November 12, 2024
We are happy to announce that the winner of the last month's JMA Architectural Scavenger Hunt is..... Neal Campbell! for being the first to identify the October clue: University of Waterloo Health Services Centre on Strauss Lake, and can be approached from Westmount Ave.
A bit about the University of Waterloo Health Services Centre Expansion:
Many of us at JMA graduated from the University of Waterloo, and remember the older health services building, on the edge of the pond – an early project of Moriyama and Teshima Architects in 1968. By 2010, when we (Kearns Mancini Architects and us) started working on this project, the university population had grown from 9,000 to 36,000, and health priorities and service models had changed.
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October 11, 2024
We are happy to announce that the winner of the last month's JMA Architectural Scavenger Hunt is..... Tim Ingold! for being the first to identify the September clue: Breslau EMS/Fire Station at 51 Beacon Point Ct.
A bit about this Fire/EMS station:
Completed in 2018, this is the only station in the region that Fire and EMS share. The training room was designed to double up as a community room for public use. The massing of the building articulates a sense of address and identity for each of the occupants. Recognizing the need to safeguard response times, and a concern for safety across the site for all users, designing a successful pattern of circulation was of huge importance.
A special water saving fea…
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October 08, 2024
Conestogo Lake home with gables
As we continue our office Word of the Day exercise, we’d like to share another round of definitions.
Infrared (thermal) emittance: A value between 0 and 1 (or 0% and 100%) that indicates the ability of a material to shed infrared radiation (heat). A cool roof (one designed to reflect more sunlight than a conventional roof, absorbing less solar energy) should have a high thermal emittance. The wavelength range for radiant energy is roughly 5 to 40 micrometers. Most building materials (including glass) are opaque in this part of the spectrum and have an emittance of roughly 0.9, or 90%. Clean, bare metals, such as untarnished galvanized steel, have a low emittance and are the most important exceptions to the 0.9 rule. In contrast, aluminum roof…
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September 24, 2024
We recently brought an engaging and interactive booth to Kitchener’s KidsPark festival, where we were able to expose kids to architecture in a way that is inspiring and fun. Additionally, we also used this opportunity to answer questions, mostly from parents and caregivers, about what architects do. This festival presented us with a great opportunity to engage with audiences we do not normally reach.
Our booth, “Fun with Architecture" was a massive success. We were busy non-stop all day, as kids played an architectural matching game, built with wooden blocks and drew on title block. With this pilot project, we tested activities and our approach.
Recently, we were very pleased to learn that the project has generously be…
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July 16, 2024
Dickson Public School, ongoing residential conversion - How many keystones can you spot?
As we continue our office Word of the Day exercise, we’d like to share a second round of definitions.
Enfilade: In architecture, an enfilade is a series of rooms formally aligned with each other. This was a common feature in grand European architecture from the Baroque period onward, although there are earlier examples, such as the Vatican stanze. The doors entering each room are aligned with the doors of the connecting rooms along a single axis, providing a vista through successive rooms. The enfilade may be used as a processional route and is a common arrangement in museums and art galleries, as it facilitates the movement of large numbers of people through a building. [Wikipe…
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July 02, 2024
In the world of architecture, there are many specific and technical terms. As a fun office exercise, we recently started an internal Word of the Day, where a different JMA staff member is invited to share a definition with the office every day, before nominating a colleague to contribute the next day’s definition. We just thought we’d share some of the words that have come up so far:
Pastiche: an artistic work in a style (or styles) that imitates that of another work, artist, or period. [Google Dictionary]
Fanlight: A window over the door that is curved or shaped like a fan is called a fanlight. A transom is the rectangular version of the fanlight. [OntarioArchitecture.com]
Examples: http://www.ontarioarchitecture.com/FANLIGHT.HTM
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April 15, 2024
Our staff are looking forward to participating again in Jane's Walk, the annual community-based approach to city building that uses volunteer-led walking tours to encourage people to rediscover the value of walking, and to observe, reflect, share, question and re-imagine the places in which they live, work and play. This year, both John and Scott have Jane's Walks planned for the first full weekend of May (3-5). Scott's walk will be announced shortly.
How Do you Do? The Happy Accident of Meeting a Stranger, with John
An interactive session that uses our city as a backdrop for an important conversation.
What are the spaces / places in our community that help us meet people who aren’t like ourselves? How do our actions in public affect our a…
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February 09, 2024
Every December the JMA team gathers at John and Margaret’s house to share the holiday cheer with our annual potluck.
Everyone is gathered around the table to explain the dishes they have cooked. Here John is showing the kimchi that took him a week to prepare.
Each year we choose a different theme for the potluck. We all agreed with enthusiasm that
this time around we wanted to eat Korean food, so we got our creative juices to work! We learned that Koreans take great pride in their cooking traditions and having good wholesome foods in their homes.
It was great fun attempting to prepare dishes we had never cooked before...and great fun to eat them! Try out our recipes below:
Tong Dak (barbecue chicken wings) …
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February 09, 2024
Elyn, Matt, Margaret, Marc, John and Melhik pause for a quick photo op while scaling the rocks on Wreck Island.
On the last weekend in July, 7 intrepid explorers from the JMA team set off into the sunshine to continue the tradition of the JMA Massasauga Camping Trip. Good weather, great company, and even better food were enjoyed by all over three days of canoeing, hiking, and swimming against the wild backdrop of the Canadian Shield.
Feasting in style, a full gourmet steak dinner cooked over an open fire, and “Bear Paw” pancakes!
The local fauna as seen in their natural habitat.
Marc and Elyn captured our exploration of the stunning landscape as resident office photographers.
Until next year, Mas…
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February 09, 2024
JMA closed up shop for a day and headed to the International Plowing Match in Roseville. Our team volunteered our time and muscles to assist the Mennonite Disaster Service in a demonstration of an “old fashion” barn raising, which took place over the course of the Plowing Match within the antique section of the event. The barn was brought in from Paris, Ontario for the demonstration and was assembled and disassembled at the event before being transported to it’s final resting place at a private residence in Collingwood.
Our day started out with a very appropriate tractor ride from the parking area to the event grounds, once we where able to find the barn raising site we grabbed our hardhats and waited for instr…
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February 09, 2024
The JMA office endeavoured to replace one of the existing low performance windows in the office meeting room with a newer, higher performance model. The building in which JMA is located is the renovated Bonnie Stuart Shoe Factory. The building was originally built in 1910 and carried out its shoe making processes until 1997. Over the years, renovations have been carried out to adapt this older building to its current usage. Replacing the old single pane windows are a part of this ongoing process of renewal.
JMA staff undertook the exercise of replacing the window in our office Meeting Room as a training exercise. Given the many times that each of us have drawn window details, we thought that this would be a good way to get a better understanding of the steps involved in constr…
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Scott
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August 02, 2023
Thanks Nolan. If you can think of anything to add to the list, we'd be interested to hear from you.
Nolan Bentley
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August 01, 2023
I am going measuring tomorrow so this is a timely reflection :-) thx!
