9am July 29, 2008
Mean temperature: 21.2 °C
In the ever-growing genre of ‘young architectural firms’, it becomes quite difficult to distinguish who does what, where and why. Well, when the time comes to have an opportunity and discuss relevant works with a young, prominent architectural firm, one begins to make the distinction from the crowd and realize which ones stand out. CORE Architects, a progressive yet distinguishable studio by their creations, is well on the rise in becoming one of the leading architectural firms within Toronto, Canada, if not already. With a keen eye set beyond our nation, they attain projects overseas, with great passion and persistence – the kind that makes one stand out from the rest!
It was a delight to sit down with one of the founding partners, Babak Eslahjou of CORE Architects (in addition to Charles Gane and Deni Poletti who were there in spirit) and discuss some rather interesting topics. Please read on as we find out what makes this firm so unique…
CORE Architects: http://www.corearchitects.com/
Could you tell us a few things about yourself, if you don’t mind sharing, which would give some insight as to how you have become who you are today?
If you want me to become someone special, you are going to have to wait. My life was/is driven by waking up early and to work hard but to play harder. When I try to park my car, I always back-in. I am told that this shows that I have the characteristic of a person with delayed gratitude. I think that this is the most critical thing for architecture, delayed gratitude. It’s such a long process and I think this has really helped me out.
What sparked your interest and decision in becoming an architect?
My father was an architect and I grew up around him and his friends and I thought they were the coolest people. All the way throughout my childhood, I found them very funny and creative and from as long as I can remember I just wanted to be like them.
Is there a person from the past and/or present that has influenced you or that you particularly appreciate? Is there anyone in particular you look up to and respect?
Yes there is but it is a very personal story if you don’t mind.
What is the best moment of the day for you?
Early morning, fresh coffee and fresh air!
I noticed on your previous website, you each had a favorite tune – did the songs that were associated with your names describe each of you in any way or was it more the genre? Do you think music and architecture are intimately linked and if so, how?
We tried to pick the songs that represented each of us. Charles was the Jazz guy, I was a little more of the modern interpretation of Jazz and Deni doesn’t have a clear favorite type, so I picked for him. I think that architecture and music are very much related because they share the same evolution. I think they are both very much related to people’s lives, emotions and their everyday experiences, yet it affects each person differently. There are forms of art that have parallel lives for me and it is extremely important for me – music is the third largest part of my life.
As for piano, I’ll will never forgive my parents for letting me quit piano – they let me quit. (Lot’s of laughs).
Do you read design, architecture, development and city planning books/magazines?
I do read them but the thing is we get a lot of them in the office. We get the European ones, the Asian ones and of course the local ones, so I go through them visually which I feel is the right way to do it. I really feel that architecture is more visual than it is written. A lot of people like to talk about it, I like to look at it and see if I get it. So this is how I look at things and for the little time we have and they tend to stack up on my ‘in’ tray, so I pass them along to the partners to review.
Your profile states that you are an “expert on the fast-paced development [which is] currently taking place in emerging urban regions” – can you explain what this means to the general public as some may misinterpret this statement?
I think the intent of the web site was to address not only the developed world of ours but the developing world. Usually, a lot of the developments are done through bank financing so interest charges are very important therefore the developers like to push it through fast.
In the developing world, the same holds true but fast-paced basically means catching up with the developed world. So when we stated ‘fast-paced’ we were trying to speak to the Western and Eastern clients and we were trying to tell them both that we know how the development world is run and that it is our expertise in this – we know where the traps are, we know where the opportunities are, we know where the challenges are and we are the ones that know how to carry a project through as fast as possible.
Now from the public’s perspective, especially in the developed world, they like to slow things down; they like to make sure that they have assessed all the components associated with the project and that’s just part of the reality of developing in Canada. We recognize that everyone needs to be on board and that it is a team effort, so we work through it, but still as fast as possible!!
Being an Architect from Toronto, and aside from the ‘super-build platform’, what is your perception as to why so many excellent Toronto Architects work outside the country as opposed to pushing for excellence in our own backyard?
