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 particularly exceptional by its clear evocation of place.
Aided by a distinct and temperate climate, a distinctive local building tradition (as exemplified by the Queenslander), and a long 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, 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.
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).
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 architecture 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 grow 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 they 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.
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.