Fall 2010

Winners of our 13th annual Design Awards

BEST OF CANADA

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Fall 2010 VOL.47 NO.7

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Canadian Interiors magazine is published by BIG Magazines LP, a division of Glacier BIG Holdings Company Ltd. Tel: 416-442-5600, Fax: 416-510-6875 e-mail: info@canadianinteriors.com website: www.canadianinteriors.com Canadian Interiors publishes seven issues, plus a source guide, per year. Printed in Canada. The content of this publication is the property of Canadian Interiors and cannot be reproduced without permission from the publisher. Subscription rates Canada $36.95 per year; plastic wrapped $39.95 per year (plus taxes) U.S.A. $69.95 US per year, Overseas $95.00 US per year. Back issues Back copies are available for $10 for delivery in Canada, $15 US for delivery in U.S.A. and $20 overseas. Please send payment to Canadian Interiors, 12 Concorde Place, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M3C 4J2 or order online www.canadianinteriors.com For subscription and back issues inquiries please call 416-442-5600 ext.3543, e-mail: circulation@canadianinteriors.com, or go to our website at: www.canadianinteriors.com Newsstands For information on Canadian Interiors on newsstands in Canada, call 905-619-6565 Canadian Interiors is indexed in the Canadian Magazine Index by Micromedia ProQuest Company, Toronto (www.micromedia.com) and National Archive Publishing Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan (www.napubco.com).

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Fall 2010

Official publication of the Interior Designers of Canada

CONTENTS 13 Annual Best of Canada Design Awards

On the cover (clockwise from top left): Woolwich Memorial Centre; Spring Rolls Conestoga; Sauder School of Business; The Royal Conservatory, Telus Centre for Performance and Learning; Rennie Offices + Gallery; LoyaltyOne (Air Miles Reward Program) Customer Care Centre; Brown Thomas Luxury Hall. BEST OF CANADA WINNERS The Royal Conservatory, Telus Centre for Performance and Learning Brown Thomas Luxury Hall LoyaltyOne (Air Miles Reward Program) Customer Care Centre Rennie Offices + Gallery Woolwich Memorial Centre Sauder School of Business Spring Rolls Conestoga Osteria Ciceri e Tria Private Residence West Vancouver Southbrook Vineyards 10 14 16 18 20 21 22 24 The Room at The Bay PaperStone Scissors Exhibit at IDS09 Crystal Clear Audi installation at IDS09 25 26 28 29 30

Bloor/Gladstone Branch Library 31 Vanilla Tisch system Stalac Coffee Table 33 34 34

Canadian Interiors would like to extend a big thanks to Allsteel, for the use of the Toronto Resource Centre, at which the judging for the 13th annual Best of Canada Design Awards was held.

2010

DEC.1-3

Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building

The Show for Architects, Corporate Executives, Facililty Managers and Interior Designers
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13th annual Best of Canada Design Competition

Call us a national treasure. Canadian Interiors Best of Canada Design Competition is the countrys only design competition to focus on interior design projects and products without regard to size, budget or location. We welcome submissions from interior designers, architects, interior architects, decorators, crafts persons and students. This year, we received 124 entries in nine categories: Office, Institutional, Hospitality, Residential, Retail, Marketing (including Exhibits and Showrooms), Landscape Design, Student Design and Product Design. The projects and products were each judged anonymously and on their individual merit. After careful consideration, dialogue and debate, our panel of five judges chose 17 winners (with only Student Design not represented), including two Projects of the Year. We would like to thank our five judges, for their expertise and enthusiasm: Tania Bortolotto, principal, Bortolotto Architects; William Elsworthy, of Elsworthy Wang Studio and Teeple Architects; Jason MacIsaac, owner of Ministry of the Interior; Drew Mandel, principal, Drew Mandel Design; and Samantha Sannella, president and CEO of the Design Exchange. Its an honour for us to honour such fine work.

By David Lasker

8 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

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PROJECT OF THE YEAR

The Royal Conservatory, Telus Centre for Performance and Learning, Toronto
Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, Toronto

