Ron Keenberg
Competitions Lost
MacKenzie Art Gallery
Regina, SK
This was a juried competition open only to Saskatchewan architects and we had an office and partners there. Given the competitors, this was ours if I did my best and I did. The projects were juried and displayed; it was obvious to everyone that IKOY had won. That was to everyone but the jurors who selected a very normal and very sterile International Style design.
The good news is, it was never built.
Women’s Cultural Club
Toronto, ON
The students from my competition-winning William Davis Centre team who had come to Winnipeg to work with me on that project wanted to do this competition.
I joined them and the office did the competition as a three-day charette. We came up with a club for the leading women of Canada, a proud place. One write-up on the competition featured the IKOY submission as chauvinistic. But what won was a ‘storefront’ on Queen Street – it seems they thought women would never be more than shoppers in Canadian society.
I learned a lot and it wasn’t all about the making of Architecture.
De Steal House
What could an average person’s house be like, what should it be like in the late 20th century.
did I once more dare to go where only angels fear to tread? You couldn’t have held me back with a team of developers.
I designed a modest steel house that could be bought for a steal in a package, one box, of pre-cut pieces delivered to a site and assembled by the owners and their friends with power drivers, wrenches, ladders and a small mobile crane. A modern barn-raising. And just for fun, I gave them an off-the-shelf horse trough for a bath.
And did it sell? Not even a box.
Going Back Downtown
Winnipeg, MB
But six months later, they announced they were closing Portage Avenue to build on its eight blocks of extra-wide road, a new windowless all-in-one ‘centre’ with department stores, housing, shops, cafés, office buildings and whatever else we’d all like. I had a bird.
I called George Baird in Toronto and asked him to help me prepare an appropriate alternate. I had no city planning experience; George, I believed, was Canada’s leading urban mind.
We worked together and prepared a new master plan. We presented it to the politicians and they stopped their silliness. I was $50,000 lighter and believed that they would now retain us to implement our plan. No way!
They hired a ‘staff’ architect and then made a 50-person bureaucratic office for him, the government’s idea of efficiency. They then had developers bid to do parts of the scheme. Portage Avenue has become the best example of how to kill a once thriving place.
Museum of Man
Gatineau, QC
Looking back, it was an interesting parti, ‘high-tech’ iconography. The constructive idea was brimming with ‘Capitol City’ contexturalism but my ‘machine in the park’ laid an egg.
I called and congratulated Cardinal; it seems I was the only one. This naïveté has stayed with me.
Sibnce then, at IKOY, there has always been pool on the number of calls we’ll receive after a win; zero and one have been the only paying numbers.
Canadian War Museum
Ottawa, ON
The winners are right, the losers are young men doing what they were told to do, doing it well and dying.
My country’s young men fought well, but we’re not a warrior nation.
Why would we celebrate war?
I did not want a museum to celebrate the warrior, crisply starched uniforms, the elegance of functional weapons or the glory of the victor.
I wanted to make a place that would put the fear of war in the hearts of our children, a fear so real that when asked to fight for what is right, they’d question the right of our leaders to send them to hell.
I designed a place where our people, our young people, could experience war, its chilling fear, its abomination to mankind, its so-called collateral damage, its raw power and its fruitless destruction.
I lost.
333 Dalhousie Street
Ottawa, ON
I found an unbuild-able site, optioned it for nothing and spent my firm’s downtime having a build-able idea that would lead to the development of a ‘green’, cutting-edge commercial office building. Not an ad but a reality.
I left curtain wall and returned to the less expensive window wall, in-situ concrete structure with exposed trademark capitals, raised access floors everywhere, sunshades and light reflectors, indirect glare-free lighting, grass-roofed terraces, an outdoor court filled with cafés off the street, opening windows and of course, gargoyles.
The leasing is going well; will you ever have lunch at its cafés or visit your lawyer there? I don’t know. As of today we have more potential tenants than we have floors.
They really like ‘green’; it surprised the leasing agent and me too!