What is your feeling with the starchitects in Toronto?
Excellent architects do excellent work anywhere. Overall, architects need to do global work to survive local slow-downs and this is what drives a lot of Toronto architects and other architects to look for work and to have a portfolio that is wide-ranging from different parts of the world if they can. For some firms, it’s harder for them than others. Core Architects, with 40 staff, is considered a small firm on the world stage yet in Toronto we are a medium-sized firm but as difficult as it is, we still try to be as active as some of the larger firms in the world.
Within Toronto itself, if you are asking why some of our buildings are not as good as they can be, I would not look to the architects for that answer only. A lot goes into a building, from the client, to the city, to the neighbors, to the lawyers, etc… Toronto does tend to produce a lot of mediocre work for many reasons but one of the most annoying one is that sometimes it is an unfortunate byproduct of watering down a project so that a large portion of the population is happy with it; until we arrive at a compromised solution that doesn’t have its initial vision but it does have something that everyone likes and that is part of the problem. When you see a lot of Toronto architects go outside Canada, especially in the developing world, there is a lot more freedom to do the kind of things they do whereas here, there is a lot more scrutiny and you just have to keep everyone happy and everyone takes a chunk out of the building until it’s something that pleases everyone but it isn’t necessarily what it would be desired to have.
As for to the ‘starchitects’ and in particular to the ones that Toronto invited recently to do its museums, I think that they were way past their prime as sort of those pioneering architects. I think what we did with those museums specifically is that we bought into the architect’s brand rather than into good architecture. My favorite starchitect is Calatrava and his galleria is a perfect example of how “spectacular” architecture should be done. It deals with a scientific based approach that yet has economic considerations. He repeats the same complexity, whereas in the renovation of our museums, we have custom made every single piece of the building, which is not very creative to me.
In Canada we tend to be very progressive in politics yet we are very conservative in the arts and architecture. We are very conservative and even when we invite the architects to do our museums; it is only after they have done so many of those, somewhere else, it’s become a tried and tested undertaking and it goes to a point to where it is not really risk-taking anymore but a lot of people are talking about as if it’s something that the ‘starchitects’ are bringing that is new, yet it is not. There are newer ‘starchitects’ that are doing more interesting things that should have probably done the museums here.
By not giving away any secrets, what is your approach in acquiring projects? Are they based on preference and/or interest?
We basically get all of our work through word of mouth. It’s like ‘so and so said you did this’ or ‘I saw what you did there’ and it’s really that. Even though we do market ourselves, a lot of it has to do with word of mouth.
Is there any one/company/institution/etc. in particular you would like to design for?
We would like to do more work for universities in this province. It’s not an easy task because one of the main requirements they have is “relevant experience”. What basically happens is that the same old guys get the work with the universities – it’s like a club. It’s a typical middle-management hurdle that you have to jump over because they are responsible and if something goes wrong they like to say that ‘these people have the experience so I don’t really know what went wrong’. So they don’t really pick younger architects to do these types of projects. It’s interesting because when we became active in the condo world, we had no condo experience. I think that a lot of these universities should open up more. Universities being cultural institutions; they should open up to younger architects and there are other ways to ensure, technically, that a building doesn’t go wrong. Some architects do joint-ventures on their own. Some of the European universities will hire their technical architects and they will get the design ideas from younger architects. I wish that the universities did this here as well, but they don’t.
Do you have a dream project in mind?
I have many dream projects in mind and they all involve fixing the city of Toronto but this needs money and leadership and unfortunately we lack the latter.
You should run for Mayor then!
I am not really cut for it, but it has cross my mind to run for mayor (laughs) but I just really wish that there was somebody that would take this city by the throat and do something really good with it. My dream projects are when I think about ways of fixing so many areas of this town could really improve so many parks – get them connected better; so many transit lines should be done otherwise. It’s not so much the buildings but the infrastructure.
