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 Intrinsic
      
Location: Collingwood
Gender: Male
 |  | Allandale Station (Barrie, ON) News
< on 9/24/2009 7:12 PM >
|  | | | Blending past with future
Roman Svoboda is part of a team that will work on the old Allandale Station.
September 24, 2009
Roman Svoboda has walked through the great cities of Europe. A restoration specialist, he has seen firsthand how buildings ancient, old and new can work together. He has seen how their interaction can create a special ambience within a city.
And now, he’d like to help create the same in Barrie.
“When you go through cities in Europe, you see millennia go by as you walk along, two or three millennia. It’s included in a city, in buildings that are a part of it,” he said.
The old can stand up to the new. In fact, they can complement each other, and together offer a space that’s once again relevant to the life of a community, he explains. Together, they express the past and the present – and set the stage for the future.
“That’s the European philosophy,” the Barrie man said, as he walked along the abandoned site that was once the hub of Allandale, the Grand Trunk Railway’s gateway to Ontario’s resort area.
Svoboda is part of a team that includes Edwin Rowse, an historical architect who worked on Toronto’s Distillery District and the Carlu, as well as another architect with transit station experience. He is inspired by what is about to take shape on the abandoned Allandale site.
The third part of the team is local architect Michael McKnight, twho knows the station inside out thanks to time he spent working with CHUM on its plan to convert the station into a broadcast centre that was shelved officially in 2006.
Today’s $50-million Allandale Village project will feature not only a restored train station, but a second GO train station, retail, hospitality and community spaces, as well as the YMCA’s corporate offices and a state-of-the-art facility that offers programs for young and old.
Coming from Europe and taught the classics by his father and his professors, Svoboda anticipates the station will include spaces for the arts. Glancing up to the incredibly tall ceilings in the old station, he envisions a small concert venue.
“We don’t have any nice concert halls in Barrie,” he said, adding the Fisher Auditorium at Barrie Central and the Gryphon Theatre at Georgian College “don’t have this atmosphere.”
Atmosphere is what the project needs to seize, he explains. How the space will be programmed, however, has yet to be determined.
Extensive consultations with the arts community are being analyzed in what the city calls the Creative Allandale plan. It is to be unveiled in October and present strategic directions and ideas on how to make best use of public spaces on the site.
“It’s a beautiful building. We don’t have anything like it. We have to be (thinking) 50 years ahead,” said Svoboda.
Thinking ahead of his time is a family tradition. Svoboda’s father, an architect by trade, revolutionized theatrical set design and instilled in his son a pride of craftsmanship.
The younger Svoboda went on to train in mural restoration in Vienna, and along the way, learned the art and craft of furniture restoration. While still in Europe, he turned down a job at the Louvre in Paris in 1973. He admits that was a mistake.
“I was an idiot,” he said, looking back at what his resume could have included. His take on restoring wood panels, to stop them from warping, was more traditional. His would-be boss disagreed, so they parted ways in the interview.
“When I restore, I try to use not just the materials, but the techniques the same they were (when the piece or building was made). There was a pride in craftsmanship. There was the reputation of each craftsman in each job,” he said.
As a restorer, he respects those who went before him, their craftsmanship and what they created.
Yet, Svodobda understands the need to integrate the past with the present and look to the future.
He came to Canada to escape Eastern European politics and chose Canada, partially because of a photo of Toronto’s New City Hall.
“It was an architectural jewel. I thought this is the country. They were years way ahead (of other non-European countries),” he said.
After coming to Canada, he got a job at the Art Gallery of Ontario and furthered his studies to include architecture and best practices in restoration. He worked on restoring Coburg’s Victoria Hall, as well as smaller projects throughout Ontario.
“(The Allandale Station) is a beautiful building. We don’t have anything like it. We have to be (thinking) 50 years ahead,” he said.
“We have to educate people to understand progress.”
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yokes
Location: Toronto
Gender: Male
I aim to misbehave
| |  |  | Re: Allandale Station (Barrie, ON) News
<Reply # 1 on 9/24/2009 7:36 PM >
| | | | I'm working on this project. Should be good.
"Great architecture has only two natural enemies: water and stupid men." - Richard Nickel |
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z0th
Location: /dev/urandom
Gender: Male
On the bleeding edge of cocking things up.
| | | Re: Allandale Station (Barrie, ON) News
<Reply # 2 on 9/25/2009 3:19 AM >
| | | | i really hope this project gets completed. its been sitting derelict since i was a kid. would be nice to see it part of the city again, not just some rotting building waiting for the wrecking ball.
yokes, is the city still pushing the 'native fieldstone' foundation?
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