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From the Globe, by Dave LeBlanc:
THE ARCHITOURIST
Uno Prii's bold buildings are gaining a devoted following
DAVE LEBLANC
From Friday's Globe and Mail
I remember vividly the time I almost met Estonian-born architect Uno Prii.
On a cold and windy night in late 2000, a friend and I joined a small group in a basement room of the Lillian H. Smith Library on College Street for a lecture and slide show on postwar Annex apartment buildings. The presentation was being given by Taddle Creek magazine essayist Alfred Holden, and his special guest was to be Mr. Prii.
I was quite excited at the prospect of hearing Toronto's most imaginative exponent of 1960s modernism speak. I'd always admired the flared base and tapering tower of his building at 20 Prince Arthur St. (Mr. Prii's favourite, too, I later learned), and his rounded �flower tower� at 44 Walmer Rd., with its Jetsons-esque courtyard fountain. Imagine my dismay when we were told that Mr. Prii had passed away just a few days before.
By all accounts, Mr. Prii was a character as buoyant as his buildings, and he left us, unfortunately, just as his architecture was making a comeback. Despite being criticized by his peers for not taking architecture seriously enough, by the 1990s, he was being discovered by a whole new generation of architects and architectural junkies like me. His bold buildings were a breath of fresh air in a city where, more often than not, architects took the safer path during a quarter-century flirtation with modernism.
Related to this article
Uno Prii with a model of his building at 20 Prince Arthur St., his favourite among the approximately 250 structures he designed.
Uno Prii with a model of his building at 20 Prince Arthur St., his favourite among the approximately 250 structures he designed.
Among those who began to speak about the importance of Mr. Prii's work were Michael McClelland of E.R.A. Architects Inc.; John Shnier of Kohn Shnier Architects; Ryerson University's Marco Polo; Angus Skene, architect and former host of the cable TV show Structures; Joe Lobko, past chairman of the Toronto Society of Architects (which included 20 Prince Arthur in its TSA Guide Map: Toronto Architecture 1953-2003); the University of Toronto's Larry Richards; and heritage architect Catherine Nasmith. In January, 2004, the city agreed by listing 13 of his buildings on the Inventory of Heritage Properties.
Part of the credit for Mr. Prii's boldness, his wife Silvia Prii says, belongs to developer Henry Hiller, who allowed the architect a free hand. That is, provided he didn't �bankrupt� him, she laughs. Mr. Hiller, she explains, was a refugee who made a future for himself in Toronto, just like the Priis did when they landed here in 1951 after fleeing Soviet-occupied Estonia in 1945.
Mrs. Prii and I are sitting comfortably in her Bloor Street condo overlooking the Rosedale ravine as she tells me the details of their escape, first to Sweden, where the �high school sweethearts� married in 1946 and where Mr. Prii got an engineering certificate at night school. (�That helped him a lot because he always said later that it was easier for him to understand buildings,� she adds.) They then came to Toronto so he could study architecture at the U of T. He made friends with professor Eric Arthur while there and worked for his firm every summer until graduating in 1955.
On this, Mrs. Prii's 82nd birthday, I'm honoured to spend a few hours discussing her husband's legacy in a room filled with reminders of his artistry. �He loved to paint,� she offers when she catches me admiring his colourful canvases, which share wall space with photographs of the couple smiling in front of backdrops both abroad (they loved to travel) and on board Mr. Prii's beloved sailboat. Pointing to the sculpture in the room, she says he �loved to buy sculptures,� which, I think to myself, is not surprising since his apartment buildings are sculpture writ large. She says his favourite travel destination was Italy and hers was Paris. They never lived in a Prii-designed apartment building, and the one time they tried �the waiting list was too long,� she says
She also tells me that Mr. Prii died in the very room we are in.
As we talk about just a few of the approximately 250 apartment buildings Mr. Prii designed in his lifetime, I wonder aloud why his story and body of work aren't being taught to first-year architecture students; why they are presented only in library basements by enthusiasts such as Alfred Holden. Uno Prii, in large part, shaped modern Toronto, as did contemporaries John C. Parkin, Macklin Hancock, Peter Dickinson (a sculptor of buildings himself) and dozens of others.
When Mr. Dickinson's Inn on the Park came crashing down earlier this year, Mrs. Prii was �appalled.�
�Uno and I both just loved to go there,� she remembers. She remembers, too, that her husband went to see Mr. Dickinson as he lay on his deathbed at age 35 in 1961.
The majority of buildings designed by Mr. Prii, Mr. Parkin and Mr. Dickinson were built right here; they're as important to the city as Richard Neutra's work is to Los Angeles or Frank Lloyd Wright's is to Chicago. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that young architecture students in the United States learn about their architectural heroes while we prefer to keep our students in the dark about ours.
And we wonder why we're losing so many of our best examples of Toronto modernism.
Dave LeBlanc hosts The Architourist on CFRB Wednesdays during Toronto at Noon and Sunday mornings. Send inquiries to dave.leblanc@globeandmail.com.