Previous Project
Ron Keenberg
Competitions Lost
MacKenzie Art Gallery
Regina, SK
This was a juried competition open only to Saskatchewan architects and we had an office and partners there. Given the competitors, this was ours if I did my best and I did. The projects were juried and displayed; it was obvious to everyone that IKOY had won. That was to everyone but the jurors who selected a very normal and very sterile International Style design.
The good news is, it was never built.
Womens Cultural Club
Toronto, ON
The students from my competition-winning William Davis Centre team who had come to Winnipeg to work with me on that project wanted to do this competition.
I joined them and the office did the competition as a three-day charette. We came up with a club for the leading women of Canada, a proud place. One write-up on the competition featured the IKOY submission as chauvinistic. But what won was a ‘storefront’ on Queen Street – it seems they thought women would never be more than shoppers in Canadian society.
I learned a lot and it wasn’t all about the making of Architecture.
De Steal House
What could an average person’s house be like, what should it be like in the late 20th century.
did I once more dare to go where only angels fear to tread? You couldn’t have held me back with a team of developers.
I designed a modest steel house that could be bought for a steal in a package, one box, of pre-cut pieces delivered to a site and assembled by the owners and their friends with power drivers, wrenches, ladders and a small mobile crane. A modern barn-raising. And just for fun, I gave them an off-the-shelf horse trough for a bath.
And did it sell? Not even a box.
Going Back Downtown
Winnipeg, MB
But six months later, they announced they were closing Portage Avenue to build on its eight blocks of extra-wide road, a new windowless all-in-one ‘centre’ with department stores, housing, shops, cafés, office buildings and whatever else we’d all like. I had a bird.
I called George Baird in Toronto and asked him to help me prepare an appropriate alternate. I had no city planning experience; George, I believed, was Canada’s leading urban mind.
We worked together and prepared a new master plan. We presented it to the politicians and they stopped their silliness. I was $50,000 lighter and believed that they would now retain us to implement our plan. No way!
They hired a ‘staff’ architect and then made a 50-person bureaucratic office for him, the government’s idea of efficiency. They then had developers bid to do parts of the scheme. Portage Avenue has become the best example of how to kill a once thriving place.
Museum of Man
Gatineau, QC
Looking back, it was an interesting parti, ‘high-tech’ iconography. The constructive idea was brimming with ‘Capitol City’ contexturalism but my ‘machine in the park’ laid an egg.
I called and congratulated Cardinal; it seems I was the only one. This naïveté has stayed with me.
Sibnce then, at IKOY, there has always been pool on the number of calls we’ll receive after a win; zero and one have been the only paying numbers.
Canadian War Museum
Ottawa, ON
The winners are right, the losers are young men doing what they were told to do, doing it well and dying.
My country’s young men fought well, but we’re not a warrior nation.
Why would we celebrate war?
I did not want a museum to celebrate the warrior, crisply starched uniforms, the elegance of functional weapons or the glory of the victor.
I wanted to make a place that would put the fear of war in the hearts of our children, a fear so real that when asked to fight for what is right, they’d question the right of our leaders to send them to hell.
I designed a place where our people, our young people, could experience war, its chilling fear, its abomination to mankind, its so-called collateral damage, its raw power and its fruitless destruction.
I lost.
333 Dalhousie Street
Ottawa, ON
I found an unbuild-able site, optioned it for nothing and spent my firm’s downtime having a build-able idea that would lead to the development of a ‘green’, cutting-edge commercial office building. Not an ad but a reality.
I left curtain wall and returned to the less expensive window wall, in-situ concrete structure with exposed trademark capitals, raised access floors everywhere, sunshades and light reflectors, indirect glare-free lighting, grass-roofed terraces, an outdoor court filled with cafés off the street, opening windows and of course, gargoyles.
The leasing is going well; will you ever have lunch at its cafés or visit your lawyer there? I don’t know. As of today we have more potential tenants than we have floors.
They really like ‘green’; it surprised the leasing agent and me too!
