Part 2: How About a Craven Row Challenge?

What if...

...we can turn conflict into creativity?

...we can turn ire into innovation?

...we can turn a seemingly zero-sum problem into the potential for improving all stakeholders’ lives together?

(This is Part 2 in a series. If you haven't already, you can check out Part 1 in "Rumble on Craven Row," and Part 3 in "Thoroughly Modern Through-Lots.")

The City of Toronto is looking into removing approval for garden suites from Parkmount Road lots backing onto Craven Road, and Parkmounters are quite understandably Not Happy About It.

(Cravenites, in turn, were Not Happy About the prospect of fighting 2001 monolith boxes in Committee of Adjustment hearings for the next decade, which is how we got here in the first place.)

2001: A Space Odyssey

I'm not an architect. I come from a theatre directing background, and as an academic, I research how the dramatic arts can help us understand and seek resolutions to conflict, especially on social media, where algorithms milk our outrage for profit. (TikTok’s wrapped its talons around this issue already.) 

But as an educator, I know a creative learning opportunity when I see one.

Craven Road is well known in architecture circles as the home of Shim Sutcliffe Architects' Craven Road House (1994), a low-budget experimental project that won the Governor General’s Medal and was recently given a City of Toronto heritage designation. 

Sixteen years later, Linebox Studios designed a temple to minimalism on the site of a former drug lab with Mini Craven (2010). 

And a decade after that, Anya Moryoussef's Craven Road Cottage (2021) was hailed as a groundbreaking way to "respect the street’s vernacular fabric and cultural history, while reimagining the worker’s cottage typology." The Globe and Mail called it "A simple idea, constructed with ordinary building materials — but a beautiful idea that’s executed beautifully."

Craven Road Cottage, Anya Moryoussef Architect

It feels like there might be something in the water.

So what I'm wondering is: inspired by the sparks of genius in individual houses on Craven Road, as well as by the build-it-yourself history behind that worker's cottage vernacular, what if we created a Craven Row Challenge in which architecture students can consult with the community, then envision a suite of new designs for garden suites that reinvent and revitalize the neighbourhood for everyone?

Parkmount owners could have access to high-quality architectural ideas and plans that fit within City bylaw requirements, reassured in the knowledge that these designs have been pre-approved by the Craven residents across their back lot line. 

Craven residents could feel more positively included and respected in the planning that affects them, and might be more willing to trade the vista of tumbledown garages currently lining the street for a row of new mini-homes whose proportions and design lift the spirit rather than oppressing it. 

Google Street View

I'm imagining a name like "Craven Row Challenge" because it's not just about designing one garden suite – there's a whole row two blocks long on the west side of the street with the potential for neighbour-friendly densification. But we could also call it Parkmount Brainstorm. Or West Side Rodeo. What about Garden Suite Jam? No, wait – Backyard Hackathon! (Or maybe it's best to let the participants themselves come up with something they won't cringe to put on their CV.)

Having young architects shine their light into this vale of shadow could ease tensions on a street currently clenched with conflict. It could also provide a showcase of the most innovative architectural thinking for energy efficiency and sustainable, affordable materials, keeping building costs low enough that owners might keep their rents affordable in turn. (We can always hope.)

Students' work could even inspire a local equivalent of western Toronto's Long Branch Neighbourhood Character Guidelines, while giving them experience in community consultation on a high-visibility urban issue. 

And as a younger generation partnering with their elders, they could inspire the whole city with their vision of a future we’d all enjoy living in.  

Long Branch Neighbourhood Character Guidelines, p12

Long Branch Neighbourhood Character Guidelines, p12

Toronto has at least two university architecture schools that I know of, at Toronto Metropolitan University and U of T – not to mention their respective School of Urban and Regional Planning and Department of Geography and Planning. But there's no reason a southern Ontario architecture program like UWaterloo or Carleton, or even schools farther afield, couldn't be provided with a virtual tour and a brief that could make up for not being able to walk down the road and soak it up in person. 

I love the idea of a street party for the final exhibition, with designs displayed in front of the actual sites they're responding to, inviting residents of both streets to mingle and imagine as they stroll down Ingenuity Lane. Think of it as a Jane's Walk into the future.

So.

Is all this just a pile of Pollyanna? 

Or is there something to it?

What if...?

________

Continue to Part 3: Thoroughly Modern Through-Lots