 |
| Lise Trottier |
| BRUCE: What kind of training do you have?
LISE: I have double training, training in art and architecture. BRUCE: Which one was first, and what do you mean when you say �art�? What kind of art? I mean is that poetry, painting, drawing? LISE: They were both there at the same time, although they didn�t always have the same significance all the time. For example, when I was very young, I would draw all the time. I was always involved with drawing. But I thought it was just for me, and I really liked architecture. Then coming from a practical background, that seemed to be more logical. So I applied to architecture school first, although if my background had been more artistic, maybe I would have gone to art school first. BRUCE: You mean drawing? LISE: Drawing, sculpture, photography, everything. BRUCE: Visual arts? LISE: Yes. BRUCE: What schools did you go to? What did you study and where? LISE: It started even before university. I was very fortunate that the highschool I went to had a very good technical department, and they had architectural drawing. We learned a lot about building construction and then larger skill projects. So I had a good introduction. Then when I went to Carleton University in Ottawa, the first year was very involved with art and concepts and images. So I was quite thrilled about that because the art side was important. It gave a totally new twist to everything I had learned from my high school time. That was a little more technical and a little more artistic and poetic. And I took to the artistic side. So I really liked the first year at Carleton because of that. The second year was very, very pragmatic, too much so. I think it�s difficult to dissociate art and science and architecture. I think it�s how it doesn�t work. And that�s when I decided I was going to art school, finally, and did a full degree in art, and created to my heart�s content for three solid years, whether it was courses, or off-campus projects, or commissions. I was involved with sculpture, photography, collations, drawings, for three years. BRUCE: And did you continue with architecture at some point? LISE: It was there all the time. There was no getting away from it. I tried. I tried to get as far away from architecture as possible because I thought it was too demanding. BRUCE: Isn�t there an engineering side to architecture that tends to be offputting for people who are more interested in the artistic side? LISE: The engineering would not necessarily be a problem because the artistic approach becomes like sculpture, and then you can consult. You can consult with the engineers to know like the dimensions to the centimeter, to the millimeter. It can become boring, and that can be boring when it becomes just plain old building construction. BRUCE: You have been in Montreal for many years, what do you think of architecture in Montreal in the contemporary sense? LISE: It�s in a state of becoming. I�m not from Montreal. I�m from Ontario. I have another perspective on it. And when I compare Montreal to other places, I find that new movements tend to start in other places. People might not know about it, people who are not architects. I mean architecture is not that popular, not as popular as painting or sculpture, not as well known. So you have these movements that start in other places like Coop Himmelblau in Switzerland, new movements in Europe or in the United States. Then at some point Montreal wants to surf the new wave. It tends to follow new trends. Montreal doesn�t tend to set the new trend, but rather to follow new trends. And we have to wonder why that is. This is something that has to happen in Canada. We have to become more adventureous with architecture. All we have to do is to look at architecture magazines in Europe and architecture magazines in Canada. Our first impression is to think, �Why can�t we do the same thing as in Europe?� BRUCE: You are originally from Kapuskasing. You could have gravitated to Toronto. Why not? LISE: I seem to pass through Toronto, but I never stay. I tend to hop about a lot. I started at Carleton in Ottawa; then I ended up in Calgary for a year, working over there. Then I went to Nova Scotia to art school. And while I was in Nova Scotia, I went to Paris to do my photo studio. I thought it would be a good idea to come to Montreal because it�s bilingual. The reason I went from Halifax to Paris was because I wanted to re-learn my French. And when I did that, I said to myself, �Hmm, if I�m going to be in Canada, it would be nice to be some place that is both French and English, so I came to Montreal. If I went to Toronto, it would be only English again, and maybe I would lose my French again. BRUCE: So you�re here for an enriched linguistic environment, but not for anything specific to the architecture world? LISE: This is something that we discovered as we went along. I came to Montreal to complete my basic training in architecture. Since I had done everything in English, I thought, well, it will be balancing my formal education by doing a few years in French. I found that it has something to do with the work ethic. There�s a stronger work ethic in Toronto than in Montreal, and in architecture we can not be lazy. We cannot be a slackard. It is a very, very demanding discipline. It can only work if we put in all the hours that it takes; and it takes a lot of hours. It�s a question of �L�amour du travail bien fait.