July 3, 2007

KEARNS MANCINI ARCHITECTS INC.

A sculpture of a destitute Irish immigrant stands in the foreground in this photo of Ireland Park. In the rear is a commemorative wall, carved with the names of some of those who lost their lives after arriving in Toronto.

Architectural Design

Stone mirrors harsh reality Irish immigrants faced

Park is a monument to immigrants who fled the potato famine

PATRICIA WILLIAMS

staff writer

Located on the Toronto waterfront a stone’s throw from where more than 38,000 Irish immigrants landed in 1847, newly opened Ireland Park has been conceived as “a modern yet emotive” rocky environment.

Designed by Dublin-born architect Jonathan Kearns, a partner in Kearns Mancini Architects Inc., the park is meant to evoke memories of the desolate and ravaged conditions that existed in Ireland at the time.

“This is not a typical Toronto park,” Kearns says. “It is an emotional and evocative place that might call up long-lost memories of destitute ancestors arriving from blight-ravaged Ireland with hopes for a new life in a new land.”

Located on Eireann Quay, formerly Bathurst Quay, the $2.5 million park occupies a site defined on its south and east sides by Lake Ontario and on the north, by the Canada Malting grain silos.

The starkly minimal landscape of the 44 metre by 25 metre park has been created through the predominant use of a single material: stone.

Stone paving, stone seating and a five-metre-high commemorate wall of rough Kilkenny stone imported from Ireland, all contribute to the character of the rocky landscape, Kearns says.

The 25-metre-long wall, which closes the park from the world outside, is carved with the names of 675 identified immigrants who died after arriving in 1847. In all, some 1,100 perished that year.

Contrasting with the rough, craggy stone landscape is a tall, illuminated cylinder of stacked glass approximately six metres in height.

Symbolic as a beacon both of the new world and the hopefulness for the future of the arriving immigrants, the glass tower “contextually relates” to the adjacent silos and forms “an icy material counterpoint” to the park’s rough stone landscape.

The names of victims are carved into the limestone wall.

Similar in proportion to the silos, the tower stands alongside three interactive computer screens which give visitors access, at a touch, to the story of the park, the famine tragedy that it commemorates and an acknowledgement of those who made the park possible.

Facing the city are Irish sculptor Rowan Gillespie’s gaunt figures of famine immigrants making their final landing in Canada.

“In one sense, the stone wall and the stone landscape are about the landscape that these immigrants left behind,” Kearns said.

“The glass tower is a kind of tribute to modern Ireland, which is one of the world’s largest producers of computer software.”

Kearns, who graduated from Ireland’s National University School of Architecture in 1974 and emigrated to Canada the following year, said the landscape concept was developed using architectural models and cardboard blocks cut into numerous shapes, guided by photographs of Irish landscapes.

“We worked with these shapes until we had a series of forms that were satisfactory,” he said. “We could then photograph, measure and draw them on a computer until we had a virtual finished product that we could develop into construction drawings.”

Kearns believes the stone work will set new standards in technical achievement.

The challenge of translating the architects’ vision into reality fell on the shoulders of construction managers Kenaidan Contracting Ltd.

“It’s a very artistic project,” said site supervisor Jeff Bedard.

“It was also an engineering feat to make some of this limestone defy gravity.”

The commemorative wall consists of 16 limestone-clad piers. More than 20 different sizes or types of limestone are incorporated. Each piece of limestone was hand-cut and dressed to fit the piers.

In all, some 376 tonnes of limestone was shipped to Toronto in containers.

“Getting the stone here when it was supposed to be here, making sure that what wasn’t on the boat was on its way and dealing with Canada Customs were challenges I’d never encountered,” Bedard said.

The park, the brainchild of the Ireland Park Foundation, officially opened last week. In attendance for the ribbon-cutting was Mary McAleese, president of Ireland. Her government contributed $500,000 to the project.

“She insisted on meeting all of the workers,” said Kenaidan president Aidan Flatley, himself a native of Ireland. “You don’t see that happen very often.”

The project team included: electrical engineer Tony McDonnell of McDonnell Engineering; landscape architect John Quinn of Quinn & Associates; and three structural engineers_Scott Wallace of Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd; Mike Picco of Picco Engineering Ltd. and Tom O’Rourke of Tom O’Rourke Engineering.

Masonry contractor was Trinity Custom Masonry Ltd.

All three levels of government have contributed to the project. The federal government is providing $500,000 while the Ontario government is contributing $200,000. The city of Toronto supplied the land and will maintain the park.

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