James Strutt; Ottawa architect & disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright
Hyfler/Rosner
Ottawa architect championed modernist age in Canadian design
A disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, his work incorporated the
beauty of geometry, structure and form in nature. 'A
building of any sort should be a place to awaken our senses'
NOREEN SHANAHAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
December 30, 2008
Inspired by American architects Frank Lloyd Wright and
Buckminster Fuller, James Strutt's designs fostered the
modernist age in Canadian architecture. He revered the
former for incorporating nature into architectural design,
and admired the latter for having invented the geodesic
dome. In all his work, Mr. Strutt explored the beauty of
geometry, structure and form in nature.
Best known among his designs are the Uplands Airport
terminal building in Ottawa, Plaza de las Americas at Expo
67, the Canadian Nurses Association Headquarters in Ottawa,
and a number of distinctive churches and private dwellings
that dot the Gatineau Hills.
For the Bells Corners United Church in Nepean, Ont., Mr.
Strutt incorporated such innovative features as a large
convex roof meant to evoke the image of praying hands. Using
his own home on Mountain Road in Aylmer, Que., as a
prototype, he also designed Canada's first wooden hyperbolic
parabolic roof, a shape vaguely resembling a saddle or a
Pringles potato chip. The nurses building includes a
six-metre lantern, the universal symbol of nursing.
The son of an electrical engineer, he spent his early years
in Pembroke, Ont. His father, William Strutt, helped set up
power plants in Quebec and Ontario, all jobs that took him
away from his family for long stretches of time.
Consequently, Jimmy grew up surrounded by a group of women
that included his grandmother, mother, sister and aunt. They
all lived in a 19th-century brick-clad boarding house that
was believed to have been built for a lumber baron. In those
carefree childhood days, Jimmy often spent his afternoons
building dozens of balsa-wood wind-up model airplanes, or
experimenting with bizarre geometric shapes.
When he was a teenager, the Strutts moved to the Glebe
neighbourhood of Ottawa. He attended Ottawa Technical High
School and in 1942, immediately after graduation, joined the
Royal Canadian Air Force. He was trained on Tiger Moth
airplanes and was selected to fly long-range bombers. He was
assigned to command a B-24 Liberator in the defence security
force, patrolling Canadian coasts and shepherding ship
convoys to safe harbour. Near the end of his service, he
escorted a surrendered German submarine, into Halifax where
it was handed over to the Canadian navy.
After the Second World War, he attended the University of
Toronto as part of a program to reintegrate veterans. He
started out in mechanical engineering but, on the advice of
a teacher, he switched to architecture and never regretted
it. He soon fell in love with the work of Frank Lloyd
Wright. As a student, he copied the architect's entire
portfolio of drawings and was even able to convince him to
give lectures and workshops to his class. As the story goes,
Mr. Wright was an arrogant old sod, but also a brilliant
designer and devoted mentor. "That young man is going
places," he said of his talented young admirer.
In 1950, Mr. Strutt graduated with a bachelor of
architecture, with honours in design. It was an exciting
time in modern Canadian architecture, and he was on his way.
"People wanted to break away from the old architecture and
Jim found fertile ground in which to express his ideas,"
said his brother-in-law, Bill Lett.
In 1958, Mr. Strutt designed the Uplands Airport terminal
building (now called the Macdonald-Cartier International
Airport). It was one of the first postwar government
buildings that combined architecture and art. Outside the
building, passengers were welcomed by two stylized geese
made by Montreal sculptor Louis Archambault. Inside, on the
mezzanine level, the Canadian Aviation Museum detailed the
history of flight in Canada.
But more importantly, Mr. Strutt solved a serious problem
for air controllers. By sloping the glass sides of the
control tower outward instead of vertically, he eliminated
glare and provided a completely uninterrupted view of the
runways. The concept was later used at the Halifax airport,
which he also designed, and became standard on control
towers across Canada.
In 1968, he designed the award-winning Loeb Building at
Carleton University in Ottawa. At the time, it was the
largest building on the campus, housing the departments of
sociology, geography, psychology and economics. His design
allowed movement to slow down, breaking the building up into
small sections, each with its own elevator, small lobby and
series of windows. Perhaps he intended to take the edge off
during stressful exam time.
The influence of Frank Lloyd Wright was everywhere in his
work. What Mr. Strutt particularly took from his teachings
was respect for the environment, said his biographer,
Titania Truesdale. "He used local materials, local craft, so
it seemed to be of that place. It's a little bit like where
we're going now, with the sustainable architecture. He was
ahead of the curve in that, as well."