AoD
EDIT: Formatting
THE ARCHITOURIST
Uno Prii's bold buildings are gaining a devoted following
DAVE LEBLANC
From Friday's Globe and Mail
I remember vividly the time I almost met Estonian-born architect Uno Prii.
On a cold and windy night in late 2000, a friend and I joined a small group in a basement room of the Lillian H. Smith Library on College Street for a lecture and slide show on postwar Annex apartment buildings. The presentation was being given by Taddle Creek magazine essayist Alfred Holden, and his special guest was to be Mr. Prii.
I was quite excited at the prospect of hearing Toronto's most imaginative exponent of 1960s modernism speak. I'd always admired the flared base and tapering tower of his building at 20 Prince Arthur St. (Mr. Prii's favourite, too, I later learned), and his rounded �flower tower� at 44 Walmer Rd., with its Jetsons-esque courtyard fountain. Imagine my dismay when we were told that Mr. Prii had passed away just a few days before.
By all accounts, Mr. Prii was a character as buoyant as his buildings, and he left us, unfortunately, just as his architecture was making a comeback. Despite being criticized by his peers for not taking architecture seriously enough, by the 1990s, he was being discovered by a whole new generation of architects and architectural junkies like me. His bold buildings were a breath of fresh air in a city where, more often than not, architects took the safer path during a quarter-century flirtation with modernism.
Related to this article
Uno Prii with a model of his building at 20 Prince Arthur St., his favourite among the approximately 250 structures he designed.
Uno Prii with a model of his building at 20 Prince Arthur St., his favourite among the approximately 250 structures he designed.
Among those who began to speak about the importance of Mr. Prii's work were Michael McClelland of E.R.A. Architects Inc.; John Shnier of Kohn Shnier Architects; Ryerson University's Marco Polo; Angus Skene, architect and former host of the cable TV show Structures; Joe Lobko, past chairman of the Toronto Society of Architects (which included 20 Prince Arthur in its TSA Guide Map: Toronto Architecture 1953-2003); the University of Toronto's Larry Richards; and heritage architect Catherine Nasmith. In January, 2004, the city agreed by listing 13 of his buildings on the Inventory of Heritage Properties.
Part of the credit for Mr. Prii's boldness, his wife Silvia Prii says, belongs to developer Henry Hiller, who allowed the architect a free hand. That is, provided he didn't �bankrupt� him, she laughs. Mr. Hiller, she explains, was a refugee who made a future for himself in Toronto, just like the Priis did when they landed here in 1951 after fleeing Soviet-occupied Estonia in 1945.
Mrs. Prii and I are sitting comfortably in her Bloor Street condo overlooking the Rosedale ravine as she tells me the details of their escape, first to Sweden, where the �high school sweethearts� married in 1946 and where Mr. Prii got an engineering certificate at night school. (�That helped him a lot because he always said later that it was easier for him to understand buildings,� she adds.) They then came to Toronto so he could study architecture at the U of T. He made friends with professor Eric Arthur while there and worked for his firm every summer until graduating in 1955.
On this, Mrs. Prii's 82nd birthday, I'm honoured to spend a few hours discussing her husband's legacy in a room filled with reminders of his artistry. �He loved to paint,� she offers when she catches me admiring his colourful canvases, which share wall space with photographs of the couple smiling in front of backdrops both abroad (they loved to travel) and on board Mr. Prii's beloved sailboat. Pointing to the sculpture in the room, she says he �loved to buy sculptures,� which, I think to myself, is not surprising since his apartment buildings are sculpture writ large. She says his favourite travel destination was Italy and hers was Paris. They never lived in a Prii-designed apartment building, and the one time they tried �the waiting list was too long,� she says
She also tells me that Mr. Prii died in the very room we are in.
As we talk about just a few of the approximately 250 apartment buildings Mr. Prii designed in his lifetime, I wonder aloud why his story and body of work aren't being taught to first-year architecture students; why they are presented only in library basements by enthusiasts such as Alfred Holden. Uno Prii, in large part, shaped modern Toronto, as did contemporaries John C. Parkin, Macklin Hancock, Peter Dickinson (a sculptor of buildings himself) and dozens of others.
When Mr. Dickinson's Inn on the Park came crashing down earlier this year, Mrs. Prii was �appalled.�
�Uno and I both just loved to go there,� she remembers. She remembers, too, that her husband went to see Mr. Dickinson as he lay on his deathbed at age 35 in 1961.
The majority of buildings designed by Mr. Prii, Mr. Parkin and Mr. Dickinson were built right here; they're as important to the city as Richard Neutra's work is to Los Angeles or Frank Lloyd Wright's is to Chicago. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that young architecture students in the United States learn about their architectural heroes while we prefer to keep our students in the dark about ours.
And we wonder why we're losing so many of our best examples of Toronto modernism.
Dave LeBlanc hosts The Architourist on CFRB Wednesdays during Toronto at Noon and Sunday mornings. Send inquiries to dave.leblanc@globeandmail.com.
AoD
EDIT: Formatting