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Idea Log 12012012

 
Consulting Structural Engineers
 
1246 Yonge Street, Suite # 300
Toronto, ON Canada M4T 1W5

email: [email protected]
 
Phone: 416-961-8294
Fax: 416-961-7434 

Quinn Dressel Associates has:

• Extensive experience with major developers, top architectural offices, and has an open, co-operative philosophy
• Successfully completed many projects of large scope, complexity, and have justified our designs through costs comparisons and peer reviews.
• State-of-the-art structural design software, hardware capacity to run the total design of a major structure, and the latest computer drafting technology and hardware.

And is...

• Extremely budget and time conscious, and considerate of the cost effects of structure on other disciplines.
  Creative and sensitive, with an alive, vital and energetic practice
 

They have one of the best portfolios ~ how come I never knew about them? Most of their projects were with WZMH Architects.

 PROJECT PORTFOLIO

Quinn Dressel Associates CORPORATE PROJECTS:

IBM 3600 Steeles, Markham> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Nortel St. Laurent Campus, Montreal> HOK Urbana Architects/Menkes Shooner Dagenais

Nortel St. Laurent Campus, Montreal> HOK Urbana Architects/Menkes Shooner Dagenais

Pratt & Witney, Montreal> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Prudential Assurance Centre, Kitchener > Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Quinn Dressel Associates ENTERTAINMENT:

Kravis Centre for the Performing Arts, West Palm Beach> Architects: Zeidler Roberts Partnership

CBC Broadcasting Centre, Toronto> Architects: Scott Associates Architects Inc./Bregman & Hamann

Quinn Dressel Associates HEALTH CARE

Princess Margaret Hospital,Toronto> Architects: Zeidler Roberts Partnership

Quinn Dressel Associates Hotels

Stoffer Hotel, Harborplace, Baltimore> Architects: Zeidler Roberts Partnership

Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Philadelphia> Architects: Zeidler Roberts Partnership

Hilton Niagara, Niagara Falls> Architects: Darling & Downey Architects

Quinn Dressel Associates INSTITUTIONAL

City Hall. Calgary> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Gelber Law Library, McGill University, Montreal> Architects: Dan S. Hanganu Architects

Quinn Dressel Associates INTERNATIONAL

Elf Aquitaine, Paris> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Shanghai Securities Exchange, Shanghai> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Pudong Development Bank, Shanghai> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Peoples Insurance Company of China, Shanghai> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Peoples Insurance Company of China Shanghai Securities Exchange, Shanghai> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Quinn Dressel Associates OFFICE PROJECTS

Royal Bank Plaza, Toronto> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

World Trade Center, MInneapolis/St. Paul> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Liberty Place II, Philadelphia> Architects: Zeidler Roberts Partnership

Canterra Headquarters, Calgary> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Maison de Cooperant, Montreal> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Petro Canada Headquarters, Calgary> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Scotia Plaza, Toronto> Architects Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Bank of Nova Scotia, Montreal

Quinn Dressel Associates RESIDENTIAL

Residence at the World Trade Center, Toronto> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Hazelton Lanes, Toronto> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

66 Avenue Road, Toronto>  Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Village by the Grange, Toronto>  Architect: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Renaissance Plaza, Toronto> Architects: Page & Steele Architect

Quinn Dressel Associates RETAIL

Shops at Liberty Place, Philadelphia> Architects: Zeidler Roberts Partnership

Shops at Liberty Place, Philadelphia> Architects: Zeidler Roberts Partnership

Pacific Center, Vancouver> Architects: Zeidler Roberts Partnership

Zeidler Roberts Partnership Harbour Place, Baltimore> Architects:  Zeidler Roberts Partnership

Quinn Dressel Associates RENOVATION 

Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto> Architects: Zeidler Roberts Partnership

Exchange Place, Boston> Architects: Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

336 Bay Street, Toronto> Architects Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership

Idea Log 01122011

Finally made it to the exhibit!!!

Struggling Cities from Japanese Urban Projects in the 1960s 

by Naohiko Hino, Architect and Supervisor of the exhibition

What is a city? There can be no single answer to this question. For over 5,000 years cities have developed all over the world. In each, a unique material culture and lifestyle has formed to reflect local conditions and history. For example, there was a fortress of a city surrounded with walls in preparation for foreign invasion, a market of a city where various people met on trade routes, a city developed by industry, and a city where all the power of the government was concentrated. Thus, cities have been built in various ways.

In the 20th Century, influenced by modernization, cities changed themselves by rather stylized methods. A mesh of modern urban planning covered cities. As if to replace their local culture, cities were rationalized to fit the modern social system, planned according to an ideal based on an archetypal European city.

In the mid-20th Century, only 25 percent of the world's population lived in cities, in 50 years this figure rose to 50 percent. In light of the fact that it took 5,000 years for the urban population grew in the latter-20th century.

This rapid urbanization caused drastic change to cities and forced governments and cities to adapt to new conditions. Modern urban planning is less effective in larger-scale cities because of the difficulty of maintaining organic consistency while overcoming urban problems caused by modernization. Megacities are at the forefront of this problem.

In the 1960s Tokyo became a megacity. The population reached 20 million and continued growing rapidly. Newspapers were filled with articles about the problems caused by modernization: traffic congestion, pollution, housing shortages and sinking ground. In order to find a way out of these critical situations and to renovate the city, Japan mobilized industrial productivity during a high-growth period of its economy. In response to this increase in momentum, architects announced quite ambitious urban projects through mass media such as TV programs, newspapers and magazines. The project aroused the interests of a public caught in the waning mood of the times, a people that still believed modernization's promise of a brilliant future.

Representative examples are Kenzo Tange's "A Plan for Tokyo - 1960", projects proposed by the Metabolists, a group that included the four architects Kiyonori Kikutake, Masato Ohtaka, Fumihiko Maki and Kisho Kurokawa, and Arata Isozaki's "Cities in the Air". Although they were announced in tandem, in their details these projects have different meanings. Tange made a rational and systematic response to the problems. The Metabolists used fear of crisis as a springboard for proposing  progressive images of future cities. Isozaki thought that an essential problem existed in the fact that cities came to refuse urban planning itself. The differences between these projects emphasize the changing consensus from the modern to the contemporary age. The times steadily moved toward skepticism about modernism.

While none of these projects were realized in Japan, globally many urban plans by architects were implemented and modern cities emerged such as Brasilia by Locio Costa, the capital cities of Nigeria and Macedonia by Kenzo Tange, and Chandigarh by Le Corbusier. In most cases the architect's intentions were not fully realized. Part of a given city would be built to plan only to be surrounded by chaotic areas. As such it's ambitious city planning was unstable and failed to keep its consistency. This reality reveals the essential difficulty in modern urban planning, which Isozaki pointed out; it's extremely difficult to set visions for idealized cities and share the visions with people, and then realized them consistently.

Rather than difficult, urban planning may simply be unnecessary. Tokyo serves as a good example. Thinking back to the critical atmosphere of the 1960s, it's significant that today few of its citizens are aware of Tokyo as the largest megacity in the world. They merely feel inconvenience with that huge Tokyo. There is no vision of an ideal shape or consistency for Tokyo, it looks like an impromptu patchwork. The reality of Tokyo shows that expanded megacities can be functional.

So far as these megacities are concerned, why does ideal vision or consistency matter?

In some sense, cities resemble living things. Figuratively speaking, Tokyo is a self-indulgent creature tending towards schizophrenia. Why did this happen? It's hard to tell where Tokyo's unique characteristics end and where general characteristics of megacities begin. As stated above, other megacities continue to grow according to their own characteristic identities. We can at least recognize that like Tokyo, many megacities have a patchy structure in which old cities overlap new ones, and planned areas are adjacent to unplanned.These patchy structures exhibit a flexibility suggesting that development aimed at meeting practical needs is more efficient thatn building cities to strictly rational plans. It may sound strange, but it seems to be a natural fact that megacities themselves are irrational.

It's not easy to plan new city blocks to have true organic relationships which existing urban context. If new blocks are only planned to be in harmony which the rest of the city, cities as a whole would fall into things of the past. To keep cities active, it's necessary to have projects that can continually revitalize the context of a city. In this regard, Tokyo has few good examples to show. Even if we recognize Tokyo as a self-networking system with multiple variables, we are still searching for a way to lead and support the system. Facing the reality that many megacities are shifting to patchwork-like structures, it's clearly nonsense to consider cities as extensions of tree structures. A new vision for cities is needed, one which can connect unrelated things and create a new organism. This is a big and challenging problem for us.

Our understanding of architecture and cities has been depressed by Globalism and Neo-Liberalism. We need a vision that can release us from this depression and allow us to take the next step. We need to build momentum in order to develop cities with identify out from under of these banners of universalism.