There are a lot of good things that can happen. Mayor Mel Lastman placed the Sheppard line under a bunch of townhouses which was the wrong thing to do and it went from nowhere to nowhere but if nothing else, it showed that it takes real political leadership to do something like that. You need somebody strong; I did not agree with a lot of the things he did and I don’t agree with where he put the new line but he showed that it can be done, and that’s what we need.
Is there a particular self-fulfilling philosophy that you follow that you believe helps guide you in achieving anything and all that you do?
Is this philosophy shared with the firm or is it more personal?
My self-fulfilling philosophy is never to believe in “one” thing. This philosophy is personal but the firm does have a mission statement as well as philosophies that we have developed through the years and that we agree on. The three partners work very well together as well as on their own. It is interesting that all three of us have sort of developed our own client base and we do our own things yet the firm has a singular image. We do help each other out but it was very critical from the outset to accept our mission statement and philosophies of the firm so that everyone is on the same page. It so far has been a great 12 years together with a lot of trials and tribulations yet we stuck together and we have been quite successful.
When discussing architecture and the like, do you chat with other architects, developers and/or related disciplines with respect to sharing ideas? Do you believe it is important to share ideas?
If so, what do you think seems to be the topic that always seems to come to the forefront?
Of course; you always have to talk about these things, but as long as everybody agrees with me, there are no problems. Everybody is entitled to my opinion (Lot’s of Laughs).
[Frankly speaking] you never stop discourse – it’s funny, I was at the design review panel and it was my first experience being there. It was interesting to see because the people there were some of my ex-classmates, my friends and people that I know well and even being in that atmosphere, it was an interesting discourse and exchange of ideas about what I have done. It was a formal gathering but the same thing happens when we informally sit together. We all have a sense of humor so sometimes we are a little rough on each other, especially the partners and I. We have fun with it and this is how we get through it.
Nowadays, there seems to be a lot of discussion about landmark design. It seems to be the thing that everyone talks about. Another hot topic is density and how we are going to help this city, and other cities, grow. Buildings are going taller and taller and in my opinion, it is better to go vertical than horizontal especially with the price of oil, global warming, etc., we should all live close to work. In particular though, other than the issues of density and height, especially in the condo market where we are very active, people are constantly looking for more inventive ways of approaching residential design. We are very happy with that because this is what we really started when we started our firm. Typically, the good architects in North America were not involved in condominium design before. Going back to the 70’s and 80’s where there were certain types of architects that did these buildings and that the better architects frowned upon condo projects; but it is really about where people live and what’s more important than where people live?
For us, when we started our firm, we started with our first project being residential and we were very excited about attacking it and doing something different and giving good living spaces for people and it took off from there. It is interesting to see the market now, and how it is demanding more and more of this.
It’s not like the past, these days; nothing is taken for granted anymore. In every project, we have to think of a different angle – marketing people have their own ideas, we have our own ideas as far as the city, the neighborhood and the context goes and all of that comes together and there is no formula like the old days – everything starts from scratch every time.
Going back to the Starchitect issue, many architects now tend to venture into residential design since condos are the name of the game these days. Just like the starchitects, there are many Architects that want to be so radical in design that they don’t consider the repetitive and economic nature of doing a multi-unit building. The creativity in this type of building should come from the repetitiveness of it and not from doing a design where every floor plate is different. What is the point of designing a building that costs twice as much? Anyone can do that. The question is how do you make a mass produced model and make it look good.
Since your firm excels and defends forward thinking through sustainable design and applications, if architects were a part(s) of a tree(s), what part would they be and why?
I would think that architects would think they are the roots of a tree – they are that self-centered (laughs).
I think really, they see themselves as behind-the-scene creators and that is why I think the root is important. You never see the architect yet you see the effect of it. And again, especially in the condo world and especially in the Canadian culture, it’s amazing that when you publish a photograph; you have to say who the photographer is. This is law, but you can print a million pictures of buildings, talk about the design of the building, but you never have to mention who the architect is. It’s the way our culture is. In Europe, they never talk about a building without talking about the architect and they never talk about a movie without talking about the director. Directors are well known in Europe and architects are well known in Europe. In North America, the developers are well known and the movie stars are well known. It’s an interesting comparison.
