I take the Valley Line LRT downtown with some regularity and almost every time the train passes the vacant lot at the corner of 101 St and 102 Ave, I sigh wistfully. This site was formerly occupied by a granite-clad, SOM-designed main branch of the Bank of Montreal (BMO), which was vacated by the bank in 2017 and sold to a developer who promptly demolished it. While the demolition of a well-designed and well-constructed building scarcely 35 years old prompted some comment from a few lonely souls, their protests were quieted, as they always are, by the promises of things to come.

Bank of Montreal building in Edmonton, Alberta prior to demolition. — Bank of Montreal building prior to demolition.

As the years passed, the more cynical among us were hardly surprised to discover that in place of the glittering, cosmopolitan mixed-use highrise we were promised, we’ve had a fenced-off, rubble-strewn void. In a bid to officially end this sad chapter in the life of one of the city’s most prominent intersections, the developer responsible for the demolition listed the site for sale in November.

While listening to last week’s episode of Speaking Municipally, I learned of a potential buyer with a new proposal for the site. At the January 20 meeting of the Edmonton Design Committee, Westrich Pacific presented a proposal to convert the site into a parking lot that includes planting, public art, and a cafe. This scheme was presented as an interim measure, to remain in place until market conditions allow for the development of a high-rise.

While the proposal is well-intentioned and would unquestionably represent an improvement relative to what’s currently on the site, I worry that it’s simply a more conscientious version of the story told by the previous developer (and so many before them): accept this suboptimal thing now, because it will lead to better things at some point in the future.

There is currently a misalignment in Edmonton between the development outcomes the market is producing and those desired by the city at large. The crux of the problem is that it is, at the moment, difficult to profitably develop buildings downtown. The solution proposed by Westrich is to wait (possibly a very long time, if history is any guide) until this is different.

Instead of waiting, we might ask a different question: how could we change the conditions such that building here becomes viable now?

Various cities have used variations of the model below:

1. The City (often via an arm’s-length development corporation) acquires strategic land

2. The City creates a development brief outlining objectives it wishes to see achieved. For the BMO site, this might involve guidelines around scale, the inclusion of a residential component (possibly including some amount of affordable housing), expectations around architectural quality, etc.

3. Proposals are solicited from developer teams, including a land price and a detailed plan demonstrating how the brief will be satisfied.

4. The preferred proponent is awarded the site subject to a development agreement, often including performance conditions (such as timelines for construction, minimum investment thresholds, or a reversion clause if the project does not proceed).

The key idea here is not designing the building itself, but designing the conditions under which a building that meets the City’s goals can profitably be developed.

Woodward’s Development in Vancouver (left) and Via Verde development in New York (right), both developed using a scheme similar to the one described above.

The parameters included in the development brief will (almost by definition) pull the development toward the City’s goals and away from pure market viability. For this reason, the price for which the site is awarded to the winning developer may indeed be below the price paid by the City. In other words, the development is subsidized, which is how the goals of the City and the outcome provided by the market are brought into alignment.

Some would no doubt object to such a subsidy, but I’d argue that subsidy is already a structural feature of urban development. Much ink has been spilled about the money lavished on greenfield suburban development in the form of arterial road expansions, stormwater infrastructure, and long-term maintenance liabilities that are quietly absorbed into the City’s general tax base. Perhaps less widely known outside of our industry is the role of government-subsidized financing in aiding the proliferation of multi-family infill development (e.g. 8-plexes). Further examples abound. The question is not whether to subsidize—it’s what outcomes to subsidize. I believe this is better viewed as a regrettable cost of doing business than as a barrier to action.

Some may point also to the current state of the City’s finances, but it’s not as if the City isn’t already spending money on “downtown revitalization” writ large (and considering spending more). In place of a per-door subsidy for office-to-residential conversions, for example, I’d personally much rather see resources strategically concentrated in important, high-priority locations than sprinkled diffusely over the vast area that comprises our downtown. A single, uncompromisingly good building in the right place does more for downtown than a dozen half-measures spread thin.

I have no idea regarding the current status of Westrich’s offer on the site; by the time I publish this, the sale may well be a fait accompli. In any event, I think we need to pause to consider these sorts of stop-gap proposals, which seem to have become more prevalent in recent years. While they feel progressive, I worry that they structurally reward delay, by removing urgency and making the deplorable states of some of these sites easier to tolerate or ignore.

We don’t need more open space downtown. We need more buildings.

I’ve become an avid follower of Australian residential architecture. Although there is undoubtedly some fine residential work happening in Canada (particularly in Quebec), as a whole the scale and quality of what is happening in Australia is so vastly beyond what’s happening in North America it boggles the mind. I’m a particular fan of the residential architecture being produced in Queensland (namely Brisbane) which is, in my opinion, made exceptional by its clear evocation of place.

Queenslander. Image courtesy of Vokes and Peters

Aided by a temperate climate, a distinctive local building tradition (as exemplified by the Queenslander), and a stretch of influential professors at the University of Queensland, Brisbane has a number of practices producing work that to my northwestern prairies eye appears to be exceptionally grounded in its context. I see in these projects transitions between indoor and outdoor attenuated to an almost ludicrous extent, finely-crafted details inspired by a tradition of thoughtful but unpretentious carpentry, and the practical forms and materials of the Queenslander deployed in novel and contemporary ways. These, and a number of other similar qualities, give the work of these practices a loose feeling of unity that is, to my eye, particular.

