Please join us for a presentation on Limberlost Place, a project under construction for Toronto’s George Brown College, poised to be one of the first assembly occupancy, tall, exposed mass timber, net-zero carbon emissions buildings in the world. Project lead Carol Phillips will discuss the research and innovation that went into winning the international design competition, and the significant challenges associated with navigating the regulatory and approvals processes thereafter. Carol will discuss the project’s structural design testing and code approvals, funded by both the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Natural Resources Canada, in addition to the ambitious sustainability targets set forth by Waterfront Toronto and the City’s Planning and Development Dept. Already the recipient of 8 awards for innovation and design excellence, Limberlost Place is set to open new doors for mass timber construction in Canada.
Carol Phillips is a Partner at Moriyama Teshima Architects (MTA) and a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Her portfolio includes MTA’s most ambitious, low-carbon, mass timber, LEED Platinum, and net-zero targeted projects, including Limberlost Place (a joint venture with Acton Ostry Architects) for George Brown College, and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation Multi-Tenant Commercial Building.
Please note the LOCATION for this Urban Forum Event
Urban Forum was pleased to present its second Urban Film night at the Mayfair. The aim of the Urban Film Series is present films that focus on the mutually impactful relationship between urban design, planning, architecture and people. This year’s selections included “The Priutt Igoe Myth” as the feature, preceded by the National Film Board of Canada’s Farewell to Oak Street as a single program.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth tells the story of the wholesale changes that took place in the American city in the decades after World War II, through the lens of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis. At the film’s historical center is an analysis of the massive impact of the 1949 Housing Act, which built Pruitt-Igoe and other high-rise public housing of the Fifties and Sixties. This critical piece of legislation also initiated the so-called urban renewal program and prompted the process of mass suburbanization, which emptied American cities of their residents, business and industry. Those that were left behind faced a destitute, rapidly de-industrializing St. Louis, parceled out to downtown interests and increasingly segregated by class and race. The residents of Pruitt-Igoe were among the hardest-hit. Their gripping stories of survival, adaptation and success are at the emotional heart of the film. The domestic turmoil wrought by punitive public welfare policies, the frustrating interactions with a paternalistic and cash-strapped Housing Authority, and the downward spiral of vacancy, vandalism and crime, led to resident protest and action during the 1969 Rent Strike, the first in the history of public housing. And yet, despite this complex history, Pruitt-Igoe has often been stereotyped, with help from a world-famous image of its implosion, and used as an argument against Modernist architecture or public assistance programs. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth seeks to set the historical record straight, to examine the interests in Pruitt-Igoe’s creation, to re-evaluate the rumors and the stigma, to implode the myth.
For the trailer click here
For an Interview with Chad Freidrichs (the film maker) click here
This documentary presents a before-and-after picture of people in a large-scale public housing project in Toronto. Due to a housing shortage, they were forced to live in squalid, dingy flats and ramshackle dwellings on a crowded street in Regent Park North; now they have access to new, modern housing developments designed to offer them privacy, light and space.
