Key Highlights
There seems to be a major shift in the horizon in the fields of architecture, heritage and sustainability, that values a larger discussion of what it means to provide healthy, sustainable, equitable and inclusive futures. Throughout the conference, heritage professionals called for immediate action to tackle the climate crisis, LGTBQ2S+ inclusivity and Reconciliation action.
Special Guest Speaker and former AIA President Carl Elefante gave an electrifying presentation at the Modern Heritage Toronto City Hall Council Chambers, keying-in on his coined phrase “the greenest building is the one that is already built.” Building Reuse as Climate Action was a major theme of the conference. The topic was the focus of many discussions including the one-day Workshop, the “CAHP Workroom: Energy, Carbon and the Value of our Existing Buildings.”
For MTBA, this was gratifying, after over a decade of our promotion of these notions of valuing existing resources with their embodied carbon and the critical need to immediately scale up the rehabilitation and retrofit of existing building stock, as well as our calls to action made across the continent and in several international publications.
The Workshop brought a diverse group together to look at the obstacles to retrofit from different lenses. Issues considered included Energy Efficiency, Carbon Avoidance, Operations and Maintenance Optimization, Development, Conservation and others, against various complex inter-relations. The scenarios options included:
- Demolition and building new platinum green building;
- “Deep retrofit” of existing buildings;
- Minimal intervention focused projects.
This workshop helped achieve these objectives:
1) Understanding from a multi-disciplinary team the issues (positive and negative) challenging industry adoption of existing buildings as valuable assets in the climate fight.
2) Understanding the different points of view from professionals involved with a potential building project, and how those points of view impact, conflict with, or relate to each other.
3) Understanding potential impacts of choices and process used in design and identifying potential processes to help design teams find better carbon responsible solutions.
Worker's Housing Typologies in Corktown
Catherine had the pleasure of strolling through Corktown, guided by Don Loucks, co-author of Modest Hopes: Homes and Stories of Toronto’s Workers from the 1820s to the 1920s. The field session focused on the typologies and stories within Toronto’s industrial cultural heritage, home to many Irish Immigrants in the early 20th century. The tour indicated the shift from vernacular cottage-style homes to the row townhouses that make up some of Toronto’s hottest real-estate.
Revitalizing Commercial Heritage Buildings
Catherine’s second field session included a guided tour by the Giaimo Team, visiting two rehabilitated early 20th Century commercial buildings. The impressive building at 21 Dundas Square has been rehabilitated and stripped to its core structure, revealing the beauty and hidden gems of the era. The project demonstrates a quality approach for minimal intervention that allows the building’s heritage value to carry-on into its future uses.
Fixing Broken Systems: The Growth Machine, Environmental Plunder, & Expanding the Heritage Conservation Vision
One of the best sessions Mark attended sought to disrupt key narratives propelling the take-make-waste mind set in Western societies. From the examining the destructive growth algorithm and financialization of nature at the heart of today’s economics, to exploring material and social legacies of resource extraction, and the need to reboot a design and construction industry professionalized to demolish and consume. Three visionary thinkers challenged the heritage conservation movement to see itself as part of the bigger societal transformations underway. Especially compelling were Enlai Hooi (Head of Innovation at Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, Copenhagen, Denmark) and Yannick Beaudoin (Director, Climate Change and Nature-Positive Solutions, Alinea International & Former Director of Innovation, David Suzuki Foundation, Toronto, ON). These two presentations were among the most insightful and powerful that this conference has seen, in any year.
