On Public Buildings

I'm originally from London, Ontario so I have a kind of fascination for public buildings. London didn't have much in the way of architecture when I was growing up and the Dominion Public Building was by far the best building in town. Here's a picture:

What this image doesn't capture is how the building is usually seen. It's on one of the busiest streets in London. Most often all you see is the front, an extremely terse essay on the skyscraper (10 storeys counted as a skyscraper in 1930s Canada):

It is an example of the style now called Modern Classicism but it is filled with little Deco moments. The building was part of the Public Works Construction Act of 1934 - the government was trying to spend its way out of the Great Depression (a story that should sound familiar). The design was by chief architect of the Department of Public Works T. W. Fuller and it was completed in 1936. Despite the place it occupies in my imagination it never occurred to me to look for either other buildings constructed under the Public Works Construction Act or other designs by Fuller. It turns out there are a lot and, helpfully, many of them are also called the Dominion Public Building.

Here is the Halifax Dominion Public Building:

According to what I can find on Google, it was designed by the Chief Architect's Office of Canada and I can see Fuller's hand. He has a tendency to emphasize the building's height by recessing the windows in long vertical bands - there is a restrained gothic element, you can see it in the emphasized vertical banding right below the toque-like dome. The sculptural elements (reserved for ground level and the top of the building) show a similarity. The corners are very strong and have multiple articulations.

The Dominion building's are barely a blip in Fuller's career. He is far more famous for the Library of Parliament and the Parliament Building itself. But these buildings, built in the last half of the 1930's are the ones that grab me. When the government was faced with a financial crisis of unprecedented proportions its architectural response was to create buildings that practically scream of solidity. They are massive stone constructions intended to last a lifetime. Since Fuller died in 1898, they have lasted longer than a lifetime. 

Compare them to the Dominion Public Building of Toronto:

  Construction on this building started in 1926 - less than a decade before the DPB in London but it looks like it could have been a century before. Unremarkable classicism. Rusticated ground floor, doric (ish) columns, exaggerated intercolumnation, and a heavy (yet incomplete) pediment. Could be England in 1700. If the glazing was less prominent, it could be the House of Raphael (an obvious precedent). This building is old-fashioned. Strange that something designed in 1926, when the stock market was still sound and optimism ruled, should take no chances when a building designed in the middle of the Great Depression can't find enough opportunities to try new things. For example, check out the main entrance for the DPB London:

Where did that come from? It isn't Deco, really. It's close in the way surfaces appear to be layered on top of each other. It certainly isn't classical. The main entrances don't face the street directly, you enter on a diagonal - an distinctly non-classical touch. And those lights are completely nuts. Many, many times I have dreamed of stealing them. The inside is even wilder, pity I can't find any pictures (because it's a public building they are understandably nervous about people taking snapshots inside). 

The point I'm trying to make (other than T. W. Fuller's DPB's are greatly under-appreciated) is the way architects respond to social crises is important. Fuller (and the government of Canada) responded by the architectural equivalent of saying, "Relax. We are going to be here for a long time. Everything is cool." In the last decade, a period of more financial and cultural shocks than I care to enumerate, the architectural response has been more glass curtain walls. Not reassuring.

There seems to be some small movement, hard to see and sporadic, to change this. Architects are slowly moving to stone instead of concrete, wood instead of steel. I think this change is both important and appropriate. What people were afraid of in the 1930s was the collapse of the financial and political systems they had previously thought eternal; the response was buildings designed to last. What people are afraid of now are elaborate fictions that have enormous power over their lives, commodities that don't really exist but can nevertheless bring down entire nations. So the response (choosing materials that are natural rather than manufactured, regardless if such a distinction has any real merit) is reassuring. Stone is stone and wood is wood. We know what they are and where they come from. Fuller's DPBs also demonstrate times of crisis do not require retrograde designs. Architects can continue to embrace new ideas about design even in times of social unrest.