by kurtkraler » Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:27 pm
Michael McClelland
I distinctly remember meeting you at the opening of Dundas Square, the event where you were wearing a t-shirt that said, “I am the architect.”
James Brown (BSA Office)
Yes. (laughs)
Michael McClelland
You were handing out these t-shirts “I am the architect” to everyone. I've got one at home somewhere.
James Brown (BSA Office)
I did! I gave my sister one, all the kids in the family had one. Everyone was the architect, right? It was kind of like a blurred multiverse of architects.
Michael McClelland
What did you mean by doing that?
James Brown (BSA Office)
Well, you know it was referencing a sci-fi movie at the time, but it’s a lot of what we were trying to do with the building. It really was not so much a kind of unique, iconic architecture, but something that was more generalizable.
As you're saying with the media signage work, we tried to distract the media a little bit--with the buildings, with the structures, with the long canopies and so forth, so you weren't in the eye –the prying eyes of the signage and media. In that respect, the idea of everyone being the architect is to say that people do have a role. You know, when you're in the square you're interacting with it, you're a part of the action, you make the action, which is the other thing. So again, with everyone being the architect, everyone is the architect, so to speak. Users are not, just kind of consumers, idling, sitting there and doing nothing, they actually create the action and the event of the space.
Michael McClelland
Do you see signage as something that's necessary in a city?
James Brown (BSA Office)
Well, there are a couple examples that have just come up on Bay Street. I don't know if you’ve heard about it, but it's a huge mural. It's on a scaffolding on one of the Dream properties in the financial district [330 Bay Street]. It's like 77 feet high, it's on a scrim, so to speak. It's an image, a beautiful image by an artist [Jorian Charlton, Untitled as part of ArtworxTO’s Year of Public Art, empowering local, emerging BIPOC artists] - a media artist, and I thought when you look at that, you think this is art, this is a great scale and contributes to the city. There's another example right on the bank at Bay and Queen, which is a multimedia screen. It’s inside the bank and it's like 1,000,000 pixels. It forms this beautiful image you can see from City Hall right across. It is gorgeous, you know? So, I'm of two minds about it.
The signage on Dundas Square, we really didn’t have much to do with it. We designed the light mass, the big, tall, arching pieces that complement the form of the square and they're carrying lighting, signage, banners on them and that portion was kind of integrated with it. My problem with the signage is not so much the media, but the apparatus, the instruments. The thing that actually supports the media, you know. If you look at a lot of that, they're not designed by media artists, they’re designed by ad companies. They tend to do the same banal generic stuff all over the place. Every signage element looks like a deodorant bottle, in profile, right? So, the square could have been better designed in terms of that apparatus, those instruments.
It’s like a telescope: you know what you're seeing really depends on the instrument you're using. A lot the clutter and a lot of that stuff on the square really falls into some of those categories. I would also say, in defense of Dundas Square: It's not the entire city! I mean I could throw a rock from the middle of the square in either direction and there would be no media signage. It's a small little concentrated space for media. You get out of the subway and bingo, you know you've arrived at the centre of the city, and I think there's something exciting about that.
Michael McClelland
I thought one of the precedents really was Times Square in New York and I'm not sure whether it gets there.
James Brown (BSA Office)
Yeah, it had no relationship to that, that's outsiders talking about that. Times Square, there’s no square! It’s just a crossroads in a corner building, and we had nothing to do with Times Square. I was more fluent in terms of some of the European examples, you know water, landscapes, ecetera. Times Square was not the reference point for the project, although you can't avoid it in some ways.
Michael McClelland
But I think James that it was the idea that collecting all the major pieces of signage and having them in one location was basically a Times Square related place, where that kind of signage wouldn't be permitted elsewhere in the city, but by putting it all in one place it kind of created a sense of place, I think. I'm very interested by your idea that that it's not so much the signage, it's actually how it's done.
James Brown (BSA Office)
Exactly.
