Evolution of award titles related to heritage issues in Quebec (2009-2019)

What should we think of awards of excellence for heritage transformations, particularly in the Quebec context?  According to the recurrence of this type of distinction in the contemporary landscape of architectural awards, heritage would be one of the canonical categories of architectural excellence. Despite their number, the impressive variability in the nature of the buildings awarded these awards seems to be equalled only by their titles. In Canada, the categories judged range from preservation to heritage conservation, to restoration, extension or renovation as one might legitimately expect. On the other hand, it is curious to see notions that seem as far removed from heritage as recycling, sustainable development, or innovation rewarding intervention on the existing. Contrary to what we will call “programmatic” awards that reward buildings with specific functions, these “heritage” awards can be granted to any type of architectural intervention, as long as it concerns a built site, whether or not it has a historical value.

This terminological vagueness could evoke the famous lecture given by the language philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1932 at the University of Cambridge (1) where, in desperation to define the term “game” according to the entirety of the productions it covers, he came to the conclusion that this concept refers less to a common essence than to family likenesses. In fact, if all the artefacts likely to correspond to this family name have fundamentally no common characteristics, they are very similar from one generation to the next: A resembles B, which admits another characteristic in common with C, and so on.  In other words, the multiple productions of the discipline that we do not hesitate to call “heritage” have relationships that are sometimes as distorted as the very definition of the word and the different values to which it refers.

Well known to historians, restorers and architects, these values were described for the first time in 1903 by Alois Reigl in a report commissioned by the Central Commission for Historic Monuments in Austria: the now famous Modern Cult of Monuments (2). In this text, Riegl distinguishes between two categories of value attributed to historical monuments and to heritage in general: the ” commemorative values” (Erinnerungszerte) and the “present values” (Gegenwartswerte). For Riegl, these values do not compete with each other and regularly overlap. His decomposition was based on a pragmatic and political objective in that it was primarily intended to provide a basis for legislation and then recommendations for restoration.

However, this distinction seems to be at the origin of the multiplication of titles among the organizations that proposed to distribute award and thus to categorize the awarded projects. For example, in 2009, the Ordre des Architectes du Québec already dissociated reconversion, embodied by so-called “recycling” awards that essentially rewarded the consideration of contemporary utilitarian value, from conservation and restoration, which referred instead to the values of memory – the age-value and historical value.

Although this binary perception of the disciplines of restoration seemed adequate for the organization until 2015, the titles of its mentions seem to be in perpetual questioning. As of 2013, the term “recycling” will take a back seat to designate interventions of high contemporary utilitarian value, but will be coupled with a sustainable development mention, which rewards the same type of building, more or less.

The 2017 edition sees a major upheaval within these categories and this division disappears in favour of the very neutral Mise en valeur du Patrimoine, awarded that year to the renovation of the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier by Atelier TAG + Jodoin Lamarre Pratte architects in consortium. The OAQ Grand Prix will be awarded to the Maison de la littérature de Québec, a project by the Chevalier Morales agency whose heritage quality is now attested. Although the project was praised by the Order for its consideration of religious heritage – even more so than for the qualities of its plan in relation to its program – the project was nevertheless awarded in the cultural building category. At the same time, the sustainable development mention, which has been recurring since 2013, was changed to a green building mention for this edition, rewarding in particular a project to recycle industrial buildings without demolition.

In 2020, the OAQ will retain the category of Heritage Development but will divide it into two subgroups which refer to the binary distinction that has disappeared over the past five years: “conservation/restoration” and “conversion/expansion”. By combining these terms under the same category, the OAQ acknowledges the need to combine commemorative and present values. While they always distinguish between dissimilar project practices, they all qualify as “heritage”. In doing so, they are thus closer to the categorization proposed by Opération Patrimoine Montréal (formerly known as the Opération Patrimoine Architectural), which does not reward works by categorizing them, but rewards practices as shown by the action verbs in the award titles: “take care”, “bring back to life”, “know-how”, “make known” and “act together”(3).

The fluctuation of heritage mentions in the awards we observe in the case of the Ordre des Architectes du Québec awards is only an indication of a broader disciplinary problem: that of the definition of heritage and its scope within the architectural disciplinary field. If conservation and restoration practices – even extension or recycling – are as old as the discipline itself, it is natural that vectors of standards representing the profession identify them and reward contemporary productions that they deem exemplary. Nevertheless, it appears that some of these productions have absolutely nothing in common, like the so-called “game” elements observed by Wittgenstein. Consequently, by forcing their inscription within the same taxon, these awards contribute to obscure an already protean definition of heritage much more than to shed light on it as they might suggest at first glance.

