This page was created by Keagan Fowler. The last update was by AVRC.
The Waterworks: Exterior in Dialogue with the Land
Constructed from 1930 to 1940, the RC Harris Water Treatment Plant in Toronto is a prime example of the relationship between civic achievement and architectural style. In his article “The Palace of Purification,” architectural historian Steven Mannell notes that “the heroic confidence of the architectural form and expression of the waterworks speaks of that moment in the 20th century when civil engineering and public works were taken to be great civic deeds, demanding a great civic architecture” (Mannell 1999, 18). Mannell also remarks that “the massing and typology of forms do not attempt explicitly to reveal the operations of the water purification process. The waterworks is legible as a composition of pure architectural types, both figural and supporting, disposed on a fundamental landscape type, the terraced shore” (Mannell 1999, 18). At the RC Harris Treatment Planet, the function of the structure is shrouded using ornamentation and different styles, allowing the building to present itself as whatever the viewer associates with the style in question. Given that these buildings equate grand styles with grand civic deeds, viewers can read the building as something elaborate. The use of ornamentation allows for the viewer to associate the face of these civic structures with the grandeur of the city despite their utilitarian function (Mannell 1999, 19).