10 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects (KPMB) and The Royal Conservatory go way back to 1991, when the firm master-planned the music schools vision for its future a hybrid facility that, as built out, includes 43 teaching and practice studios, the 150-seat Conservatory Theatre and the 1,135-seat Koerner Hall. The Theatre replicates the acoustic quality and stage size of the main Koerner Hall to prepare students for live performance. To make Koerner seem unusually intimate for its seat count, KPMB partner Marianne McKenna wanted the ceiling to appear lower. She also wanted to conceal the utilitarian-looking lighting, rigging and loudspeakers. Robert Essert of Sound Space Design, the mastermind behind the excellent acoustics, explained to her that for sound considerations, the ceiling had to be an open grid. McKenna responded in inspired fashion, creating a floating veil of oak strings that became the halls signature icon, adapted for the logo graphics. These wood elements begin behind the chorus as a vertical backdrop to the stage and then twist to flow under the acoustic canopy, where they act to disperse sound. Sinuously curved balconies wrap the tall, shoebox-shaped room, optimizing sightlines. The project includes three tiers of glass-fronted lobbies, back-of-house areas for performers, a caf at ground level; and an installation of unique antique musical instruments donated by Michael and Sonja Koerner, which concertgoers waiting on the ticket line particularly appreciate. Each lobby level has its own bar and offers magnificent views of the University of Toronto and the city. The triple-height main lobby, with limestone floors, accommodates 200 guests for seated dinners.
Design team: Marianne McKenna (design partner), Robert Sims (associate-in-charge), Dave Smythe (project architect) and Meika McCunn (project architect); plus Carolyn Lee, Frances Lago, Dan Benson, Krista Clark, Bill Colaco, George Friedman, Ramon Janer, Erik Jensen, David Jesson, John Mestito, Gary Yen, Robin Ramcharan, Rita Kiriakis, Lexi Kolt-Wagner, Scott Pomeroy, Olga Pushkar, Mark Simpson, Jimmy Sun, Deborah Wang, Chris Wegner, Norm Li and Clare Radford

Photos by Tom Arban (upper right) and Eduard Hueber/Arch Photo (left and lower right)

Best of Canada Fall 2010 CANADIAN INTERIORS 11

1968 Social environmental movements take hold.

WHO SHAPES THE FUTURE OF GREEN DESIGN?

You do.

1978 Earth Day brings awareness to Earths need for continual care.

What was once a quiet evolution has become a revolutionary force. Your desire for sustainable design has helped redefine the meaning of green. Since we began making nora rubber flooring over 50 years ago, weve evolved with you.

1988 1,000 communities in America initiate curbside recycling.

Your concern for the environment continues to create new standards for designing in harmony with nature. It is why we continually explore ways to blend the best of technology with greener thinking.

mo

1998 EPA launches voluntary programs for energy, water, indoor air quality, waste and smart growth.

It starts with you. You and your challenges. You and your world. You and nora.

2008 U.S. Green Building Council member organizations grow to 15,000.

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PROJECT OF THE YEAR

Brown Thomas Luxury Hall, Dublin, Ireland

Burdifilek, Toronto

The new Luxury Hall marks Burdifileks third plum job at the Dublin, Ireland, flagship of luxury department store Brown Thomas. It follows on the heels, as it were, of the Brown Thomas Womens Designer Collections and Shoe Departments in 2006 and the Mens Concourse World in 2008. The Luxury Hall, dedicated to fine jewelry, watches and luxury gifts, is laid out as a piazza with enclaves for brands like Cartier and Tiffany projecting beyond the main area. The perimeter is sheathed in subtly reflective dichroic glass, the colour delicately shifting with light and movement as shoppers move through the space. Invisible floating vitrines are suspended on modulated transparent glass walls, allowing for a glimpse through to the adjacent in-store boutiques. Underfoot is a honed marble floor, in mottled creamy shades of taupe, cream and caf-au-lait, while soft lighting further accentuates the shimmering, gold-hued iridescence throughout. Semi-circular glass display cases appear to float, cantilevered over sandblasted, champagne-coloured bases made of Starfire glass (a lead-free glass that lacks the usual greenish tinge). Oystercoloured suede displays provide an inconspicuous backdrop for the jewelry itself, allowing the product to take centre stage. The curving display counters encourage meandering and lead shoppers through the space. Taking a multilayered approach that blurs boundaries and dematerializes space, Burdifilek creative director Diego Burdi sheathed the big structural columns in mirrored glass, draperies of various lengths, and floor-to-ceiling sculptural assemblages of glinting, polished nickel rods suspended on wires. The rods reflections further enliven a ceiling already made interesting by the freeform, cove-lit cutouts above the column tops. Burdi cites as his inspiration for the sculptures Harry Bertoia, who is best
14 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

remembered for his wire-basket-framed chairs for Knoll. However, a more proximate retro-era precedent would be Robert Lippolds Orpheus and Apollo stabile (1962), made of hundreds of slender copper planks suspended from the ceiling of the piano nobile at Lincoln Centers Avery Fisher Hall in New York.