Michael McClelland
Because I think there have been pros and cons about the quality of Dundas Square and the quality of how it's been put together. Some people love to hate it and other people hate to love it. It's a very interesting mix of opinions, but I have a sense of critique about it is that there's something not working with the signage, and your idea is that it's not so much the actual signage or whether it's commercial or whatever, but the quality of how it's done.
James Brown (BSA Office)
Yes, It’s the instrument. You’re designing the instrument. Imagine, you know, that those signage companies that do this work all over the city had a media artist. These people are sensitive, they know and understand the relationship between the media being presented and the instrument, the machine, the infrastructure that houses it. it’s not to be thought away.
Quantum physics is all about understanding that the media-- you are part of the media-- the instrument that looks at this other world is part of the world that you're looking at. So, there's something there that we couldn't control. We had no role over it and we got, in a way, treated unfairly in some circumstances for that.
The other thing I'd like to say is that squares, we don't have a history of squares in Toronto. We have streets, we have parks: we don't have squares. To carve something right out of nowhere and create a square. It puts people in situation to say, “Well, all this hardline media, where's nature?” It's that kind of dialectic dualism that always comes up. They confound synthetic culture with nature, and I think that's a part of the big problem. People looking and saying “Where are the trees? Where's the grass?” There's no room for grass, it’s all granite. We have put trees where we could put trees on the perimeter, where they sat in Terra Firma. Those things are in an artificial landscape par excellence
We could not control the media, the signage-- and to be honest that's still evolving. The latest stuff that was put on there I think really destroyed--those long canopies –it did some nasty things. We disagreed with it. We actually showed some very architecturally designed structures that could you know work with that media, like you know marquees are a beautiful thing. Yonge street has a history of them: the marquee. Even the thing on its own, cause it’s outside the building, tells you that there’s an event is going on inside. That’s acknowledged on the street. These things are beautiful. You’re walking down the street, you see a line of marquees. I think that type of design-- and when they're designed they’re designed with a kind of scale, and let’s say monumentality, about them—they’re quite beautiful and there's no denying that. Even some of the strip bars on Yonge St had some really beautiful signs. Like the Zanzibar.
Michael McClelland
Do you think if there was a requirement that any new signage be innovative, have state of art excellence, have a designer that helps –would those things and would help to improve the quality of the square.
James Brown (BSA Office)
I would think so, Michael. There's a lot of talented artists in the city, and I really feel for them because they're painting precast barriers, and roads, and things like that where they could be contributing in a more kinetic and ascetic way to the city. So, there are people that are media artists that do this internationally. How do you put a three-storey image up on a building, face, or scaffold? It's quite beautiful. Dundas Square, by the way, has been used by artists. The Rolling Stones introduced their recent world tour on Dundas Square. They took all the screens and used it--so there is a kind of media matrix kind of interconnecting system that goes on there. We are wired, we are media.
Michael McClelland
So James, I gotta say, I'm kind of a fan of Dundas Square because I saw it go from nothing to actually creating a public space, which I think was a monumental task. I'm quite proud of what's there. Are you proud of what's there?
James Brown (BSA Office)
I think so, I think we laid down some primary elements and organization there that you can't erase. You can't take the square and flatten it. Some things you cannot molest. What’s around it, the peripheral, it’s going to be changing. That's kind of the infrastructure in motion all the time, and that will go away, but I think from the parking lot and the former downtown theater was there, it was a pretty remarkable thing for the city of Toronto, **Ron Ranzoni and company to take that on, all the businesspeople around were people who initiated that, like Baron (**Barberians?) Steakhouse. These people knew that you had to provide some amenity that wasn’t going to put pressure on the retailers in the area. You know there were no public washrooms so we put public washrooms underneath the square—lots of facilities. I understood that if you take a line that goes from City Hall to Holy Trinity Park and right across Dundas Square to Ryerson University, there's a whole range of different types of spaces. So, the hard surface nature of Dundas Square is I think what people object to for all the wrong reasons.
Michael McClelland
Yes! I remember the celebratory lunch at Barbarians with the BIA and Kyle Rae and a couple of other people.