Idea Log 19112011

The Oriental Village in the upper northwest of Langkawi Island, near Pantai Kok, is the entrance for the cable-car ride, which takes visitors all the way up to Mount Mat Cincang, Langkawi’s second highest peak. Entering the village and passing through the pleasant oriental garden and souvenir shops, visitors make their payment at a counter before stepping onto an escalator which brings them to the cable-car pedestal.

Once in, the cable-car ascends; you’ll begin to notice the temperature dropping and a windy breeze begin flowing into the cabin through ventilation slits at the top. As it gets cooler, the landscape below begins to appear smaller, and at after climbing at a 42° angle for a few hundred feet, you can start snapping pictures of the rainforest below. Look out at the side for a view of the Telaga Tujuh Waterfalls, which cascades down a grey rock face.

After around 600 metres, the cable car reaches the first station, where you disembark to either; take another cable car up to the peak, or lull around the observatory deck and admire the magnificent surroundings. Most will not spend too long here, as the view from the peak is even more amazing. After a short queue, you can grab another cable car and ride up another wire cable which doesn’t rise too sharply, though the initial jolt of the car leaving the second station can feel quite unnerving.

As the car settles to a decent speed after the brief spurt from the station, passengers will be treated to an even higher view of the rainforest and hills below. The car here is at its coolest and in too short a time, you’ll reach the final station which is where most of the excitement is. Passengers leaving the cab will be greeted by a menagerie of stalls selling souvenirs, toys, snacks and drinks.

You’ll want to climb a set of staircases that cuts through a thin forest to reach the observatory deck above. Once on the top, you can finally enjoy the magnificent view of the surrounding horizon; the island’s landscape, skyline and seas beyond. At the side is a steel bridge suspended across Mount Mat Cincang and a neighbouring mountain. Walking across this bridge is a fantastic experience and offers a different viewpoint of the island and sea towards the north.

After immersing yourself in the views, it’ll be time to go, and the entire process of cable-car ascent is repeated in a descending route. Along the way, you can pick up some souvenirs at the final or base station before carrying your adventures elsewhere in the magnificent island of Langkawi.

Opening Hours: 10am - 8pm
Address: Jalan Telaga Tujuh Teluk Burau, Langkawi, Kedah 07000
Tel: (604) 959 4225

Read more: Langkawi Cable Car - Langkawi Attractions http://www.langkawi-info.com/attractions/cable-car.htm#ixzz1e4bFyvev

Idea Log 13112011

The History of Fo/ Whoo
The History of Whoo products are formulated from rare ingredients that were used in the ancient royal family and are a prestigious line of cosmetic made with natural ingredients traditionally used in Oriental medicine. The products contain wild ginseng and snow lotus and work to rejuvenate skin, giving your face a younger appearance. The History of Whoo has limited production and is in high demand because of the rare and hard to find ingredients the products are made from. The products are known for their excellence in fighting against dry and aging skin, working to restore youthfulness to the skin and reducing fine lines while erasing the traces of aging.

The History of Whoo Gongjinhyang
The products in The History of Whoo’s Gongjinhyang (Oriental medicine-based ingredients) line are comprised of herbal ingredients that keep the skin soft and moisture-rich by hydrating dry skin and improving its purification capabilities. The highly concentrated herbal serum is a perfect solution for a more crystal-like, vibrant and luminous skin tone. The finest herbal ingredients offer a luxurious and silky smooth feel. The Gongjinhyang line incorporates the products of traditional beauty care with techniques from the ancient royal family. The herbal nutrition stimulates the skin’s viability, moisture retention and adds radiance to the skin. The synergy between Gongjindan and Polygonatum also provides excellent wrinkle improvement, adds firmness and promotes a naturally youthful glow around the eyes.

Benefits: Concentrates hydration, improves purification capability, wrinkle improvement and skin tightening

Major ingredients: Wild ginseng, cordyceps sinensis

>> more on history

In TOronto buy it at P.A.T SuperMarket in Korea Town in Toronto!

Idea Log 12112011

http://www.blogto.com/

Arts

A tribute to the Montreal Metro, right here in Toronto

Posted by Derek Flack / November 10, 2011

The first thought that came to mind when I arrived at INabstracto for the launch of John Martins-Mantiega's latest book, Métro: Design in Motion, was why hasn't anybody given the TTC such a lovely and thorough treatment? Spread over 450 pages, Mantiega's new book is more that just a love letter to the Montreal subway and the remarkable people who made it possible — it's a tribute to modern design and the pragmatic spaces we often take for granted. I'd love to read — or perhaps even write — something similar about the Toronto subway, even if the story isn't as compelling or Canadian in its design history.

Needless to say, this isn't an easy task. It took over three years for Martins-Mantiega to write Metro. Part of this has to do with the amount of research and documentation that went into the book, but it also has to with funding. It's a challenge to publish books of this nature, and the journey wasn't always a smooth one — but here's the book, and it's fantastic.

So too are the photographs on display. As much as I enjoy viewing (and posting) archival photographs, there's something about seeing larger versions in person that really get me enthusiastic. But perhaps even more cool than the photographs is the model subway train and orange seat in the window of INabstraco. Seeing them displayed this way really drives home the degree to which they're design objects, something that's all too easy to forget.

"That little train is probably the most important piece of industrial design that Canada ever produced," Martins-Manteiga declared at last night's launch. That might be overstating it, but it was still a remarkable accomplishment, particularly given the timelines the designers had to work with. 20 of the original stations were completed in just four years to coincide with Expo 67.

At the media preview for the new TTC streetcars I attended earlier today, it was revealed that full incorporation of the vehicles isn't expected until 2018. And that's just vehicles — no stations. That gives a bit of perspective into just how quickly the Montreal system came together. It's also interesting to note that Toronto's new streetcars will be built by Bombardier, which blossomed into the large-scale company it is today on account of their construction of Montreal's subway cars.

It may not be the Toronto subway book I'm hoping for, but Metro: Design in Motion is well worth the read for design buffs and transit history fans. And even if you don't fall into either of these categories, having a look at the exhibit is still highly recommended.

Metro: Design in Motion will be up at INabstracto until November 27th. The book can be purchased there or at Swipe Books.

Idea Log 26102011

世界初就航NH7871便　香港行き初フライト
ANA All Nippon Airways Boeing 787-881 Dreamliner JA801A
Boeing 787 Special charter flight Narita - Hong Kong
Oct 26. 2011

TODAY!!

 

 

LANDING IN HONG KONG!

  

TOMORROW in Japan time> First Official Flight in

19hrs 42mins

Idea Log 22102011

(took this book out of the library on Thursday & couldn't recognize this place!)

MISSION FOR TODAY: Find this place!!

Found it!!

Commerce Court North @ 25 King St. W :

The first building, now known as Commerce Court North, was built in 1930 as the headquarters of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, a precursor bank to the current main tenant. Designed by the Canadian firm Pearson and Darling with the American bank specialists York and Sawyer as consulting architects, the 34-storey limestone clad tower was the tallest building in the British Empire/Commonwealth for roughly three decades, until 1962. At the time of its construction, the building was one of the most opulent corporate headquarters in Canada, and featured a public observation deck (since closed to the public due to safety and liability concerns).

Commerce Court North held the title of tallest building in Toronto between 1931–1967

Idea Log 17102011

 Peterborough Utilities Inc.

Founded in 1914, the Peterborough Utilities Commission (PUC) operated in Peterborough for more than 85 years as a not-for-profit organization providing safe and reliable supplies of electricity and water to the city.

Restructured in 2000, the PUC became part of the Peterborough Utilities Group and continues to operate as a not-for-profit organization providing safe and reliable water to the city. At the same time, a number of new companies were established within Peterborough Utilities Group:

• Peterborough Distribution Inc. to provide safe and reliable electricity to the city;
• Peterborough Utilities Services Inc. to provide services to support the operations of all of the entities under the Peterborough Utilities Group; and
• Peterborough Utilies Inc. to manage electrical generation and retail services.

Generation

Peterborough was one of the first places in the country to begin generating hydroelectric power. Companies like Edison General Electric Company (later Canadian General Electric) and America Cereal Company (later to become Quaker Oats), developed hydroelectric generating stations to take advantage of this inexpensive, efficient and reliable energy resource to provide power to their manufacturing facilities in Peterborough.

Today, Peterborough Utilities Inc. (PUI) owns and operates three hydroelectric generation stations:
  

(1) London Street Generating Station 
Originally built in 1884 and located on the Otonabee River within the City of Peterborough.  This facility was acquired from Quaker Oats in 1975.  The station produces 4 MW of power that is distributed within the City of Peterborough.



