The Chief Justice of the American Judiciary deemed the Vancouver Courthouse the most important innovation in courthouse design since H.H. Richardson's Allegheny Courthouse in Pittsburgh at the beginning of the Century.  The prominent American critic Kenneth Frampton also deemed it the most important public square since Rockefeller Centre of the 1940’s. The challenge here was to divest the courthouse from its overbearing, draconian image to a more appealing one, in line with the principle of the Justice System where guilt, not innocence, must be proven.  The complex of three city blocks was to contain two other institutions:  the Social Services Offices of the Provincial Government and the Vancouver Gallery of Art.  I was intrigued by the opportunity to have justice, government and art in the same city complex and to relate the uniqueness of each institution through architectural form.  But there was another consideration.  the city had needed a central park, a meeting place for its citizens and a nexus for the downtown core.  The Art gallery had always been a fringe institution with little attendance.  Putting the gallery in the former neo-classical Law Courts building, a dignified and hallowed structure at the very center of the city, would immeasurably enhance the role of art in the public's mind.  Government services on the other hand would be partially submerged under a garden as a barely visible presence.  The garden climbed three stories up to a large pool from which cascades flowed down through richly planted landscape reminiscent of the terrain of the province. The Court's building, whose purpose was to be open and accessible, housed a great interior public space glazed and open to all passers by.  It acts not only as a courthouse but also as a cultural centre for the city; large lectures, recitals, celebrations and banquets take place in the Great Hall. The complex, an early example of sustainability, was heated by the sun, cooled as in a greenhouse by the surge of fresh air from the bottom OF THE GREAT SPACE to exhaust at the top, with a huge underground storage tank to absorb excess heat from the lighting.
 
Designing the main symphony hall in Toronto, I had noticed that great music halls of the past used the architecture of the hall to modulate the sound; not acoustic baffles or superfluous decoration as most modern halls do, to accommodate the right reflection and reverberation time.  I wanted the structure itself to modulate the sound.  Huge, convex concrete piers support the concrete "pods" for seating in two levels above the orchestra level, carrying also the concrete leaves of the ceiling, which are supported by a stainless steel tension structure like a bicycle wheel.  The bicycle wheel, besides its structural purpose, is like a chandelier for the auditorium, with a supplementary circumferential catwalk for setting up stage lighting. Slots between the concrete ceiling leaves are for air conditioning and for the arrays of the 2,000 woolen acoustical absorption tubes designed by Mariette Rousseau Vermette that dropped in various configurations to adjust the reverberation time of the hall for Baroque or romantic music.  Acoustics, lighting, structural, and mechanical engineers all worked with Marriette and myself to achieve this gigantic instrument of sound modulation. 

Convention halls are usually an aberration in American cities.  Huge, faceless and dominating, they act as attractions to draw tens of thousands of delegates for a product show and then stand empty most of the time.  We attempted to offset this by allowing for smaller venues and to involve the citizens of the city by making the rooftop available for civic events, the banquet halls for private functions and all open for the casual viewer.  The roof has a splendid view over the harbour, protected by a giant tent, where it sits.  Consistent with the concept of receding terraces, the entrance façade was stepped back, so as to reduce its scale to a more human dimension, engaging it more modestly with the street life of the city.

At the end of the civic mall, the city hall in Fresno, a country town, had the metaphor of the sheltering roof of a barn shaped to embrace a civic plaza where civic events take place.  The round stage, when not in use, acts as a fountain attraction to a public park.

In the more urbane setting of Washington, DC, the Canadian Chancery sits on choice property opposite the National Gallery of Washington and I.M. Pei's east wing.  We were to present a "Canadian presence."  Our instruction from Foreign Affairs was to make it welcoming.  There were twenty-five Washington committees to go through, all protecting the neo-classical image of the National Capital.  Although I was sympathetic to the Lafontaine plan, I considered that abiding by the graceful neoclassicism of the city wasn't an honest expression of our time.  To get through the many committees I decided to seem to comply; but with tongue in cheek.  I would use the theme of colonnades so prominent in Washington; but not of a classical order.  The heroic columns that seemed to support the dramatically long architrave across the entrance, would be of hollow aluminum and not support anything but half a glass vault.  The rotunda columns would be missing two teeth.  The reception hall would open onto a pool of water. The classical sculpture in the court, would be figurative but sculpted by an aboriginal native; in black not white.  The concept of thrusting aboriginal native animistic art into the haloed classicist precinct of Washington intrigued me.  Given a pool with a wave-shaped edge, the subject chosen by the great Haida Sculptor, Bill Reid was "The Black Canoe" (which he eventually called the "Ship of Fools"); for each animal in the canoe was biting or clawing the others around the chieftain, who stared impassively outward.  It was Bill Reid's last comment on our society and its political system!  He died a few years after completing this, his masterwork.

An aquarium for Toronto on its own island off Ontario place. The aquariums are beneath the platform level.  The glass shards, like frozen ice , house the administration and exhibit space.  The suspended coloured balls house theatres on different subjects.  the image of the building resembles the transparency of certain jellyfish and plankton, which i had seen undersea in the Atlantic.

Overseas, in Johor Bahru (a housing and commercial extension of the city in the Singapore straits) the residential islands recall the traditional kampongs of the coastal region of Malaysia on stilts over the water. 

A museum of glass in Tacoma, is connected by a bridge to the history museum across the ganglia of freeways, and displays a collection of modern art glass.  since you arrive on the roof, the roof is an introductory display of glass art, set in infinity-edge pools, which step down to Tacoma’s principal sea canal. The  “hot shop” where they blow the glass is a tipped cone in form.

Architecture is not simply a form-giving language of conscious thought, which commits to a rationale.  Although there is a purpose to the building and a logic to its organization, the concept for its form comes from the creative depth within the psyche, an amalgamation of the life experiences that have been assimilated into the ocean of the unconscious we carry within us.  I never know during the act of design why I do what I do.  I am sure this is common for any artist, writer, poet, painter, or architect.  Picasso said, "I do not seek, I find".  It is this moment of finding that is the "Eureka" of the creative act; its source unknown.  It is only when I am asked why, that some of the influences can be dredged up out of the unconscious.  You do not think your way through a design, you feel your way.  The act of creation is dictated by an inner motivation, the feeling of what is right for a composition whose meaning is not yet, nor may ever be, clear to the creator.  The rightness of a composition is arrived at beyond thought, but guided by its conditions and the sense of appropriateness.  That is why I used to advise my students, "Don't think.  When you design with thought, it is very restrictive.  It is better to find your solution out of the chaos of your feelings and then begin to seek the structure, discipline and spaces that can clearly embody them".

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