U of T’s architectural gems tend to stay away from the periphery of our downtown campus (ie. Spadina to the west, Bloor to the north, Bay-ish to the east, and College to the south). Con Hall, UC, Old Vic, Robarts, and even the dreadful MedSci are more or less invisible to the public whizzing by on the streetcar. However, this does not hold true for one of the newest additions to the U of T Architecture Hall of Fame: the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy Building, gracefully plopped on the northwest corner of University Avenue and College Street. Completed in ’07, it shows how wild and gregarious spending was before the global financial meltdown and ensuing hellscape of ’08.

She has all the forward thinking-ness of the Terrence Donnelley Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (the glass tower attached to MedSci) but without the near childish use of colour. Where Donnelley slaps you in the face with a curved red wall and random blocks of colour throughout its glass facade, Pharmacy gently implies monochrome maturity and refinement. Save for the suburban style front lawn, the Pharmacy Building proclaims to the public that it is U of T territory. We should be glad that our southeastern sentinel is so beautiful.

The Donnely Building on the left has a near childish use of colour. Pharmacy to the right is more mature.

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Everyone is welcome to attend the Heart & Stroke Foundation – U of T Chapter’s first General Meeting of the year. Whether you’re looking to get involved with an amazing organization or just want something to do, we encourage you to come on out, learn more about us, and meet some new friends.

University and Victoria (Old Vic) College. They need no other introduction.

We at U of T are lucky. Unlike those at Waterloo or York, we have diversity in our architectural character. Our oldest buildings are a century and a half old and our newest ones are prime examples of what the best of modern design has to offer. Design and its close cousin, ‘form’, must follow function. Our newest buildings obviously have excellent form because they meet the demands of our large inner-city university.

So it is with a heavy heart that I reflect upon U of T’s antique architectural gems, namely University College and Old Vic.

These structures boggle the mind. It’s in the details. really – the wrought iron along the exterior, the wainscoting, the carved stone, and the intricate patterns in every nook. Unfortunately, these details do not serve any function for the modern student. These structures were built when classes were smaller and when the most complicated electric gadget was the sowing machine. Nowadays, we fight for plugs for our laptops, shiver in the poorly heated classrooms in the winter, and gasp for breath after the long flights of stairs (here’s looking at you, Old Vic).

Details of UC: There are dozens of odd characters in compromising situations carved in stone. The painful looking orb of steel atop the Croft House inspires curiosity and the wainscoting in the east wing bold.

What makes UC and Old Vic so fantastic is exactly what makes them poor places for students. They are nice places to visit, and we can tolerate taking an exam there once a term, as well as appreciate the common rooms. However, while appreciating the Victorian ambiance, students also seem reluctant to commit. “It’s like being in Harry Potter,” I once heard someone mumble about UC, “but why does it smell like rotting driftwood?”

These buildings serve better as museums than functional sites of learning. It’s almost painful to see the ad hoc upgrades made to these old premises: air conditioners jutting out windows older than our grandparents, lecture room seats from the 60’s, the laminate flooring of UC’s basement, jarring electric cables bolted to the walls, and weird paint jobs. There are two things that hit you when you enter Old Vic for the first time: 1. This place looks like a giant living room and 2. Why did they think pink and aqua make nice complimentary colours twenty years ago? Too bad about the long staircase to the second and third floors. That’s one down side of taking History of Science courses up there – you arrive to lecture breaking a sweat and panting. In an effort to make these places more compatible with modern student life, they lose what makes them unique and, by corollary, what makes U of T unique.

Details of Old Vic. On the left you see an example of the unnecessary upgrades to the lecture rooms; it's a cable and outlet mess. On the right is the main foyer/living room of Old Vic, a surprisingly pleasant public space. Except for the early 90's paint job. Who thought aqua and pink go well together? Geez.

The new Robarts portico. But where are the robots?

Robarts is the building we all love to hate. And by ‘we’, I mean non-science students. Other than the occasional light fiction novel, science people can’t find a reasonable excuse to go north of Harbord. This is a bit of a tragedy because there has never been a better time than now to be at Robarts.

The library’s revitalization is a lot more than just ‘vitalizing’. To be accurate, it’s more like applying two supercharged heart paddles to a dead patient and, in less than a minute, he’s alive again and tap dancing his way into our hearts. Robarts is the patient and our hearts just got a little warmer.

Robarts, along with the Medical Sciences Building and OISE, is a prime example of brutalism: an architectural style popular in the 60’s and 70’s that used prefabricated reinforced concrete for the exterior. Basically, Robarts was built a cold, cavernous, unwelcoming place.

But the recent upgrades have saved us. The new entrance on Harbord St. is a godsend for all those who take the Spadina streetcar. The group study rooms on the stack floors are exactly what’s needed the morning before a final exam as you desperately extract information from your friends’ un-procrastinating minds. But the greatest improvement starts with the letter P:

PORTICO! (Use that word in a sentence when you’re with friends and your classiness level will shoot up five points.) Remember the exterior stairs that led up to the second floor entrance? That waste of exterior space has been intelligently re-imagined into indoor space. Enclosed by glass, you finally feel like you’re in the twenty-first century. When I first walked through, I half-expected a robot to approach me and ask if it can be of any assistance. I would then reply, ‘yes robot, obtain a unit of glixnardian hydrator for me; it’s 55 degrees celcion out side! Bleep Blorp!’