� You want work that is done well. We tend to see that in Europe. I would tend to compare Canada with Europe. They want architecture and they want work that is well done. The thing about architecture is that it�s the world�s most public art. It�s the world we live. If the world we live in is not artistic or fulfilling, what happens then? Over 80% of people in industrialized countries live in cities, so if our cities are boring and uninteresting, what kind of world are we creating for ourselves? We are spending millions and millions and billions of dollars to live in sterile worlds. Why are we doing this? BRUCE: North Americans want low prices. Can you mass produce buildings? LISE: That�s why we have the Bauhaus. If we are going to have mass production, then we have to have mass production by machines. What has to be integrated in the process is the artistic content. We mass produce qualitative objects rather than boring objects. BRUCE: Can beauty be mass produced? LISE: I�m glad there�s only one David. But there are mass-produced plastic models as momentoes. In terms of objects of every-day life, it�s important to have objects in our every-day life that have beauty. BRUCE: Are you familiar with the Orange and Lemon awards for beautiful successful buildings in the first case and for ugly, unsuccessful buildings in the latter case. What do you think of these awards? Do you think it�s a good idea to have awards like these? LISE: I�m not too familiar with the specific buildings, but I think it is important to have these kinds of awards. The ultimate aim is to encourage a love of work well done. The Orange Award is a good one, but the Lemon Award is good too because there are too many people who say that because they�re making money in the building therefore it works. The owners sometimes have no choice. If they had more choices, then those lemons would not be bought. There are lots of lemons to choose from. If there are not many examples of good architecture, then people say that architecture is not important. They then fulfill themselves by taking advantage of other artistic expressions, such as painting or sculpture or the cinema. These boring buildings are forcing us to become desensitized to our built environment. People think it doesn�t really matter. So there�s a downward spiral and we find fulfillment with other artistic expressions. Violet-le-Duc prophesied this a long time ago. He said that when the printing press was invented, we could say good-bye to architecture because we won�t need the cathedrals any more. Cathedrals integrated Bible culture into architecture, and so with that they didn�t need the Bible so much. BRUCE: Since we don�t look to architecture to fulfill that kind of teaching mission any more, what do we look for in architecture today? LISE: A building is more than concrete, and glass and steel and wood. There is something more. They have something to do with ideas. Architecture is to the soul in the same way that music is to the soul. It is supposed to contain us. It is supposed to make us feel that we belong to a meaningful, beautiful world. That�s one of the reasons that we have this twentieth-century existentialism. The environment was foreign for a long time. It seemed like it didn�t belong to the human race. There was nothing human about it. It�s one of the consequences of capitalism. There are good things about capitalism and there are bad things about capitalism. Profit is OK, but the problem of profit at all costs at the expense of everybody else, that�s when it�s not OK. We can have building developments with good profit. If architecture is a part of it, then we are that much ahead. We have a place where people can be happy, where people want to live. If they want to live there, then they will want to buy. The developer will discover that he is making a profit. We make a contribution to the patrimoine so that in time it�s still interesting. BRUCE: It used to be that the profit motive was held up as opposed to the aesthetic: boxes were cheap, whereas a nice environment was necessarily expensive. That line of reasoning seems to have been abandoned. LISE: These boring boxes cost millions of dollars. They are not cheap. Boring is expensive. Even if people don�t live in them, materials cost what they cost. The labor cost is the same. The land cost is the same. Beautiful countryside is transformed into a blight. The use of valuable land to put up a boring box is very, very expensive. And people don�t enjoy being there. Nothing is being added to their life. In the headquarters of some insurance companies attention was paid to design. They have found that productivity went up because people enjoyed being in those environments. Happiness works! BRUCE: Do you have certain favorite architects? LISE: There are always favorite architects. One is always afraid of mentioning some and not mentioning others. BRUCE: Are there some architectural works that you feel are worth mentioning? LISE: I�ve been very intrigued by Japanese architecture, traditional or contemporary Japanese architecture. There�s a lot to learn from it. It always wants to go back to essential values. It reflects a healthy rapport with nature. It�s an economy that is also spiritual. If we look at Tadao Ando�s architecture we see a use of concrete. He creates spiritual, soulful spaces with concrete. At first it seems to be just concrete, but then if you look at it more carefully, you discover it isn�t just concrete; it�s the way light lives in the space. It shows harmony with nature. BRUCE: What was the thesis of the Garden City Movement? LISE: To understand the Garden City Movement, it is necessary to understand the world from which it came. There was no nature left. It was England in the process of becoming industrialized. There were no rules. The exploitation was quite high. In London and Manchester they built the railroad tracks anywhere, industries anywhere. People had to live right next door to the industries because there was no public transport. All of life had become a living hell. Thoreau said, �What�s the point of having a house if you don�t have a planet to put it on?