(2) Campbellford-Seymour Electricity Generating Station
Built in 1910, this 6 MW station is situated at Lock 14 on the Trent River a few kilometers north of Campbellford.  The facility was acquired from the Campbellford-Seymour PUC in 2000.




(3)Robert G. Lake Generating Station
PUI is a partner in Trent Rapids Power Corporation and will operate the Robert G. Lake GS under contract with TRPC.  The station has been named for “Bob” Lake who was General Manager/President of the Peterborough Utilities Group (and it’s predecessor the Peterborough Utilities Commission) for almost 20 years.

All three hydroelectric generating stations operate as run-of-the-river facilities in order to minimize their environmental footprint while producing a reliable source of "green" energy.

PUI sees electricity generation as a key area of growth in the future and is pursuing a number of additional project opportunities. PUI’s focus will be on the development of renewable and clean energy resources including solar hydropower and landfill gas. 

PUI recently commenced construction of the 10 MW Lily Lake Solar PV project located northwest of the City of Peterborough adjacent to Hydro One's Dobbin Transformer Station.

In addition, PUI recently executed a Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) contract for a 2 MW landfill gas (LFG) generation project to be located at the County/City of Peterborough Waste Management Facility on Bensfort Road.

Idea Log 16102011

- taken from page 33-

Back at the turn of the twentieth century electricity was only starting to make its way into affluent homes. Electric trolley cars appeared on main streets to replace horse-drawn transit. Cities completed to be the first to have those streets lit with clean, bright light. In the small Ontario city of Peterborough, the town fathers came up with the idea of "the Electric City," claiming that theirs was the first in the Dominion to boast electric street lighting. During a period when Montreal and Toronto were still using a toxic mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called coal gas to light their streets with smoky yellow flames, Peterborough's downtown George Street was illuminated by seventeen electric arc lights.

...

During a period when the innovation was restricted to the wealthy, it was usually only opera houses and high-tone restaurants that boasted electric light. Indeed, when Thomas Edison, the quintessential American hero of the Gilded Age, inaugurated his first central-station electrical system is 1882, he placed his generator on Wall Street.

Peterborough was a pioneer of Canada's industrial revolution because its fast-flowing Otonabee River offered ample supplies of the novelty that was hydroelectric power at Niagara was just starting to spark a controversy over who would control the stories falls, the Peterborough Light and Power Company had already installed a generator on the Otonabee's Dickson "raceway." The company secured the municipal street lighting franchise and lit up George Street. Peterborough's surplus power meant that by 1907 it was generating more manufactured goods than any city in Ontario on a per worker basis. Cereal from Quaker Oats (founded 1900) and canoes from what would become Peterborough Canoe became national brands.

Peterborough was even further ahead of its time when it came to luring new businesses. At the end of the twentieth century cities and provinces were falling all over themselves with offers of low taxes and cheap land to lure this or that employer to set up shop. Well before the end of the nineteenth century, Peterborough had accomplished just that. In 1890 the city fathers told the Edison General Electric Company that the town was in a position to come across with land valued at $18,372, municipal services worth $12,138, and a ten-year tax holiday. The U.S. company had initially built its works in Sherbrooke, Quebec, but immediately decamped when it got an offer it couldn't refuse. The men of property who constituted Peterborough's ratepayers were similarly enthusiastic. They authorized the deal by a vote of 656 to 11.

Peterborough had more than cheap land. The city sat on the Otonabee River at the foot of a series of fast-moving channels. The millraces on the river had already made the town an ideal location for the water-powered sawmills that processed timber from the dense forests of the Kawartha Lakes district. When Edison arrived, the company received fresh tax incentives to build two new power houses on the river. The company that would become Canadian General Electric emerged as one of the country's leading manufacturers of electrical apparatus. Well over a hundred years later its huge Peterborough plant remains a large industrial employer, though it has downsized in recent decades. It once produced everything from locomotives to refrigerators, from insulated wire and cable to huge hydroelectric generators. It also emerged as a key supplier to the nuclear industry, making refuelling machines and the fuel bundles that form the guts of nuclear power plants. Today its products are more limited (though the nuclear section with its fuel bundles remains a mainstay), but in the spring 2004 the plant was completing the first of six generators - each the size of a railway car- to be use in portable stations in Iraq.

 Also check tomorrow's post on Peterborough Utilities Inc.

Idea Log 14102011

The Lethbridge Viaduct, commonly known as the High Level Bridge, is the longest and highest steel trestle bridge in North America. It was constructed between 1907–1909 at Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada at a cost of $1,334,525.

Specifications

• Length: 1,623.86 m (5,327.625 ft)
• Height: 95.7 m (314.0 ft) above river bed
• Materials: 12,400 tons of steel
• Deck spans and lengths:
  • 44 plate girder spans each of 20.4 m (66.93 ft)
  • 22 plate girder spans each of 30.15 m (98.92 ft)
  • one riveted lattice-truss of 32.6 m (106.96 ft)
• Rigid braced steel towers: total of 33

Location of Lethbridge Viaduct in Lethbridge

This massive steel trestle over the Oldman River was designed by the Canadian Pacific Railway's bridge department in Montreal. The field work was directed by CPR's Assistant Chief Engineer John Edward Schwitzer. The steel work was manufactured by the Canadian Bridge Company of Walkerville, Ontario. A 100 man gang worked on the erection of the steel. Although there were some initial problems with settlement, the bridge has proved to be an enduring engineering work and is still in use today.

It was built as part of a major diversion of the Crowsnest Pass route between Lethbridge and Fort Macleod. The river crossing was previously over a wooden trestle measuring 894 m (2,933 ft) long and 20 m (66 ft) high; an impressive structure in its own right.

Above is a picture of the High Level bridge I took the last time I was in Lethbridge! Sorry not the best picture but atleast I have one of my own.

Idea Log 13102011

I love transmission poles! I had taken this pic and posted on my facebook page, as it seems, exactly this month, 4 years ago! (I remember this was at Richmond Hill Centre while waiting for the bus.) I was reading the book 'HYDRO', as mentioned in yesterday's post, and found the following Babcock & Wilcox magazine ad quote from the 1950s on pg. 35:

Across rivers and chasms, over mountains, through forests, out into deserts- the slim wires run - bringing lightm, power and life. Into every corner of the country, electricity has sent its probing, creative fingers- developing farms, mines, industry and cities.

Electricity has been ... and will continue to be ... man's indispensable aid in breaking through the physical frontiers of the world. But now, with the full advent of the science of electronics- electricity begins to open the frontiers of the mind

 

Idea Log 12102011

Currently reading...

-Taken from the Preface of the book

ONTARIO HYDRO WAS, for nearly a century, one of the most successful public utilities in the world. The company always hired talented people to undertake its ambitious ventures.

...

If you make your way to the stacks of a library in Ontario and search out the shelf where they keep the books on Ontario Hydro, you will notice that most of the titles play on a single word. The People's Power (Merrill Denison's book). The Politics of Power. Delusions of Power. Public Power. Power at Cost. Power at What Cost? There is at least one case, too, in which the writer and publisher did not choose a wordplay on the intimate, even incestuous, relationship between electrical energy and political  and economic power in the province. That book bears the simple but suggestive title Electric Empire.



HYDRO-The Decline and Fall of Ontario's Electric Empire

Idea Log 02102011

 

'Ice Man' vs. Global Warming

By Heidi Shrager, Monday, Feb. 25, 2008

Chewang Norphel, Director of the Leh Nutrition Project.

Rain is scarce in these snow-peaked Himalayas of northern India, and summers bring dust storms that whip across craggy brown slopes and sun-chapped faces. Glaciers are the sole source of fresh water for the Buddhist farmers who make up more than 70% of the population in this rugged range between Pakistan and China. But rising temperatures have seen the icy snow retreat by dozens of feet each year — to find evidence of global warming, the farmers simply have to glance up from their fields and see the rising patches of brown where, once, all was white. Knowing no alternative, they pray harder for rain and snow.

But Chewang Norphel has gone beyond prayer. The 73-year-old civil engineer has come up with a solution that won't exactly save the ancient glaciers, but it could stave off a looming irrigation crisis. Norphel has created artificial glaciers, frozen pools of glacier run-off perched above the farmers' fields, which thaw just in time for the start of growing season in April — two months before water from the distant natural glaciers is expected to arrive. The slanted pools melt into irrigation channels over the next six weeks, watering crops for villages of roughly 500 families and, as a bonus, recharging the valley's natural springs.

Norphel is known locally as "Ice Man," and cuts a rebellious figure with slick raven hair and a black leather jacket. His innovation has been hailed as an elegantly simple and cheap solution to a devastating problem. One artificial glacier costs just $7,000, compared to $34,000 for a cement water reservoir. Only local materials are needed, and the villagers themselves can build and maintain them. The seven glaciers he's built as head of a local non-profit managing the watershed program for the state of Jammu and Kashmir have won him widespread attention, as engineers from other mountainous regions in India and Afghanistan have visited to learn his methods.

