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When Canada wanted a standout pavilion for Expo 67, and a modern new science museum for Centennial Year, it handed a lot of the design work to a young man just reaching his thirties.
It was no gamble. By the early 1960s, John Arnold had already built a reputation as a designer with artistic flair who also understood the nuts and bolts of construction and electronics.
And in later years, every time you stepped into the Crazy Kitchen at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, you walked through his ideas.
But Ottawa holds far more of his work than that.
Arnold, who died recently at 83, was the head of design when the museum was created — for the whole museum, not just the tilted Kitchen. He was also a senior member of the design team for the Canadian pavilion at Expo, the famous “upside-down” Katimavik.
He went on to be an architectural design consultant for the Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, but switched careers to restore private historic homes in central Ottawa, winning multiple awards for his designs. He became a director of Heritage Ottawa.
In Ottawa, he is best known for the original design of the Science and Technology Museum.
“There was that look, the distinctive Sixties design look, that simple, elegant geometric look — sleek, but also his and the museum’s twist at that time was interactive, engaging, multi-sensory. And that was innovative in North America and the world for that time,” says David Pantalony, curator of physical sciences and medicine at the museum.
In the 1950s and 1960s, “there was a moment there when (Canadian designers) were at the vanguard for that. That is important to know, and he is there at the forefront.
“The subtext of that, and this is the beginning of our museum, is the crisis in science education in the post-Sputnik era, and how to engage someone in science and mathematics.”
Arnold had a grant to travel around the world and see how other museums were approaching things. He was hugely influenced by “Mathematica,” the 1961 Ray and Charles Eames exhibit at the California Museum of Science and Industry. This showed that science, and even math, could draw in and fascinate an audience by getting rid of traditional glass cases and “Please don’t touch” signs.
“Amazingly, the idea for the Crazy Kitchen came from his visit to the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto) and a fun house there,” Pantalony said.
But the Kitchen is no fun house. It sits in the context of a museum dealing with the senses and observation, and asks: What happens if one throws the visitor off balance?
“The Crazy Kitchen is actually important … not just a popular oddity,” Pantalony said. “There’s something on measurement and the senses and observation, and here is what happens when it is all thrown off.”
Arnold and designer Glenda Krusberg came up with a room tilted on a 12-degree angle. Krusberg later told the Citizen: “The whole point was this (a kitchen) was someplace you normally feel comfortable. Then you make them walk through this kitchen and it’s not very comfortable at all because your perceptions are all cockeyed: your eyes are telling you one thing and your inner ear, which controls your balance, is telling you another.”
The museum opened in 1967, but Arnold had been attracting public attention before that.
In 1963 McKenzie Porter, a famous and often acidic columnist with the Toronto Telegram, was decrying the soppy Christmas displays on downtown businesses:
“Some of the corniest Christmas lights I have ever seen are winking on University Ave. these days. Many of the displays would not be accepted for the Christmas grotto in Paddy Conklin’s Tunnel of Love,” he wrote.
“But one display on University Ave. is the most pleasing I have ever seen. It is that of the flying angel among the stars on the north wall of the Canadian Oil Companies Ltd. Each of the illuminated fixtures looks as lovely as an enlarged piece of expensive jewelry.
“This truly tasteful illumination is the work of John Arnold, an employee of Design Craft Ltd., a Toronto firm that specializes in the arrangement of commercial displays in publicly sited showcases and at exhibitions…
“Harry Duncan, head of the design department at Design Craft Ltd., says Arnold combines brilliant artistic talent with a sound technical knowledge of the electrical complexities” in his work.
Porter noted that Arnold was already active on the design team for the Canadian Pavilion at Expo 67.
Much of Arnold’s work is scattered around central Ottawa today, including his specialty pieces — old homes that are extended in such a way that the new and the old mesh perfectly.
“He was a big believer in preserving historic houses,” and helped Ottawa owners restore some 30 of them over the years, said his partner of 48 years, Stephen Boissonneault. He also helped to preserve a historic apartment building in Sandy Hill, a synagogue on King Edward Avenue, and even the Rideau Street Chapel, which is now inside the National Gallery.
Anyone crossing the Cummings Bridge into Vanier is driving or walking on his design, with the bridge’s stone walls and distinctive globe lighting.
And he loved trees.
“He was a compulsive tree-planter. Every year trees went in, many dozens” in central Ottawa, Boissonneault said.
Through Heritage Ottawa he was involved in protecting the Aberdeen Pavilion and other buildings. And he was an early organizer of the campaign to prevent an arterial road that threatened to cut through Stanley Park.
Arnold came to Ottawa around 1965, and his early career here included a mix of large projects — the Centennial Train was one — and smaller ones such as sets and lighting for music and plays at Le Hibou and the Ottawa Little Theatre.
Arnold was an only child, born during the Depression and raised in Cookstown, north of Toronto. He was a Royal Conservatory of Music graduate in piano and a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design.
He will be buried beside his parents in Alliston, near his childhood home in Cookstown.
Decades after Arnold set an illuminated angel and stars on an oil company’s wall in Toronto, Boissonneault went back to Toronto’s University Avenue. The composition was still there, a testament to an artist who saw that one year’s Christmas entertainment can be a lasting gift to a city.
