I had a discussion last night with a friend who is involved in the renovation of Union Station in Toronto. Union Station is a big deal of a building, not because of the architecture but because it was one of Canada's first great train stations - the entry to the City for thousands and thousands of people. It makes appearances in Canadian literature (Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion for example). And it is the centre of a large urban set-piece as University and Front Streets form a block long U shape to emphasize its importance.
Architecturally, it is a Canadian attempt at Beaux Arts architecture that only comes off in the Great Hall - a long basilica space with covered by a coffered arch. Still, it has about the highest level of Heritage Protection a building can have.
My friend's firm is specifically handling many of the interior elements throughout the station. Other firms are responsible for different aspects of the project. Because he is working with the interiors, he spends a lot of time negotiating the specifics of how to interpret heritage protection. The exterior is relatively simple - fix it. But the interior is more complex; railway stations linked to public transit don't work the way they did when Union was first built so every issue from signage to ticket booths to furniture to timetables has to be negotiated. In many parts of the building it isn't complicated but in the Great Hall it is.
Heritage protection, according to my friend who gets his info from a specialist they hired in Montreal, is ultimately reduced to one of three states: reproduction, submission, and nothing. So the ticket booths, for example, can be exact replicas of the originals (totally impractical) or they can be removed (even more impractical) or they must be submissive to the heritage portions. This is interpreted as "less interesting".
I was surprised by this. I am a fan of heritage protection generally. I think everyone can agree there is at least one building in the city developers should be prevented from demolishing. Which means everyone is in favour of heritage protection to some degree. We all fall on a hypothetical continuum between preserving one building and preserving every building. That was about as much thought as I had given the subject. The actual working of the protection, what was protected, from whom, and how weren't really questions I asked myself. In the particular case of Union Station I would say packing the Great Hall with laser light displays is a terrible idea but the qualification "submissive" is odd.
It is like demanding half-assed design. Nothing should grab peoples attention more than the original Great Hall architecture so everything you design must be bland. Invisible. It isn't wrong to ask for subtle architecture. It isn't wrong to forbid neon or bright colours or things that make very loud noises. It should be understood you are designing for a prestigious public building and not the midway of a travelling carnival. But the "submissive" qualification presumes people using Union Station will care about the architecture and that is definitely a mistaken presumption. Part of the joy of Union for me is that it is there to be looked at but it's out of the way. The most impressive bits happen 40 or 50 feet above your head. You can look up and admire or you can fight through the crowd to get the next train. It's always there and I'm glad there is protection in place to ensure it will continue to be there but I spent almost a decade in architecture school, I'm passionate about architecture and even I don't care all the time. If I'm meeting someone, I want to be able to see the schedules and track listing, I want to know how to get from where I am to where I need to be, I want to know what time it is and how much time I have to get from A to B. This is stuff my friend's firm is fantastic at designing (they are also pretty good at buildings, interiors, and furniture).
The qualification for design inside a heritage building shouldn't be "submissive" but "clearly differentiated".
I guess my point is there should be two axis - one for how many buildings you want to save and another for different they can be and still be the same. Right now, there are condo towers being built (and not only in Toronto) with facades of older buildings glued to the side like bumper stickers. In some perverse way, this qualifies as "preserving" the original building. I am not that far along the second axis. But I think well-designed, state of the art signage, info-graphics, furniture, and other accoutrements would be beautiful beneath the Great Hall's arched ceiling. No neon needed. And it would be obvious to everyone which parts were a century old and which weren't. That would be honest to the original building, which was less about the Beaux Arts and more about progress. It was (and is) an important building because it marked a giant technological step (the railroad) and the unification of a nation. Design that demonstrates precisely how far the state of the arts has advanced since the station was originally built would be entirely appropriate. Sometimes you need trust people to have a brain. Of course, when I see how heritage protection is applied to some buildings in this city, it is worth asserting the opposite: sometimes you have to wonder if people have brains.
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