Mr. Strutt's most successful years as an architect occurred
during the earlier part of his career, well before he turned
50. In 1962, an article in Star Weekly magazine featured him
among "Canadians Worth Knowing." By then, he had already
designed more than 100 private residences in the Hull-Ottawa
area, as well as several other notable buildings. He was
described as a tall, lean man with curly black hair who
looked as though he might be a race car driver or the host
of a TV drama series.
"He's unorthodox and so are his inexpensive houses,"
continued the article. "He experiments with structure,
aiming at the most economical use of labour and new
materials."
The Strutts' four-bedroom house cost $15,000, which was a
bargain even at that time. During the 1960s, the house
became famous as a venue for caviar and champagne parties
attended by the likes of Pierre Trudeau, who, as the story
goes, tended to show off with spectacular late-night dives
into the tiny swimming pool. "He had to come back up the
next day to look for earrings of the lady he was with," said
Mr. Strutt's son, David. "His first reaction was, 'I thought
the pool was about three times bigger than this!' "
A few years later, Mr. Strutt was asked to design a house on
a site dominated by a large maple tree. The thing was,
though, the tree had to stay. The result bore his trademark
of innovative design and generated more interest in the
press. "How a tree dictated design," ran the headline in the
Ottawa Citizen. The article described how the entire
structure owned the appearance of a deck of cards fanned
around the trunk. Each card represented a roof, and under
each one was a wedge-shaped room. Skylights allowed the
upper branches to be seen from every room in the house.
"I'm not a black-and-white or totally stainless-steel
person," Mr. Strutt was quoted as saying. "That's too
impersonal ... I prefer warmer materials."
One of his least favourite buildings was Toronto City Hall,
a modernist structure by Finnish architect Viljo Revell that
opened in 1965. "It's not architecture, it's a piece of
sculpture," Mr. Strutt said at the time. "They could have
put Toronto on the map with a piece of architecture just as
easily ... It would have been a much more significant source
for a redevelopment of downtown Toronto if it didn't turn
its back on the city on three sides."
To him, it violated certain fundamentals. "A building of any
sort should be a place to awaken our senses," he said.
From circular-plan homes to rhombi-shaped yacht clubs to
hexagonal recreational facilities, his enthusiasm was a
powerful force to be reckoned with, said Ms. Truesdale. Mr.
Strutt mentored a generation of architects and engineers,
including John Adgeleian, the man who designed Toronto's
domed stadium.
One of Mr. Strutt's personal triumphs was the Nurses
Building in Ottawa, a design that required four murals to
depict the history of nursing in sunken relief. The artist
on the project was Eleanor Milne, the official architectural
sculptor for Canada's Parliament Buildings from 1962 until
her retirement in 1993.
"My interest was based in a new approach to design and
construction of stained glass windows and walls," said Ms.
Milne. "Jimmy's hope was to create an entirely new approach
to the design and construction of buildings."
Less successful was the Jackson Building in downtown Ottawa.
To his detriment, Mr. Strutt was more architect than
businessman, which led to an unfortunate decision in the
late 1960s that took him to the brink of bankruptcy. He had
undertaken to renovate the structure, which had been
severely damaged by a massive gas explosion in 1958. His was
a second attempt at repairing the place, and his problems
began when the original drawings on which he based his work
proved to be inaccurate. Preliminary repairs had botched the
job and caused structural changes, then gone unrecorded on
the blueprints.
To correct the problem, he authorized major engineering work
that ended up costing a great deal more than was originally
budgeted.
It was a bureaucratic nightmare," said his son. "Engineering
teams went ahead and did the work and sent him the bills,
but the government refused to pay."
Instead, Mr. Strutt was left to foot the lot. It was an
unfortunate debacle, and he ended up declaring bankruptcy
and closing his practice. Afterward, he decided to shift
careers. In 1969, he took a teaching position in the
architecture department at Carlton University. In 1977, he
became the director, and retired in 1986.
However, his work as an architect was not over. In 1998, he
designed the Canadian embassy in Algiers, then turned his
hand to drawing up plans for hurricane- and
earthquake-resistant structures. He also helped develop
factory-produced crisis and emergency housing, completing
several projects in Sudan, South America and the Caribbean.
Back home, he acted as mentor to students and interns and
continued to inspire, influence and direct future designs.
JAMES STRUTT
James William Strutt was born Jan. 28, 1924 in Pembroke,
Ont. He died Nov. 8, 2008, in Ottawa of cancer. He was 84.
He is predeceased by his wife, Audrey (Lett). He is survived
by children Lesley, David, Katherine and Jocelyn. He also
leaves his sister, Esther Waring, and four grandchildren.