Generic No More: Toronto Modernism in Denis Villeneuve's Enemy

Canadian cities such as Toronto or Vancouver are often used by Hollywood to represent either generic modern cities that could be anywhere, or else to act as substitute locations for specific American cities, usually New York or Chicago. An example of the former is The X Files, in which the Vancouver in which it was filmed represents no city in particular, while an example of the latter is provided by the movie Chicago, which was filmed entirely in Toronto (minus the stock footage establishment shot at the beginning). The reason Canadian cities make good substitute locations is precisely because they are so generic and unremarkable for the most part. (The low value of the Canadian dollar in the 1990s and the availability of subsidies also made it very attractive for Hollywood to shoot in Canada)

It is therefore interesting when a film comes along in which a Canadian city is actually itself, with modern architecture being used to affirm urban identity rather than to erase it. The film Enemy, directed by Denis Villeneuve, does just that. In the opening establishment shot, Toronto's CN tower, designed by architect John Andrews in the late 1960s, is shown in the very centre, so there's no mistaking where this story takes place. (Then again, since Toronto so rarely represents itself on film, many non-Canadian viewers --especially Americans-- may mistake the image for a US city. Not to worry though: Canadians are used to dealing with being mistaken for Americans)

Enemy: establishment shot.

Interestingly, Enemy's portrayal of Toronto does not include, at any moment, that city's pre-modern architecture, such as the vernacular Victorian rowhouses that are slowly disappearing in the current construction boom.  Instead, we see almost exclusively concrete and steel architecture that dates from the 1960s onward, such as the béton brut megastructure Scarborough College (also by John Andrews), St James Town apartment buildings, or the 'Marilyn Monroe' twin condominium towers in Mississauga by MAD. 

Enemy: generic modern apartment buildings (St James Town, Toronto)...

... and generic modern office buildings (downtown Toronto). 

The major role played by modernist architecture in Enemy inevitably invites comparison with Jaques Tati's Playtime, even though these films are separated by over half a century of time as well as an ocean of distance, not to mention that Playtime is comical while Enemy is a creepy psycho-thriller. Like Enemy, Playtime's architecture is exclusively modernist, yet in both cases fleeting appearances by monuments --in Playtime the Eiffel Tower makes a brief appearance as a reflection in a glass door-- serve to situate the story in a real place. Another remarkable comparison is how both films use subdued colour tonality to create a certain ambiance --sepia-tone in the case of Enemy and a blueish, semi black-and-white tone in Playtime-- that is consistent with modernist architecture's general lack of colour.

Whereas Tati had to construct elaborate sets at great expense to create a high-modernist Paris that didn't exist yet, Villeneuve was able to use Toronto's abundant, repetitive modernist buildings to great effect in his disturbing film: the plot revolves precisely around a college professor who discovers another person (both roles are played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who resembles him exactly. 

Enemy: Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) at Scarborough College (all images courtesy Vimeo.com)

Jurisprudence. The City of Justice by David Chipperfield Architects and b720 Arquitectura

Courts of justice are steeped in protocol and decorum, not merely because of tradition, but in order to establish and assert the authority of law. This applies to everything from the gown worn by a judge to the facade of the building in which justice takes place, neither of which can appear to be flippant, light or irreverent at any time. On the one hand, justice must of course always be blind and impartial. But at the same time it must always also be seen, in the public eye, to be taking place in a fair and timely manner. Very serious, solemn business indeed.

Barcelona’s new City of Justice appears, at a distant and superficial glance, to be a monotonous, repetitive, and imposing building complex. With its concrete facades and narrow windows, the City of Justice reminded me initially of those 1970s university fortresses that were designed to avoid a repetition of the student unrest of 1968. But up close and inside, this complex turns out to be a very dignified and user-friendly place in which the notion of an architectural balance between opposites (dare I say "harmony"?) takes precedence over the accepted notion that a single overriding architectural idea--often formalist--must be made to prevail über alles come hell or high water.

Occupying the site of a former military barracks on the boundary between Catalonia’s two largest cities, Barcelona and l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, the new court of law servicing both of these municipalities is a 230,000 square-meter complex comprised of eight separate medium-rise buildings on a plaza, four of which are joined by a lower four-story concourse that acts as a central atrium and as a passageway between two major adjacent streets: Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, one of Barcelona’s busiest thoroughfares, and Avinguda del Carrillet, which historically connected the center of l’Hospitalet with that of Barcelona. The context surrounding the City of Justice is a mix of the kind of corporate headquarters, modernist housing blocks and arterial roads that one would expect to find on the way to an airport anywhere. Perhaps not the most glamorous part of town, but one that is undergoing an important transformation with the construction of a new subway line, highways that have been re-built below grade, and new office towers by the likes of Toyo Ito and others.

Although the eight buildings of the City of Justice are constructed using the same tectonic system of load-bearing concrete facades with deeply inset tall-and-narrow windows, they are not perfect clones of one another. Variation in height, color and orientation of the buildings creates an urbanism of repetition diferente: variations on a theme that lends a strong overall visual identity for the City while avoiding the nauseating monotony of the kind of supposedly rational urbanism with which monolithic concrete buildings are usually associated. In fact, with its polychromy and seemingly random building placement on a large plaza, a walk through the City of Justice is a bit like stepping into a painting by Giorgio de Chirico.

The concourse infra-structure, which provides entry to the complex at each of its ends as well as amenities such as an auditorium, a bar and a cafeteria, is clad, in contrast to the concrete buildings, with generous amounts of glass behind a finely knit stainless steel mesh. The concourse accommodates a constant flow of people; a humanity that is hidden from view by the steel mesh screen and that is almost completely absent in the plaza outside (à la De Chirico). The life of this justice city is highly interiorized, unlike the Spanish city in general, with the plaza serving more as an abstract setting for the architecture rather than as a place to hang out. Certainly, there is adequate space in the plaza in case the need arises for any demonstrations, a favorite pastime in the young democracy that is Spain. But no matter how inviting the space, who wants to hang out near a courthouse anyway?

The plaza is, then, a space in which a series of monolithic building blocks embrace a more delicate, smaller-scale glass and steel concourse. This creates different effects at different scales. If the concrete facade system provides the necessarily more “serious” image that a court of law must project outwards to the rest of the city at an urban scale, then the concourse compensates with a humane and lively interior space. Indeed, the very success of the concourse as a place is precisely due to the fact that it is not overly large and ambitious; that more is not being made out of that which it simply is.

This is the lesson of the City of Justice: sound architectural judgment. The grandiose gesture that we have come to expect from high-profile architectural projects is absent in this case. The City of Justice is subtle, suggestive, and considered, but it is not frivolous. For Barcelona, with its architectural legacy of Gaudí and Miralles, this may seem like an anathema. But perhaps it is useful to remember here the notion of seny and rauxa, a sort of Catalan equivalent of Yin and Yang. Achieving a correct and judicious balance between seny (prudence, wisdom) and rauxa (ecstasy, rapture) is a hallmark of Catalan culture. In the City of Justice, seny clearly prevails over rauxa, as it must, arguably, for the sake of justice.

[originally published in Art 4D Magazine]