September 5, 2006 Source: :
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/060905-2533.asp Foster focus of gallery exhibit Details of pharmacy design on display
Sep 5/06
by Mary Alice Thring (about) (email) With the official opening of the new Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building Sept. 6, the world will finally get to see what may well be the jewel in the architectural crown of U of T’s St. George campus. For those who are curious about the thought process behind those floating pods, an exhibition at the Eric Arthur Gallery provides an intimate look at the work of Lord Norman Foster, the Stirling Prize-winning architect whose firm designed the pharmacy building. "U of T is a great new laboratory for contemporary architecture" said Professor Larry Richards who has lovingly curated Norman Foster: Gliding Through Space at the Eric Arthur Gallery of the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. "The university’s projects have generated a lot of conversations, both pro and con, ranging from Graduate House to the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research. The pharmacy building is even more exceptional because of Foster. This is by far the most internationally acclaimed firm we’ve had on campus." Foster came to international attention with the opening of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters in 1986. With its highly engineered and articulated exterior and soaring atrium, it bears a certain resemblance to Richard Roger’s Centre Pompidou in Paris, but without the technicolour aspects. "The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank is machine cool and elegant," said Richards, noting that Rogers was Foster’s former partner. "The atrium is lifted off the ground. Foster is also a pilot and flight and aerodynamics are key to understanding his work." A 1963 shelter design, Retreat at Feock, that resembles the cockpit of a fighter plane emerging from the earth is an early example of engineered lightweight structures with a desire for lift. To that end, the Eric Arthur Gallery exhibit includes everything from urban design schemes to industrial design. Even the product design (a chair, a faucet and door hardware) look like aircraft parts, with brushed aluminium structural components and rubber gaskets. "Foster used to be seen as an object maker," Richards said. "Now he is understood as an urbanist whose work is about the larger context of the city. He cares a lot about the health of cities." The exhibit gives primary space to the new pharmacy building. Gallery goers can thumb through the 61 pages of working drawings for the building and see samples of the special fritted glass that not only provides visual interest but acts to restrict solar gain. A photo sequence detailing the assembly of the engineered steel for the pods is on display, as are large scale photo realistic renderings of the building’s section. "If you examine Foster’s work, pharmacy was a challenge for the firm, with its tight site and budget. Even so, the solution is typically elegant," he said. "Put into context with the rejuvenation of the southeast corner of the campus as the medical research hub and its relationship with the historic structures and avenue, each of the building’s elements come together." Also on display are the model and drawings for a new high-speed train station for central Florence and the massing models for the Swiss Re building in central London, a spiralling rocket ship form that has been affectionately nicknamed The Gherkin. Nearby, a video screen plays an interview with Foster. Most amusing perhaps is a fabric panel Richards imported from Scotland for the exhibit. Entitled London Toile, the design by Timorous Beasties Studio of Glasgow offers a sly take on toile do Jouy, the classic French upholstery fabric that typically features complex pastoral scenes stamped on a white background. The panel on display has images of contemporary London, showing homeless and street people, old ladies, children, prostitutes and dogs against a skyline that includes St. Paul’s Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Swiss Re and the Millennium Wheel -- another Foster project. And about those pods in pharmacy? "They’re ambiguous, aren’t they," Richards said with a smile. "I think they animate the space and give scale to the atrium. There’s also a contrast between hard and soft and day and night with their preprogrammed light show [dusk till 11 p.m.] . In the end they’re also about drama and mystery and the magic of staying aloft." The Eric Arthur Gallery is at the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, 230 College St. Foster: Gliding Through Space continues until Sept. 30. Admission is free. Visit www.ald.utoronto.ca for more information.
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