Ten years ago, Atlantic Canada looked a lot different than it does today. Not the nature, which has remained relatively consistent, but the typical cityscape.

In Halifax, for example, heritage mainstays like the City Hall building (opened in 1830) and the Old Town Clock (opened in 1803) now coexist with modern buildings like the Halifax Central Library, which was designed by local firm Fowler Bauld & Mitchell and introduced bold lines and sleek glass walls into the city’s skyline when it opened in 2014.

Also, St. John’s, Newfoundland is well known for being a city with a long past (after all, they have close to 30 federally designated historic sites), but even they have been looking toward the future with the construction of The Rooms in 2005. The modern building was built on a historic site, but with plenty of consultation from historians and archaeologists to quell fears of lost heritage.

These places, and other cities across the Atlantic provinces, are evidence that residents have started to let go of long-held ideas that old is always better. This has resulted in new skylines that mix traditional heritage architecture with modern, innovative buildings.

This shift has been largely driven by young, creative architects who see their practice as a form of art, rather than something strictly technical and functional. They work at small firms where they have creative autonomy, bringing in inspiration from art movements, the feelings of certain places, and the stories that can be told about their work

Narrative Architecture

One of the biggest new trends in Atlantic Canada is narrative architecture, or architecture that’s developed around a story. The emphasis is placed on the meaning of the building rather than just the design.

For Monica Adair, founder and partner at Acre Architects in Saint John, New Brunswick, the narrative behind the pieces is one of the most important elements. In fact, the firm’s tagline is “storied architecture.”
“I think this idea of inspiring people to live great stories was really about going beyond the bricks and mortar,” Adair said. “It was about how we see the world, how we see ourselves in the world, and how can we transform that?”

Adair is originally from Saint John but spent a lot of her time in New York before returning home to set up her practice with Stephen Kopp, her husband and business partner.

While in New York, they set up the precursor to Acre Architects – the Acre Collective, comprised of artists, writers, landscape architects, and other people that inspired the two. There wasn’t much strictness to it – it was more about working on exciting projects with people who inspired them.

One of their first “stories,” as they call their architectural projects, was a public art piece titled “In Transit.” Situated just in front of the new Saint John Transit headquarters, the project is both a public art piece and a bus stop.

“That project for us showed that architecture could cross both realms of art and architecture, and it actually crossed the idea of functional space,” Adair said. “So, that was a really good project for us to keep our practice open and for us to work with ideas and to change the public realm.”

Another firm that’s using narrative to guide their design process is Fathom Studio in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Chris Crawford, director of architecture and vice president, says that “it’s all about storytelling.”

“I think that plays a major role in our design, and I think every project has a story, and having a team that regularly uses that as a medium, it really helps inform that greater design process.”

Fathom Studio has done a lot of work for Parks Canada, and where it would be easy to stick up a sign without any context, they focus heavily on the history of the space, telling stories that are instrumental to understanding the area and its people. There’s a reason that an area is designated a national park, and it’s not just the beauty.

For example, in Fathom’s work at Prince Edward Island National Park, they used the stories of Indigenous heritage—as well as French, Acadian and British colonization—to inform the design of their work at Robinsons Island.

The island, which is actually more of a peninsula, was most recently used for camping, but has been used by the Mi’kmaq people to harvest shellfish and by the English and Acadian settlers to forage cranberries. When Parks Canada got in touch about creating signage for their new trail system, Fathom did some research to uncover those stories and then let those stories inform their design.

The site has signs that expand and retract, minimizing the impact on the natural landscape, and transparent signs that overlay the vista with illustrations of former activities that took place on the site. At one stop, they’ve demonstrated the size of the annual cranberry harvest through a red metal frame.

“It’s just illustrating the importance of the other layers that are other times ignored in the history of what has happened on the site or the current culture and society.

Heritage reimagined

Architecture is vast and explores many complex ideas, but individual architects vary widely in their approach. The people I spoke to approach projects very differently, but one thing that they can all agree on is that there has been a major shift concerning heritage buildings, or the idea that old is good and new is bad.