� BRUCE: What does the name Garden City mean? What more does it mean than having geraniums on your balcony? LISE: There was the issue of harmonizing industry with nature. That came through with zoning. They wanted to have the industrial sector separate from the residential sectors. It�s a question of good design. The key thing is that if a city keeps growing, at some point there will be endless urban sprawl. They wanted to harmonize the built environment with the natural environment. The population had to be administered with satellite towns around a central city. BRUCE: I find this rather surprising because what you�re talking about is an environmental or green movement that began over a hundred years ago. I think if you told most people that there was a green movement that long ago, most people would say that that�s not true. LISE: Well, it�s there in the history books. BRUCE: I mean I�m saying that most people seem to think the green movement began in the 1970s, yet here you�re saying that that movement was the great great grandchild of a much earlier movement. LISE: Actually such movements began with the Greeks around 750 BC. The Greeks understood intuitively that a town could have only a certain number of inhabitants or it became difficult to manage. As towns grew, they became less easy to live in. They created colonies all about the Mediterranean and built colonies. BRUCE: Well, the British did the same thing in Australia. They sent convicts there. Did they Greeks do that? Were they trying to purify the home environment? LISE: No, it wasn�t the same. The Greeks liked going out on expeditions. It was a way of life. I think it was for economic purposes. They were involved with trading, maritime trading. Even the Minoans were involved with trading with Egypt. BRUCE: What happened between the Garden City Movement and the revival, if you like, of the Green Movement in the 1970s? Was the whole matter simply forgotten? Was it a failure? LISE: No, it was not a failure. Architecture and urbanism is not that well known in popular culture. So it�s easy for it to be forgotten. If you have people in administrative positions who are not familiar with it, it�s easy for things to disappear. There were experimental cities in England, like Welland, new capitals like Canberra in Australia, the capital of India, New Delhi. These were international competitions that were awarded, designed by leading architects of their day. These designs are beautiful. They are very expressive. When you see the parkway in Canberra, or the Raj Path in New Delhi, you know that there was a design. It didn�t happen by accident. These grand city avenues and views are majestic and magnificent. Civic monuments don�t happen by accident. There was a will at work. There are a lot of very good examples of successful cities that are based on the Garden City. I think that what happened is that unfortunately there was the Second World War. That created a big gap. I think the Twentieth Century will be called �the best of times, the worst of times.� BRUCE: You�ve told me that the Garden City movement, in Paris for example, was the victim of its own success. LISE: In Paris the city built satellite towns. Paris found itself in the same situation as Enland, only a bit later. In 1850 there were 250,000 people in Paris. Fifty years later there were 1,275,000 people. Where do you put all these people? They established a ring of satellite towns and Garden City neighborhoods around the city of Paris. They started off as economic developments. They were well designed. So today they are posh places to live in. So the Garden City concept when implemented by architects has very good results. The only problem with the Garden City is that it is not used more often. It always gives good results. BRUCE: If you were going to bring the Garden City movement back, what would you need to do so that it wouldn�t die out after twenty years or so, after giving excellent results in a few cities? LISE: That�s a very good question. Those are things that are not easy to predict. In the 50s and 60s, the approach was pragmatic and functionalist. It went in a different direction. Developments take place in waves. It lasts for a while and then it simply changes into something else. How do we bring back the Garden City Movement? It�s happening without are becoming too aware of it. The Garden City is a very basic approach. If there are too many people in a city, they can�t all remain in the city. So we will make satellite towns. The Greeks were doing that in 750 BC, long before the birth of Ebenezer Howard in the Nineteenth Century. We need the Garden City today as we did a hundred years ago. Some people know it; some people don�t know it. These new towns would follow the progression from central city to satellite towns. The Garden City approach is to achieve a harmony between the natural environment and the built environment. I think that�s something we want to preserve. Why don�t we implement it in our new cities? A lot of cities were not designed. If the cities were more beautiful, you wouldn�t so strongly feel the need to go out in the countryside. For another thing, if a city is terrible, it will spread and spread, making the pristine countryside farther and farther away. Between the cities and the satellite towns, there are the green belts. There was a better, more harmonious balance. The satellite towns were more rural and the central city was more urban. There would still be a balance with nature. BRUCE: Are there in Montreal any samples or remnants of the Garden City Movement? LISE: Yes, there is one. It�s the Tricentenaire. It is a garden city neighborhood, a residential neighborhood, that was designed and built right next to the Botanical Gardens. The Tricentenaire incorporates one element of the Garden City Movement, the pastoral side. The Garden City has, you see, two dominant themes: the Paris Beaux-Arts, the more geometric formal design principles, and then there is the more natural, free-flowing aspect, more like the English garden. The Garden City neighborhood that we have is more on the pastoral side. It is a tendency that has been used by residential developers, in the sense that the streets are not rectilinear or orthogonal. They are more curvilinear and arabesque. There are a lot of trees and vegetation. The Garden City has sometimes been implemented in ways that we�re not aware of. BRUCE: I understand that parts of Ottawa, also? LISE: Yes, green belts. The street patterns that are not always orthogonal. The idea you were expressing earlier, namely that the environment where I work is not important to me, but that on the weekend, when I want to get away, that I want to go out to a pristine country side. This is the attitude that leaves our cities in such a dreadful state. We should plan on having beautiful cities in the first place. Our cities were seen as factories that you want to get away from. BRUCE: There you have it. There�s that expression �get away from.