ONTARIO SCIENCE CENTRE 1: THE LOSS
The Ontario Science Centre, today, August 2024.
PHOTO: The Right Angle Journal
On 18 April 2023, Premier Doug Ford announced the Ontario Government’s general plan to replace the Ontario Science Centre with a smaller, newer institution on the Toronto waterfront. Now, a year and a half later they are taking apart the exhibits.
This remains a great shock to me. The OSC has been a cornerstone for exploration and activity for three generations of my family. Just a couple months ago it was the only request that my seven-year-old grandson made for his birthday outing. So, we packed up the six of us and off we went to Toronto. Yes, the building was showing wear and tear and some of the exhibits were a little tired. Those things I attributed to an uncaring Provincial Premier that would rather promote cheap beer than provide support and services to all the generations of people that proudly make Ontario our home. The OSC is an institution, as necessary as a hospital, a school or public transit in a sustainable world. It contributes to this community’s culture and is one of those things that makes for a balanced and interesting life.
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When I was a kid, the OSC was a great hall filled with wonder, made more remarkable by the fact that I did not hear one “shhh” or a single “don’t touch.” When I entered University, I began to appreciate my experiences at the OSC from a new point of view. It began as a sense of awe that evolved into a feeling of pride at the accomplishment of the buildings that held the institution. Later, when I visited with my own children Erin and Mark, for their introduction to the stimulating environment of the first interactive science museum, they were captivated by the experience—driven forward by a new exploration of the world—experiments in sight, sound and paradox. Our visits may have begun when they were too young to understand all of what they experienced, but through repeated visits their understanding grew. Even during these trips, I was filled with wonder at how the buildings that make up the composition seem to fit naturally into their environment. An embodiment of an architecture flowing into nature, following the natural contours of the Don River ravine, into which the Centre descends.
When I became an Architect, the profession wrapped around me, with all the demands of running a practice while trying to contribute to my client’s lives as well as the lives of those that I impact through the power of my best considered designs and aspirations. Works of Architecture contribute to a vibrant community and personal life experience. I have been fortunate to travel widely and experience many works of architecture and to understand how the overall impact of a comfortable built environment, no matter how humble, surrounds and supports us each day of our lives. As I became more involved in leading the profession, I met with many prominent Architects who have shaped this world with incredible knowledge together with an agile and gentle hand. More to the point of this story, I met and became friends with Raymond Moriyama from whose great mind the OSC sprang.
For Ray, and the others who were involved in creating the OSC, it was intended as more than just a backdrop for families to explore and experience the wonder of the world. The OSC had a more well-rounded life function. It was a workplace and educational facility with its own culture. The impressions and inspirations it evoked were collectively held by all those who entered its halls.
One of those groups was the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, which invited my wife and me to their Awards Gala. It was a great party, where a few hundred people filled with food, conversation and awards demonstrated the unique contribution of engineers to the people of Ontario and beyond. Why do you think they would pick this particular spot? Obviously, the building and everything that it held—people, objects and emotions—conveyed meaning to them.
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It was a beautiful evening when Jan and I arrived at the Science Centre. We parked the car and took the brief walk through the lush greenery of the grounds with the scent of pine following us to the building entry where the light spilled out from the interior. Then, through a grand expanse of glass, and beneath a heroic angled cornice of concrete we found ourselves in a magnificent space devoted to industry, devoid of art, but a beautiful space all on its own. After shedding our coats and picking up our name tags, we strolled together out of the entry pavilion and across the glass enclosed bridge over the dark wooded ravine below. A few lights twinkled through the trees.
The bridge led us to the top of the great hall. From there, we descended a broad curving stair into a glorious space formed by three brutal, minimalist concrete cylinders. In the past, when we had visited during the daytime, this was always a bright space, filled with the sight and sound of excited children on bus trips, roaring around, experiencing the newfound wonders held by science. But that night, the hall conveyed a more restrained mood. The lights were subdued to give an ambiance of dinner intimacy. We caught the reflection of a single bulb off the fine mirror finish of the terrazzo floor, in contrast to the rough cast, bush-hammered and broken surface of the highly expressive forms. Memories of the gleeful noise and a buzz of excited children, like the crackling of electricity, now gave way to the hush of a formal black-tie evening with a quartet playing “Stand by Me” as we entered the Hall. In retrospect, maybe that song was a plea from the building to be respected and maintained. That was ten years ago.
The tables were set with all kinds of finery, and the aroma of floral centrepieces surrounded us. Once seated, I could really drink in the room and the shape of the space. On one side, above the stage, I could see lights reflected on the glass beyond the cylinders that separated the warmth of the interior from the cold of the outdoor terrace. The ceiling between the cylinders was punctuated by skylights made reflective by the dark sky above. The playful shapes of sculpted mobiles hung above us and animated the interior with their reflections on that ceiling. All of this delicacy provided an even starker contrast with the unflinchingly curving brutalist concrete walls that enclosed us. What better place to experience an Ontario engineering awards gala than in a room inspired by a delicate trillium—our provincial flower—surrounded by rooms filled with machines of ingenuity?
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Ontario Science Centre Event Space, 19 May, 2016.
Dnllnd, Wikimedia Commons
It has been proposed that the current six-storey building of approximately 568,000 square feet will be replaced by new structure of around 269,000 square feet (less than half the size of the existing Centre) to be located on land next to what may remain of a mutilated Ontario Place, whose iconic buildings were created by another great Ontario Architect, Eb Zeidler. The current 55-year-old Science Centre has been criticized for getting old, as buildings tend to do, but it has been left to decay rather than being maintained—just like all of us, thanks to a decaying Health Care system. The current government likes to toast new accomplishments and cut ribbons, but it is loath to carry out the necessary work of maintenance or pay the staff a living wage. I’m certain that the reason behind the shrinking of the facility by more than half, may be the wages that will be saved.
I am reminded how fragile much of the art of building is. The dream of building spaces shaped by forms of memory and filled with meaning for generations that inspired my journey to become an architect has vanished. But I was never that naïve. Many of my projects, including those that have been published and recognized, have been transformed or completely swept away as things that have outlasted their usefulness. What we are seeing at the OSC is different. It is a violent act of vengeance that is being perpetrated against society. It is a crime, a colossal waste of money and a dismissal of collective memory.
Public institutions are just that: public. They belong to us all collectively and shape us deeply in how they affect our bodies and our thoughts. We seem to live in a time of privatization where everything can be reduced to a disposable commodity. This view of the world is not for me, and I will continue to fight against it, and all the ghostly shapes and shadows that it throws at us.