“I’ve been working for 13 to 14 years now, and in that time, I’ve seen a massive shift,” said Crawford. “From being a young graduate and not having much optimism that our province or our culture would be open to new ideas to seeing a real design culture emerge.”

Crawford says that in Halifax specifically there was a perception that architectural innovation meant a throwing away of history in favour of something cold and heartless. That’s no longer the case.

Rayleen Hill, the principal architect and founder of RHAD Architects, is also based in Halifax. She’s noticed the same kind of pattern over the years and thinks the shift in perception might have been the construction of the new Halifax Central Library, a large modern glass building with a second story that juts out over the rest of the building, all bold lines and sharp edges.

“I think it was the first time that everybody got to see modern architecture in a great new light, and all that it can provide,” she said, “and I think it might have changed a lot of minds. It’s been a very important building for the city.”

Hill has worked on a number of projects that bring modern twists to heritage buildings. For example, one residential project in 2014 added a garage and new siding to an existing Halifax home, turning it from a regular old house into something modern and energy efficient that still paid tribute to the original structure.

The same goes for Adair. One of Acre’s first projects in Saint John was the creation of a tiny patio for a wine bar housed in a heritage building. The project was relatively simple, but Adair says that, as the first contemporary intervention on a historic structure in the city, the meaning was much deeper than you’d think.

It showed many St. John residents that you could make a modern change to a historical building in a city that prides itself on heritage without compromising the past.

“That’s something not to take for granted for us,” she said. “These moves, even small, kind of start to set the stage. So, I think that was a great opportunity for us to start our dialogue for mutual accommodation between old and new.”

Acre has since worked on many of the commercial buildings in the historical core of the city, bringing their signature look to much of Canterbury Street and Grannan Lane. Here, the cobblestone streets and brick buildings mix with modern industrial touches and old rustic lighting to evoke an image that’s hip and modern, not unlike what you’d see in the cooler areas of Brooklyn.

Architecture is Art

Another common thread linking this new wave of Atlantic architects is how they view their field. Whereas in big architectural firms the focus is on technique and functionality, everybody I spoke to believes that the most important element of architecture is the design, and how it makes people feel.

“I think outright that architecture is art,” said Hill, when I posed this question to her. “It doesn’t have a relationship with art, it just is art.”
Of course, she adds, this depends on the specific architect and how they approach a project. For Hill, whose background is firmly rooted in design, any architectural piece that her firm works on takes into consideration the same things that an artist would: colour, form, emotion.

That’s why it’s so rewarding for her to work on things like the Halifax Explosion Commemorative Markers. With that project, she was focused on how people would react to the space, what they would see, and how they would feel. As a result, what could have been just a signpost is a piece of public art with a message.

“What we were really trying to do was to develop a sense of scale, and really to have this moment where people could walk up to the markers and read them, and while they’re reading them, also be able to see their own reflection in the markers.”

For Crawford, the relationship between art and architecture is a little less obvious, but he heavily emphasizes the importance of place-making, something that requires the ideas of art and architecture as well as those of urban planning and community feedback.

One of Fathom Studio’s projects, a revitalization plan for the seaside community of Borden–Carleton on Prince Edward Island, is a perfect example of what they hope to achieve.

The plan looks at the fabrication yards right outside of the small town as an asset rather than a liability, envisioning a large park with boardwalks passing through marshes, markers explaining the location’s history, and rotating artist studios built from the concrete pillars of the yard.
He uses the Highline in New York City as an example of the kind of project that he sees this becoming.

“Someone walks through and sees the old highline, this derelict raised subway line and you know, your initial thought is this is horrible, we need to get rid of it,” he said, “and then you see what happens as a result of some community advocacy from that passionate community, and now every major city is trying to recreate it.”

The Borden–Carleton project has not yet gone through development, but Crawford is hopeful that either someone will pick it up or a community-led initiative will give it the support it needs to go forward. If that happens, he sees it as a hub for PEI’s artistic community.

For Adair, the relationship between art and architecture is more characterized as a way of thinking or a way of viewing the world. It has been heavily inspired by the artists she worked with in New York, including Lawrence Weiner, Walter De Maria, and James Turrell.