(James Brown (BSA Office)
I miss Kyle Rae. By the way, he's in Madrid, isn't he?
Michael McClelland
No, not right now. I'm going to be interviewing him shortly too.) I think everyone is quite proud of Dundas Square. I wonder if you could say for the next like next 10 years. What're improvements you would like to make, particularly to things like the signage?
James Brown (BSA Office)
Well, you know, less is more, right? There's some of them, I think that have crept on top of our structures--the infrastructure that we on the square—I would like to see them taken away. Or things on top of the roof--it you get the kind of sense that there's just this kind of money-making ambition there with the media, so it kind of degrades other structures. If I had an eraser I could show you what I would take away. Some of the bigger signs I don't mind, I mean I like the lighting effects. We created as they say, areas where you wouldn’t have to be under the surveillance of that media or the signage--you could get underneath them, like in the shadows of that space. I would like to even design one of them. I would have preferred to design one of the buildings that worked with the square, but we had nothing to do with that, I think what you're talking about in terms of having artists involved in the teams, that's what really should be set up in the beginning, so you know you have somebody that has an eye, has some sense of style, a sense of material, you know experience. Working with an artist, the right one for sure, could do something quite fantastic there. So, you wouldn't be complaining--nobody complains about seeing a giant, figurative image on the screen or getting information. I mean, that's the world we're living in now. It's a completely synthetic artificial world that we inherited. That's the future.
Michael McClelland
I'm really pleased to hear that you like this square because I hear so much griping about “where are the trees” and stuff like that it must become offensive at a certain point.
James Brown (BSA Office)
Well Torontonians are tough, they don’t adapt very easily and 20 years from now people will be waxing nostalgic about it and the old days and stuff like that.
Michael McClelland
Also, I think it's amazing as a public space-- it does things that no other public space in Toronto does, and it brings a lot of very interesting groups of people together to celebrate things. There are issues about how the square is controlled and all that sort of stuff. But if it is controlled, then maybe they could do something better with it.
James Brown (BSA Office)
Yeah, that's Kim's feeling—there’s too much security and control there.
Michael McClelland
I distinctly remember meeting you at the opening of Dundas Square, the event where you were wearing a t-shirt that said, “I am the architect.”
James Brown (BSA Office)
Yes. (laughs)
Michael McClelland
You were handing out these t-shirts “I am the architect” to everyone. I've got one at home somewhere.
James Brown (BSA Office)
I did! I gave my sister one, all the kids in the family had one. Everyone was the architect, right? It was kind of like a blurred multiverse of architects.
Michael McClelland
What did you mean by doing that?
James Brown (BSA Office)
Well, you know it was referencing a sci-fi movie at the time, but it’s a lot of what we were trying to do with the building. It really was not so much a kind of unique, iconic architecture, but something that was more generalizable.
As you're saying with the media signage work, we tried to distract the media a little bit--with the buildings, with the structures, with the long canopies and so forth, so you weren't in the eye –the prying eyes of the signage and media. In that respect, the idea of everyone being the architect is to say that people do have a role. You know, when you're in the square you're interacting with it, you're a part of the action, you make the action, which is the other thing. So again, with everyone being the architect, everyone is the architect, so to speak. Users are not, just kind of consumers, idling, sitting there and doing nothing, they actually create the action and the event of the space.
Michael McClelland
Do you see signage as something that's necessary in a city?
James Brown (BSA Office)
Well, there are a couple examples that have just come up on Bay Street. I don't know if you’ve heard about it, but it's a huge mural. It's on a scaffolding on one of the Dream properties in the financial district [330 Bay Street]. It's like 77 feet high, it's on a scrim, so to speak. It's an image, a beautiful image by an artist [Jorian Charlton, Untitled as part of ArtworxTO’s Year of Public Art, empowering local, emerging BIPOC artists] - a media artist, and I thought when you look at that, you think this is art, this is a great scale and contributes to the city. There's another example right on the bank at Bay and Queen, which is a multimedia screen. It’s inside the bank and it's like 1,000,000 pixels. It forms this beautiful image you can see from City Hall right across. It is gorgeous, you know? So, I'm of two minds about it.
