Toronto Nathan Phillips Square + Spirit Garden | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto

From the Star:

Peace Garden to get new digs
Landmark at City Hall moving across square, but keeps key elements like the eternal flame
Jun 23, 2007 04:30 AM
Paul Moloney
CITY HALL BUREAU

The Peace Garden will be moved as part of a $40 million makeover of Nathan Phillips Square but the main elements must remain intact, city council has decided.

The compromise is a relief for peace advocates who were shocked after architects proposed moving elements of the garden, including the eternal flame, and tearing down the stone-walled pavilion structure.

"As long as this relocation can be handled with respect and dignity to an appropriate place that's visible, that's fine," said Setsuko Thurlow, a Toronto resident who survived the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, and helped plan the Peace Garden in 1984.

Mayor David Miller said the new site on the west side of the square will be "a perfect place for the Peace Garden."

The garden was opened by then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau, the flame was lit by Pope John Paul II and the site was dedicated by the Queen.

"You can't relocate the Wailing Wall. You can't relocate the Sistine Chapel," said Councillor Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence).

But Councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul's) said the Peace Garden is often overrun during large events on the square. "I think the redesign of the whole square gives us an opportunity to rethink this piece of it."

Council directed that the interfaith community and peace advocates be consulted regularly as the relocation unfolds.

The city has committed $16 million to the square renovation project and hopes to raise $24 million from other levels of government and the private sector.

Work could start next year.
_______________________________________________

Note to Karen Stintz: The Peace Garden ain't the Wailing Wall.

AoD
 
From the Globe:

NATHAN PHILLIPS SQUARE REDESIGN
Peace garden to relocate despite 'sacred' status
Moving the monument would be akin to moving a native burial ground, one councillor says

ALWYNNE GWILT

June 23, 2007

It might be a small part of Nathan Phillips Square, but the Peace Garden was the height of discussion at city council yesterday morning.

In the end, councillors voted 22-10 to award the contract for the Nathan Phillips Square redesign to Plant Architects, which will move certain elements of the Peace Garden to a new home on the square's west side. But the decision did not come without passionate debate.

The Peace Garden evokes revered moments for some, said Councillor Michael Walker (Ward 22, St. Paul's), remembering when the area was dedicated by Pope John Paul II in 1984.

"I don't think we should be desecrating the Peace Garden, committing it to the trash heap of a corner," he said, defending his motion to have it stay put regardless of whether the square is changed.

There has been much confusion on what will actually happen to the garden, the designer from Plant Architects said after the final vote.

"The fear was that things would just be thrown away and discarded but what we need to do now is, in consultation with the peace activists, figure out a way of accommodating all these things in a [new] design," said Chris Pommer, referring to an approved motion by council to have a subcommittee created for discussions on the Peace Garden's design with interested groups.

Many councillors agreed that the current garden, which people often use as a garbage dump or clamber over during large public events, isn't respected.

"At the moment, the Peace Garden is treated incredibly badly during many events," Mr. Pommer said in an interview this week. A redesign "provides an opportunity to make a new Peace Garden that is more powerful and more connected to the people of Toronto today."

Such explanations were viewed with some suspicion yesterday.

"If we had found an Indian chief buried there, we wouldn't have moved anything because we would have had the aboriginal community taking over and saying you can't touch this ground because it's sacred ground," Councillor Mike Del Grande said.

"For people like myself who are Catholic, when you bless something, it becomes sacred and to do otherwise is to insult me, insult other Catholics, and insult other religions who believe in things that are sacred." continued Mr. Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt).

Councillor Karen Stintz said that in her ward she decided to build a park around a crumbling bus shelter because some people felt it had history.

"Here we have a piece of sacred ground dedicated to peace, which is a value held by every Torontonian, and yet we're just going to relocate it?" said Ms. Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence).

The garden was created for the city's 150th anniversary as a way for Torontonians to express a desire for world peace and, according to a statement at the time from architect Ken Greenberg and the Urban Design Group,: "achieve impact by the power of its image not by its size."

It includes an eternal flame, lit from embers brought from Hiroshima, and water from the rivers of Nagasaki, a testament to those cities ravaged by atomic bombs. In the centre stands a pavilion, built with one corner missing to symbolize the work that still needs to be done to achieve peace. Those three elements, along with a sundial also located in the garden, will move to the new space.

Members of the peace groups present at the opening of the monument admit it has lost some significance since the days when prime minister Pierre Trudeau turned the sod for it, the Queen inaugurated it and the Pope blessed it.

"Unfortunately the meaning of the Peace Garden has never been adequately communicated to the residents of Toronto," said Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing who helped bring the garden's elements from Japan.

The architects from the winning team hope to elevate the garden's stature by highlighting those elements deemed sacred.

"As you enter Nathan Phillips Square from the west there will immediately be these two stone crucibles filled with fire and water," said Andrew Frontini, a partner at Shore, Tilbe and Irwin who have teamed up with Plant for the redesign. "That's the kind of design elements that evokes all kinds of questions."

AoD
 
competition panels

does anyone know where I might be able to find pdfs of the original competition panels? I would love to see them for all competitors, but especially PLANT.

