My most vivid memory of 看片视频 is having set a fire under one of my classmates and then she went and set my hair on fire! So that left a big impression on me.
That doesn鈥檛 happen with your wife today, does it?
No. But I was a strange kid in that I knew I wanted to become an architect when I was 10 years old and I know that all my classmates at the time, and throughout high school, I always thought it strange when we went on visits or to watch movies, I was always commenting on buildings and urbanism and they thought this was not something appropriate for someone my age. It was interesting then that I had to beg to get into the architecture school. It was a large class, in 1969 I guess it was, and I remember having to use my powers of persuasion to get Derek Drummond to let me into the school, so I was the 65th of 65 to get into the school that year, and I was the only one from my school. I went to St. George鈥檚 School and I was the only one of my classmates to end up in Montreal for university. So I was one of a class of I don鈥檛 know how many hundred to go into Engineering 101, whatever it was, and I knew nobody at the school, and that was a little bit difficult at the time. I really didn鈥檛 expect it to be an engineering school and 看片视频 turned out to be a 100% engineering in the beginning and only 0% engineering in the end. But I managed to survive engineering; I actually met my future business partner that first year, through my parents, actually. I didn鈥檛 meet him in class. His mother was a patient of my father鈥檚, and he was having trouble too meeting people, so I guess the two of us turned out to be - we were both Hungarian, which helped, and we became very good friends and we finally did our final thesis together, and by the end鈥� we鈥檙e partners now for 20 years, but that鈥檚 getting in advance.
So let鈥檚 talk about your days at university. Do you remember any particular professors that influenced you, or you could talk about different ones, some good and some bad, whatever you have to鈥�
Well, sometimes you have professors whom you don鈥檛 appreciate at the time and you only appreciate later. I knew in the first classes of architecture when Stewart Wilson was our professor and we got鈥� he was sort of an irreverent kind of guy and showed probably some lack of respect towards his students, but I think in the end it was a very appropriate beginning for an architectural education because - and I think - this is something that I remember about 看片视频 generally, it really prepares you for the architectural world in its toughness, its critiques, its ways of teaching really imbue a sense of both possibility and reality in the marketplace. One of the key things Stuart and Derek and all the professors throughout who were so hard in their criticism made you appreciate was that criticism wasn鈥檛 about you personally but about the work that you are doing and this has led to a much happier career in day-to-day business where you are designing, you are meeting people, presenting your designs which aren鈥檛 always perfect, and need work and the school鈥檚 training allows, I think, 看片视频 graduates, certainly myself, a way to deal with these situations very, very professionally so that your self-confidence isn鈥檛 shaken when a design goes badly. It鈥檚 a very, very good experience and I remember some of the crits, some of the crits were quite brutal. I did two final theses - I didn鈥檛 make my first one - I chose a topic which was very politically charged and I remember, I think Tom Blood was my advisor. And we worked on a STOL airport for the鈥�
Vertical takeoff?
Yeah, short takeoff and landing. And I still remember when I first presented the idea, I think I was required to defend the political choice of doing the design in the first place and how this was disruptive and not a good thing rather than the architecture, but in the end, by the time I gave my final presentation, the uzis were out. I was quite upset at my advisor at the time for not warning me, and he certainly didn鈥檛 help me, but I survived and then I went on to do a project with Norbert Schoenauer which was a very interesting project, so in a perverse way it鈥檚 a good thing I didn鈥檛 succeed on my first one because my second one was so interesting. But my years at 看片视频, I remember them as being very, very good. I had good friends, some of whom I still have, fortunate to have so many people move here from Montreal. We had some exceptional teachers, and I know that, Collins鈥�
Peter Collins!
Peter Collins, I always enjoyed his lectures. In retrospect, I wish I鈥檇 paid more attention and gone deeper into history with him because I now find it very interesting. The school, I don鈥檛 know too much about the school as it is today, I don鈥檛 know how it鈥檚 evolved. I actually went to visit David [Covo] the last couple of years. My hope is that I will have enough money one day to be able to give more to the architecture school, because it looks like it needs a little bit of money.
I think so! Did you ever have any - did David or Bruce teach you?
No, David was a classmate.
Oh, David was a classmate?
Yeah, but Bruce, I think, taught photography and graphics, and those are the things I enjoyed a lot. The most interesting part at that time was I think he and one of his students were having some kind of鈥�
Whom he probably married?
That鈥檚 right, he did! I don鈥檛 know if they鈥檙e still married?
Yes, they are.
Good, good.
You鈥檒l be happy to hear that!
That was big news then!
The subject of affairs is not a very common topic on these tapes.