Red Hill House and Studio, Zuzana and Nicholas

Since discovering this work I’ve frequently tried to incorporate some of its ideas into our projects. When I’ve done so in an overly literal way, this impulse has quickly collided with reality (Edmonton is a city in which reality is particularly pushy and insistent). A 20 foot long sliding glass wall connecting directly to the backyard will be spectacular, but only for three months a year (and will probably need a bug screen). Permeable pavers look amazing, but probably aren’t going to react well to snow clearance. Lean and minimal entries are space efficient, but where do people put their parkas and snowy boots? Etc. etc.

In other words, you can’t just take an architecture of Australia and copy/paste it into Edmonton. This prompts a question that applies more broadly in this peculiar city of ours, in which we copy/paste a lot of things from elsewhere: what does an architecture for Edmonton look like? What would our houses look like if we reduced the extent to which we uncritically imported ideas from elsewhere, and began to embrace the peculiarities of working here? Would our houses begin to take on qualities that, while they deviated from conventional norms in some ways, carried a distinctiveness and self-possession? If we lack the natural gifts that have allowed a city like Brisbane to become the Brad Pitt of residential architecture, could embracing our peculiarities give us the character and distinctiveness that might allow us to become the Willem Dafoe?

On an aesthetic level, exploring that question is the central motivation of our practice. Architecture is slow, so we’re of course very early along in our exploration, but here are some of our initial ideas:

Thickness

Modern architecture tends to want to make things thin – roof edges, mullions, joints, etc. This is hard and expensive to do in a place like Edmonton where we need insulation. What would it look like if we go the other way – can we use thickness in a beautiful way, to create power, presence, and solidity?

Basements

In Edmonton, you need to dig down about 5 feet to get below the frostline to put down your footings. This is part of the reason basements are so prevalent here vs other parts of the world – if you’ve got to excavate that far and build foundation walls that tall, why not go 2-3 feet farther and get an extra storey?

When I was young, basements were frequently unfinished or minimally finished, and in either scenario they were the domain of kids, projects, and work–all very useful in a place where it’s not very fun to go outside for half the year. When I think back to my childhood, so many of my fondest memories are set within basements – playing knee hockey, video games, or Ukrainian pool, trying to be quiet at the end of the night so our parents who were upstairs visiting didn’t hear us and be reminded it was time to go home. We’re interested in finding ways to preserve the wonderful flexibility and informality of basements while also mitigating some of their less desirable aspects (namely lack of views / light).

Pragmatism

I’d speculate that the difficulty of scratching out a living on the Canadian prairies in the pre-industrial era led to theories about the way things ought to be frequently being set aside in favour of more immediate concerns (e.g. figuring out the food before winter), and that this is the genesis of the pragmatism which I perceive to persist to this day in our corner of the world. This is a place that, I think, tends to favour the real and the practical over the abstract. This of course runs counter to some of the core tenets of modernism as expressed in art and architecture, but it’s a quality we strive to embrace in our architecture and detailing – directness, practicality, and solidity.

Semi-outdoor spaces

So much of modern architecture emphasizes the connection between indoor and out. Particularly as manufacturing technology has improved, this is done via increasingly large sliding or folding windows that connect interior spaces to adjacent exterior spaces that are themselves finished to increasingly interior-like conditions. Our climate makes this type of indoor-outdoor connection less practical on a number of levels, but we’re exploring “semi-outdoor” spaces as a means to provide some of this feeling in a way that works better on an energy/envelope level and makes these spaces useful for more of the year. These spaces mitigate the challenging aspects of our climate with roofs, walls, sources of heat, insect screens, etc., but still provide outdoor connection, and do so in a way that is integrated with the underlying architecture of the house.

Form

What is the archetypal Edmonton house? What forms carry meaning? We lack Brisbane’s Queenslander, Montreal’s stacked triplexes or Atlantic Canada’s saltboxes. Most of our older houses are either rather unremarkable craftsman-esque affairs that are essentially lower-quality imitations of their more westerly progenitors or mass-produced post-war CMHC standard plan boxes.

My sense is that the 60s to 80s were something of a golden age in Edmonton – a period of sustained economic growth and optimism that saw the city increase dramatically in size, prominence, and confidence (very different, in spite of the current rapid growth, to the scorned and self-loathing period it currently finds itself in). The houses from this period seem to reflect this optimism. I think particularly of the sloped roof bungalows and split levels that in the evening emanate warm light from which you can practically feel the many Saturday nights spent within playing cards or watching hockey.

A city as diverse and historically young as ours is never going to have a singular iconic form, but I do think that houses like this are prevalent enough that their form does, for many, carry some meaning that new projects have the potential to access.

Open space

Much has been made of Edmonton’s lack of density. (In the wake of the zoning bylaw renewal this is a bit of a live issue, so I tread lightly here…) I agree that increasing the density in our residential neighbourhoods would have a number of benefits, but I also do think that we should acknowledge the benefits of our present condition. It is nice to have a back yard big enough to host a barbeque, kick a soccer ball around, plant a garden, etc. (Vokes and Peters, a Brisbane practice, have written elegantly about this). In our work, even when we are increasing the built density, we try to be mindful of the positive qualities of the open space we’re replacing and embrace the possibilities that it offers.

Light wood framing

I think there is a general disdain among architects for light wood framing (which is, by far, the dominant mode of construction for residential construction in Canada and the US). Relative to more properly architectural alternatives like concrete, steel, masonry, or mass timber, it tends to be seen as impermanent and lacking in material character. While this is to some extent true, it is also economical, flexible, fast, and low carbon. We’re interested in finding ways to express the potentiality of light wood framing, by exploiting things like the ability of truss manufacturers to fabricate trusses with complex geometry with relatively little additional cost.

This is a partial and provisional list of ideas that will continue to change and evolve alongside our practice, but it for now represents some of the ways we’re thinking about what an architecture more particular to this place might look like.

Designing the conditions for development

An architecture for Edmonton