Architects and engineers party in Toronto

Over 30 engineers, architects and professional musicians got together for a jam session in downtown Toronto on April 18.

Smith + Andersen mechanical-electrical consulting engineers and their Footprint sustainability division organized the jam session, which was at the Courthouse Nightclub on Adelaide Street West downtown.

Over 400 guests arrived to “express their inner Jimi Hendrix and to give back to the planet.” The event was timed to coincide with Earth Week and proceeds from drink sales went to support Trees Ontario.

Apparently design firms in the city are harbouring much hidden talent. The 30 performers included Smith + Andersen’s own Ben Bismonte on vocals, Carlos Buitrago on drums, Dustin Su on bass guitar, and Keith Butler and Shawn Pascoa on guitars. Other performers were from architectural firms like Diamond and Schmitt, WZMH, HOK, and B+H, ZPA and Facio, playing instruments as diverse as keyboards, mandolin, saxophone, tambourine and flute.

To see a YouTube video, click here

Another consulting engineering company, Entuitive, which opened its doors just two years ago, also held a standing room only celebration downtown on April 25 at Canoe on the 54th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Building. Councillor Adam Vaughan spoke about how engineers like Morden Yolles, the late architect Peter Dickinson, and firms like Page and Steele had helped to shape the city of Toronto in the past.

Vaughan, whose own father was a politician and an architect, recalled that Morden Yolles had been attracted to the Bauhaus modernist style partly because the Nazis had rejected it. “When he and Dickinson met, it started a relationship that revolutionized the city’s architecture.”

Today we’re facing much different problems, said Vaughan, citing especially the need for transit. He said he has spoken to young people from deprived areas who face a three-hour commute across the city on the existing public transit system to get to classes at university.