Gerry Tondino, John Bland - I guess John didn鈥檛 have much to do. Did he teach you a course then?
John Bland鈥� I don鈥檛 think so. Maybe in the early years. Tondino: I enjoyed Sketching School so much I went on an extra one.
I see!
Not that I was a great artist or anything, but I really liked getting away. I wish I could do that now: take a week, because it takes you two to three days to relax enough that your hand can actually, you know鈥�
Steady!
That鈥檚 right. But he was a - that was a great class, his class.
He鈥檚 still around 看片视频 and he鈥檚 still teaching as ever.
Oh, yeah.
Interestingly enough, there was a person who worked at 看片视频 by the name of Maureen Anderson who recently retired and they set up a fund for her, like an endowment, a scholarship for her - do you have any memories of her? Because some people talk very eloquently: either you knew her well, or you didn鈥檛 know her at all. Those are the two categories.
Yeah, I hardly knew her at all. The only memory I have, if I dig deep, I remember, very gracious person, always willing to help.
And loved the students obviously. Difficult to replace somebody like that. And I鈥檓 trying to think, through my memory of those particular years. Were there any - you mentioned Tom Blood - do you remember any of the visiting critics that were brought in to your various design programs, like Ray Affleck or Fred Lebensold?
I think Fred came for some of the crits. One of the things I enjoyed most, actually, was a course, I guess it was in fourth year or maybe fifth, where instead of having a major project all year, we had a series of outside visitors, setting the assignment and critiquing, one a week for a whole term. This was very, very stimulating, and very, very exciting. For one thing, we got to see lots of different building types, and some of the lessons I learned in that class, because it wasn鈥檛 only architects that came in but they were actually developers, property managers, designers who came in and they taught us some pretty good lessons. One of the other things that we did, and it鈥檚 not directly tied to the school, but it was difficult to get summer jobs.
Still is...
And one year there was the Opportunity for Youth Program, the federal government paid us a $1000 or something for the summer, which was good money then. And Jacques Binette and George Popper, my partner, the three of us conceived a project and actually got it funded, and we had a great, great summer. We designed a hyperbolic parabolic shell using steel decks to build a chapel for the B鈥檔ai Brith camp at Ste. Agathe, and we got all the materials, we procured all the materials, we got all that donated and shipped and went up there. We not only designed but we built, and that experience of actually building what you design was one of the most important things in my career at 看片视频 because all of a sudden it gave you an appreciation for what it is that you have to put on paper. And the difficulty or the ease with which somebody can implement that design in actual construction. One of the first things that had happened is we had calculated the angles wrong where the two main beams came in, so we had to figure out a way to resolve it at the site and we worked with concrete and steel and fibreglass and wood, and I think it was a fabulous experience and I think we used all of our experience to date in design, and that construction experience really cemented the realism with which we do our designs even today. That鈥檚 one thing that I see 看片视频 does consistently well, certainly did it for me, and people I know compared to other universities, is that - and you can debate whether it goes too far or not - but by and large, 看片视频 graduates know that buildings have to be on solid foundations, whereas in some other universities, never mind that they don鈥檛 know that this is truly, they don鈥檛 even know about foundations sometimes. We have in our hiring practice at the office had to be wary of hiring students from other universities because of this lack of knowledge of construction. So I have good memories of the school, made some good friends. I think I got a good education. I would鈥檝e maybe liked to spend more time on design, which is hard to critique because we had 50 hours a week of studio and stuff. But you look at some of the great architecture schools and there are people there with vision and strong convictions and you can go there and study a certain way of doing things which was missing at 看片视频, it was a general - it was good quality education, no doubt, but was missing that dynamism that comes with a key individual who leads you down a certain method. He might not be all that.
That鈥檚 right, but that often comes from whoever is setting up the school...
Yeah. One of the things they didn鈥檛 teach us in school is that an architecture career is really a rollercoaster ride. Because you definitely have ups and downs in an architectural career and actually that should be taught to the students and how to prepare for that because we learned by the second cycle what to do. After graduation I didn鈥檛 go to secondary school, to graduate school at ARCOP. So I went to work for Max Roth and learned a lot of good things there. I worked over five years with various companies. I worked with Eva Vecsei on exciting projects, at Concordia, and I ended up with Lagrange et Matthews which was the Canadian arm of SOM out of Chicago. We were doing great鈥�
Lucien Lagrange?