Design team: Diego Burdi, Paul Filek, Tom Yip, Jeremy Mendonca, Jacky Ngan, William Lau, Helen Chen, Anthony Tey, Edwin Reyes, Amy Chen and Wilson Lau

Photos by Ben Rahn/A-Frame

Best of Canada Fall 2010 CANADIAN INTERIORS 15

OFFICE

Loyalty0ne (Air Miles Reward Program) Customer Care Centre, Toronto

Figure3, Toronto

It must have seemed like a brilliant idea at first: bringing power and data to the desktop down from the ceiling, by means of slender metal power poles, instead of fishing it up from the floor. Brilliant until the poles began to rattle when people walked by and tilt slightly, lending a touch of rinky-dink to many an otherwise crisp corporate interior. Figure3 highlighted this typical office

shortcoming at the LoyaltyOne Customer Care Centre in Toronto, tweaked it and turned it into a witty, colourful branding feature that repeats as a giant-scale stencil on the fenestration. Along the way, the designers transformed the large, 50,000-square-foot bullpen into a memorable work space. Extra-tall poles stretch diagonally from the floor to the joists supporting the

20-foot-high ceiling. Collectively, the crisscrossed poles stride through the open-concept space like a battalion of colossal Pick-up Sticks, their distinctive colours seemingly imbuing the poles with different personalities. The blue poles evoke the corporate colour of LoyaltyOnes ubiquitous Air Miles Reward collector card. Further to reinforce the clients branding message, thousands of blue card blanks were painstakingly assembled to form privacy screens hooding seating areas that function as intimate collaboration pods within the sprawling open space. These pods contribute an increase in conference areas by half. While downsizing is often a downer, the lively open space helps the medicine go down, the medicine being a reduction in personal real estate for the 400 customer reps from 140 to 125 square feet. The democratic space planning also helps ensure high morale. All staff share equal access to daylight and views, thanks to the low panel heights of workstations in the open areas. A variety of formal and informal meeting areas, a caf, lunchroom, games room, quiet room, knowledge lab, prayer rooms, massage room and several lounges ensure that workers will collaborate across their departmental silos. Figure3 assisted the client in the initial search for an energy-saving site and evaluated the costs of a 10-year LEED program featuring an 800-panel solar rooftop array (Canadas largest). Solatubes (a light-piping system) direct daylight to the centre of the work area, reducing glare and minimizing power draw for interior lighting. And workers enjoy sitting near operable windows.
Design team: partners Christopher Wright and Caroline Hughes; senior team leaders Darryl Balaski, Erin Armstrong and Eric Yorath; team leaders Jackie Prawecki, Steve Tsai and Angela Stinson; project designers Bradley Marks, Laura Burke and Pavel Voronenko

16 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

Photo by Richard Johnson

Best of Canada Fall 2010 CANADIAN INTERIORS 17

INSTITUTIONAL

Rennie Offices + Gallery, Vancouver

mgb Architecture + Design, Vancouver

Vancouvers first Chinese school lives again in the new Rennie Offices and Gallery. Like a fine wine, it exploits artifacts of the old structure to add layers of depth and complexity to the crisply Modernist new one. Walter Francl Architects inserted its handiwork into a pair of 1880s masonry buildings in Vancouvers Chinatown that were undergoing extensive heritage revitalization; while mgb (formerly knowns as mcfarlane / green / biggar) designed the interiors. The project joins a six-storey brick laneway building with a three-storey streetfront brick building. The unusual program accommodates two diverse sets of activities: a busy real estate marketing office and a private gallery housing the owners extensive collection of contemporary art. The office area evokes the rawness of the original school with an elegant grid of reveals cut into knotty, grainy pine wood panelling on the back wall. The schoolhouse room was preserved intact and adapted as a meeting room. The gallery area comprises a main large gallery punctuated by clerestory windows, a skylit middle gallery, a dark smaller gallery for video or light-controlled installations, a tall slot gallery with openings that expose the underlying heritage masonry, and a cellar-level gallery. As for being green, wood from the building was reclaimed and repurposed throughout the project into doors, washroom partitions, meeting tables, the reception desk and wall storage.
Design team: mgb principals Michele Biggar, Michael Green and Steven McFarlane; with Susan Scott and Tracey Mactavish

18 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

Photo by Nic Lehoux

INSTITUTIONAL

Woolwich Memorial Centre, Elmira, Ont.

MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects, Toronto

The Woolwich Memorial Centre in Elmira consolidates the Township of Woolwichs recreational programs into a single public complex. As a memorial to Dan Snyder, the late NHL player and native of the southwestern Ontario town, the Woolwich Memorial Centre serves as an important civic building. Indeed, this structure is more a multiuse project than an athletic centre: the arena converts into a convention and entertainment venue. The building layout is based on a cruciform plan, with the arena in the north and the swimming pool and community areas to the south. Transparent interior glazing ensures excellent sight-

lines and views of all the activities from the central spine. The design resolution expresses the idea of community layering through the overlapping of program and the layering of colour and material texture. The material choices corrugated metal, wood and masonry establish a muted colour palette that offers a neutral backdrop. Users enliven this base layer with the colours of their team jerseys and sports paraphernalia. Graphic elements provide wayfinding cues, easing traffic flow throughout the building. For instance, a teal ribbon starts in the aquatic hall and continues into the

concourse where it wraps around the reception counter. The cost of the 117,500-square-foot project was $20.3-million, but this tight budget didnt deter the designers from having their fun. In the aquatic area, complementary red and blue rectangular inserts in the window wall liven up the otherwise austere space with a jivey Mondrianesque boogie-woogie.
Design team: David Miller, Viktors Jaunkalns, John MacLennan, Andrew Filarski, Dan Kronby, Mark Downing, Chen Cohen, Chris Burbidge, Nicolas Choy and Troy Wright

20 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

Photo by Tom Arban

Sauder School of Business, Vancouver

Acton Ostry Architects, Vancouver

INSTITUTIONAL

The University of British Columbias Sauder School of Business has expanded steadily since the original Henry Angus Classroom Block and Henry Angus Office Tower were constructed in 1965. This latest campaign by Acton Ostry Architects includes the insertion of a five-level

addition and atrium on the west side of the existing classroom block. The skylit atrium links the addition to the existing building to bring order to the complex through the creation of a central circulation spine at the heart of the school. The new addition accommodates lecture

theatres, breakout rooms, an undergraduate centre, student social space and learning commons. The most distinctive new component is the leadership centres tiered lecture theatre. The giant glulam beams that support the wooden ceiling bend along the curving wall at the rear, evoking giant hockey sticks. Together with the concentric rows of desks, the room makes statements about B.C.s blond, woody regional style and the lecture hall as community hockey arena. Passive solar shading combined with fritted glazing reduces heat gain and glare. The renovated and revitalized ground floor incorporates new graduate and business career centres that are linked with lounge areas, informal study spaces, a caf and a student store. Russell Acton, principal at Acton Ostry Architects, explains that The rhythm of the existing building structure reminded us of a barcode. To that end, he wrapped the disparate additions in a unifying, new glazed facade embellished with barcode in the guise of green and blue wood panels that spell out the schools name. These colours, in turn, derive from the palette of influential B.C. painters, such as Jack Shadbolt, B.C. Binning and Emily Carr. The interior integrates wayfinding and a donor-recognition program featuring images of forest scenes and donor portraits. The images are made of international currency symbols used as pixels a witty touch.
Design team: Russell Acton, Mark Ostry, Alex Percy, Stewart Child, Antonio Colin, AnnaLisa Meyboom, Ryan McCuaig, Peter Padley, Volker Ritter, Rafael Santa Ana, Mark Simpson, Nebo Slijepcevic, Hannah Teicher, Sergei Vahkrameev, Andrew Weyrauch, Matthew Wood and David Zeibin

Photo by Nic Lehoux

Best of Canada Fall 2010 CANADIAN INTERIORS 21

HOSPITALITY

Spring Rolls Conestoga, Waterloo, Ont.

Dialogue 38, Toronto

Spring Rolls has popularized pan-Asian cuisine in Toronto since its founding in 1996. The chains motto Quality without the price, style without the attitude speaks to the replacing of the image of the grungy downtown food mill often associated with Far Eastern dining with upmarket, yuppie-acceptable eateries. Bennett Lo, who heads interior design firm Dialogue 38, is the designer behind this long-running merchandising metamorphosis. Moving westward, Spring Rolls recently brought its franchise to Waterloo, Ont., at the newly expanded and renovated Conestoga Mall. The venue draws university students and trendy young professionals. Lo tricked out the space with enough glitz and glitter to satisfy a Las Vegas high-roller, let alone local diners in search of moderately priced ethnic eats. But, as ever, the designers imaginative detailing stops short of looking overly fussy or mannered. In the vestibule, light sculptures hang from the 22-foot ceiling. The 12-foot-long reception desk glows with a sexy, backlit, honey onyx cladding. Behind the desk rises a metal grid whose voids form a wine-display wall. Colour-changing LED lighting adds a sense of movement here and in the adjoining bar and lounge, where the Spring Rolls logo adorns white textured walls. In the dining room, attention focuses on the massive lighting feature, 24 feet long and three feet wide, with multiple rows of internally illuminated, eight-foot crystal strands. The rooms 14-foot-high ceiling tapers downward to help frame the piece. The logo recurs on computer-cut white acrylic, adding texture to the ceiling, and on bronze mirror wall panels. Even the trek to the upper-level bathrooms is memorable. The staircases red, linear-textured walls are dimly lit from a custom light panel in the ceiling that is branded, again, with the eaterys logo.
Design team: principals Bennet Lo and Raul Delgado; Marya Hwyn and Wendy Wang

