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Architecture Junkies

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You people out there who live and breathe architecture, can you remember when you first got the bug. Even though it was a long time ago, mine is still crystal clear. I was 14 years old and living above the old cinema ar Ronces and Galley. My younger brother and I took a streetcar downtown and got off at Queen & Bay. As soon as I got off the streetcar, I was confronted by this beautiful 1 1/2 storey building occupied by the TD bank. The thing that amazed me about it was that all the walls were glass from floor to roof, all the way around. I couldn't believe it could stand up. That was in the mid 60's and the building and bank are still there and it looks as beautiful and fresh as it did back then.
 
As a younger fellow, I was fortunate enough to spend several years living in Europe (Florence mostly). While surely influential, this was not my architectural Genesis.

To be honest, I can't recall the point when I realized the power of the built environment. I can however, remember accompanying one of my parents to the Stantek offices on Wellington and thinking, "Ya, this is for me." Years later, I now realize that Stantek is not the firm which I would want to work at, but I am still in their debt for sparking that initial interest in my future career.
 
I lived my whole life in the suburbs of Toronto, and every time my family took me down to the city for dinner, I was amazed by every building I could see.

Later on, traveling to Montreal, London, and across Italy, I became more aware of different styles of architecture - I loved it.
 
For me it was interiors: the lines, fixtures, furnishings and finishes. Bassells restaurant on the southeast corner of Yonge and Gerrard. The early Yorkdale mall.
 
... also, movies were an influence. I remember - again, I must have been about five or six - seeing some black and white American gangster B-movie set in some place that had oil derricks and lots of sand. How mysterious and unfathomable those strangely shaped structures seemed! And at about the same age I saw an Ealing comedy ( St. Trinians? ) with people running around the maze-like remnants of some ruined city ( in North Africa? ).

Mostly, regardless of whether it was a film, or a picture in a book, or a real building, at that age it was about my emotional response to shape and form and colour and texture - which I think is the basis of all architectural appreciation - and a sense of wonder, and an attempt to make sense of the visual unknown.
 
Believe it or not, I was only three. I was half asleep in the back seat of a rental car on the way back from a road trip in Pennsylvania. It was about midnight on Canada Day. I thought I was dreaming when I looked out the window and saw lines of light rising out of the water, with multicolored lights glowing all around them. Then I woke up. And the lights were still there. We were stopped on the rainbow bridge coming into Canada, and I was looking across the lake at our skyline and the Ontario Place fireworks.
 
Seeing Habitat in Montreal as a kid. Absolutely loved the idea that people could live in that building.
 
It took three years to erect, but is actually 16 feet smaller than what they claimed. Still, at that age I was impressed.
 
Two events:

1. Must have been 6 or 7 years old. Going with my dad to the New City Hall in the early 70's. We parked on the south side of Queen in front of the hoarding for the then under construction Sheraton. Looking into the massive pit I was hooked. I also remember my dad getting a parking ticket. He was swearing all the way home.

2. We went to New York City in 1976 when I was 12. Drove in from the New Jersey side. Once we hit the George Washington Bridge I couldn't believe my eyes. The massive wall of buildings on the New York side blew me away (still does today) as did the Cross Bronx Expressway. Massive towers lined it as did all sort of overpasses/underpasses etc. Abandoned cars sitting on blocks on the side of the highway was an eye opener. Clearly I wasn't in Kansas anymore.
 
It was New City Hall for me. I was just a tot, but I recall my parents' comments about this being the start of Toronto becoming itself, with the first major public square in the city, etc. I was very excited about the curvy design of the building and the "mushroom" in the rotunda which becomes the council chamber above. I've always been much less excited about the overhead walkways which surround the square. Some day someone brilliant will convince the powers-that-will-be that this building and square are totally sexy without the overhead walkways.

New City Hall was supposed to be the gestation of a new Toronto and in many ways, it was. Some controversial redevelopment schemes were presented (and killed) just after New City Hall opened. Then, several architectural hits and misses surrounded the place. I will always be sorry that an opera was not built behind (i.e. to the north of) adjacent old city hall.

Much later in life a trip to NYC woke me up to some fantastic things, especially bridges. And that darned Chrysler building -- darned fantastic thing I should say.
 
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