THE AISLE OF WHITE

Donald Schmitt, a principal at Diamond Schmitt Architects in Toronto, is no stranger to creating white exteriors: four of his firm’s recent projects involve white buildings. “There is a connection between fresh, positive white buildings and the urban land

Emily Carr School of Design, new Vancouver campus, 2017: “This is a place bursting with creativity and colour, so it needs a neutral context for art-making. It has the same sense of freshness as Whitehaus and serves as a background for life and creativity in an urban context. It’s a very classical, cool colour scheme.”

Delaware North Office, Delaware

and Chippewa Sts., Buffalo: “The base of the existing building has a beautiful, heritage, white terra cotta façade from the early 19th century. We restored the façade and it became an entry colonnade framing the retail space. We took that white and built on it, so the office building is clad in white horizontal rods and the office building has white ceramic baked into the glass for solar heating and cooling. It’s like having the shades pulled in full daylight.”

KPMG Tower, Vaughan: “We used the same strategy here as we did in Buffalo with white ceramic baked into the glass for solar heating and light.”

Daniels Spectrum, Regent Park: “We used white as the backdrop against which we set up colours. Regent Park is a huge immigrant arrival area, so we took the colours of the flags from 60 nations and worked with graphic designers to create abstractions of these colours. They are used as punctuation on neutral white metal panels. We establish an emotional connection between the residents and what is going on in the building.”