PROJECT Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage, Edmonton, Alberta
ARCHITECT gh3*
PHOTOS gh3*
One of the few lazy diagonals in a hard-working grid-iron city, Edmonton?s Fort Road is well-named. Dating from the 18th century and by far the oldest street in the city, Fort Trail?now renamed to the blander Fort Road?is a former First Nations then Settler ox-cart trail that meandered from Fort Edmonton to Fort Saskatchewan. During the past hundred and fifty years, first a rail line, then a light rail transit corridor arrived to flank its path.
Fort Road is also the unlikely location of two pioneering works by top Toronto architects, separated by two generations. A spirit of innovation and of taking workplaces very seriously links the two buildings constructed on this site: Eric Arthur?s 1936 Canada Packers Plant and Pat Hanson?s Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage, completed last year in its place. When Canada Packers planned an ultra-modern meat-packing plant at the height of the Great Depression, they turned to Eric Arthur, a New Zealand-born University of Toronto architecture professor who had worked for Sir Edward Lutyens. They asked him for a contemporary, no-nonsense design, which was realized in association with the workhorse firm of Anthony Adamson.
Granulated rubber tires are used as a ground cover, set across the site and delineating the preserved foundations of Eric Arthur?s demolished Canada Packers Plant.
Built in red brick just as this building material was falling out of fa...