22 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

Photo by Eric Lau

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HOSPITALITY

Osteria Ciceri e Tria, Toronto

Giannone Petricone Associates Architects, Toronto

An osteria is an Italian tavern where family, friends and neighbours share some wine, find out the days gossip, and taste what the oste, or host, has decided to make that day. In this case, it signifies the traditional Italian restaurant serving moderately priced, authentic cuisine from Puglia (a region in the Italian boot), that Cosimo Mammoliti, owner of Terroni in Toronto and Los Angeles, had long planned to open. On the edge of Torontos business district, this 60-seat restaurant presents itself as small refuge from the anonymity of the big city, offering instant community. Entry through the artisanal storefront suggests to visitors that they are in for a treat with some Old World hospitality. Once inside, however, they see that Giannone Petricone Associates has made the rustic modern. Surfaces of reclaimed wood and stripped boards are routered with machine precision and fitted out with polished and powdercoated hardware. A peg wall of uniformly distributed, crisply cut slots, pegs and shelves is fully adaptable and easily reconfigured for displays. On the walls, snapshots emphasize the family in family tavern, while squiggles and place names plot the routes of the Giro dItalia bicycle race. At the centre of the room, industriallooking, yellow articulated swinging lamps contrast against the predominantly warm, woody tones. The lamps illuminate the tavalone, a 20-seat communal table where strangers socialize and presumably enjoy a dinner-party atmosphere. At each place setting, the table edges are inscribed with an Italian name. During their visit, patrons are identified by this persona rather than by table numbers. The flour-covered pasta-making butcher block by day becomes an eight-person dining table by night. Carved on the table is the recipe for the restaurants signature dish: ciceri e tria, chick peas with fried Tria pasta (traditional pasta from Lecce). As for the green quotient, interior
24 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

walls, tables and benches are made from reclaimed timber chosen to imbue the interior with warmth and informality, while ensuring that the restaurant is acoustically suitable, durable and easy to maintain.

Design team: Ralph Giannone, Pina Petricone, Michael Rietta, Tom Kanellopoulos, Leland Dadson, Sacha Ferro-Townsend and Reza Aliabadi

Photo by Ben Rahn/A-Frame

Private Residence, West Vancouver, B.C.

Mitchell Freedland Design, Vancouver

RESIDENTIAL

This 1,250-square-foot, second-floor master suite is an addition to an existing Modernist beach house, located on a steep site with spectacular vistas of B.C. waters. The design challenge was to create a seamless interior envelope that respected the minimalist structure while infusing a sense of warmth in the new environment. The floor plan responds to the panoramic views and the buildings trapezoidal footprint. A flat-screen television and fireplace were positioned as an organizational device between the lounge and bed. A Starfire glass partition defines the bed and bath areas, its clarity enhancing the dramatic views from the bath area. Skylights demarcate the bath area and provide abundant natural light. Their form

and rhythm follow the existing skylights in the lower floor, bowing to the established vocabulary and providing a measure of design continuity. The ceiling drops over the open bath and the woodpanelled rear plane and storage wall. The edge of the drop is lit to emphasize the ceiling form. The materials palette was pared down to avoid competing with the views. The panelling of rift-cut white oak offers a change from the dominant white and supplies the sense of warmth requested by the client. Another exception to the controlled scheme is the sensuous counterpoint of the taupe, velvet-draped closet, a surprise element that the client loved.

All furnishings, including pendant fixtures and backlit mirrors, were customdesigned for the space. The exception is the circa-1957 acrylic Lily chair from Erwin and Estelle LaVernes Invisible series, at the sink vanity.
Design team: Mitchell Freedland, assisted by Aaron MacKenzie-Moore

Photo by Ed White

Best of Canada Fall 2010 CANADIAN INTERIORS 25

RETAIL

Southbrook Vineyards, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

Diamond and Schmitt Architects, Toronto

Svelte, seductive new Southbook Vineyards, located on a 150-acre estate, offers a reason other than the traffic jams on the Queen Elizabeth Way for Shaw Festival theatregoers to allow extra time for the drive. A bridge over a reflecting pool leads to a single glazed entrance that punctuates the solidity of the 9-foot-high, 650-footlong landscape wall. Its sleek, long, low lines connect with the flat landscape as surely as does the elongated hip roof of a Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie house. The wall opens onto a delicate, 8,000-square-

foot glass pavilion juxtaposed against the wall that houses retail and hospitality facilities. In the pavilion, floor-to-ceiling glazing offers panoramic views of the vineyards. The interior vistas also intrigue, thanks to the full-height vitrines holding French oak barrels of wine that define spaces within the building. Contrasting colour-blocked wall sectors and grainy wood panelling warm the spatial envelope. Wine-bottle displays in horizontal niches carved into the landscape wall add a tactile, sculptural note.