� I mean there are, by contrast, cities in Europe where, when you are downtown, you don�t want to get away from them. LISE: Yes, our cities were born during the Industrial Revolution. So our cities became synonymous with a factory, with work. The pollution was so serious. We called them cities, but they were really factories. People wanted to escape. On the other hand, many of the cities in Europe existed before the Industrial Revolution. BRUCE: What are we learning from the Garden City Movement that would be useful for the future? LISE: I was in Japan recently. It was interesting to see a planned city like Kyoto and to compare it with a totally unplanned city like Tokyo. Of course Tokyo was rebuilt several times. Kyoto was planned a long time ago. It was a Chinese importation. It wasn�t done exactly like the Chinese did. They incorporated the orthogonal system of north, south, east, west. So there�s one example of a planned city, and then Tokyo, which is a much more organic city, which just happened it as it happened. Both of them have a lot of people. I met someone who has to drive an hour and a half to work and an hour and a half back from work every day, because she likes to live by the sea. She has a house with a view of the sea, and then she goes in to work. But they work long hours, plus three hours of transport every day. So how much sea is she getting? It�s mostly on the weekend when she�s free. So the issue is that we have cities with high population. How do you manage that? It would be useful to have a clearer definition of the difference between the central city and the satellite communities. If I were a developer, I think it would be more exciting to participate in developing new towns where there would be residential districts, where there would be a central business district, a civic centre, where there would be a sports infrastructure. That would be much more interesting than just building dormitory zones. LISE: The beauty of Canberra is that you have a central city surrounded by plains and then you have the satellite cities out on the horizon. I don�t know why they are keener in Australia on this type of planning. BRUCE: Isn�t there a loss of freedom with this type of planning, though? LISE: Well, that fear stems from a false idea of freedom. The planning prevents you from losing your freedom later to urban sprawl. Democracy doesn�t mean that in such decisions everyone has the same expertise and influence. If people without the necessary understanding are making the decisions, the result is absurd. Leave brain surgery to the brain surgeons. BRUCE: Are there any other examples in Canada of the Garden City Movement? LISE: Yes, and the beauty of it is that it was designed by a landscape architect. This is a very beautiful little town in the remote forests of Northern Ontario. It is quite far from anywhere at all. It is at least ten hours by car from Toronto. BRUCE: Why did the Garden City Movement people choose such a spot? LISE: Actually, they didn�t. It happened after. The forests were discovered during the First World War. There was an internee camp there. Then, the New York Times became a client because they needed paper for their newspaper. So the forests supplied the pulp and paper. They were very lucky that the government of Ontario saw this as an ideal occasion. They said they had the money, we have the power of action, all we need was a vision. These are the prised circumstances when everything comes together. So Kapuskasing is an example like Canberra. BRUCE: When did this happen? LISE: In the 1920s. BRUCE: Were the people in England aware of this development in Canada? Did they influence it directly? LISE: No, there was more a coming and going. The urban planner who gave the direction, Thomas Adams, was originally from England. He was working on the Canada Council. He was giving direction for a lot of different projects. They needed a new town. He knew about the Garden City Movement. We were very lucky that he was there. He decided to have the Garden City model described by Ebenezer Howard. Alfred B. Hall, the landscape architect, was a consultant to the government of Ontario. He had a practice in the United States and in Canada. There was a lot of cross-border activity. There was a lot of optimism in the financial world. To think that Kimberley Clark and the New York Times found 60 million dollars, in the 1920s, to start the city. That was a huge sum of money. There weren�t even any roads. They had to get there by railroad. BRUCE: But then, despite that huge sum of money, Kapuskasing seems to have disappeared from the radar of the world. LISE: Did it ever exist on the radar? That�s the thing. We often shun publicity, but there are issues of cultural awareness. Kapuskasing was supposed to be a model for future town sites. How can it serve as a model if nobody knows it exists? Even the people who live there didn�t know it was a Garden City. Last year when I told the people who live there, they thought it was a joke. They thought I was making it up. But it was true. It is a Garden City. We have our landscape architect, and we have our two traditions brought together in a beautiful harmony. The Parisian Beaux-Art system and the English pastoral style. They are brought together in a very harmonious ensemble. The predominant feature is of course the pastoral style because it was a landscape architect who designed it. The existing natural features were utilized to their best. There was already a river and a bay, and that worked quite well in establishing the town. It worked! |
 |
| This interview took place at the Atwater Library and Computer Centre on Wednesday, March 16, 2005. The lecture entitled "Garden Cities and Urban Design" is scheduled for 7:00 pm on Tuesday, April 5, 2005 in the ALCC Auditorium. |