IT'S easy to love the elegant turn-of-the-century buildings of the Exchange District. But ask someone about the style of our city hall (built in 1963-65), and chances are they'll say it looks like a prison -- or worse.
Often perceived as stark, boxy, cold or institutional, the post-Second World War buildings in our midst are seldom thought of as beautiful.
The clean lines and geometric structure of the modernist Civic Centre on Main Street, designed by David Thordarson and Bernard Brown of Green, Blankstein, Russell and Associates, are often misinterpreted as institutional.
"I think it's been a knee-jerk reaction, since the '70s or so, to hate modernist architecture," says Serena Keshavjee, a professor in art history at the University of Winnipeg. "But I've always felt that if it was shown in an artistic way, and people had the chance to see these buildings out of their normal contexts, that it might seem more beautiful."
Keshavjee has teamed with University of Manitoba architecture professor Herb Enns to guest-curate an exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, highlighting our city's unique and important collection of modernist structures.
The show, Manitoba Modernist Architecture 1945-1975, opens today and runs until Oct. 29. The two professors are publishing a book on the same subject, to be launched at the gallery on Sept. 14.
"There's a very high quality of modernist architecture here, one that rivals just about any city in Canada," says Keshavjee.
"In 1996 my husband got a job here, so we moved to Winnipeg. Before that, I knew about the Exchange District, but I didn't know Winnipeg had such a great collection of modernist buildings. The quality of it is certainly equal to the Exchange District."
Executive House at 390 Wellington Cres. was designed in 1959 by Libling Michner.
So what is the modernist style, exactly? Pioneered internationally by such leading figures as Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, it included the period between about 1920 and 1980. Characterized by flat, horizontal lines and cubic shapes, it used clean, simple designs, without the ornate flourishes found on heritage buildings. It replaced wood and brick with glass, concrete and steel.
Van der Rohe, for example, is famous for his "less is more" philosophy, favouring buildings with glass façades and an open, flowing design. Wright created buildings that reflected the American prairie landscape.
The WAG exhibit, says Keshavjee, will introduce gallery-goers to the beauty of our local modernist architecture -- from Rae & Jerry's Steak House to the spiral-shaped Precious Blood Church -- in a way that avoids being dry or dull.
"It's designed very creatively," she says. "If it had been left up to me, there would have just been a bunch of tiny black-and-white photos on the wall. But we wanted it to be more than that, something spectacular, and it couldn't have been that way without Herb (Enns). The set-up of it is very unusual and very beautiful."
Enns has included drawings, photographs and city plans, as well as period advertising, clothing and furniture, to help give viewers a sense of how modernist architecture reflected the social conditions of its day.
In conjunction with the exhibit, the Exchange District BIZ is hosting modernist walking tours, while the WAG will host guided tours of the exhibit itself and screen several related films.
Frank and William Lount's Winnipeg Clinic has art deco touches on the exterior.
Historically, an important local connection to the international modernist movement came in the person of John (Jack) Russell, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Russell arrived at the University of Manitoba's school of architecture in 1913, and eventually became its dean. (The J.A. Russell Building named in his honour, home to the Faculty of Architecture, is itself a carefully preserved 1959 modernist gem.)
During his tenure, Russell hired leading architects and teachers for the school, including James Donahue, a former student of Walter Gropius at Harvard.
Russell also encouraged his students to do their master's studies abroad. This meant that many of our city's top architects received training under leaders of the modernist style, before returning home with their knowledge.
"Russell said that we can't always be looking to the past," says Keshavjee, "and that we have to make buildings appropriate for our time. Why should we still be making banks that look like Greek temples when we have new technology, and a new situation? As philosophies change, architecture changes.
"So there's that, and there's also the socio-political aspect, the fact that modernists were very concerned with social conditions. One of the basic ideas behind (modernism) was mass-produced, high quality and affordable housing."
Regional adaptations to modernism were made all over the world; the style was re-interpreted everywhere it showed up. Locally, buildings such as the Civic Centre (city hall), Winnipeg Art Gallery, Norquay Building and Centennial Concert Hall are just a few examples of the modernist style, each incorporating a local flavour.
Created by leading local architects such as Gustavo da Roza, Etienne Gaboury and the firm Green, Blankstein, Russell, these buildings include adjustments for our cold climate and abundant sunlight.
"City hall is a good example of this," says Keshavjee. "There are brises soleil (sun shades) and large sections of glass brick, rather than the walls of windows that you might normally see in modernist buildings... The idea is to reduce the light, so that it still comes in but isn't overwhelming.
"There's also local Tyndall stone used, and that's a regional variation that happens quite a lot here. The Norquay Building, for example; the front is pure glass, but the sides of it are Tyndall stone, the same that's used in The Bay or the Legislative Building."
The Winnipeg Clinic, with its space-age Jetsons design, is a classic example of modernist style, and one of Winnipeg's greatest buildings to modernism buffs. While it uses the flat, horizontal features that are typical of modernist architecture, its curved windows and jutting fins resemble the art deco style of an earlier age.
An interesting addition to the WAG exhibit is that, in the main-floor lobby, a display of paintings highlights four leading figures of Prairie modern art: Bruce Head, Winston Leathers, Ken Lochhead and Tony Tascona.
The paintings, like the architectural exhibit, show how traditional, ornamental styles of art and architecture were replaced following the Second World War. These newer styles rejected many of the existing ideas of beauty, while still creating buildings and art that remain beautiful in their own right.
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