But funding from the government and cooperation from villagers have proved fleeting, and his plan to put artificial glaciers in over 100 villages of his native highlands now faces Everest-sized obstacles.

One of the villages targeted by Norphel is the Buddhist hamlet of Sakti, tucked in the mountains of the Ladakh Range that stretch above the Indus River. Village head Tsering Kundan recalled the rush of optimism when Norphel's glacier was first built in 2001. People grabbed up more land to cultivate, planting groves of willow and poplar saplings between the fields. But now they're letting their man-made glacier fall into disrepair, says Kundan. Villagers accuse one another of secretly diverting its water, and the local watershed committee is neglecting to spend government funds on maintenance. "They're more interested in spending it on buying cows," said the 54-year-old farmer, his eyes glistening red from sun and wind.

Norphel found his state funds cut in 2006 as part of the fallout from an unrelated political dispute between government officials and Ladakh's notoriously crowded field of NGOs. Still, the quixotic Ice Man remains determined to prove the power of his invention. His biggest and most successful glacier is also the most remote, meaning that few officials are willing to make the seven-mile hike to see it. One nearer to town has been reduced to a series of dirt pits from neglect and a major flood. Unperturbed, Norphel sees this as a chance to rebuild the perfect showpiece.

Shimmying down the slopes toward the dry pools, he described the improvements he would make if he just had the money. The headworks at the natural glacier would direct water with more precision and efficiency. Stone channels would be widened so the water wouldn't freeze on its way down. Pipes leading to the pools would be deep underground, and made of concrete, to withstand floods. Water would cascade onto fields in April, and global warming would lose its grip, for a while.

Then people would see.

"I just need one village," said Norphel. "Then I can show everyone.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1717149,00.html#ixzz1Zg7NzrPc

 

Idea Log 30092011

SAULT STE. MARIE — Only the Ontario Liberals are committed to building a clean-energy economy — a plan that is creating jobs for families in Northern Ontario.
 
“Building Ontario wind turbines with Northern Ontario steel is a great example of how our new clean-energy economy is working — reaching all corners of Ontario to deliver good jobs for families and making us more competitive,” said Premier Dalton McGuinty.
 
The Premier made his remarks following a tour of Essar Steel Algoma — the largest employer in Sault Ste. Marie. The company manufactures 100 per cent made-in-Ontario steel that is being used to build wind towers for turbines. This is supporting jobs in Sault Ste. Marie and a direct result of the Ontario Liberal commitment to a clean-energy economy.  
 
Thanks to the Ontario Liberal Green Energy Act, Essar Steel Algoma has seen increased demand for their product. They’re getting orders from companies like Vestas, CS Wind and International Power Canada to supply steel for wind projects throughout Ontario. That’s great news for workers and their families in Sault Ste. Marie.
 
“We’re the number-one producer of cars in North America because, not only do we build the best cars, we build the best parts. Now we’re doing the same thing in clean-energy,” McGuinty said. “Our clean-energy economy is attracting new investments, and our workers are building the best materials to support it.” 
 
“Our leading-edge renewable energy strategy is transforming Sault Ste. Marie into the green energy capital of North America and building a stronger, more diversified economy by supporting jobs at Essar Steel Algoma and creating high quality, well-paying jobs at new companies, such as Heliene Canada solar panel manufacturing plant,” said Liberal candidate David Orazietti. “In addition to positioning the Sault at the forefront of the rapidly growing clean energy economy, the Ontario Liberal plan builds on the environmental protections that are improving public health as we continue to close coal-fired power generators.”
 
The Hudak PCs have a $14 billion hole in their platform — that means deep cuts that will put our economy, education and health care at risk. When Tim Hudak was Northern Development Minister in the Mike Harris government, he helped the PCs download $3 billion in costs onto cities and towns, causing property tax hikes and massive cuts to public services.
 
The Horwath NDP would introduce a crushing $9 billion in job-killing taxes, eliminating these green jobs. They would impose a moratorium on development north of 51, which would kill the Ring of Fire and destroy jobs in every Northern community. Both would take Ontario off track at the worst time.

http://votepasternak.ca/Document/367?l=EN

Idea Log 29092011

The Busan to Geoje fixed link project was an ambitious scheme to reduce journey times between Korea's south coast city of Busan and the island of Geoje - a tourist hot-spot and home to the country's biggest shipbuilding yards.

This world class project provides an 8.2km highway link between the southern city of Busan and the island of Geoje in South Korea. The overall link comprises two major cable stayed bridges, with main spans of 230m and 475m respectively, and a 3.4km long immersed tunnel. The tunnel, which carries traffic at a depth of up to 48m below sea level to avoid large container ships, is one of the deepest in the world.

Halcrow TEC JV were appointed Technical Advisers to Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd, who led the consortium to design, construct and operate this vital US$1100m transport link, completed in 2010.

Halcrow–TEC JV provided advice to Daewoo on many aspects of the design and construction of the link, together with advice on contracts and contract strategy (including design contracts) and project organization.

The link slashes journey times from three and a half hours to just 40 minutes opening up the region to a wealth of previously untapped business and tourism opportunities thus boosting the economy.

http://www.halcrow.com/Our-projects/Project-details/Busan-Geoje-Fixed-Link-Korea/

BUSAN-GEOJE bridge under construction

 

Idea Log 24092011

ABOUT THE SHOW

There is an amazing race going on right now around the world to find the fuel of the future. More than three decades after the oil shocks shook America, the United States and the rest of the industrialized world is still addicted to oil. But now, for the first time in a generation, plans to break the black gold stranglehold are closer than ever to becoming a reality.

CNBC will broadcast a one-hour special, "Beyond the Barrel: The Race to Fuel the Future," anchored by CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla. The one-hour program will showcase the bottled promises ready to be unleashed from the Middle East, South America, Asia and here at home. This CNBC original production will introduce viewers to more than a dozen potential game changing innovations to power our planet. “Beyond the Barrel: The Race to Fuel the Future” will also take a critical look at why we are still years away from putting these ideas into practice.

CNBC, First in Business Worldwide, will cover this story from across the globe:

• CNBC’s Jane Wells will look at parts of the American west where new solar towns are popping up all over the map.
• CNBC’s Brian Shactman travels to Bolivia to report on the Country’s untapped reserves that can be used for new battery technology and change the way we use energy forever.
• NBC’s Adrienne Mong reports from China, a country accused of being a serial polluter. But at the same time, China's green-tech industry is catching up with the world's traditional leaders very quickly as they mass-produce the equipment and materials needed to create new forms of energy.

Additionally, Quintanilla will profile a small start-up in northern California that's working to turn toxic emissions literally into building blocks for tomorrow. Plus, Quintanilla will go one-on-one with the OPEC ministers who say there's no way the world will replace oil anytime soon and he'll talk to the naysayers who believe we'll be addicted to oil forever.

Idea Log 14092011

Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies to reduce the need for human work in the production of goods and services. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly decreases the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Automation plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and in daily experience.

Automation has had a notable impact in a wide range of industries beyond manufacturing (where it began). Once-ubiquitous telephone operators have been replaced largely by automated telephone switchboards and answering machines. Medical processes such as primary screening in electrocardiography or radiography and laboratory analysis of human genes, sera, cells, and tissues are carried out at much greater speed and accuracy by automated systems. Automated teller machines have reduced the need for bank visits to obtain cash and carry out transactions. In general, automation has been responsible for the shift in the world economy from industrial jobs to service jobs in the 20th and 21st centuries.

 < KUKA robot for flat glass handling

Advantages and disadvantages

The main advantages of automation are:

• Replacing human operators in tasks that involve hard physical or monotonous work.
• Replacing humans in tasks done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, underwater, etc.)
• Performing tasks that are beyond human capabilities of size, weight, speed, endurance, etc.
• Economy improvement: Automation may improve in economy of enterprises, society or most of humanity. For example, when an enterprise invests in automation, technology recovers its investment; or when a state or country increases its income due to automation like Germany or Japan in the 20th Century.

The main disadvantages of automation are:

• Unemployment rate increases due to machines replacing humans and putting those humans out of their jobs.
• Technical Limitation: Current technology is unable to automate all the desired tasks.
• Security Threats/Vulnerability: An automated system may have limited level of intelligence, hence it is most likely susceptible to commit error.
• Unpredictable development costs: The research and development cost of automating a process may exceed the cost saved by the automation itself.
• High initial cost: The automation of a new product or plant requires a huge initial investment in comparison with the unit cost of the product, although the cost of automation is spread in many product batches of things

Other goals of automation (beyond productivity gains and cost reduction)

In manufacturing, the purpose of automation has shifted to issues broader than productivity,costs and time.

