Hume did a piece on this a few days ago.........
Hume: A bold step to revamp Ryerson
February 13, 2010
Christopher Hume
Ryerson will never be the same. Neither will the city, for that matter.
This week the university announced an architectural team comprising Norway's leading practice, Snøhetta, and Toronto-based Zeidler Partnership has been chosen to design the new Student Learning Centre. Located on the northeast corner of Yonge and Gould Sts., the $100 million facility will be the school's face to the city and the world beyond.
The name Zeidler will be familiar to Torontonians – think Eaton Centre, Ontario Place, Princess Margaret Hospital – but Snøhetta is still relatively unknown. In fact, the firm has earned an international reputation for its innovative and humanistic approach to architecture. Although Snøhetta entered a competition for redeveloping Toronto's central waterfront some years ago, the student centre will mark its Toronto debut.
"We have no idea how it's going to turn out," admits Snøhetta co-founder Craig Dykers. "It all has to be figured out."
That process will start next week, when team members sit down to begin the laborious task of conjuring something out of nothing.
The site, small but prominent, is known to most Torontonians as the longtime location of Sam the Record Man. It and several other buildings on Yonge are being torn down to make way for the new centre. Though unfortunate, perhaps we can console ourselves with thoughts of what will come next.
If the opera house Snøhetta did in Norway is any indication, the student centre will be remarkable for its innovation, accessibility and sheer originality. Clad in dazzling white marble, the hall, which rises from the waters of the Oslo Fjord, is wrapped in a large ramp-like structure that leads up to the roof. In this way, people become part of the building; inside and out, they function as the animating principle.
Snøhetta's award-winning Alexandria Library, which opened eight years ago, has also been enormously successful. It draws 10,000 visitors daily, most of whom aren't there to look at books.
It was Snøhetta's expertise in library design that prompted Zeidler to get in touch. For both firms, the starting point is the realization that libraries aren't what they used to be. The old ideal of Fort Book, the guarded outpost of knowledge, dark, silent and intimidating, has given way to a hunger for flexibility, comfort and lots of natural light. The fact that food and drink are now allowed in many libraries is a small but telling example of how attitudes have changed.
In Ryerson's case, however, the building must also serve as a landmark; it will be the piece by which the school is known. In other words, it must, in that most overused term, be an icon. Given the wretched architecture of much of the Ryerson campus, this desire for excellence will be welcomed.
"Libraries are growing and changing," says Dykers. "Today they're about making collaborative spaces."
At the same time, the library must also be a place where students can sit by themselves and study quietly. And then there are the shops, cafés and restaurants that are now a part of every campus, especially one, like Ryerson, so fully integrated into the larger urban fabric.
If anything, the campus could do with a little more isolation from the intrusions of the surrounding city. Gould St., for example, remains open to vehicular traffic despite the fact it is the main thoroughfare for a student body of 28,000, all of them pedestrians.
According to Ryerson president Sheldon Levy, this will soon change. City and school are currently negotiating an arrangement that would close Gould to regular traffic on a trial basis. His hope is that the results will be too successful to be undone.
The closing of Gould will also make Yonge safer and more pedestrian-friendly. Once the learning centre is complete in three or four years, the campus will be a major car-free zone in a city of auto addicts.
The building itself will likely be tall – at least 10 storeys – and highly transparent. Dykers talks of "creating a sculptural identity" for Ryerson. Given its location, it will inevitably be seen as a kind of entrance into the campus, a threshold. Graduate House, with that extended cornice reaching out over Spadina Ave. and Harbord St., serves the same function at the University of Toronto.
"We're looking at a vertical structure," says Zeidler's Tarek El-Khatib. "It will be a public building, but one that's equally practical."
Levy likes to use the word "transformative" when referring to the centre. It's an adjective we bandy about often these days, but in this instance, it seems justified. Though the downward spiral of this critical downtown neighbourhood has been halted, the turnaround isn't done yet. The learning centre will mark the next big step in a continuing process, and given the rare quality of talent assembled, that transformation has already begun.