The project achieved its sustainable design target of LEED Gold, one of only three wineries in North America to gain the coveted designation.
Design team: Jack Diamond and Martin Davidson, principals; Walton Chan, project architect; plus Malini Rao Smirnis, Cynthia Toyota and Carl Madsen

26 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

Photo by Tom Arban

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RETAIL

The Room at The Bay, Toronto

Yabu Pushelberg, Toronto

Forgettable name notwithstanding, The Room is the iconic boutique in the Hudsons Bay Company flagship where generations of status-conscious females have spent serious cash on elegant outfits. In the past decade or so that sterling image grew tarnished. The boutique suffered along with the rest of The Bay as ownership

changed hands and the entire departmentstore niche faced unprecedented competition from big-box and stand-alone specialty stores. Enter The Bays latest president and CEO, Bonnie Brooks. Hardly your typical bean counter, the former Flare editor and Holt Renfrew VP made a bold bid to restore

The Rooms supremacy by engaging Yabu Pushelberg to redesign it. With clients like New Yorks Bergdorf Goodman and Tiffanys on their roster, George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg are past masters at high-end retail. Yabu Pushelberg unified the 20,000-square-foot space by giving it a cohesive point of view rather than trying to reflect the identity of each retail brand. The designers subdivided the shop into distinct zones delineated with visually permeable screens. These were seemingly assembled from oversize shish-kabob skewers bearing not meat or mushrooms, but rounded-edge glass rectangles. (This retro motif dates back to a fabric pattern popularized by futuristic 60s French fashion designer Andr Courrges, father of the miniskirt.) The screens openness allows daylight to flow unimpeded, which reflects and sparkles on the silvery metal fittings, gleaming glass and white-on-white scheme. The palette creates a gracious, neutral backdrop for the hits of colour provided by the merchandise displays. In turn, these opportunities are offered sparingly, another indicator of luxury retail (as opposed to junking-up the shelves with quantity). Indeed, the busiest zone, surprisingly, is the ceiling, where swirling, curving rods and a flock of abstracted blackbirds create sculptural interest, while adding a dollop of residential intimacy by seeming to drop the base-building ceiling height. In the footwear area, characterized by sweeping Deco curves in the walls and overscale ottomans, ghostly laurel-crown cartouches allude to The Bays ancient aristocratic history (it is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world).
Design team: George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg, Reggie Andrade, Abraham Chan, Eduardo Figueredo, Julian Kim, Eric Lam, Anson Lee, Sunny Leung, Teresa Leung, Mary Mark, Rand Patterson, Shida Salehi, Kevin Storey and Maria Tsang

28 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

Photo by Evan Dion

PaperStone Scissors exhibit at IDS09, Toronto

Plant Architect, Toronto

EXHIBIT

PaperStone Scissors was commissioned by the Interior Design Show for its 2009 Collaborations series, which pairs a supplier and designer with the challenge of creating an installation using only the suppliers material. Warm to the touch and without the plastic feel or look of many solid surfaces, PaperStone, the material in question, is a water- and fire-resistant, layered and compressed sandwich made in North America from post-consumer recycled paper and non-petroleum resins. It is LEED-qualifying and FSC-certified. PaperStone is unusually strong, smooth and monolithic, easily accepts patterning and can be cut precisely. The material normally finds use as a countertop or exterior wall cladding. Plant Architect used it to create an environment of cut

screens inspired by Japanese shoji screens (which are light, thin and precise) and paper dolls repeatedly cut with scissors. High in the priority of design criteria was for the installation to be assembled quickly and packaged easily for shipping to subsequent trade shows. Plant Architect partner Lisa Rapoport recalls that they used a tangram, the Chinese dissection puzzle, as their model to make sure that any pieces cut out of the sheet would fit back into it for flat packing la Ikea. Because the material is strong and holds a precise edge when cut, Rapoport surmised that the screens could be self-supporting. The installation, then, is a series of CNC-cut screens joined by PaperStone connectors and additionally CNC surface-engraved. Shelves were keyed

in with slots and wedges made from PaperStone. There were no other materials, connectors or glue. The entire project was cut and engraved in four days, assembled at the show in four hours and dismantled in two, with no waste produced. The installation demonstrates several PaperStone finishes. The shelves were either spray lacquered or left with their selvage edges (self-finished edges that keep the material from unravelling or fraying). The panels were oiled and the connectors were left raw.
Design team: Lisa Rapoport, Chris Pommer, Mary Tremain, Vanessa Eickhhoff, Matt Hartney and Lisa Dietrich