“I’m very interested in transformational projects, and things that change the way we think, the way we see the world,” she said. “And so I think these land artists, or these Dia Foundation artists, are just part of these big thinkers, and I think they’ve always really inspired me.”

When it comes to transformation, Acre is really pushing toward the future. By the year 2030, they hope to have completed 100 transformational projects—whether the scope be big or small—and they are well on their way to achieving that.

“We’re not just going to sit there and go, ‘okay, that’s a great project and brings in money, and we’re happy to just do it’, [the point is] to really just spend some time thinking about how do we ambitiously try to go after making change.”

The Scotiabank Nuit Blanche spectacle in Toronto with its more than 110 contemporary art projects gets most of the press, of course, but Charlottetown’s fourth annual Art in the Open—with more than 36 projects in six locations throughout PEI’s capital city—was an evening’s entertainment worth the travel. In 2013 I made the error of having to leave by 7 pm little knowing that the art really only gets going after the sun sets. No mistake made with the second visit to this ambitious Atlantic Canadian project: I wandered the streets and parks for the entire eight hours, 4 pm to midnight!

Yet we still weren’t able to see everything and, perhaps, that is the important aspect of these temporally tightly defined public art productions that seem to be popping up everywhere in lieu of and as a kind of poor community’s “biennale”?  In their “Welcome” to the 2014 Art in the Open, curators Pan Wendt and Becka Viau state “the aim is to provide through performances, installations and projections, experiences that help us rethink the spaces we move through every day.” They didn’t succeed with me. What was exhilarating that late summer evening in August was the immediate sense of audience, and especially younger audiences, and the feeling that our art and culture need not be restrained and limited to the confines of that specially groomed place, the gallery. It was exhilarating to hear kids yelp and yell from experiences and encounters that gained their attention without anyone saying “Shush!” It was more that feeling of an open encounter without regard for all the usual accoutrement that comes with art viewing. It was such fun to see kids, and adults too, playing with Monica Lacey’s Indoor/Outdoor sculptural installation in the night darkened Victoria Park, and later joining all manner of person brought to a stop on a Queen Street sidewalk to figure out what they were seeing and hearing with the staging of Ursula Johnson’s Hot Looking performance in the window of the normally sedate Casa Mia Café.

It seems to me unlikely that many, if any, people came away from Art in the Open rethinking their experiences of the spaces they occupy everyday, with a different understanding of the beautiful Victoria Park or the existing delights of the urban Rochford Square. The curatorial aim suggests, I think, how distanced we professional art people can get from every day experiences notwithstanding our best efforts. Well, theory and practice are often distant cousins without much effect on the vibrant lives of the other!

My evening started at 4 pm hanging around the Confederation Centre Plaza, one of the six loci for staging Art in the Open and, almost eight hours later, the site of the last project I was able to see as well as a snack and refreshing drink around the welcomed warming fires of Mavor’s. What gained my attention? What did I like, and there is no reason why I, or anyone, would like everything.

Alexis Bulman was just setting up The Free Ads Structure/L’issue des petites annonces gratuites on the plaza overlooking the pedestrian only Victoria Row: a collection of found objects from free ads, objects that would be offered free of charge later in the evening. The homemade sculptural pile was just beginning, and when I returned evidently all had been given away because there remained no trace of art. From nothing to nothing has long been a powerful philosophical concept. Nowadays it is also a powerful art attitude, often merely a conceit, for a way of working in a hyper-productive world, a world where more product is a matter of bad faith and counter-productive. Bulman’s project worked very well because it almost never existed for me! I liked that.

