AIA Canada - The Myth of Simplicity
Event Description
Entitled 'The Myth of Simplicity', the presentation covers the 5-year process of construction of a large minimal planar Modernist house in Central Ontario, north of Toronto. The challenge was to create a house whose design inspiration came from the Los Angeles Case Study Houses of the 1940s-60s, with an absolutely minimal material palette (glass, aluminum, plaster and stone). This presentation will document the extraordinary efforts required by architects, engineers, builders and trades (on a difficult sloping rural site) to create the perfect alignments of materials in Climate Zone 6, where Zone 8 includes the Arctic. It is a description of a 70-year and 3000km translation from Los Angeles in the 50s to the present in Ontario.
CES: Estimated 1 LU/ HSW for AIA Members
Speaker
Gerry Lang, OAA, AIA, TSA, FTI, Senior Associate, architectsAlliance (aA)
Over a 45-year practice in Toronto and New York, Gerry Lang has developed an encyclopedic understanding of high-performance building envelope design and creative construction technique. He has examined the relationship between design aesthetics, building performance and operational function in the design and execution of such projects as the Mississauga and Kitchener (ON) city halls, the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre at the University Health Network in Toronto, the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, and the BMW North America’s East Training Facility in New Jersey. While at Arup NYC he consulted to the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in the development of the Harvard Art Museum’s many sophisticated facades.
Since returning to Toronto and joining architectsAlliance (aA) as a Senior Associate in 2012, Gerry has led the development and execution of the firm’s signature complex facades, charged with wringing aA’s advanced aesthetic ideas out of conventional materials on carefully-budgeted high-rise residential developer projects.
Gerry is a graduate of the University of Toronto (honours, 1978) and the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design (2008). He is registered to practice in Ontario and New York State.
He has taught architectural design studios and professional practice at both graduate and undergrad levels at the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo and NJIT in Newark, mentored young Toronto and New York architects for 35 years, and lectured at Columbia University and the Pratt Institute. He also speaks publicly at conferences in Canada and the US on the design implications of new building technologies and architectural facade development.
