Exploring York University

A bike tour

This past weekend I took the subway out to York University to check it out. York University is along the western Line 1 and much further out than I expected. It’s nearly to Vaughn and it took me nearly an hour to get out there. I got off at Pioneer village because that station is at the north end of campus with a plan to make my way down south through the campus.

One of my first stops was the Bergeron Centre for Engineering Excellence, designed in 2015 by ZAS Architects. It’s a shame that I can’t get inside right now but it is still an awesome building from the outside. It especially struck me as being successful as an inspirational icon for opportunity, learning, and discovery — something that the old CEME building at UBC most definitely does not have.

The next stop was the York University TTC station. It is a bizarrely curved building by Foster and Partners which is suppose to consider the surrounding public space and use natural light to intuitively guide the passenger from the entrance down to the platforms. Unfortunately, the external stairs down either side of the cut in the ground only lead to giant windows and no doorway. It’s such a shame that the nice terrace at the bottom of a pit is non-functional. As well, I thought the curved form of the building distinctly out of place with the rest of the campus.

My main reason for coming to York University is because I’d had some lectures on it in my landscape architecture history class. I was particularly interested in the Ross Building which is the original main building. It originally included a huge ramp from a parking lot at ground level to the elevated entrance. The president of the university hatted the ramp and had it removed and replaced with Vari Hall, a somewhat interesting building that kind of blocks the main attraction. I would probably have a different opinion if I could get inside, but it seems no more welcoming.

The Ross building is still striking because of the monumentality of the mid-century modern architecture which uses structure as form instead of contemporary buildings which are just glass boxes. Along the concrete beam of the bridges connecting the north and south wings is an interesting quote:

“We at York must give special emphasis to the humanizing of man, freeing him from those pressures which mechanize the mind, which make for routine thinking, which divorce thinking and feeling, which permit custom to dominate intelligence, which freeze awareness of the human spirit and its possibilities …”

I ended up biking through the ravines from York University down to the coast. North of the 401 highway was not fun because each ravine was only about 500m long and I’d go down only to have to climb back up and go along the streets to get to the next section. As well, there was no signage so I kept going the wrong way. After the 401 I was able to get into the Humber river ravine and that was, thankfully, a straight shot south to the Humber Bay Arch Bridge by Santiago Calatrava where I took a cookie break before biking home.

Lately I’ve been thinking that I need to get into blogging again and I’m also considering getting some equipment to make videos. I went for a late night walk down Yonge street to Dundas Square and thought it would have been great as a video walking tour. I’m trying to figure out the practicalities of filming and doing photography as well as whether or not it should be lifestyle or architecturally focused. I also realize that I haven’t used my camera (mirrorless A6000) since I stopped traveling two years ago. A big reason is the convenience of the iphone compared to the effort of bringing around a camera, getting it out to take photos, and then post-editing them. It’s just more of a hassle and I haven’t been taking photos that I need the high resolution. I think I’ll probably give the video a try since it’s not that expensive and there’s still a month and a half of summer but I’ll have to get over the self-consciousness of walking around recording and figure out some logistics but it’s really cheap to get started so I might as well.