Which projects have given you the most satisfaction, how and why?
The ones with really appreciative clients have given me the most satisfaction. I think that at the end of the day, if you’re doing a public building, the public is one thing and you will get a variety of opinions from the public but it’s very important for my client to appreciate what we have done and to have liked it and that’s our thing. One of our clients called me an ‘intellectual asset’ which was one of the best adjectives I have ever received and of course it was banker that said that but it was a charm working for him because he saw the value of what we were doing. A lot of the times, unfortunately architects give up their best ideas just to get the job and beyond that it just turns out to be delivery of the project. The clients just see it as this. They don’t really talk about the idea; it’s usually the delivery of the project that they talk about.
Also, too many architects are fascinated about competitions and about having the best idea and unfortunately, because of that, design just becomes this free thing that they throw out.
I think that if my client appreciates the idea of a building and how it was carried out, then that is my most successful project.
What separates your firm from the rest or most?
All architects have difficulty with this. You often hear “design”. Well, what else!! But I think that the way we like to see it is that we are small enough yet large enough and that is sort of how I describe ourselves to new clients: We are small enough to give the attention to design, work it through and to think of something creative for each specific project and yet we are large enough to be able to handle it.
What trials and tribulations have you gone through to become who you are today?
We really started our company with $200 each which is a total of $600. When you start a company with $600, after twelve years, you’ve really seen everything. Especially that we did not take a single client from our old employer and we still have a very good relationship with them. We came out doing the tiniest of projects. The most challenging thing that we did was when we went to the Middle East; we had to expand to nearly double our size. Usually it’s not so much the architecture itself but the mechanics around architecture that are very difficult such as human resources, dealing with people, dealing with staff, keeping everybody happy. Moving a whole bunch of people with you – there are three of us as Partners but really there are 40 of us as the team. So you have to keep 40 people happy at all times and this is our biggest challenge. We try and have as many parties as possible (lots of laughs) but of course, people’s professional career is what’s important to them so you have to balance their aspirations along with your own firm’s direction and goals. You’ll find a lot of architects say the same thing. We are not making a manufactured good because if I were to do that, I would punch something in, they would go through a machine and pop out somewhere else. But in architecture, what it comes down to is that I have 40 brains that I am selling – I am selling brains and they have to work – they have to be in a good mood, they have to be happy and they have to work hard and create every day.
In one sentence, what advice can you give to young architects or to those who would like to become an architect?
Don’t do it! (Laughs)
I’m sure you have heard that before but I think that the young people have to understand that it’s a lot of work and that you will do long hours for very little money and possibly very little appreciation. They have to be ready for that. The biggest reward for architects is the satisfaction of having designed the building and I think that is what drives all of us.
Where would you like to see yourself in the near and/or distant future?
On the golf course!
I want to see us do good work throughout. We only have one decade behind us and possibly a couple more ahead for at least me and I would like to see the quality of work sustained. This would be the biggest thing for me.
Is there anything that you are afraid of regarding the future?
The thing that I am afraid of is that I would have to work harder in my future than in my past. That’s the one thing that scares me. Of course, this is the result of the revolution in my country of birth, Iran. I saw in my family and in a lot of people that we knew that they were successful and that they had a good life in Iran, and they were all forced to recreate themselves outside Iran, and many of them at a late stage in their lives. This has stayed with me ever since so I just want to be cruising through. I think that it takes time for the system to realize the potential in people from other countries that come here and in the most part, people do become successful coming here – it’s just the concept that people have to work harder as they get older, is what bothers me the most.
Do you see any value in the Pug Awards which is based on the “People’s Choice”?
I don’t mind the idea, but I am not hot about it either. I think that on its own, there is a problem, to just have a people’s choice awards. I think people’s choice awards in conjunction with other awards by peers and colleagues are more interesting to see and compare.
