On August 24th of this year Riitta Immonen, one of the co-founders of Marimekko died. CBC’s “As It Happens” spoke to Ritva Koskennurmi-Sivonen, a lecturer on textiles and clothing at the University of Helsinki, about Ms. Immonen’s revolutionary designs. Ms. Koskennurmi-Sivonen noted that Ms. Immonen’s designs were often labelled “simple” but that Riitta never used that word herself and rather preferred the word “pure” to describe her work. That statement resonated with me and has been swirling around in my thoughts since.
We have discussions in our office about what is an edmonton architecture? How do we create a regionally responsive form and “style” (although I loathe to use the word style as it smacks of consumerism and marketing)?. There is something in the power of the word pure that gets close to what I’m interested in investigating in my/our work. The rawness of the Canadian Northern landscape is indeed about purity. Distilled, our work responds to our landscape which is sky, earth and light. Above all else it is light – the need to bring it inside in the dark months of winter, the intensity of it reflecting off snow, the clarity of the natural palette. While I never really look forward to winter I am always awestruck when it arrives and I am once again mesmerized by the amazing range of blues, purples and grey that are present in the shadows of snow drifts.
Somehow an edmonton architecture needs to capture this purity and reflect it. Respond to the elegance of our light and land. Simple is a somewhat derogatory word. Pure embodies the magnificent natural world that surrounds us, even in the city. The clarity of the North Saskatchewan at this time of year, where the water runs clear and I can see the river bed below. The straight lines of the aspen trunks, denuded of their golden leaves. The cloudless sky that shades from almost white at the horizon to a deep, clear blue of infinity above. Somewhere in these ideas is an emerging language for an Edmonton architecture which is worthy of these surroundings. Now I just have to articulate it.
