Have you heard?

Have you heard? The Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada has a new blog!  The purpose of this blog is to keep members up to date on current events with the Society as well as happenings in each province.

Check out the new blog at http://ssacnews.wordpress.com/

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Building of the Week: Worker's house in Arvida

This week's building of the week is a worker's house in Arvida, Quebec that we had the pleasure of touring last week. The house is a small two-bedroom house that must be put into context to understand its true value.

Erected in the group of houses built for Alcoa Aluminum after 1927, this small house was part of a newfangled idea on the part of the company's owners to give each worker a house of his own.  Company towns prior to this provided cramped spaces for workers, so the idea to provide separate single-family dwellings for each employee was quite radical.  Since the average family size at the time would have been much larger, a private house on this scale would have been incredibly appealing to workers.

The town boasts that it was built in 135 days, a feat which was achieved by the use of prefabricated elements to construct the houses, much like the assembly line ideals of Ford.

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The return home

Today we bade adieu to Saguenay and its rushing waters and returned to Toronto.

Above: The Saguenay River from atop the Arvida Bridge

We would like to extend our thanks to everyone who made this year's conference possible. Their hard work is greatly appreciated and everything ran very smoothly.

Perhaps the best news of the entire week is that, in Arivda, we found the soulmate of our ugly green rental car....

Above: our jelly bean of a rental car

Above: our jelly bean's long-lost love... and I don't mean Candace

I really hope those two crazy kids make it!

Blogging live from the banquet

The banquet was a delightful and delicious success. As you can see from the photo above, the torch of conference organization was passed from Lucie back to Peter - and by torch, I of course mean lobster, now adorned with an aluminum 'A' for Arvida.

SSAC Day 4: The Final Conference Day

So far we've had a great time in Chicoutimi and Arvida; last night we walked down to the water and along the boardwalk, followed by an amazing pasta dinner at Artis - highly recommended! We started the day today with our usual tasty Quebec breakfast and then were off to hear some early morning papers dealing with architectural decor, followed by modern architectural exhibitions, and then lunch - tourtieres, salad and lovely desserts!
The AGM was extremely eventful this year. Peter did an amazing job as President residing over the meeting, Barry's title was clarified - he is now the VP in charge of Membership, Candace resigned as Ontario Representative in order to accept a new position as News & Views Editor on the Board, and Jess assumed the position of Ontario Representative - Congrats Jess and welcome to the SSAC Board of Directors!

SSAC: the papers

The entire conference has been jam-packed full of excellent papers. Candace hosted a session titled "Urban and Villages Churches" that consisted of 9 different papers that were broken down into 3 sessions over two days. The first two sessions were yesterday and in the first, we heard about the evolution of the features of St James' Anglican Church in Stuartville (Kingston, Ontario), as well as from Candace about the small-town churches of 19th-century Ontario architect Henry Langley.


We also heard about Montreal architect Joseph Venne's St-Enfant-Jésus, Montreal and its relation to la Chartreuse as well as from Barry about the standardization of mid-20th century church plans and materials. In the second session we heard about the heritage values assigned to the churches in the Montreal borough of Verdun and about the adaptive reuse of churches across Quebec (from restaurants to climbing gyms!).

In the third and final session today, we heard about a modernist church of mixed materials including poured concrete, stone and glass in Goderich, Ontario, adaptations in wood of Gibbsian preaching boxes in 18th-century Nova Scotia and from Malcolm (via Candace) about the work of Gordon W. Lloyd, a little-known church architect who worked mainly in present-day south-western Ontario.

Otherwise, we attended a variety of sessions covering a wide variety of topics, the current research session included an update on Gothic Revival houses from Jess, the building of Arts and Crafts houses across the country, and the use of laser technology to map various aspects of buildings. Other sessions covered the curation of architectural exhibits, heritage issues, architectural decor and aspects of company town planning.

The sessions have run very smoothly, thanks to excellent organization.

SSAC day 2: Day trip to Arvida

After a morning of great papers, we all hopped on a bus from Chicoutimi to Arvida.  Our first stop was (of course) the pub for lunch where we were warmly welcomed by the owner of the Brasserie d'Arvida and Arivida's alderman. With full stomachs we headed to the Arvida bridge - built of aluminum in 1950.

Above: part of the group at the Arvida bridge

Following this, we went into town to check out the houses of Arvida or, as it is also known, "the city built in 135 days."  The town was designed as a company town for Alcoa in 1927 with a plan for generously-sized workers' houses that were built using pre-fabricated elements assembled in a variety of different ways to produce homes that were similar, but all slightly different.  Here are a couple of examples below: 

See what I mean?

Despite the rain, we soldiered on and toured through the second, later phase of house-building in Arvida before arriving at the Salle Arthur-Vining-Davis (named after the name-sake of Arvida - Ar-Vi-Da... get it?) for the exclusive premiere of the "Memoires d'Arvida" exhibit accompanied by a wine and cheese reception.

Overall, a drizzly day, but very interesting and informative!