  • (1) Marjorie Perloff, Wittgenstein’s ladder: poetic language and the strangeness of the ordinary (Chicago (Ill.) ; University of Chicago Press, 1996). p. 60
  • (2) Alois Riegl, The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin. (Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, 1982).
  • (3) https://ville.montreal.qc.ca/operationpatrimoine/laureats/2019

Aurélien Catros

The competition for the Toronto City Hall was won in 1958 by Viljo Revell (On the left the model produced for the competition, on the right photography taken by the author in 2015)

The Fort York Visitor Centre as a competition project won in 2009 by Patkau Architects and Kearns Mancini Architects (Top, a digital model produced during the competition, below a photo taken by the author in 2015)

Should we be able to measure the gap between the promise of the image produced during a competition (from a physical or digital model) and a photograph of the awarded building taken from similar angles several years later? In other words: How much should the constructed building look like the model that anticipated its appearance?

Each architectural model falls into the broad scientific category of “models”, while each model is itself a “figure to reproduce” (1). At the crossroads of these two principles, the architectural model should be “a reduced architecture to reproduce” according to varying degrees of fidelity. A designer is always more or less aware of the gap separating these representations from the expected built reality. On the other hand, in competition situations, the model is also a tool for explaining the project or even an argument to win the jury’s approval, which is not necessarily prepared to consider these artifacts with the same critical distance as their designers.

In order to measure the gap between the competition models and the building photographs that they originally represented, it is enlightening to compare two winning competition projects 60 years apart in Toronto: they have been awarded prizes of excellence, confirming their exemplary value and making them “role models”.

The competition for Toronto City Hall was won in 1958 by Vilijo Revell, while the building won an Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) Landmark Award in 1998. The Fort York Visitor Center, the result of a competition won in 2009 by Patkau Architects and Kearns Mancini Architects, was quickly awarded the Canadian Architect Award of Excellence in 2011, followed a few years later by a City of Toronto Urban Design Award and an Honourable Mention for Design Excellence from the Ontario Association of Architects in 2015, just prior to its consecration with a Governor General’s Medal in 2018.

The models of the Toronto City Hall made during the second stage of the competition were required for all competitors: and we know these famous images showing hundreds of models carefully arranged on huge tables so that the jury can examine them. If the photo of the competition model resembles the built project we photographed in 2015, there are several notable differences. The number of arches facing the tower has gone from 3 to 5 and their shapes have been simplified. They have also slid east of the body of water, which was halved. The division of the main building’s floors, which is perfectly regular on the model photographs gives way to wider intermediate and final levels. Finally, the gables of the two towers are less glazed than what the model displayed and thus the project at the competition stage. These differences appear minimal when we recall that this model was produced 7 years before the inauguration of the building in 1965.

The model produced by the winning team during the competition for the Fort York Visitor Center is only presented through the digital images it has produced. If the latter seek to anticipate the photographic representation pursuing objectives like the photograph of the model carried out in the context of the competition for City Hall, it must be kept in mind that these images have certainly been subjected to retouching. In addition to the lack of public and the tired grass banal witnesses of reality, the building’s photography in 2015 also appears very similar to the computer-generated image from a digital modelling from the competition. The translucent volume on the roof appears higher on the image than it will eventually be, while the glazing seems less transparent than announced by the perspective drawing: the difference between the two images of the project is small. The size of certain openings has changed somewhat and the number of corten steel panels has been modified accordingly, but the promised project is very close to the building that will finally be delivered 5 years later, in 2014.

Through these summary comparisons, it appears that the change of support of the models, namely, of the very nature of the architectural models does not necessarily seem to modify the distance that separates the object from the building which it represents: the two cases mentioned admit similarities and differences of the same order. Although the summary comparison of these two projects cannot support any generalization, the models can anticipate the realization and this leaves little doubt about the purpose of the mediations, which both deserve the name of “reduced architecture to reproduce”.

It may be objected that the similarity observed in these diachronic confrontations of perspective views is an exception and that few buildings can boast of always being so close to the original project. Nevertheless, it is clear that these two buildings whose architectural excellence was recognized have reproduced the same feat 60 years apart. One can wonder if this proximity is one of the marks of architectural excellence? Therefore, a good project, according to its etymology, would be a building that would have been precisely “thrown forward” by its model, that is to say, perfectly anticipated.

Unlike models of design, engineering or exhibition that could be respectively named exploratory models, predictive models and descriptive model, the models of competitions, whether they be virtual or physical, are the real models of the project (1) available to architects. Paradoxically, by confusing the latter, they are often the ones who make their own models lie.

