September 3, 2008

Projects

Toronto’s Filmport design wins praise from David Cronenberg

Director lauds Quadrangle for ‘sweating details’ of project

TORONTO

Quadrangle Architects Ltd. has been lauded by Academy Award-nominated director David Cronenberg for “sweating the details” in the design of Filmport, from the column-free sound stages to the soundproofing and the electronics.

Quadrangle’s designs for the sound-proofed interconnecting doors and massive power/air conditioning systems, the ability to bear massive loads on floors and trusses, the stages’ nine-inch thick walls of precast concrete panels and Insul-Quilt and the seven purpose-built sound stages are all designed to meet the filmmaker’s every need.

Quadrangle employed the same painstaking attention to detail for the design features of the offices and production spaces, such as installing colour-corrected lighting in the make-up and dressing rooms and a leveller loading dock in wardrobe, eliminating the need for ramps.

“We have been designing facilities for television and film production for over 25 years,” said Les Klein, principal and partner at Quadrangle Architects.

“Filmport encompasses all of our knowledge, creativity and vision for the future of film.

“We designed the space to exceed the functional expectations of television and filmmakers and to provide them and their crews with a space that will help inspire their creativity.”

Filmport is Canada’s newest and largest convergence district for film, television and digital media companies. Phase 1 occupies over a quarter of a million square feet of production space, including seven sound stages, production offices and mill shops.

“The people who designed this, who built this, who have engineered it, have really sweated the details, every single detail,” Cronenberg said at the official opening of phase 1. “It’s really quite phenomenal and incredibly impressive and incredibly exciting to any film person.”

Cronenberg added, “It’s exciting for film people ... to look at all the details of the buildings, these structures — the electrics, the electronics, the lack of pillars in the buildings.

“That’s something you don’t think about if you’re not in the film business, but if a studio is in a converted warehouse, it will have pillars in the way and you have to continually work around them.”

The largest column-free studio at Filmport is the mega-stage.

This stage is North America’s largest purpose-built sound stage, coming in at a massive 45,900 square feet, with more than an acre of unobstructed space below a six-storey high lighting grid.

The red flying buttresses outside the structures create column-free space, which allows limitless possibilities for set production inside the mega-stage, including comfortably accommodating a Boeing 767 jetliner or a full-size replica of the Parthenon.

Quadrangle also applied its expertise in sustainable design to ensure that Filmport offers a green film-making environment.

Measures included installing high-efficiency mechanical systems, low-E Argon filled windows, high-efficiency lighting with motion sensor controls, exterior lights on photo-cells, instant hot water systems as well as building bio-swales for storm water treatment.

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