Reliability and precision

The old focus on using automation simply to increase productivity and reduce costs was seen to be short-sighted, because it is also necessary to provide a skilled workforce who can make repairs and manage the machinery. Moreover, the initial costs of automation were high and often could not be recovered by the time entirely new manufacturing processes replaced the old. (Japan's "robot junkyards" were once world famous in the manufacturing industry.)

Automation is now often applied primarily to increase quality in the manufacturing process, where automation can increase quality substantially. For example, automobile and truck pistons used to be installed into engines manually. This is rapidly being transitioned to automated machine installation, because the error rate for manual installment was around 1-1.5%, but has been reduced to 0.00001% with automation.

Health and environment

The costs of automation to the environment are different depending on the technology, product or engine automated. There are automated engines that consume more energy resources from the Earth in comparison with previous engines and those that do the opposite too. Hazardous operations, such as oil refining, the manufacturing of industrial chemicals, and all forms of metal working, were always early contenders for automation.

Convertibility and turnaround time

Another major shift in automation is the increased demand for flexibility and convertibility in manufacturing processes. Manufacturers are increasingly demanding the ability to easily switch from manufacturing Product A to manufacturing Product B without having to completely rebuild the production lines. Flexibility and distributed processes have led to the introduction of Automated Guided Vehicles with Natural Features Navigation.

Digital electronics helped too. Former analogue-based instrumentation was replaced by digital equivalents which can be more accurate and flexible, and offer greater scope for more sophisticated configuration, parametrization and operation. This was accompanied by the fieldbus revolution which provided a networked (i.e. a single cable) means of communicating between control systems and field level instrumentation, eliminating hard-wiring.

Discrete manufacturing plants adopted these technologies fast. The more conservative process industries with their longer plant life cycles have been slower to adopt and analogue-based measurement and control still dominates. The growing use of Industrial Ethernet on the factory floor is pushing these trends still further, enabling manufacturing plants to be integrated more tightly within the enterprise, via the internet if necessary. Global competition has also increased demand for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems.

Idea Log 12092011

Good One! hahahahaha really good one! Kinda like me :p

Thank you ~> http://xkcd.com/949/ 

 A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

Idea Log 15072011

BEST APP goes to BLACKberry Travel!!!

 

Video demo for the app..

   

Idea Log 13072011

"Architecture, for her, is a game of power and influence as much as it is about bricks and mortar... architecture as a social process - as a carefully negotiated agreement between various people, rather than as a product of the solitary architect" 

- Annmarie Adams, assistant professor at the McGill University school of Architecture as a commentary on Adele Freeman's book, Sight Lines: Looking at Architecture and Design in Canada (Printed in the Gazette, Montreal/ December 29, 1990)

Link to source: people.mcgill.ca/files/annmarie.adams/KeepingScoreCandianArch.pdf

 

Idea Log 28062011

Regal Constellation Hotel currently under demolition

The Regal Constellation Hotel was a large hotel with focus on trade shows, convention and hospitality training centre near Pearson International Airport near Toronto, Ontario.

Built in 1962, the hotel consisted of two 15 floor towers, 6 storey atrium, a Chinese restaurant and 90,000 square feet (8,400 m²) of convention space. Renovations took place in 2001.

Once a popular hotel and convention venue, the hotel is no longer operating due to declining business and other setbacks, culminating with the SARS crisis. It was owned by Hong Kong-based Regal Hotels International.

In 2004, Hospitality Investors Group (HIG) of Scottsdale, Arizona acquired the site and was planning to add a 350 room hotel to the existing 800 room hotel. Construction was planned to begin in 2005. However, since that acquisition, HIG was broken up and one of its chief officers has formed a new organization, Alatau Hospitality, with the principal shareholders of Lancaster Group of Kazakhstan. Alatau Hospitality retained the domain name of HIG (hospitalityinvestors.com) and its web site does not list this hotel as one of its current construction projects. As of November 2007, it is not clear who owns the property.

Plans are to re-brand the hotel under Red Lion and Crowne Plaza names. Other tenants of the new complex include:

• Wolfgang Puck
• Tu Tu Tango
• Gordon Biersch
• Gold's Gym

Construction and demolition company, Terrasan has begun work on the Regal Constellation in September, 2007. The entire hotel property is now surrounded by tall Terrasan fencing, and the company's logos are posted as large signs on the corners of the main hotel building (on its south face).

As of November 16, the rear garage building is being torn down. This will probably be the site of the planned new third tower.

As of October 9, 2008, most of the complex has been torn down, with the exception of the two taller towers fronting on Dixon Rd. and the smaller wing to the east that fronted onto Carlingview.

Also visit:

http://jermalism.blogspot.com/2011/01/urban-exploration-regal-constellation.html

http://www.blogto.com/city/2008/10/torontos_forgotten_landmarks_regal_constellation_hotel/

The credits for the following pictures go to ABANDONED UE for more:

http://www.uerev.com/index.php?pid=faq

http://www.uerev.com/index.php?pid=constellation

 

 

 

Idea Log 27062011

Currently reading...

PREFACE

The projects included in this book are some of the very best examples that our post-war architects, designers and artists have given our city, Toronto. This book is a celebration of their work, their vision and their vision and their energy.

At the same time, the work featured here is fast disappearing. The year 2004 marked the demise and complete eradication of Parkin's Terminal One at the Toronto International Airport and of the A. V. Roe Company's administration building and the very hangars were the Avro Arrow and the Avro Jetliner, North America's first commercial airliner, were designed and built. The cancellation of the Arrow stands as a symbol of this Canadian duality; fresh, energetic design filled with possibilities, stifled by MOR administrative decisions.

The forum, the concert venue designed as part of Ontario Place, has been destroyed, replaced by the Molson Amphitheatre. The CNE Grandstand Stadium was replaced by a parking lot, its majestic cantilevered rood dynamuted, coming down in one fell swoop. The Shell Oil Tower, George A. Robb's seminal work of modern architecture, was torn down more than a decade ago to make way for the Molson Indy. The O'Keefe Centre for the Performing Arts and the modern collection at the CNE are threatened with each new corporate quaterly report.

The fact is, not much has been learned since Eric Arthur wrote his battle cry, Toronto: No Mean City, back in the early 1960s. Little has changed and Toronto remains a city with one of the wrost records for heritage conservation in North America. Our heritage laws have no teeth. Facadism is rampant and we are still turning sacred places like Maple Leaf Gardens into supermarkets.

It is my hope that this document inspired us to rediscover our modern past, to reflect on it and to preserve it in a meaningful and throughtful way; that it serves to encourage and support indigenous talent and to create places that speak to us.

For the industry, it is my hope that the work included here serves to move a new generation of architects to strive for excellence, to pick up the torch where modernism left off and to go further.

For the public, it is my hope that these works inspire them to expect more and demand excellence of their built forms; that they understand that architecture is not an elite sport but part of everyday life; that they learn to appreciate its beauty and poetry; that they be more discriminating in their scrunity of what is being passed off as architecture; that they observe and debate architecture and design in all its glory.

JOHN MARTINS-MANTEIGA/curator, Mean City/Director, DOMINION MODERN Museum of Modern Architecture & Design

Featured Projects:

>> Don Mills; Yonge Subway; Sun Life Building; O'Keefe Centre for the Performing Arts; Toronto International Airport, Aeroquay No. 1; Toronto City Hall; Toronto-Dominion Centre; Canadian National Exhibition; Grandstand Stadium; Shell Oil Tower; Queen Elizabeth Building; Food Products Building; Dufferin Gates; Hockey Hall of Fame; Better Living Centre; Ontario Place; Maple Leaf Plastics; Canadian General Electric K40; A.V. Roe Canada

Idea Log 24062011

Peter Allgood Rastall Dickinson, (October 21, 1925 – October 15, 1961), was a British-born architect responsible for many modernist buildings in Toronto.

Born in London, UK, he studied architecture during World War II and served during 1944-1945. He came to Canada in 1949 to work for Wells Coates. He moved to Page and Steele in 1950 and later with his own firm Peter Dickinson and Associates. He died in Montreal, Quebec.

