Imagery by artist Nicolas Baier is inscribed into the façades of a new pair of residence buildings at Toronto?s York University, designed by ARK. Photo by Nicolas Baier
Two six-storey student housing buildings, clad in black metal panels, sit alongside each other at the southern end of Toronto?s York University campus. Behind them are parking lots and beside them is a scraggly field, waiting to become something better. The most striking thing about these new housing blocks?named The Quad?are the delicate line drawings etched into their almost pure black metal exteriors.
The façade imagery is by Nicolas Baier, a Montreal artist who works with photography, video, sculpture and drawings. It results from Toronto?s requirement for developers to contribute to public art. ARK, the project?s architect, ran an RFP following city guidelines to find an abstract artist. They had a very precise idea of how the art would work with the building, and prescribed the location of the drawings?for dramatic impact and practical considerations like avoiding retail signage?along with the exact methodology of applying the lines. The five-storey-tall drawings extend over multiple cladding panels, and are comprised of individual lines etched 3 millimetres wide and 0.3 millimetres deep. They were cut with a CNC machine exposing unfinished aluminium through the painted face of the 4-millimetre-thick aluminium composite panels. When the sun is low, the silvery bare metal lines appear illuminated.  S...