Each architectural model falls into the broad scientific category of “models”, while each model is itself a “figure to reproduce”. At the crossroads of these two principles, the architectural model should be “a reduced architecture to reproduce” according to varying degrees of fidelity. A designer is always more or less aware of the gap separating these representations from the expected built reality. On the other hand, in competition situations, the model is also a tool for explaining the project or even an argument to win the jury’s approval, which is not necessarily prepared to consider these artifacts with the same critical distance as their designers.

In order to measure the gap between the competition models and the building photographs that they originally represented, it is enlightening to compare two winning competition projects 60 years apart in Toronto: they have been awarded prizes of excellence, confirming their exemplary value and making them “role models”.

The competition for Toronto City Hall was won in 1958 by Vilijo Revell, while the building won an Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) Landmark Award in 1998. The Fort York Visitor Center, the result of a competition won in 2009 by Patkau Architects and Kearns Mancini Architects, was quickly awarded the Canadian Architect Award of Excellence in 2011, followed a few years later by a City of Toronto Urban Design Award and an Honourable Mention for Design Excellence from the Ontario Association of Architects in 2015, just prior to its consecration with a Governor General’s Medal in 2018.

The models of the Toronto City Hall made during the second stage of the competition were required for all competitors: and we know these famous images showing hundreds of models carefully arranged on huge tables so that the jury can examine them. If the photo of the competition model resembles the built project we photographed in 2015, there are several notable differences. The number of arches facing the tower has gone from 3 to 5 and their shapes have been simplified. They have also slid east of the body of water, which was halved. The division of the main building’s floors, which is perfectly regular on the model photographs gives way to wider intermediate and final levels. Finally, the gables of the two towers are less glazed than what the model displayed and thus the project at the competition stage. These differences appear minimal when we recall that this model was produced 7 years before the inauguration of the building in 1965.

The model produced by the winning team during the competition for the Fort York Visitor Center is only presented through the digital images it has produced. If the latter seek to anticipate the photographic representation pursuing objectives like the photograph of the model carried out in the context of the competition for City Hall, it must be kept in mind that these images have certainly been subjected to retouching. In addition to the lack of public and the tired grass banal witnesses of reality, the building’s photography in 2015 also appears very similar to the computer-generated image from a digital modelling from the competition. The translucent volume on the roof appears higher on the image than it will eventually be, while the glazing seems less transparent than announced by the perspective drawing: the difference between the two images of the project is small. The size of certain openings has changed somewhat and the number of corten steel panels has been modified accordingly, but the promised project is very close to the building that will finally be delivered 5 years later, in 2014.

Through these summary comparisons, it appears that the change of support of the models, namely, of the very nature of the architectural models does not necessarily seem to modify the distance that separates the object from the building which it represents: the two cases mentioned admit similarities and differences of the same order. Although the summary comparison of these two projects cannot support any generalization, the models can anticipate the realization and this leaves little doubt about the purpose of the mediations, which both deserve the name of “reduced architecture to reproduce”.

It may be objected that the similarity observed in these diachronic confrontations of perspective views is an exception and that few buildings can boast of always being so close to the original project. Nevertheless, it is clear that these two buildings whose architectural excellence was recognized have reproduced the same feat 60 years apart. One can wonder if this proximity is one of the marks of architectural excellence? Therefore, a good project, according to its etymology, would be a building that would have been precisely “thrown forward” by its model, that is to say, perfectly anticipated.

Unlike models of design, engineering or exhibition that could be respectively named exploratory models, predictive models and descriptive model, the models of competitions, whether they be virtual or physical, are the real models of the project (2) available to architects. Paradoxically, by confusing the latter, they are often the ones who make their own models lie.

Aurélien Catros

(1) – Rey, Alain. (Éd.), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris, Le Robert, 1998.

(2) – What Marcial Echenique named in the 1970s “planning models”. Echenique, Marcial, Models: A Discussion, Cambridge, University of Cambridge, 1968.

“Sisyphus” by Tiziano Vecellio 1548-1549 Madrid. Museo del Prado.

In a series of scientific posts inaugurating the Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competitions and Mediations of Excellence (CRC-ACME) program, we will briefly present — whether in a thousand words or a simple image and its legend — the main terms of our research activities for the upcoming years. Since we have previously devoted many texts to the question of competition (1), it seems appropriate, for this very first post, to contribute to the definition of mediations of excellence: an expression designating the phenomenon of awards, consisting of all award-winning buildings and their related actors. What are the agencies of mediation?

The Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales (CNRTL) defines excellence as the character of a thing or person that corresponds, almost perfectly, to the ideal representation of its nature, of its function or which manifests a very clear superiority in a particular field (2). Suffice to say that excellence — in architecture as in all fields — is an ideal, an objective, a horizon and not an endpoint.

The term mediation is broadly defined by CNRTL as that which is an intermediary between two or more things (3). To this account, everything would potentially be a mediation. Too short of a definition, since we need to distinguish, for example, mediations in architecture from mediations in art.

In “L’art à l’épreuve de ses médiations,” sociologist Nathalie Heinich (5) reminds us that between the artist and the observer, or between the text and the reader, the game never solely operates between two but rather three parties. Intermediaries can be as diverse as they are many: curators, critics, teachers, philosophers, gallery owners, dealers, insurers, etc. Not to mention cultural mediations such as journals, exhibitions, documentaries, monographs, etc. The definition of mediation clearly remains subjected to the vagaries of history as exemplified by a French study on architectural mediations in the 1980s. Published in 2000, it underlined the role of the critique as “the first instance of judgment” (4) when today, such a role would be unclearly confirmed in many contexts, including the Canadian context.

If award-winning buildings constitute mediations of excellence (by excellence), one imagines that the phenomenon starts well before the design of a project. It can be followed by the reception of awards but cannot end with the ceremony. Award-winning buildings, year after year, can be considered as elements of response to a constant redefinition of excellence, but the building that would receive the highest number of awards in 2019 could not claim to be the definition of excellence in 2020. Architecture is a historical discipline and if all award-winning buildings point towards excellence, they represent one step in an endless quest (think of the Myth of Sisyphus).

In a doctoral thesis presented in Brussels in 2019, Typhaine Moogin studied awards in depth by immersing herself “Into the Mediations of Awards” (5). While referring to Antoine Hennion’s book on “La passion musicale (une sociologie de la mediation)” (7), Moogin opens a “reflection on the conditions of production of an architectural world” (8). Adopting the sociological pragmatism of Antoine Hennion, she proposes to redefine architectural mediation less as a device than as a space: “To the extent that a distinction is not so much a work embodying architectural ideas, an instrument of domination of an institution or a mark of the consecration of architects, but the association—complex and delicate—of all these elements and other things : a particular space of an even wider network which — from objects and knowledge to people and their social space—constitutes architecture” (9).

Our own research program, consisting in documenting, revisiting and analyzing award-winning buildings in Canada—not only from the past three decades, but for the next one — is as much about better understanding as it is about raising awareness of the best practices in architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture or in design. Only a vast network of researchers will be able to carry out such a knowledge enterprise.

The CNRTL mentions an unusual use of the term mediation that a research program should undoubtedly hesitate to convene. In astrology, “noon” or “mediation” would be the “culminating moment of a star.” Instead, we prefer a term used in medicine, psychology or philosophy: acme. A synonym of apogee or culminating point, it can designate the critical point of an illness, or the highest degree of influence of a theory. Rather interesting, as it forms the acronym ACME or “Architecture, Competitions and Mediations of Excellence.” Which is not to say that the search for excellence would be a pathology, but certainly a habit to encourage very early in the training of architects.

Jean-Pierre Chupin, October 8, 2019.

Notes:

  • (1) Chupin, Jean-Pierre, Cucuzzella, Carmela and Bechara Helal (Edited by), Architecture Competitions and the Production of Culture, Quality and Knowledge (An International Inquiry), Montréal, Potential Architecture Books, 2015. (ISBN 978-0-9921317-0-8). http://potentialarchitecturebooks.com/pac001/
  • (2) See https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/excellence  (consulted October 6, 2019).
  • (3) See https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/médiations (consulted October 6, 2019).
  • (4) Devillard, Valérie, Architecture et communication : les médiations architecturales dans les années 80, L.G.D.J. Éditions Panthéon-Assas, Paris, 2000. p. 279.
  • (5) Moogin, Typhaine, Dans la médiation des prix. Réflexion sur les conditions de production d’un monde architectural, thesis defended at l’Université Libre de Bruxelles (Faculté d’architecture La Cambre-Horta) friday september 13 2019.
  • (6) Heinich, Nathalie, Faire voir. L’art à l’épreuve de ses médiations, Les impressions nouvelles, Bruxelles, 2009.
  • (7) Hennion, Antoine, La passion musicale. Une sociologie de la médiation, Métailié, Paris (1993).
  • (8) Moogin, Ibid.
  • (9) Moogin, Ibid. p. 74.