Some of Dickinson's works:

• Continental Can Building, Toronto
• Benvenuto Apartments, Toronto
• Dickinson Tower, Toronto
• Westbury Hotel, Toronto
• Juvenile and Family Courts, Toronto
• Jesuit Seminary, Willowdale, (now Tyndale University College and Seminary)
• Ottawa Police Station, Ottawa
• 111 Richmond Street, Toronto
• York Mills Collegiate Institute, Toronto
• Inn on the Park, Toronto
• O'Keefe Centre for the Performing Arts (later renamed Hummingbird Centre for the Performing Arts, still later Sony Centre for the Performing Arts), Toronto
• Park Plaza Hotel (Toronto), Toronto
• Courtyard & Canopy, Park Plaza Hotel, Toronto
• Medical Building,, Toronto
• Lawrence Heights School, Toronto
• Beth Tzedec Synagogue, Toronto
• Church Street PS
• Four Seasons Motor Hotel, Toronto
• Canadian Red Cross, Toronto
• Queen Elizabeth Building

Ten Newest Buildings

• 365 Bay Street 12 floors 1962
• La Tour CIBC 45 floors 1962
• 4 King Street West 20 floors 1959
• 500 Avenue Road 13 floors 1958
• 55 Yonge Street 12 floors 1958
• 111 Richmond Street .. 15 floors 1956
• 561 Avenue Road 14 floors 1956
• Lord Simcoe Hotel 20 floors 1956
• Marriott Courtyard 16 floors 1956
• Four Seasons Motor Hotel at 415 Jarvis Street 1961 - sinced demolished

Dickinson's most famed design is the Hummingbird Centre in the downtown Toronto.

His legacy lives in the firm created by his former partners in Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership.

 

Dickinson, left, with 561 Avenue Road in Toronto and his phallic masterpiece, Montreal's CIBC building, "in many ways like Dickinson himself," writes John Martins-Manteiga, "tall, lean, smart ... and forever young."

also see: http://dominionmodern.com/exhibitions/peter-dickinson-architect (please read my entry on DominionModern tomorrow!!!)

Peter Dickinson by John Martins-Manteiga (This is the first major book on architect Peter Dickinson. The 304-page catalogue traces the life and work of architect, Peter Dickinson from England to Canada. PETER DICKINSON is the first comprehensive catalogue on the work of this important modern Canadian architect.)
PLEASEpleasePLEASE pleasePLEASEplease BUY!

ISBN 978-0-09681933-1-0
John Martins-Manteiga
2010
First Edition, Binding: Paperback, 304 pages.
Dimensions: 8" x 10"
Dominion Modern
Price: $50.00 Shipping within Canada: $16.00
International orders contact us:
[email protected]

Idea Log 23062011

Styles of Architecture in Buffalo, NY

KIT/ CATALOG Houses

After World War I, between 1900 and 1917, middle class society was expanding and, for the first time, beginning to buy more homes. To meet growth demand, companies started expanding in the residential building industry. Kit houses purchased through mail-order became popular in the 1910s, allowing new homeowners to be a part of the design and building process and giving the option of buying the home in stages,

Between 1906 and 1940, thousands of North American homes in the United States and Canada were built according to plans sold by mail order companies such as Sears and Montgomery Ward.

Aladdin Homes of Bay City, Michigan premiered the idea of kit houses in 1906. It wasn't until 1908 that the largest provider of kit houses, Sears, Roebuck and Co., building upon its earlier forays into building materials and house plans, entered the market for complete kit houses.

Often the entire mail order house (in the form of labeled timbers) came via freight train.

Other times, builders used local materials to construct homes according to the mail order catalog house plans.

According to Houses by Mail, over 100,000 kit houses were built in the United States between 1908 and 1940. Many people have lived in kit houses for years without realizing the historical and architectural significance of their humble abodes... Aladdin Homes of Bay City, Michigan premiered the idea of kit houses in 1906. It wasn't until 1908 that the largest provider of kit houses, Sears, Roebuck and Co., building upon its earlier forays into building materials and house plans, entered the market for complete kit houses. In the years that followed, Wardway Homes (Montgomery Ward), Harris Homes of Chicago, the Ready Built House Company, and Robinson's also got in on the kit home market. Sears Roebuck is still the most well-known of kit home manufacturers, perhaps because of their market share. Ordering directly from a catalog entitled Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans, prospective buyers enjoyed the convenience and affordability of a pre-fabricated dwelling. The purchaser would receive all of the necessary supplies in shipments by rail car (a typical house could fit into two boxcars) for assembly either by the new homeowner or a local contractor. These houses came in a wide variety of styles, designs and prices, although kit houses were generally cheaper than traditional building options. Following the stock market crash of 1929, the construction of these houses gradually declined and in 1940 Sears printed its last Book of Modern Homes. For many years these house were slowly forgotten, but in the 1980s, people looking for affordable housing began to discover kit houses. - University Libraries. University of Maryland, Kit Houses http://www.lib.umd.edu/NTL/kithomes.html

"Between 1908 and 1940, Sears sold about 70,000 homes in 48 states through their mail-order Modern Homes program, with 370 designs that you might not readily recognize as a kit home. Sears kit homes were shipped via boxcar and came with a 75-page instruction book. Each kit contained 10,000 - 30,000 pieces and the framing members were marked to facilitate construction." - WikiHow, How to Identify a Sears Kit Home

Above content taken out from: http://www.buffaloah.com/a/archsty/kit/kit.html

See also:

Francis R. Kowsky, http://www.buffaloah.com/a/archsty/kit/kowsky.html

The Rail Barons, http://www.railbarons.org/Layout/layout.html

Thorne House, 16 Tillinghast Place, http://buffaloah.com/a/tilling/16/ext/index.html (don't forget to look at pics of the interior!)

Idea Log 13062011

Currently reading... and I highly recommend the book and the WATER Exhibit at the ROM (even you can buy the book there!)

"In 1763 a twenty-seven-year-old instrument maker named James Watt repaired a model of a Newcomen steam engine owned by the University of Glasgow. Britain was in the grip of a dire fuel famine resulting from the early deforestation of its country side, and many of the primitive engines invented by Thomas Newcomen a half century earlier were working to pump floodwater from coal mines so that more coal could be excavated as a substitute fuel. While repairing the Newcomen machine, Watt had been startled by its inefficiency. Filled with the spirit of scientific inquiry then going on in the Scottish Enlightenment, he determined to try to improve its capacity to harness steam energy. Within two years he had a much-more-efficient design, and by 1776 was selling the world's first modern steam engine.

James Watt's improved steam engine was a turning point in history. It became the seminal invention of the Industrial Revolution"

(Solomon, Pg.1)

 

Idea Log 31052011

My WHITE-BLACKberry TORCH!!

 

Idea Log 29052011

The RC Harris Water Treatment Plant will open its doors to the public for the first time since 2001. (Photo: City of Toronto)

ctvtoronto.ca

Date: Friday May. 27, 2011 2:16 PM ET

After a 10 year hiatus, the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant will be returning to Doors Open Toronto.

The landmark joins over 150 buildings slated to open their doors for the free two-day event, which pledges to be exciting for even the most knowledgeable Torontonian.

Scheduled to take place the weekend of May 28 and 29, the 11th annual architectural affair lets visitors peruse the hollows of usually off-limit buildings.

Favourites likes Toronto City Hall, where visitors can take a gander inside Rob Ford's office; and the TTC's Lower Bay station, will be back

Visitors will also get a chance to take a peek inside 38 new sites like the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant.

Dubbed "The Palace of Purification," the plant was once on the Doors Open roster but was taken off after 9/11 due to security concerns.

Built with materials like marble and bronze, the building is one of Toronto's most celebrated examples of Art Deco architecture.

Doors Open spokesperson Shane Gerard said he expects the water facility to be very popular.

"People are always interested in public buildings," he said.

Other new sites include:

TTC Roncesvalles Carhouse/Division, 20 Queensway
Built in 1895, the Roncesvalles carhouse holds 130 streetcars and serves as a work location for 105 employees. Today, the TTC building is the older of two carhouses. Visitors will get a behind-the-scenes tour of the building and see equipment used for regular maintenance.

Open: Saturday 12 p.m. – 5 p.m., last admittance 4:30 p.m.

Fire Station 227, 1904 Queen St. E.
Built in 1905, this fire station's soaring clock tower is a landmark in the Beach community. Although it has undergone significant renovations over the years, many original Arts and Crafts architectural details, such as the building's Romanesque Revival arches, remain.

Open: Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., last admittance 4:30 p.m.

Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, 30 College St., 416-969-8510With striking features such as a "green" roof planted with traditional medicines such as cedar, sweet grass and sage, this four-storey office building pays tribute to many traditional aboriginal Anishnaabe elements.

Open: Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., last admittance 4:30 p.m.

Canadian Turkish Islamic Heritage Association Inc., 336 Pape Ave., 416-469-2610Located at the corner of Pape and Gerrard Avenues, this mosque first opened its doors to Toronto's Muslim community in the early 1980s. Also known as "Pape Cami" or ‘"Pape Mosque", it is one of the city's first mosques.

Open: Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., last admittance: 4:30 p.m.