Do you think the public/people should have this type of forum/opportunity to state whether a building is good or not?
I think that the public choice is over-rated and after all, George Bush was a public choice and you can take it from there. I actually live by the idea that 90% people do not have good judgment/sense. I know I am going to get into trouble with this statement but it is one of the ways that it explains to me all the screwed up things that happens to this world. As a collective of people, we have made a lot of bad decisions in the past, whether it is in politics or other areas.
When you look at the project that won for me, this renovation of a warehouse [Argyle Authentic Lofts at 183 Dovercourt Rd], I think that people have a certain sense of old world comfort and charm and I think that “that” is what really drove the award. It was something that they could relate to and were charmed by. But I don’t think the general public has the tools required to evaluate architecture. It’s tough because the same thing goes for paintings and music and other art forms. Only about 2% of the world’s music is played on radio and there is a lot of interesting music out there that nobody ever hears. We do have good radio, don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of Jazz FM and CBC Radio, but I think the proportion of population that listens to good radio is less than 10%. Same goes for art. I think you have to take “people’s choice” with a grain of salt and not put a lot of emphasis on it and take it for what it’s worth. It is the people’s choice and we can leave it at that.
Overall, a trained eye can make a better assessment of what they are looking at.
In the end, who’s remarks/opinions would hold more merit, the public’s or private/corporate?
I think that people love buildings for a variety of reasons and I even think that architecture may not be one of those things! I hate to say it but [the public chose the loft building] not because of what I did; we just fixed it up and put a couple stories on top, so architecture may not necessarily be part of the equation as to why people like something and that is why I tend to go with the judgment of my peers. It is very important to me as to what other architects think of my work.
On the other hand, I also believe that the voters within the Pug Awards may be mostly of the business and if that is true, then I am happy about it. I do think it’s important, for me, to get confirmation from my peers and clients.
What is your favorite building in Toronto – be it residential, commercial, public or institutional?
The TD Centre – It is still the most beautiful building in this city, by far. The plaza below the building feels fantastic; the poetry is in its simplicity and sophistication at the same time. It is a timeless building and a great example of the successes of 20th century…It was a good building to happen, at the time that it did, for the city of Toronto.
How do you perceive Toronto now as well as in the future? What kind of path are we on with respect to architecture and/or style?
I think that I am optimistic about the buildings in Toronto – we have a lot of good architects in the city of Toronto and I have faith that we will all produce amazing buildings. What I think is a problem though is that the public realm is poorly planned and poorly funded. I am talking about city streets, city sidewalks, transit, light standards – we still have wires hanging out above our streets – it’s like the electricity of this city runs in the air. Go to Paris – you don’t see it – people say it’s beautiful – well, guess what, most of the beauty of Paris is in the public realm because a lot of those buildings all look the same and they act as city making buildings. It is not through the efforts of individuality of buildings that cities look good. The way they do their public walkways, their benches, their bus stops and their electricity runs under ground. It’s where it belongs. We spend whole day’s photoshop-ing wires in the air out of our buildings.
Like I said, we need a visionary leader in City Hall and we need someone who can really truly address these issues. It seems like we go from generation to generation [without properly dealing with these issues].
What is your opinion on the environmental/sustainable culture/attitude people are embracing these days?
Do you think this will be the norm or is it just a very long fad come trend?
I think that it is the norm. I hear that Greenland is finally going to be green (laughs) – and that is a scary thought. I think that hearing the same thing every day (even thought there are opposing thoughts – there are some people that are dismissing the whole idea), I think that all of data and all of the proofs are over-whelming and it occupies a lot of people’s minds. I see my own kids don’t stop talking about it so it is here to stay.
As new materials seem to surface constantly and others never seem to die out, which one(s) are you hooked on at the moment and why?
My new material (or assembly) is the green wall, as I am currently applying it to this building [points to an image of a long-term presentation building for multi-unit residential buildings]. It is my new obsession because it is a “living” material. I try to include it into many of the buildings that I do now, but I seem to get a lot of resistance. The client’s first question is always what kind of plants will grow here in the winter time.
