Buildings should be good neighbours - Paul Thiry

The city of St Catharines is hosting an open house at Market Square on Thursday (Oct 13th, 2011) to allow all interested in putting in their 2 cents into the future of our downtown core. the Urban Design Guidelines Open House will take place 11am to 7pm, with those responsible for the draft awaiting your input. It will be interesting to see whether these guidelines will push buildings up (seeing as there is little land left) or concentrate more on the streetscape. Stay tuned for details.

The world is divided into people who do things - and people who get the credit. - Dwight Morrow

More and more our work is showing up in publications. Renderings are of special concern in the architectural field, logos and copyrights are watermarked into intellectual property and continuously cropped out and inserted into publications. I don`t get it, am I missing something? The papers will write about our projects, about the but not about the ones responsible for creating the images and pre-cursors for selling their papers. Lets face it, architecture is boring to people until it is constructed, unless we show them a virtual concept, if not the article would be filler. There is either a wow factor or an abstract quality and provokes thought that a floor plan wouldn't.

add ironic citing here - Our Niagara Region, Sept 2011 

Now, other end of the spectrum, if a rendering is use by those guys doing the fancy art centre...what's their name again, oh that's right (the paper wont let you forget it) Diamond something...Schmitt? (if you don't believe me check the bold print on any front page) I understand it is a large project under the public eye, but if our own media would pay the same amount of attention to local firms, we could all have an identity in our local market. The media is projecting the stigma that you must go to Toronto to get good architecture - FALSE

Talent is here in Niagara, set proper priorities and promote local. 

Don't get me wrong I want them to publish our images but I'm a believer in giving credit where credit is due. I think of the agricultural pitch - Buy local - Grown Close to home, think of architecture the same way! Architecture Grown Here

Rant - over and out
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Do what you believe is great work - Steve Jobs

Nothing endures but change - Heraclitus

St. Catharines City Hall Has a new exhibit called Urban Metamorphosis. This exhibit documents the changing urban landscape of the city. Now till Dec 4. If anyone checks it out let me know.

firmitas, utilitas, venustas - Vitruvius' 3 principles

Greetings all, (or none)
welcome! I'm LMC and live and work in St. Catharines. I was raised here and find a certain satisfaction in any minor or major architectural work that takes place in Niagara - as it contributes to a greater Built Environment.

My attempt is to promote information on everything architecture in the Niagara region. I have found no single source of info for architecture news,musings or history in the area, so I decided that I might take on the task. I plan to take no single direction in my writing other than to inform and inspire from within the region. It could be past or present subjects or something that I believe Niagara should draw inspiration from.

In not so conventional interpretations, I think Vitruvius might have had the right principals as they apply to architecture, but to life in general - or at least as it applies to this blog:

Firmness - My opinion is usually strong, but I'm always up for a challenge so comment away.


Commodity - useful and valuable? you be the judge.


Delight - with any luck it will be enjoyable.


If there is anything specific you would like me to check into for you, send me a message. I work at a local Architectural firm and might have the resources to help. I'll try my best to talk about all firms work if I can - I'll keep firm bias to a minimum.


Keep designing, Keep progressing, Positivity is contagious.