The Friends of Fort York have now begun their fundraising to
contribute to the approximately $15-million expense of their new visitors
centre, scheduled for completion in 2012, in time for the bicentennial of the War of 1812.
The team of Patkau Architects of Vancouver and Kearns Mancini Architects of Toronto have been named the winners of the design
competition for the 22,000 square foot Fort York visitor centre, with a
construction value of $12.2 million, with another $3 million in soft costs.
The visitors centre is part of a more general revitalization
of the 43-acre site, which was central to the defence of the realm in the War
of 1812. The site is also often referred to as the birthplace of Toronto, since
John Graves Simcoe built his first garrison tent on the site in 1793.
Construction is expected to begin at the end of this year.
The federal government announced in December than it had
committed $4 million to the project, and the City of Toronto another $5.3
million.
One of the design team's first decisions was not to encroach
at all on what's known as the common or the "Field of Fire," the site of actual
1812 fighting, and not to build under the Gardiner Expressway. This left them
with a very narrow space to develop.
As Toronto principal Jonathan Kearns explains, "In effect,
our building became like the edge of a mini escarpment, which exists in several
paintings from the early 1800s and quite a few people have commented on the
fact that we in some way reinvented in a contemporary manner the original look
of the edge of Lake Ontario."
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Kearns Mancini Architects