Great article on someone who truly walks the walk...
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Adding Some Pizzazz To Our Grey City Streets
Better design, more skaters: Shafraaz Kaba wants Edmonton to amp up its architectural culture
Published April 9, 2009 by Mandy Espezel in News
Meryl Smith Lawton
Thinking Visually | Shafraaz Kaba, local architect and founding member of MADE in Edmonton.
Edmonton is blessed with many natural visual splendours, but when it comes to human-made environments, our city is sorely lacking. A glance out the window reveals a sea of cement block towers, in every shade of gray imaginable.
But there is hope. People are out there, working to better the structural state of our city. One notable member of that admirable group is 34-year-old local architect Shafraaz Kaba.
Kaba helped found the not-for-profit organization MADE in Edmonton (Media, Art & Design Exposed), which brings together young architects, graphic designers, industrial designers, and many others, with a view to upping the ante on our homegrown designs. Kaba also sits on the Edmonton Arts Council and the Edmonton Design Committee.
He was born in Tanzania, grew up in Edmonton, and went to school in Halifax at Dalhousie University. He has worked in some of the most beautiful, best-designed cities in the world, including New York and London, and brings a definite air of optimism to his profession and his role in the community.
“We have so much potential here in Edmonton,” he says. “I would love to help the city here develop in a more design-oriented way.”
His return to our northern capital was accidental. In 2000, Kaba was working in Pakistan when he came home to attend his sister’s wedding. A casual two-week stint helping a friend at the local architecture firm Manasc Isaac turned into a nine-year career with the sustainable design company. “The opportunities to do interesting work were here,” he says.
The firm concentrates on the relationship between quality of life and constructed environments, and how they can enhance and utilize that connection. Kaba becomes excited as he explains the recently completed project The Water Centre. The building is an administrative, shopping, and maintenance centre for the City of Calgary water services and water resources departments. Kaba describes how the wave shaped building uses “passive systems” like natural sunlight and rainwater collection.
“That is the key to cost-effective sustainable design,” he says. “It requires more thinking and organization, but it is not more difficult.”
Creating structures that exist within their environments in a co-operative, attractive fashion is not always a top priority for businesses. That’s why Kaba argues it’s up to the people of the community to create the demand and push for excellence.
Of the work he has done locally, Kaba is especially proud of the St. John Ambulance building on 118th Avenue and 123rd Street, describing it as a “warm, glowing, friendly building in the landscape.” A large glass front gives the structure an inviting appeal, and the intentionally skater-friendly design of the outer entrance promotes healthy youth activity.
“What some people don’t realize,” he says, “is that skaters are a good thing. The more people out on the street, the safer it is.”
Kaba’s absolute favourite Edmonton building, however, is the Peter Hemingway Fitness and Leisure Centre.
He practically glows as he praises its shape, the way it fits seamlessly within the landscape, not to mention its technical achievements — the graceful curve is held up entirely through a cable and tension support system. But it is the building’s devotion to integrating esthetic considerations with high-standard environmental design that he sees as essential to Edmonton’s future buildings.
When asked if there are any buildings in the city that he doesn’t care for, on the other hand, Kaba delicately declines to name names. No? What about the controversial design for the new Art Gallery of Alberta, currently under construction in Churchill Square? Kaba remains steadfastly diplomatic.
“I’ll wait to see what it looks like completed,” he says, “before passing judgment.”
To volunteer or get more information about Media art & design Exposed in Edmonton, check out their website:
www.madeinedmonton.org
http://www.seemagazine.com/article/news/news-main/skate0409/
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