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
It was no gamble. By the early 1960s, John Arnold had already built a reputation as a designer with artistic flair who also understood the nuts and bolts of construction and electronics.
And in later years, every time you stepped into the Crazy Kitchen at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, you walked through his ideas.
But Ottawa holds far more of his work than that.
Arnold, who died recently at 83, was the head of design when the museum was created — for the whole museum, not just the tilted Kitchen. He was also a senior member of the design team for the Canadian pavilion at Expo, the famous “upside-down” Katimavik.
He went on to be an architectural design consultant for the Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, but switched careers to restore private historic homes in central Ottawa, winning multiple awards for his designs. He became a director of Heritage Ottawa.
In Ottawa, he is best known for the original design of the Science and Technology Museum.
“There was that look, the distinctive Sixties design look, that simple, elegant geometric look — sleek, but also his and the museum’s twist at that time was interactive, engaging, multi-sensory. And that was innovative in North America and the world for that time,” says David Pantalony, curator of physical sciences and medicine at the museum.
In the 1950s and 1960s, “there was a moment there when (Canadian designers) were at the vanguard for that. That is important to know, and he is there at the forefront.
“The subtext of that, and this is the beginning of our museum, is the crisis in science education in the post-Sputnik era, and how to engage someone in science and mathematics.”
Arnold had a grant to travel around the world and see how other museums were approaching things. He was hugely influenced by “Mathematica,” the 1961 Ray and Charles Eames exhibit at the California Museum of Science and Industry. This showed that science, and even math, could draw in and fascinate an audience by getting rid of traditional glass cases and “Please don’t touch” signs.
“Amazingly, the idea for the Crazy Kitchen came from his visit to the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto) and a fun house there,” Pantalony said.
But the Kitchen is no fun house. It sits in the context of a museum dealing with the senses and observation, and asks: What happens if one throws the visitor off balance?
“The Crazy Kitchen is actually important … not just a popular oddity,” Pantalony said. “There’s something on measurement and the senses and observation, and here is what happens when it is all thrown off.”
Arnold and designer Glenda Krusberg came up with a room tilted on a 12-degree angle. Krusberg later told the Citizen: “The whole point was this (a kitchen) was someplace you normally feel comfortable. Then you make them walk through this kitchen and it’s not very comfortable at all because your perceptions are all cockeyed: your eyes are telling you one thing and your inner ear, which controls your balance, is telling you another.”
The museum opened in 1967, but Arnold had been attracting public attention before that.
In 1963 McKenzie Porter, a famous and often acidic columnist with the Toronto Telegram, was decrying the soppy Christmas displays on downtown businesses:
“Some of the corniest Christmas lights I have ever seen are winking on University Ave. these days. Many of the displays would not be accepted for the Christmas grotto in Paddy Conklin’s Tunnel of Love,” he wrote.
“But one display on University Ave. is the most pleasing I have ever seen. It is that of the flying angel among the stars on the north wall of the Canadian Oil Companies Ltd. Each of the illuminated fixtures looks as lovely as an enlarged piece of expensive jewelry.
“This truly tasteful illumination is the work of John Arnold, an employee of Design Craft Ltd., a Toronto firm that specializes in the arrangement of commercial displays in publicly sited showcases and at exhibitions…
“Harry Duncan, head of the design department at Design Craft Ltd., says Arnold combines brilliant artistic talent with a sound technical knowledge of the electrical complexities” in his work.
Porter noted that Arnold was already active on the design team for the Canadian Pavilion at Expo 67.
Much of Arnold’s work is scattered around central Ottawa today, including his specialty pieces — old homes that are extended in such a way that the new and the old mesh perfectly.
“He was a big believer in preserving historic houses,” and helped Ottawa owners restore some 30 of them over the years, said his partner of 48 years, Stephen Boissonneault. He also helped to preserve a historic apartment building in Sandy Hill, a synagogue on King Edward Avenue, and even the Rideau Street Chapel, which is now inside the National Gallery.
Anyone crossing the Cummings Bridge into Vanier is driving or walking on his design, with the bridge’s stone walls and distinctive globe lighting.
And he loved trees.
“He was a compulsive tree-planter. Every year trees went in, many dozens” in central Ottawa, Boissonneault said.
Through Heritage Ottawa he was involved in protecting the Aberdeen Pavilion and other buildings. And he was an early organizer of the campaign to prevent an arterial road that threatened to cut through Stanley Park.
Arnold came to Ottawa around 1965, and his early career here included a mix of large projects — the Centennial Train was one — and smaller ones such as sets and lighting for music and plays at Le Hibou and the Ottawa Little Theatre.
Arnold was an only child, born during the Depression and raised in Cookstown, north of Toronto. He was a Royal Conservatory of Music graduate in piano and a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design.
He will be buried beside his parents in Alliston, near his childhood home in Cookstown.
Decades after Arnold set an illuminated angel and stars on an oil company’s wall in Toronto, Boissonneault went back to Toronto’s University Avenue. The composition was still there, a testament to an artist who saw that one year’s Christmas entertainment can be a lasting gift to a city.
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
