SOFTENING TD, 2010

This project, the site of intervention being Mies van der Rohe’s Toronto Dominion Center in downtown Toronto, began with a series of conceptual exercises. As such, the final project retains a conceptual aspect to it; the questions posed by the project were more important than a realistic architectural proposal. In the first conceptual exercise, we were asked to ‘fake’ a Miesian collage. I selected his Resor House photomontage to reproduce, which I created using only photographs that I took myself onsite (and hand drawing on trace paper). The reproduced Paul Klee painting, ‘A Colorful Meal’, was also recreated by photographs I took at the TD Center, and then photoshopped together to imitate the famous artwork. The second set of exercises further explored collage, as well as narrative. I elected to insert housing into the TD Center Towers; thus, my research focused on analyzing Mies’ built and unbuilt housing projects and his theories on residential architecture. My imagined narratives were concerned about the intersection between modern architecture and domesticity in the post-war period.