Other than childish musings on robots, the portico contains a precious commodity; no, not just the additional computer terminals, but public space. Specifically the breakfast nook-style benches with the bar stools. It’s the perfect place to casually sit down to eat your homemade sandwich or a steaming stir-fry from the takeout trucks on St. George. It’s also a good place to spend that inconvenient free hour between classes chatting (an hour is too long to spend on lunch alone, but too short to hunker down and study in silence).

However, what makes the portico such an awesome place also leads to the only downside to relaxing in there. The nearly uninterrupted glass shield that allows sunlight in can turn the space into an oven on a hot day. If you choose to have an extended studying-talking-eating break there, make sure you remember to slather on some sunscreen.

With that, I implore you to visit Robarts while the floors are still freshly waxed, the chairs are still gum free, and the glass walls still sparkle. After all, our tuition paid for it.

For more pictures of the Robarts revitalization, check out Featured Photographer Jimmy’s Flickr.

One of these vials contains: a concentrated solution of denatured proteins; elemental and polyatomic ions; deoxyribonucleotides; a bit of RNA for good measure; and freshly replicated DNA strands that, when visualized on a polyacrylamide gel, will provide the final evidence confirming the hypothesis of a seventh year PhD student. The other contains water.

Life Science students spend a lot of time worrying: worrying about grades; whether or not to buy the $150 textbook for the ‘suggested’ readings; residence life (in a few cases); relationships (in even fewer cases); and grades. But there is something else we should be banging our heads against the biosafety cabinet about: the nature of biomolecular research.

I may not be saying anything new, but a significant portion of Life Sci students do some kind of lab research. You’ve probably already heard plenty of negative things about the long hours, thankless lab mates, inconclusive results, and distant profs, but I want to share some other aspects of lab research that you may not hear about until it’s too late.

This machine will become your new best friend. Without it, there are no numbers for science to work with!

Biomolecular research consists of mixing one colourless solution with another by pipetting miniscule volumes. Labeling these vials of clear, colorless, odorless liquid results in 80% of your time being spent with permanent markers, so prepare to sniff plenty of fumes.

After properly mixing all your nondescript liquids and labeling them (don’t forget today’s date!), you place these liquids in a complicated half-a-million-dollar machine designed by  some corporate engineers. As far as we’re concerned, the real magic happens inside this machine and it just poops out numbers on a monitor. These numbers are then processed by a grad student’s statistics software and voila! You have results.

There isn’t anything particularly wrong with this situation – it’s just the way it is. Think of it as one more strange and unusual environment we undergrads must persevere. And, for those who do, honour and glory await (or at least your chequing account is $4000 richer thanks to that summer grant)!

Life Science students spend a lot of time in the Medical Sciences building. You know which one it is – that sprawling concrete menace at the southeast corner of King’s College Circle. It is a horrible place.
First, the exterior. What were they thinking back in the late 1960s? Since pre-fabricated concrete slabs were the newest and hottest constructional material, the architects went hoop-la with it. The material seems painful to look at and even more painful to touch. I feel that, if for some reason I fell and grazed the wall, it would cut into my skin. Lucky for me, Medical students would see my suffering and come help.

Or would they? Another problem with the Med Sci building is that it lacks windows. You know, those glass portals that allow sunlight in and make you happy? If you are unfortunate enough to find yourself on the upper floors where the research labs are, you will be bathed in artificial fluorescent light. The hallways are confusing with many twists and turns. With no windows, you have no idea which direction you’re headed. I guess in the 60s people didn’t have to get to class on time so they could afford to spend ten minutes lost in a painted white cinderblock labyrinth.

Back to the exterior – it’s awful. Since there’s plenty of wasted open space on the outside, Med Sci is a magnet for smokers. Does anyone else see the irony in this?

The interior is barren and feels like a high school (complete with orange lockers and a feeling of hopelessness). One day I was walking to an office on the fourth floor and a some professors were having a conversation in the hallway. There were four of them and they occupied the entire width of the corridor. Now, there’s nothing wrong with professors talking to each other and I’m not complaining about the width of the hallways. What I find deplorable is that they had to converse in the hallway. In Med Sci, there are no lounges, no casual conference rooms, and there’s no free space. Everything is locked behind a door, out of the public realm. Every space has a rigidly defined purpose and must be booked ahead of time to be used. This leaves nowhere for impromptu conversations or places to eat lunch. Life in Med Sci is lonely and oppressive – certainly not the environment to promote creative thinking or forge interdisciplinary projects.

Thankfully, there are alternatives. The Terrence Donnelley Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research is a perfect example of how a research institute should be designed (it’s the new tower which is attached to Med Sci and has a main entrance that faces College). There, the exterior walls are completely glass! There’s plenty of communal space with plant life to spur the creative juices. I bet the researchers in the Donnelley building would report that they have a higher quality of life than those in Med Sci.

Med Sci can be saved. To bring it into the twenty first century, tear down walls. Literally make open spaces for people to have lunch. Drill holes into the ceiling and allow sunlight to filter into its cavernous depths.

That, or tear the whole building down and start fresh. Perhaps a glass and steel phoenix will rise from the concrete and rebar mess.