Corus Quay, 25 Dockside Dr., 416-479-7000Designed by world-renowned architect Jack Diamond of Diamond and Schmitt Architects, the state-of-the art media production and broadcast facility features street-level radio studios and a performance space that looks out onto Sugar Beach.

Open: Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. – 4 p.m., last admittance 3 p.m.

To find your way around the city during the two-day event, visitors can download one of four Doors Open mobile apps. They list useful information like opening hours, phone numbers and transportation options.

 

Idea Log 17052011

 
Just purchased my very own yearly membership for the Royal Ontario Museum!!! As I might have mentioned before, I have handed in my resignation and hence, this is my plan B> to spend most of my unemployed moments here!

Idea Log 14052011

"For people to achieve and grow, it's not about the title or the status.

It's about accomplishing things."

- David Cornhill

David Cornhill is a pragmatist with a vision. He has taken small regional player Altagas and turned it into a diversified energy giant. And he has some strong views on where the energy industry needs to go in being a responsible corporate citizen. When he was president and CEO of Alberta and Southern Gas, which supplied much of California with natural gas, the company was wound up. Cornhill had the unpleasant task of laying off 120 people. He took 20 of those corporate refugees and founded Altagas as a midstream gas business in 1994. Since then, the company grew into a diversified income trust before reverting to corporate status last year. Today, it is growing its business into power generation, including massive wind farm and hydroelectric projects in B.C. and gas-fired generation. Cornhill has also worked for Gulf Canada and other energy companies. He shares some of the insights gained from 25 years in the gas and power business.

AV: Bear Mountain is an ambitious wind power project, the biggest in B.C. Why did you get into wind power and what is its commercial potential for Altagas?

Cornhill: We got in the power business in the early 2000s with the acquisition of a purchase-power arrangement in Alberta. Clearly, our strategy from day one was to reduce the carbon intensity and grow our power business. When we looked at the opportunities, clearly wind fit that opportunity and we were looking at Western Canada, which we knew. There wasn’t any great vision other than we wanted to grow our power, we wanted to be responsible and generate clean power, to reduce our carbon intensity. It fit the bill. We looked at various technologies and we felt the technology we were using was reliable on capability. It fit our strategy and we went forward; we looked at how we could reduce risk, how we could work with the people of Dawson Creek and try to build a project that would create value for the community but also create value for our shareholders. When we made the choice for moving into renewables, I guess I stepped back to think what our children and grandchildren think of where we should be going. Clearly, wind power is one part of the equation to generate green power and we believe that the need for electricity will increase in our economy. It seemed to be the right thing to do for the future, for what our children will be thinking of and what they will be looking out for in 25, 30, 40, 50 years from now. It was as simple as that, and then we worked hard to bring it in on time and on budget, minimize the impact on the environment, and I think we did a good job. And that was the big insight.

AV: What is the biggest lesson you have learned as a CEO?

Cornhill: Hiring the right people is critical. And if you make a mistake, it’s dealing with it quickly. I think that talking more, communicating more – and that continues to be challenge for me, as I like to listen more than I like to talk. I always say you can’t learn a lot when you’re talking, but you sure learn a lot when you’re listening. So those are the things: you need people who can help you offset some of your weaknesses and make sure you’re aligned. I think having the confidence to make decisions and move forward and commit to them is probably the biggest learning and I think we’ve done that successfully. We’re not afraid of new challenges and new learnings and to stretch our capabilities and to work hard to make sure we’re reasonably successful.

AV: What would be the single piece of advice you would offer to a rising young executive?

Cornhill: Work and think like you’re the CEO. Make decisions that are right for the shareholders, have confidence in your employees. You need to do the work and understand that. The other is don’t get overcome by the position and the titles and everything around that. If someone’s going to be successful, it’s once you accomplish things, once you create things. For people to achieve and grow, it’s not about the title, it’s not about the status, it’s about accomplishing things; it’s about increasing societal value, not individual value. If you do the right things, your own personal wealth will increase. But if you’re all about driving flashy cars and you’re all about the status, it doesn’t fit with what I want Altagas to be. If that’s what somebody wants, they should be looking at a different company.

AV: Has there ever been a corporate move where you’ve wanted to ask for a mulligan or a do-over?

Cornhill: The decisions I made around people. I’ve often sat in a meeting and wanted to go in a direction and there was active debate. At the end of the meeting, we went in the direction that I wanted to go. Then, on reflection, you realize that you’re wrong. Then you have to go back and change the direction because you were eliminating certain points of view that were really important. Then, with time to reflect on it, and I’ve done a lot of this – I want to go this way but I’m wrong, so we should adjust to take these other things into account. The biggest thing is to be able to listen. You may not immediately say, ‘You’re right.’ But then you go back and reflect on it and you say, ‘Where I wanted to go doesn’t make sense and we should be adjusting it for these reasons.’ You should have the courage to say, ‘Let’s go this way.’ I get mulligans all the time that way.

Any final thoughts?

Cornhill: It’s hard to reflect. When you look back, it’s all about the journey. Just go out and do it. If you think it’s too complicated, you’ll never accomplish things. If you understand the simple fundamental questions and act on them, and then be willing to learn and adjust as you move down that journey, you’ll do quite well.

For the full interview go to: www.albertaventure.com/cornhill

 

Idea Log 05052011

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

U.S. Patent#223898: Electric-Lamp. Issued January 27, 1880.

 Edison is the third most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York.

Life and Beginning of his entrepreneurial spirit: Edison's family was forced to move to Port Huron, Michigan, when the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854, but his life there was bittersweet. He sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and he sold vegetables to supplement his income. This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures as he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents eventually led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still in existence as one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.

Beginning his career: Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention which first gained him notice was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," New Jersey. His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder, but had poor sound quality and the recordings could only be played a few times. In the 1880s, a redesigned model using wax-coated cardboard cylinders was produced by Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter. This was one reason that Thomas Edison continued work on his own "Perfected Phonograph."

Media inventions

The key to Edison's fortunes was telegraphy. With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based broadcast system. Edison patented the sound recording and reproducing phonograph in 1878. Edison was also granted a patent for the motion picture camera or "Kinetograph". He did the electromechanical design, while his employee W.K.L. Dickson, a photographer, worked on the photographic and optical development. Much of the credit for the invention belongs to Dickson. In 1891, Thomas Edison built a Kinetoscope, or peep-hole viewer. This device was installed in penny arcades, where people could watch short, simple films. The kinetograph and kinetoscope were both first publicly exhibited May 20, 1891.

On August 9, 1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph. In April 1896, Thomas Armat's Vitascope, manufactured by the Edison factory and marketed in Edison's name, was used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City. Later he exhibited motion pictures with voice soundtrack on cylinder recordings, mechanically synchronized with the film.

Officially the kinetoscope entered Europe when the rich American Businessman Irving T. Bush (1869–1948) bought from the Continental Commerce Company of Franck Z. Maguire and Joseph D. Bachus a dozen machines. Bush placed from October 17, 1894, the first kinetoscopes in London. At the same time the French company Kinétoscope Edison Michel et Alexis Werner bought these machines for the market in France. In the last three months of 1894 The Continental Commerce Company sold hundreds of kinetoscopes in Europe (i.e. the Netherlands and Italy). In Germany and in Austria-Hungary the kinetoscope was introduced by the Deutsche-österreichische-Edison-Kinetoscop Gesellschaft, founded by the Ludwig Stollwerck of the Schokoladen-Süsswarenfabrik Stollwerck & Co of Cologne. The first kinetoscopes arrived in Belgium at the Fairs in early 1895. The Edison's Kinétoscope Français, a Belgian company, was founded in Brussels on January 15, 1895, with the rights to sell the kinetoscopes in Monaco, France and the French colonies. The main investors in this company were Belgian industrialists. On May 14, 1895, the Edison's Kinétoscope Belge was founded in Brussels. The businessman Ladislas-Victor Lewitzki, living in London but active in Belgium and France, took the initiative in starting this business. He had contacts with Leon Gaumont and the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. In 1898 he also became a shareholder of the Biograph and Mutoscope Company for France.

In 1901, he visited the Sudbury area in Ontario, Canada, as a mining prospector, and is credited with the original discovery of the Falconbridge ore body. His attempts to actually mine the ore body were not successful, however, and he abandoned his mining claim in 1903. A street in Falconbridge, as well as the Edison Building, which served as the head office of Falconbridge Mines, are named for him.

In 1902, agents of Thomas Edison bribed a theater owner in London for a copy of A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. Edison then made hundreds of copies and showed them in New York City. Méliès received no compensation. He was counting on taking the film to the US and recapture its huge cost by showing it throughout the country when he realized it had already been shown there by Edison. This effectively bankrupted Méliès. Other exhibitors similarly routinely copied and exhibited each others films. To better protect the copyrights on his films, Edison deposited prints of them on long strips of photographic paper with the U.S. copyright office. Many of these paper prints survived longer and in better condition than the actual films of that era.

