage buildings are now.
In decades ahead, it will grow ever more compelling as our heirs try to figure out exactly what we thought we were doing — and what took us so long. chume@thestar.ca