Toronto Carpet Factory
As you walk along Liberty Street toward the Toronto Carpet Factory building, you are immediately struck by the sheer mass of the structure. The simplicity of the massive abstract form is the primary source of its beauty. As an individual entity, it reflects the character of its Liberty Village neighbourhood, but at a magnified scale. It is a clear manifestation of the ethical standards of the Victorian colonial industrialists. They built these factories as an example to the common folk of the benefit of education, self-reliance and respect.
The building’s exterior is a direct reflection of the simple geometry of the interior plan, with the surface broken down into an ordered rhythm of windows set in small bays, each capped with an arch. On a bright sunny day this geometry cuts light and shadow across the field of brick, creating a simple fabric wrapping a massive volume capped with a hunter green cornice.
Early industry demanded large economical workplaces, with building scale limited only by the size of the land owned by their builders. The Carpet Factory interior is as orderly as its exterior, with a regular spacing of columns and beams supporting a floor of heavy dimensioned lumber on edge. All of this was achieved using standard sizes and grades of lumber without variations in the cross section of members along their length, and standard wood connection details and arrangements used throughout the structure were kept to a minimum. Identical member designs were used wherever practical. All of this method resulted in an economical construction formula.
A century ago, wood structure offered many advantages: versatility, durability, workability, low cost, high strength-to-weight ratio, good electrical insulation, low thermal conductance, and excellent strength at low temperatures. Wood is also appropriate for both wet and dry applications, is resistant to many highly corrosive chemicals, and has high shock-absorption capacity, with the ability to absorb overloads of short duration. All of these qualities provide decided advantages in a building filled with heavy machinery, pounding and vibrating away in the service of making carpets.
As the century-old building has shown, wood structures have remarkable wearing qualities and can be treated with a wide range of finishes, for decorative or protective purposes. Wood structural members a simple framing system for a large economical building that can withstand changing uses through time.
The use of wood in structures of this scale was formed by rote practice: it was economical to use locally sourced wood and brick. But this economy frequently made use of these materials in ways that did not fully utilize their strength.
This does not diminish the achievement we see today. Rather it highlights how much more can be achieved with a modern understanding and machine measurement of the strengths of wood members. This new understanding, combined with new engineering technologies promises to produce lighter, stronger and more inspiring architectural forms. These new uses of wood are the direct descendants of the heritage established by century-old structures like the Toronto Carpet Factory.
Of course this story would not be complete without acknowledging the surrounding neighbourhood, Liberty Village. Hundreds of acres were once filled with these temples to industry and, one by one these vine-covered masterpieces were abandoned. Most were torn down and the land scraped clean, later to be replaced by glass boxes to satisfy the desire for new housing close to the downtown core.
Fortunately, there were enough clear-sighted and forward-thinking developers to preserve many of the old warehouses and renovate them for new uses. The durability, simplicity and economy of these old buildings makes them perfectly suited to new offices for professionals and those that are attracted to a dignified, sophisticated alternative to conventional office space.
Today, The Toronto Carpet Factory houses more than one thousand workers, just as it did when it all began more than a century ago.