Edison's favorite movie was The Birth of a Nation. He thought that talkies had "spoiled everything" for him. "There isn't any good acting on the screen. They concentrate on the voice now and have forgotten how to act. I can sense it more than you because I am deaf." His favorite stars were Mary Pickford and Clara Bow.

In 1908, Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust). Thomas Edison was the first honorary fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, which was founded in 1929.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

One of Edison's famous quotations :

"If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."

 

Idea Log 04052011

Moguls & Movie Stars: A History Of Hollywood (2010)

There are many legends surrounding the history of Hollywood-some of them true, some of them false, and some wilder than you imagined! This Turner Classic Movies documentary series traces the development and growth of the American motion picture industry from the days of Thomas Edison and Edwin S. Porter through the rise of showmen such as Jesse Lansky and Cecil B. DeMille, to the World War II era, the arrival of television, and beyond. <> Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital stereo; Subtitles: English (SDH), French; bonus footage. 7 episodes on 3 discs. 7 hrs.

http://shop.tcm.com/product.asp?sku=D82829

Episode 1: Peepshow Pioneers (1889- 1907)

Audiences were watching projected images as early as the 18th century. But the pictures were drawings, and they didn't move. That would come in the 1880s. The first movie pioneers were self-taught engineers and tinkerers, itinerant entertainers and street-smart showmen. The first film producer was probably the man known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," Thomas Edison. He perfected a machine that created pictures that moved, although much of the credit belongs to his assistant, W.K.L. Dickson, the industry's first director. From the beginning, American movies were special, but they were influenced by breakthroughs overseas. From France, the brothers Lumiere, owners of a family photography lab, brought scenes of everyday life to the screen, while an ingenious magician, George Melies, created special visual effects that still have the power to amaze. In America, early moviegoers were astonished and amused by almost anything that moved - from vaudeville acts and boxing matches to three-minute gag reels. After a series of odd jobs, ambitious Edwin S. Porter found motion pictures in the early 1890s. While working for Edison, Porter was soon shooting and selling his own. Porter would create one of the first movies with a story, The Great Train Robbery. At the turn of the 19th century, while the movies were being born, America was experiencing a burst of technological ingenuity. The country's social fabric was being transformed by millions of new immigrants. The newcomers arrived with dreams, and many came with the will and imagination to make those dreams come true. The first generation of American movie makers joined with other innovators and entrepreneurs to create a totally new kind of entertainment and an art form that would transform the world. Adolph Zukor, once a successful furrier, joined with Marcus Loew in 1905 to establish a string of "penny arcades." Zukor would eventually found Paramount Pictures, and Loew would create a major theater chain. Carl Laemmle, the future founder of Universal Pictures, was another immigrant entrepreneur who saw promise in making a penny or nickel at a time. The Warner family settled in Youngstown, Ohio. Four brothers - Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack - started their movie careers as itinerant showmen, screening movies from town to town. From Hungary came William Fox, who was raised in poverty but found movies a path to success. Louis B. Mayer was the son of an immigrant junk dealer who, like other founding moguls, began as a theater owner. New York quickly became a business and distribution center, but the first "Hollywood" was in Ft. Lee, N.J. Here, the first great American film director, D.W. Griffith, learned his trade and began to develop the foundations of motion picture storytelling. The popularity of movies was unprecedented, and so was the profit potential. Realizing this, Edison joined a group of investors and equipment manufacturers, including Eastman Kodak, to corner the market. They established the Motion Picture Patents Company and demanded royalties from anyone who made movies. The pressures of the trust forced independents to look elsewhere, to the far-reaches of Los Angeles, with the safety of the Mexican border a short distance away. An unlikely southern California hamlet was about to become the world famous capital of motion pictures.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1759310/episodes

Episode 2: The Birth of Hollywood (1907- 1920)

Episode 3: The Deam Merchants (1920- 1928)

Episode 4: Brother, Can You Spare a Dream? (1929- 1941)

Episode 5: Warriors and Peacemakers (1941-1950)

Episode 6: The Attack of the Small Screen (1950- 1960)

Episode 7: Fade Out, Fade In (1960-1969)

http://www.tcm.com/moguls/index.html#/home

 *I will be making an entry on Thomas Alva Edison tomorrow!!!

 

Idea Log 28042011

Globe and Mail Home » News » Technology

The typewriter’s day is nearly done

JOHN ALLEMANG

Printed on April/27/2011

Who knew that typewriters were still being manufactured? Somehow word processing’s precursor had managed to endure in India for decades after the fickle keyboard crowd moved on. But now the 19th-century machine’s last gasp is that much closer with the announcement that Godrej & Boyce will close its Mumbai plant, which used to produce 50,000 typewriters a year. Defence agencies, courts and government offices were the last customers of the cumbersome device as sales plummeted to less than 1,000 per annum. Now, finally, even the tradition-minded Indian bureaucracy will have to face up to the efficiencies of the modern world.

They linger in dark places

The typewriter has been proclaimed dead for decades, but somehow it manages to linger on – at least in the U.S. prison system, which is now the biggest market for the transparent machines made by Swintec, a New Jersey firm. Authorities like the fact that prisoners can’t hide contraband in the see-through typewriters nor access the temptations of the Internet. David Berkowitz, the notorious Son of Sam killer, is one of the Swintec’s most satisfied customers, typing out two dozen missives a week to friends and acquaintances on his electric keyboard. Swintec also supplies typewriters to funeral homes that have to type up original death certificates and to the New York Police Department, which requires officers to do their two-finger best on carbon-paper documents such as evidence vouchers. If NYPD deskers look askance at your criminal complaint, researchers say, it’s probably because they don’t want to be bothered with the awkward tedium of an antiquated typewriter.

Speed demons

Before he was a renowned literary critic, Northrop Frye found fame as a speed demon on the typewriter. After graduating from high school in Moncton, he studied office skills at the Success Business College and competed in national typing competitions, winning an Underwood expert-typist award in 1929 at the age of 16. But his speed of 63 words per minute paled beside that of the fastest typists, who have reached over 200 wpm. Frye wisely moved on to a more cerebral level of verbal dexterity.

How to succeed in business

Was the typewriter sexist? The debate endures long after the office typewriter went the way of the three-martini lunch, thanks in part to the cult of Mad Men and its steno pools that placed young typists at the ad executives’ beck and call. As early as the 1920s, naughty postcards portrayed the typewriter as a suggestive instigator of boss-secretary shenanigans, and smart girls were advised not to learn typing if they wanted to advance in the work world. But some historians look on the old QWERTY keyboard more kindly: Office work at the typists’ level was better-paid, safer and less physically draining than other kinds of women’s work, while offering greater mobility in urban – and urbane – corporate culture.

The sound of productivity

The silent typewriter? A bad idea. Remington tried one out, and the market said no. People accustomed to the traditional clickety-clack, that reassuring indicator of productivity, found both the soundless machine and its noiseless office equally unconvincing.

Special relationships

Typewriters write the way people talk, said Ernest Hemingway. But Henry James, whose elaborate style couldn’t have been more different from Hemingway’s spare prose, dictated his novels to a female typist. Likewise, Friedrich Nietzsche trained the typewriter to obey his contorted verbiage. Jack Kerouac, a high-energy, 100-words-a-minute typist, was so impatient about his words keeping up with his streaming thoughts that he typed on a single continuous roll of paper. Maybe, as with any writing instrument, it’s each to his own: Paul Auster preciously described his Olympia as “a frail sentient being,” while gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson used to take target practice at his untalkative IBM Selectric. And the deadline-driven sportswriter Red Smith remarked that “there’s nothing to writing – all you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” Still, would anyone ever say that about a BlackBerry?

No more revealing manuscripts

With the disappearance of the typewriter, says Robert Morrison of Queen’s University, comes the end of the literary manuscript. “When you have a typewritten manuscript, you can keep much better track of the author’s revisions and second thoughts and changes. With the computer, it’s all gone: Hit the Delete key and all your changes disappear into the ether. And what we know from looking at older manuscripts is that very often the crossed-out original is a lot more interesting than the final version.”

Dirty looks

Another reason the typewriter couldn’t last: After 9/11, it’s almost impossible to get it through security without being hassled. “The typewriter’s declining popularity arouses suspicion,” wrote the deliberately old-school author David Sedaris, “and I wind up eliciting the sort of reaction one might expect when travelling with a cannon.”

>> http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/the-typewriters-day-is-nearly-done/article2000014/?service=mobile

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