Thanks.
 
bengaijin said:
does anyone know where I might be able to find pdfs of the original competition panels? I would love to see them for all competitors, but especially PLANT.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Well, I don't know about pdfs, but a number of jpgs and a full description can be found on the city's competition website here.

42
 
Is this project still alive? What about those plans for Queens Quay? Have they also been killed by the budget crisis?
 
I don't understand why they want to redesign Nathan Phillips Square in the first place. It's a big open space that's the natural gathering place for people when there's a public event, and it has the rink that people love. Why spoil that? I think it's just fine the way it is. :(
 
...because successive, piecemeal 'redesigns' and additions over the years have significantly degraded its ability to function as a gathering place befitting the city. After the renovation it will still be a gathering place, and still have the rink. What it won't have will include cinderblock changing huts for skaters, falling-apart concrete planters, and a myriad of other randomly placed "improvements" that make it really quite ugly.
 
Aside from some practical and growing aesthetic problems with the square in the past decade or so it's also badly in need of maintenance. The ground is uneven and cracking in areas, pieces of the walkways fall to the ground on occasion and erosion of property along Queen. I would argue that there are other areas which could use the money dedicated to this project but there's a matter of civic pride here and it's a destination which sees a lot of tourism.
 
I never really understood why they had to spend so much money building a designer "ruin" for the Peace Garden when I'm pretty sure they could have picked up the real thing real cheap in some place like Bosnia.
 
From the Star:

Nathan Phillips reconstruction appears stalled
Winning redesign was announced last March, but first phase of work has not yet started
Jan 05, 2008 04:30 AM
John Spears
CITY HALL BUREAU

The rejuvenation of Nathan Phillips Square started with a bang last March: An Academy Awards-style announcement of the winning design to remake Toronto's most important public space.

Today, after stripping away the special Christmas lighting, you'll find – well, you'll find pretty much the same old square.

But in the mind of design architect Andrew Frontini, the square is already evolving. Frontini sees a broad stairway rising from the square's northwest corner to the elevated walkway, shaded on hot days by a trellis. He likens it to Rome's Spanish Steps – a sloping meeting and mingling place that adds a new dimension to the square.

The trellis covering the stairway will also support lighting for the new, glass-roofed stage on the western edge of the square.

Frontini sees a garden on the roof of the main podium, a restaurant at the west end of the reflecting pool and a "disappearing fountain" with water rising from the pavement on the expanse in the square's centre.

He sees colourful paving materials, and glass panels forming parts of the elevated walkway railing.

Just when will the public see them translated into reality?

And since the city has set aside only $16 million for the $40 million project, what movement has been made in fundraising the rest?

Progress has been slow. While the winning design team – Plant Architect Inc. and Shore Tilbe Irwin & Partners – was named in March, a deal was only signed last month.

Frontini says careful staging is needed, because parts of the square have to be kept open at all times: "You just can't shut it down and turn it into a construction site for two years. ... Keeping two-thirds of the square open at any time – that's our goal."

The plan's first phase, which will begin this year, will be to install a "green roof" on the two-storey podium building, with extensive plantings and scattered sculptures. The goal is to have it finished for Toronto's 175th birthday in 2009.

At ground level, reconstruction will start in the northwest quadrant and move counter-clockwise.

But first, extensive work must be done on the square's foundation so it will be able to support the new stage – complete with dressing rooms – the restaurant and a tourist information centre on Queen St.

The buildings would start to rise in the spring of 2009.

By fall 2009, crews will be relandscaping the Queen St. side of the square, replacing the scrubby lawns with coloured paving strips that collect rainwater so it can be used to water the trees.

Then comes the landscaping along Bay St., probably in 2010. Tricky issues will arise, such as providing water and electrical servicing to new features in the square. And the waterproof membrane on the roof of the parking garage beneath the square must be replaced.

Some issues remain undecided. The biggest design question is the future of the Peace Garden, which will be shifted to the western side of the square, closer to Osgoode Hall. Peace activists loudly questioned the decision to remove a structure and eternal flame that are part of the original garden.

A committee of designers, city officials and citizen representatives has been set up to work out how to incorporate the historic elements into the new vision for the square.

Another issue is funding – $24 million must still come from the private sector.

Phyllis Berck, director of city's partnerships office, will map out a strategy to raise funds, but it's in the early stages. "It's a heck of a lot of money," she says. "We need to do a lot of research."

Councillor Peter Milczyn says the city will look for big donors with deep pockets, but wants to make sure Torontonians of modest means can chip in as well.

That brings up the thorny question of how to recognize the donors. Milczyn suggests something modest, like having donors' names inscribed on a wall or paving stones somewhere in the square. That way a grandparent could make a donation in a grandchild's name and show the child how he or she had become part of the city, he said.

But all agree that corporate logos will not be in the square.

"We're not going to have Coca-Cola Square," said Scott Mullin, a bank executive who chairs an advisory group set up by the city to ensure that the spirit of the square remains unsullied

"It's a public square, the centre of the city. It's not about naming rights or private recognition. It's about what's right for the city," Milczyn said.

Mullin's group is studying how to make sure the renewed square is well used but well respected in the years to come. That probably means having a single, person or body responsible for the square, he said. Still to be decided is whether the custodian of the square should be part of the city administration, or a special board of trustees.

AoD
 
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