The signage on Dundas Square, we really didn’t have much to do with it. We designed the light mass, the big, tall, arching pieces that complement the form of the square and they're carrying lighting, signage, banners on them and that portion was kind of integrated with it. My problem with the signage is not so much the media, but the apparatus, the instruments. The thing that actually supports the media, you know. If you look at a lot of that, they're not designed by media artists, they’re designed by ad companies. They tend to do the same banal generic stuff all over the place. Every signage element looks like a deodorant bottle, in profile, right? So, the square could have been better designed in terms of that apparatus, those instruments.
It’s like a telescope: you know what you're seeing really depends on the instrument you're using. A lot the clutter and a lot of that stuff on the square really falls into some of those categories. I would also say, in defense of Dundas Square: It's not the entire city! I mean I could throw a rock from the middle of the square in either direction and there would be no media signage. It's a small little concentrated space for media. You get out of the subway and bingo, you know you've arrived at the centre of the city, and I think there's something exciting about that.
Michael McClelland
I thought one of the precedents really was Times Square in New York and I'm not sure whether it gets there.
James Brown (BSA Office)
Yeah, it had no relationship to that, that's outsiders talking about that. Times Square, there’s no square! It’s just a crossroads in a corner building, and we had nothing to do with Times Square. I was more fluent in terms of some of the European examples, you know water, landscapes, ecetera. Times Square was not the reference point for the project, although you can't avoid it in some ways.
Michael McClelland
But I think James that it was the idea that collecting all the major pieces of signage and having them in one location was basically a Times Square related place, where that kind of signage wouldn't be permitted elsewhere in the city, but by putting it all in one place it kind of created a sense of place, I think. I'm very interested by your idea that that it's not so much the signage, it's actually how it's done.
James Brown (BSA Office)
Exactly.
Michael McClelland
Because I think there have been pros and cons about the quality of Dundas Square and the quality of how it's been put together. Some people love to hate it and other people hate to love it. It's a very interesting mix of opinions, but I have a sense of critique about it is that there's something not working with the signage, and your idea is that it's not so much the actual signage or whether it's commercial or whatever, but the quality of how it's done.
James Brown (BSA Office)
Yes, It’s the instrument. You’re designing the instrument. Imagine, you know, that those signage companies that do this work all over the city had a media artist. These people are sensitive, they know and understand the relationship between the media being presented and the instrument, the machine, the infrastructure that houses it. it’s not to be thought away.
Quantum physics is all about understanding that the media-- you are part of the media-- the instrument that looks at this other world is part of the world that you're looking at. So, there's something there that we couldn't control. We had no role over it and we got, in a way, treated unfairly in some circumstances for that.
The other thing I'd like to say is that squares, we don't have a history of squares in Toronto. We have streets, we have parks: we don't have squares. To carve something right out of nowhere and create a square. It puts people in situation to say, “Well, all this hardline media, where's nature?” It's that kind of dialectic dualism that always comes up. They confound synthetic culture with nature, and I think that's a part of the big problem. People looking and saying “Where are the trees? Where's the grass?” There's no room for grass, it’s all granite. We have put trees where we could put trees on the perimeter, where they sat in Terra Firma. Those things are in an artificial landscape par excellence
We could not control the media, the signage-- and to be honest that's still evolving. The latest stuff that was put on there I think really destroyed--those long canopies –it did some nasty things. We disagreed with it. We actually showed some very architecturally designed structures that could you know work with that media, like you know marquees are a beautiful thing. Yonge street has a history of them: the marquee. Even the thing on its own, cause it’s outside the building, tells you that there’s an event is going on inside. That’s acknowledged on the street. These things are beautiful. You’re walking down the street, you see a line of marquees. I think that type of design-- and when they're designed they’re designed with a kind of scale, and let’s say monumentality, about them—they’re quite beautiful and there's no denying that. Even some of the strip bars on Yonge St had some really beautiful signs. Like the Zanzibar.