Yes, Lucien Lagrange. When we were doing the headquarters for CP Marathon, various other interesting projects, and the PQ government got elected in鈥�
鈥︹赌�76
鈥n 鈥�76, and the day after, we got a call from every single client canceling every single project. Needless to say that was not good for the staff of the office. At around Christmas time, I got laid off. I never got so drunk as that Christmas. Whoa! I didn鈥檛 drink for two years after that! I realized at that time that it was going to be a difficult situation in Montreal. I didn鈥檛 have a teaching bent so we looked - my wife is an urban planner, also a 看片视频 graduate - we both got job offers in Edmonton which we politely declined. We had no experience with that end of the country. We had friends who moved to Edmonton and Calgary but we didn鈥檛. She got a job here [Toronto] and I moved here not knowing anybody and started practice at the time because the situation here was pretty bad and I couldn鈥檛 get a job so I started to practice. I remember, what I did to get jobs at the time was I got on my bicycle, printed out business cards and dropped off cards at construction sites. And that paid off about a year later. My first year here I made a grand total of $5000, but by the third year here, I was doing very well and at that time George Popper, my partner who had been having fun in Europe and with whom I did a final thesis, as I told you, wanted to come back and I invited him into the practice and we鈥檝e been together ever since 1980.
Amazing.
And we were going great guns doing mostly infill housing till about 1981. There was a big recession and we nearly lost the practice and our houses. It taught us a big lesson, that recession, because that鈥檚 when we first realized - we talked to different people - that we really had to diversify the practice. And we鈥檝e been working at that, ever since. We鈥檝e been fortunate; we鈥檝e had a very successful practice, although it鈥檚 had its ups and downs. Our most famous project in the city is probably Castle Hill which is a very upscale redevelopment project of terraced town housing. We鈥檝e done hundreds of houses and thoudands of homes in the city. We鈥檝e done some commercial work as well. We鈥檝e won our share of awards, including the Governor General Award which we鈥檙e very proud of. One of the interesting - the most interesting - development of late is our getting into the urban design field. And this was through our involvement in a redevelopment project here in the New Urbanist fashion, working with Andres Duany out of Miami. And this started us on the road: we ran up, we toured, we went to a lot of New Urbanist conventions and we started doing plans, for people as well as for architecture, and we thought this was a great thing to do because not only was it interesting, not only was it something that was new and exciting and kept the practice alive, but it could also feed the architecture side of the practice later. And last year, I was chair - the local chair - of a big international conference on New Urbanism that was here in Toronto.
I remember that.
And from that, we鈥檙e now working in Chile doing a new town centre for one of the poorest suburban cities within the municipality of Santiago. This is very exciting and we hope to build on this for both our urban design, planning and architecture, and what it鈥檚 made us realize is that we have something to offer, and this is something that the school might - and I don鈥檛 know if it鈥檚 teaching urban design - but architects have forgotten and abandoned urban design to landscape architects and planners. And I think we鈥檙e best equipped to think of three dimensions. Our whole approach to planning - and we get hired - is that we bring both a philosophy and an ability to predict the three-dimensional impact of what we鈥檙e designing and work back from there, rather than the traditional planning approach which is not nice coloured sections on a map and who knows what it will look like. So this is very successful. I think one of the things that we鈥檝e realized in our career, George and I, is that every once in a while you have to reinvent yourself. You have to be constantly learning. You have to be constantly challenged otherwise you鈥檙e going to be in a sort of dead-end practice, and no matter how good you are and talented, if you鈥檙e relying on that one segment of the market - there鈥檚 many, many strong famous firms here that died in this recession because they were focused on one aspect of the economy, not broad based enough. We do a lot of different housing projects, and this has been a happy circumstance because there鈥檚 always some housing going on.
So you鈥檝e enjoyed your career in architecture. If you had to do it all over again, you鈥檇 probably modify it slightly, but you鈥檇 still like to be where you are?
I鈥檓 very happy being an architect which is difficult to understand for some people. I know that it鈥檚 financially not always rewarding. It had difficult periods. Another thing that we鈥檙e doing now is we鈥檙e getting into development. The sort of thinking is this way: when we do a project, and it goes well, then we might get paid our fee; when we do a project and it fails, it doesn鈥檛 materialize, then we don鈥檛 get paid. So at best, we might get paid working for somebody else. We figured why not take the same risk with our own money. The downside risk is exactly the same.
That鈥檚 a good way of looking at it.
But the upside is鈥�
The upside is far more positive.
Yeah! So we鈥檙e now developing a condominium building. We鈥檙e redeveloping where our offices are and we see, actually, over the next couple of years, we鈥檙e maybe 50% architect, 50% developers.
Good! Well, thank you very much. It鈥檚 been very enjoyable.
Yeah.