We are working through it and we are working with landscape architects who have been advising us. It has become more of the norm in some other parts of the world. It really is becoming a building material as they sell these pockets now that the plants can grow on. It would have to withstand the Canadian climate and has to be used for the right application and facing the right direction and so on and so forth.
Which material are you just dying to use [figure of speech] and never had the chance to use yet?
It’s not so much the material but it’s more of the assembly. What I would like to use is what they have in Europe, are a lot of shutters and sun control mechanisms along the façade of the building(s) and I like the way that it makes the building look like some sort of machine. It again, addresses the issues of environmental sustainability and of course the price of gas/energy was not high enough to justify that cause – in Europe, they do something like a double skin but now that gas and energy prices are going to the levels where it will pay off to invest in a better exterior wall system and this is what I would like to see happening/being used in Canada. This in conjunction with green wall is where I see future possibilities of having buildings breath and be part of the solution to our environmental problems.
Canada tends to take a system that works and ride it for a long time but you just can’t stop doing research and development and this is what Germans do very well – they are pioneers in these systems.
New materials are not necessarily as encouraged in Canada as other parts of the world. For example, I always have issues when the City of Toronto Urban Design Guidelines tells you to use brick because they say you are in an industrial zone of Toronto. Well the industrial zone of Toronto has been gone for years – it’s gone, it’s finished!
I don’t really think we have to keep on using brick. Brick was load-bearing, it was performing a function but it is no longer doing that so I don’t really want to see us keep using brick. I would want to see us using photovoltaic cells on buildings – ask me to use photovoltaic cells – that’s what I want to cover my building with – that is forward-thinking – that is building for the future. Why do I have to wrap my building in brick just because we are from a Victorian Era and that at some point we had some industrial buildings? I think this is the wrong approach – I think this city has to encourage (Germany does), and they encourage a building to use all of the available “forward thinking” green materials at their disposal and that is important. I don’t think we have to go out and give brick homage to our industrial past as a sort of major requirement to our urban design guidelines – it’s backwards and it is fake.
If given only one material to build anything of your choice, what would that be?
That would be glass.
What are your hobbies?
My hobbies are photography and travel and they are very important to me.
http://www.iranian.com/Travelers/2004/February/Eslahjou/2.html
In reference to the photo link above: this picture was taken in Iran and what it says on the wall is ‘all of the world on one side and Karim on the other side’, meaning Karim is equivalent in load to the rest of the world and Karim is a soccer player. So this is what has been graphitized on the wall…and it’s also a pretty poor village and it symbolizes the aspirations of the kids and how they look up to soccer stars which are a common and constant theme throughout the world.
I would like to get back into photography and it was one of those things that were with me in the early part of my life and I think it will probably come back when I have more time along with relaxing on the golf course (laughs).
Where does this urban language that you portray so well into your buildings come from?
The language that comes through in our architecture is from the urban environment itself. It’s the nature of who we are. Most Architects travel and learn. I love to travel and experience other cultures. It’s looking around the world and it’s also looking at your own city and you develop a language from all that you have seen and this has been repeated through history.
If you were given a plane that would have a message attached to it and fly around Toronto all day, what would it say?
(You speak to my heart) “Ask the Federal and Provincial governments to invest your tax dollars back into your city”.
As Canadians we just sit back and take it and this is the way we are. Torontonians should scream and shout for more funding – we need funding – it’s our own tax dollars. I don’t understand why the Federal Government has a surplus and the Municipal Government is going to charge extra taxes on my land-transfer? (Municipal Government says they don’t have any money) but I just heard that 14 billion dollars extra is in the Federal Government reserve…it’s our own pocket…we paid that, it’s there! At the end of the day, tax is tax and it is the people that pay it. So, what is the difference? It drives me bananas.