Photo by Peter Legris

Best of Canada Fall 2010 CANADIAN INTERIORS 29

EXHIBIT

Crystal Clear Audi installation at IDS09, Toronto

3rd Uncle, Toronto

Crystal Clear, a feature installation at the 2009 Interior Design Show at Torontos Direct Energy Centre, interwove several distinct brand messages. It highlighted Audis participation in the show as a major sponsor, showcased the new Audi Q5 automobile in its first public appearance outside the auto tradeshow circuit, and aligned the Audi brand with design excellence in an audience of design professionals.

The 25-foot-tall custom steel-frame structure was clad in translucent, reflective Mylar panels and suspended eight feet above the show floor. Mylar panels offset diagonally within the double-panel-height frame lent the installation a complex, crystalline appearance alluding to the shows Audi-sponsored Swarovski Crystal exhibit. The installations crystal metaphor underlined the cars luxury status. Inside the suspended ring, fluorescent

strips shone onto the Q5 and transformed the installation into an elegant beacon. The space defined by the ring overhung the public corridor by seven feet on two sides, blurring the line of entry and opening up the space as an inviting meeting place.
Design team: partner John Tong and Robert Micacchi

30 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

Bloor/Gladstone Branch Library, Toronto

RDH Architects, Toronto

LANDSCAPE DESIGN

The Bloor/Gladstone Library, designed by Chapman and McGiffen Architects in 1912, is a listed heritage building in downtown Toronto. Despite that distinction, it had become dilapidated and dysfunctional. RDH Architects was commissioned to design an additional 12,000 square feet, bringing the collection and facilities up to the standards of the Toronto District Library, the largest library system in North America. The intervention included significant renovations to the existing building and the construction of an addition with a raised glass pavilion and a stone base. To create a barrier-free institution, the public now enters from a lower-level plaza two feet below sidewalk grade. To access

this plaza, one can either descend four steps or the sloped walkways flanking the main entry. Landscape design occurs at all floor levels of the project. Four limestone plinths supporting lit, tempered-glass balustrades mark the main entry procession of four stone-slab steps leading to the lowered entry plaza. Faceted, sandblasted concrete planters define the edges of the sloped, barrier-free walkways leading to the entry-level plaza. Limestone-slab benches hover above the concrete planters, providing human scale and public seating along Bloor Street and within the sunken courtyard in the childrens area. This courtyard defined by a limestone

garden wall and patio lined with trees, tall grasses and flowering shrubs offers supervised access to an outdoor reading space. Sustainable landscape initiatives include two green-roof systems, one accessible from the second floor of the library and one on the roof of the new addition; an underground reservoir under the sunken courtyard for storm water and irrigation; permeable paving along exit paths; and the planting of domestic shrubs, grasses and 19 new trees.
Design team: RDH Architects partner Bob Goyeche; Tyler Sharp, project designer; Graham Gavine, project manager. NAK Design was landscape architect.

Photo by Steven Evans

Best of Canada Fall 2010 CANADIAN INTERIORS 31

DESIGNABLE ENVIRONMENTS Inc.

DESIGNABLE ENVIRONMENTS is a Canadian architectural consulting firm specializing in universal design, accessibility, and future care planning. For the last 25 years we have worked across Canada as well as internationally, on projects that create appropriate access for everyone, including people with disabilities. We offer a level of experience and expertise unmatched in the industry. Our services include accessibility needs and implementation planning; developing accessibility standards; creating barrier-free environments; education and training; and building audits. Helping your team create great architecture which is also truly accessible. 905 278-0665 www.designable.net

InterfaceFLOR Tectonics
High tech turns high design with Tectonics. Inspired by metals and metallic finishes, Tectonics incorporates linear patterns in mixed widths in an i2 design that can be installed non directionally as patterns and colours blend easily during installation or replacement, saving time and creating less waste. Use one colour for a uniform look, or mix among the 16 available colours for a dramatic statement. This style also lends itself to pattern by tile designs that are limited only by your imagination. 800 267-2149 www.interfaceflor.ca

modularArts, inc.
modularArts Interlocking-Rock utilizes a combination of raised and inset forms to create innovative 3-dimensional surfaces. All designs repeat for continuous sculptural walls or ceilings of any size. The joints interlock for precise edge alignment and panel-to-panel continuity. Panel material is entirely non-combustible, lightweight, easily trimmed on-site and has a rock-hard, paintable surface. Design shown: dune. 206 788-4210 www.modularArts.com

