Associate Professor An Te Liu is working with Daniels Alumus Graeme Stewart (MArch 2007) to brighten up Kensington Market.

Writes Dave LeBlanc for the Globe and Mail:

What do you get when you mix the following? An architect with a particular interest in “tower renewal” – the science of reskinning 1950s-1970s buildings to be more energy efficient – who also works at one of the city’s top heritage firms; a world-class sculptor who has had solo exhibitions in Berlin, Shanghai, Los Angeles and New York; a condominium board filled with artists, educators, architects, engineers, writers and other creative types; and a wall that didn’t exactly look good after some much-needed structural repairs.

You get a new gateway to Kensington Market on the east wall of the Kensington Market Lofts at 160 Baldwin St.

“This will be his biggest public piece,” said Stewart of Liu’s design. A professor in the Master of Architecture program at the Daniels Faculty, Liu has been engaged in sculpture and installation work that explores issues of funtion, occupation, and cultural coding in the domestic and urban realms since 1999. A principal at ERA Architects, Stewart was a key initiator of the Tower Renewal Project, which examines the future of Toronto’s modern tower neighbourhoods, and a founding director of the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal.

Writes ERA on their website:

While not a tower renewal project, there are several aspects that have been informative for tower renewal endeavours. This has included:

• Detailed thinking about construction sequencing without displacing residents.
• Instituting a best practice approach to recladding of existing assemblies that takes into account long term durability, fire protection, improved insulation, and continuity of vapour barriers.
• Showing how an initially functional imperative can be leveraged to provide a design approach with additional meaning for the residents and the community.

Visit the Globe and Mail’s website to read the full article by Dave LeBlanc.

Image, top: Artist An Te Liu once painted a postwar bungalow ‘Monopoly green’ as part of the ‘Leona Drive Project’ in Willowdale, Ont.