Michael McClelland
Do you think if there was a requirement that any new signage be innovative, have state of art excellence, have a designer that helps –would those things and would help to improve the quality of the square.
James Brown (BSA Office)
I would think so, Michael. There's a lot of talented artists in the city, and I really feel for them because they're painting precast barriers, and roads, and things like that where they could be contributing in a more kinetic and ascetic way to the city. So, there are people that are media artists that do this internationally. How do you put a three-storey image up on a building, face, or scaffold? It's quite beautiful. Dundas Square, by the way, has been used by artists. The Rolling Stones introduced their recent world tour on Dundas Square. They took all the screens and used it--so there is a kind of media matrix kind of interconnecting system that goes on there. We are wired, we are media.
Michael McClelland
So James, I gotta say, I'm kind of a fan of Dundas Square because I saw it go from nothing to actually creating a public space, which I think was a monumental task. I'm quite proud of what's there. Are you proud of what's there?
James Brown (BSA Office)
I think so, I think we laid down some primary elements and organization there that you can't erase. You can't take the square and flatten it. Some things you cannot molest. What’s around it, the peripheral, it’s going to be changing. That's kind of the infrastructure in motion all the time, and that will go away, but I think from the parking lot and the former downtown theater was there, it was a pretty remarkable thing for the city of Toronto, **Ron Ranzoni and company to take that on, all the businesspeople around were people who initiated that, like Baron (**Barberians?) Steakhouse. These people knew that you had to provide some amenity that wasn’t going to put pressure on the retailers in the area. You know there were no public washrooms so we put public washrooms underneath the square—lots of facilities. I understood that if you take a line that goes from City Hall to Holy Trinity Park and right across Dundas Square to Ryerson University, there's a whole range of different types of spaces. So, the hard surface nature of Dundas Square is I think what people object to for all the wrong reasons.
Michael McClelland
Yes! I remember the celebratory lunch at Barbarians with the BIA and Kyle Rae and a couple of other people.
(James Brown (BSA Office)
I miss Kyle Rae. By the way, he's in Madrid, isn't he?
Michael McClelland
No, not right now. I'm going to be interviewing him shortly too.) I think everyone is quite proud of Dundas Square. I wonder if you could say for the next like next 10 years. What're improvements you would like to make, particularly to things like the signage?
James Brown (BSA Office)
Well, you know, less is more, right? There's some of them, I think that have crept on top of our structures--the infrastructure that we on the square—I would like to see them taken away. Or things on top of the roof--it you get the kind of sense that there's just this kind of money-making ambition there with the media, so it kind of degrades other structures. If I had an eraser I could show you what I would take away. Some of the bigger signs I don't mind, I mean I like the lighting effects. We created as they say, areas where you wouldn’t have to be under the surveillance of that media or the signage--you could get underneath them, like in the shadows of that space. I would like to even design one of them. I would have preferred to design one of the buildings that worked with the square, but we had nothing to do with that, I think what you're talking about in terms of having artists involved in the teams, that's what really should be set up in the beginning, so you know you have somebody that has an eye, has some sense of style, a sense of material, you know experience. Working with an artist, the right one for sure, could do something quite fantastic there. So, you wouldn't be complaining--nobody complains about seeing a giant, figurative image on the screen or getting information. I mean, that's the world we're living in now. It's a completely synthetic artificial world that we inherited. That's the future.
Michael McClelland
I'm really pleased to hear that you like this square because I hear so much griping about “where are the trees” and stuff like that it must become offensive at a certain point.
James Brown (BSA Office)
Well Torontonians are tough, they don’t adapt very easily and 20 years from now people will be waxing nostalgic about it and the old days and stuff like that.
Michael McClelland
Also, I think it's amazing as a public space-- it does things that no other public space in Toronto does, and it brings a lot of very interesting groups of people together to celebrate things. There are issues about how the square is controlled and all that sort of stuff. But if it is controlled, then maybe they could do something better with it.
James Brown (BSA Office)
Yeah, that's Kim's feeling—there’s too much security and control there.