There must have been half a dozen and more projects around the Confederation Centre of the Arts (home of Anne of Green Gables – the Musical and of the Confederation Centre Art Gallery). Over the railing from Bulman’s project on Victoria Row, Amy Malbeuf continued her 2009 performance Portals/Portails, one component of Art in the Open’s Indigenous Art Programming curated by Carla Taunton and Heather Igloliorte. The artist emerged on the crowded street scene covered from head to toe in a golden, skin-tight body suit. She pushed a garden variety fertilize spreader loaded, I found out later, with pinkish salt. Malbeuf walked spreading the salt, creating a strikingly colourful circular residue and then made a second circle next to it before leaving the street stage. Almost immediately the kids of all ages in the audience flocked to the circles and played in them as if the circles were tempting puddles of water. Soon the discrete circles were blurred almost to oblivion. Historically, “salting the earth” was a symbolic ritual to place a curse on conquered lands to prevent the original inhabitants from returning.  The work was somewhat confusing conceptually, I thought, but, ironically, hugely enjoyed by the mainly white middle class audience. Perhaps that is Malbeuf’s point?

Maybe because it did not have a “point,” Monica Lacey’s Indoor/Outdoor was more intriguing, exciting to my fancy. And kids seemed to like it too! A small structure in the middle of a great field in Victoria Park and made only of doors for ingress and egress – actually, only enabling entrance and exit from a space that wasn’t a room or hall or anything but a space for doors leading only from here to the other side of there on a dark night. Alice’s Adventures seemed suddenly transported to here and now. What nuttiness art can offer if both it and we step out of the ordinary.

Lukas Steinman’s Tourists was one of the works truly developed with the darkened context of Art in the Open in mind: cutout silhouetted figures of stereotyped tourists suddenly popping out of the night woods fully illuminated. The first tourist completely caught me by surprise before it disappeared and then another popped up any particular further along the park path. It was very funny and a wry observation on Island culture without making judgmental critiques.

Other projects were more seriously demanding than might be apt in an evening’s festive spirit, although Rilla Marshall’s Diminished Island was serious, subtle and effective. Marshall highlighted the sea’s projected rise in level 90 years hence with a series of stakes extending for perhaps a kilometer along Victoria Park’s water edge. Each stake was topped with lights. For the uninitiated it was a serpentine line of lights that delighted the eye as lines of light at night do, perhaps because it makes us think of the creation of form out of nothing? When informed, our eyes have a graphic demonstration of contemporary climate change.

By the time I got to Diminished Island—several hours and several kilometers later—I was tired and greatly appreciated Amanda Fauteux’s Victoria Park Public Transportation. With schedules of stops posted throughout the park and dressed in a homemade uniform, Fauteaux  freely offered rides to customers, a social practice made truly helpful! When I got to the end of my ride, I was ready to head back downtown because I did not want to miss Ursula Johnson’s Hot Looking performance.

You do have to imagine a main street in a provincial capital late in the summer’s evening with lots of people, tourists and guests and residents, mulling around enjoying themselves and often looking for one of the several bars and eateries. Blasting from a brightly lit storefront is a pop jingle of a song and there in the window a young man dressed in “traditional” indigenous garb. He is dancing in a “traditional” indigenous manner and lip syncing No Doubt’s “Looking Hot” (the 2012 video for this song features the white singer Gwen Stefani decked out in culturally questionable Native American-style costume).  I have put “traditional” in quotation marks because we are into the problematic and often fiery arena of cross-cultural discussion. I do not know very much about what may or may not be traditionally indigenous here in Maritime Canada, so experienced this performance at face value. The  performer was dancing his heart out and lip singing the song, now and again looking and pointing suggestively at the audience. It was funny. It was exhausting as contemporary durational performances usually are as they test our resolve to stay with the performer. It was surreal and like great surreal art it was finally unnerving and disorienting. I didn’t catch the full extent of Johnson’s reference until some retrospective digging, and can only here suggest that you look at the No Doubt video yourself to fully appreciate Johnson’s work.

I missed as many projects as I saw at Art in the Open and that’s probably how it ought to be in this kind of festival atmosphere. Fullness and exuberance must be the kinds of descriptors for these events. And messy. Dozens of descriptors that are not usually brought to bear for a gallery exhibition. Just when I might be thinking the organizers had reduced art to another class of entertainment, I would encounter a project that was both entertaining and sustaining. What more could I ask? Well, I can look forward to a 2015 Art in the Open!

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