Advertisers Index
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Tuzio Towel Warmers

ICO, your exclusive manufacturer and supplier of the elegant Tuzio towel warmer range. Tuzio towel warmers combine beauty and functionality to create an air of opulence and relaxation in your home. Both hydronic and electric installation options are available to ensure that Tuzio towel warmers will meet the needs of your application. Choose from a wide variety of designs and colors that will be sure to compliment any room style and dcor. 877-757-8930 www.icocanada.com

professional directory
32 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

Full Year (8 Issues) $200 per Single $350 To book your space in the Professional Directory please contact Martin Spreer at mspreer@canadianinteriors.com 416-510-6766

PRODUCT DESIGN

Vanilla

Keilhauer, Toronto

Keilhauers Vanilla chair, designed in-house, combines the sleek look of an executive or boardroom chair, ergonomic features usually reserved for more task-oriented seating applications, and a moderate price point. The upholstery options can dress it up or down and the various arm versions bring it from casual to formal without interfering with the aesthetic of a room. The mid-back height has two upholstery options: a slim-line and a fuller border design with piping details. Two tilt options are available, both with pneumatic height adjustments: a simple swivel with knee tilt and a fully synchronized tilt mechanism. Arm options include black

urethane, upholstered, polished aluminum and polished aluminum with an upholstered arm sleeve. The five-star caster base is available in black nylon or polished aluminum. Vanilla is certified by Greenguard Indoor Air Quality and contains post-consumer recycled content, which can contribute to LEED points. The chair incorporates Keilhauers Pelvic Balance Point and T1-L5 Free Shoulders technologies, ensuring that both men and women are equally comfortable when working in the chair.

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CUMBERLAND
beautiful objects that work

Celina chairs, Deauville table, and Alton bench designed by Yohandel Ruiz of RTKL for Cumberland Furniture. American design and craftsmanship to make architectural spaces comfortable. cumberlandfurniture.com 800.401.7877

PRODUCT DESIGN

Tisch

Inscape, Holland Landing, Ont.

Tisch is German for desk or table. As the name implies, this is a European-style, beam-based collaborative desking system. With its modular components and intelligent rail, Tisch works in benching, casegood and conferencing applications. (The rail is intelligent because legs, top and privacy panel slide along it and attach quickly, without tools.) Tisch can be used in a private office, back-to-back or face-to-face shared office, team space, or even when separated into component tables as freestanding desks in a learning space. A comprehensive cable-management system provides fast and easy access to power and data. Accessory rails, organizer units, screens,

filing trays and shelves help users to work more efficiently. Inscape licensed the product from Austrias Bene, adapted it for the North American market, and manufactures it in its Ontario plant. Tisch components consist primarily of wood tabletops that

contain no added urea-formaldehyde, and recyclable steel that is painted with a virtually solvent-free curing system.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Stalac Coffee Table

The Practice of Everyday Design, Toronto

As any spelunker knows, limestone icicles growing up are stalagmites, those growing down, stalactites. The Stalac Coffee Table represents an abstract image of a rectangular section from a cave ceiling, using

the stalactites as the table legs. The table, which measures two feet by three feet, is manufactured on order by Merlinworks in Toronto. A rubber negative mould is made from a CNC-routered

positive of the table made of MDF. The resulting cast, a fibreglass table, is then finished with an automotive paint containing subtle metal flakes. The Practice of Everyday Design is a partnership founded in 2009 between Antoine Morris and David Long with a focus on installation art, product design and architecture. Their table was first shown at the 2010 Interior Design Show in Toronto.

34 CANADIAN INTERIORS Best of Canada Fall 2010

Reception Desk / Back Wall

Project: Bennett Jones LLP Designers: Frankland + Associates Photographer: Gumpesberger /Hafkenscheid

Svend Nielsen Ltd. is an established Designer / Manufacturer of the finest custom furniture and millwork. Drawing upon more than 60 years experience, we take great pride in crafting products that satisfy the most discerning eye. As a company we have a proven strength in working with designers and architects. We take your vision on paper and translate it into reality through a collaborative process in which our clients' needs are seen as paramount. Over the years we have demonstrated our ability to handle the most demanding projects, executing contracts on time and in a professional manner.

Custom Furniture, Millwork and Public Seating

55 Penn Drive, Toronto, Canada, M9L 2A6 Tel: 416-749-0131 Fax: 416-749-0414 Email: nielsen@svendnielsen.com Website:www.svendnielsen.com

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