I think that the success of the world and the future is through… the success of cities – the reason why Dubai is so successful is because it is really a city state. Cities are going to be the focus of life in the future. They are going to run the economies of their countries. As cities become more competitive and as cities thrive to get more business, it will have to be that Federal Government that has to put that money back into the city and it’s not happening in Canada. We are such a vast country we always think about the smallest village that is in trouble and pour millions of dollars into it. We help the failing rather than strengthen our strong. Toronto is NOT going to do well unless the city gets serious funding. We have a great opportunity to be more of a North American center, as the United States becomes more of closed entity, Toronto should grab the opportunity and attract international business. The Federal Government must help.
What disappoints you?
Streetcars. In Toronto, we have a very unfortunate sense of comfort with these old machines and it’s again our old world charm that’s kind of there with us. I think that any serious city that wants to have a serious transit system cannot be doing it with streetcars. The streetcars you can find in those little average 1 million population towns in Europe. All the larger ones basically have done away with them and have gone with subways. You absolutely need a subterranean transit system to survive in the new age and to me, Toronto still not having a subway that goes to the airport is ridiculous. Still not having a subway underneath Eglinton is ridiculous and on, and on, and on. To think that you can just take out Gardiner (F.G. Gardiner Expressway) and replace it with a surface road is ridiculous. Gardiner should be buried – end of story. It has to happen. You cannot build a city without fast-paced subterranean transit and we don’t do it here and it’s very unfortunate. This is why streetcars disappoint me. They are, over the long run, more expensive than subways. I have lived in Toronto for 25 years and I have seen College Street get dug up about two-and-a-half feet, ten times. If the first time you would have dug up 25 feet, you would have been done. You don’t see the Yonge Subway getting dug up all the time. In this harsh climate that we have in this country, to have a street-line rail transit is ridiculous and it’s costing us a bundle and every summer we choke with it with all the cost of it, with all the disruption to traffic, etc. Once and for all, dig up St. Clair, dig up Spadina, dig up these streets and give us subways. This is the only way we can survive.
So streetcars really disappoint me.
What makes you happy?
My wife makes me happy. If I don’t say that I won’t be able to golf. (Laughs)
Comment/statement:
As Canadians, we like to think that we have sort of a cohesive social fabric that we tend to care about the public realm, care about everyone and everything else but I don’t think we do. I think we always tend to take the cheapest possible way of doing things. We don’t spend money on public realm. We do not have great parks, great civic places. We do it cheap because of our fear of white elephants. Gardiner was one of them, the Allen Expressway was the other one, to me the Spadina and St. Clair streetcars are a disaster. As far as the social fabric, they have scared the city forever – they have divided us one side from the other, they are going to ruin retail – but it’s just that we cop-out. On the public realm, we take the cheapest possible way and that is because the managers at the city hall are judged by capital expenditures and not by life time maintenance requirements. The maintenance that Gardiner has taken and the streetcars are taking is far more than if they were buried in the first place. At some point, we just have to take that leap – we have to bury these things. Imagine if you buried Spadina and St. Clair rail lanes– the sidewalks that you can have, the life that you can have there and that you can dedicate better lanes for bicycles and all the green methods you can have of traveling is what’s important for this city. I want to see dedicated, elevated (6” above ground) pathways for bicycles. We have to do these things that are forward thinking. Of course they are not that visionary in Europe because they already do it. They are very simple but I keep going back to transit because transit runs a lot of what is happening with the high buildings these days. There just isn’t enough of it so wherever we have transit, we have to build high to maximize the use of the tax dollars spent on building them. The other major issue is the public realm, the beauty of the streets and the piazza’s and the parks – look at all of our parks, they are just places for dogs to do their business. We just don’t take good care of all of these things. We are not as public-loving as we think we are. Still, down inside, we a very selfish. I think everybody thinks about me, me, me. Especially when these projects go in front of neighborhood associations, it’s all about me me me. It’s never about what’s good for the city and I think that this is what we have to think about more and more and we have to put our money where our mouth is. If we are concerned about the public good, it should show in our streets, it should show in our public piazzas and our parks.
by: Warren Gyulay
