Ron Thom at Trent

Iconic Modernism:

By Bernadine Dodge

The Modern Movement in architecture and design is a statement of the social aims of the age. ...By asserting itself against subjectivity and equivocation, it discloses a universal, purposeful order and clarity in what appears to be a mental wilderness.

Berthold Lubetkin. 1947.

Time magazine, July 18, 1969

“Toronto architect Ronald Thom’s buildings are scaled naturally to the landscape. None rises more than four storeys and their shifting perspectives at one moment recall a walled medieval town, at the next a sculpted fortress.”

The Master Plan sets a height limit of four stories. This is set because it approximates the height of the predominant natural feature of the valley, the elm trees….

R.J. ThomPhoto Credit: Andy Turnbull

Site of Trent University1960

Photo Credit: Professor Robert Stairs

Champlain College

The corner stone for Champlain College was laid in 1965 and the College finally opened in 1967.

Photo Credit: Parks’ Studio

Champlain College

Photographed from under Faryon Bridge

The buildings designed by Ron Thom for Trent University represent a tension between the naturalistic aspects of Prairie architecture and the Brutalist elements of machine aesthetics.

Champlain College: Inner Court Yard

Champlain: Interior

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Hall

Faryon Bridge under construction 1967

Faryon BridgeDesigned by associates from Thom’s office and

Morden Yolles, Structural Engineer

Faryon Bridge looking across the Otonabee River to the east bank.

Science Complex under construction 1967

Photograph by Roy Nicholls

Science Building

Photograph by Roy Nicolls

Bata Library under construction 1968

The library is considered to be the central building of the campus, the one building used by all members of the University. It has therefore been placed at the confluence of all pedestrian traffic, making it the proper hub of the University. Everyone has to pass it in his normal to and fro.

Ron Thom: Trent University Master Plan, 1964

Bata Library

Bata Library: viewed from the river

Ron Thom: Trent University Master Plan, 1964

The main academic

square, which is paved and of a size to accommodate assemblies, convocations and outdoor gatherings of all sorts, is at the front door of this main building [Bata Library] and will become the gathering point of the campus…It not only falls in the approximate geographical centre of the plan, but also on the main topographical prominence of the river.

Bata Library

Opened October 1969

Bata Library through the Faryon Bridge

Bata Library, 2004

Lady Eaton College under construction 1968

Lady Eaton College

Ron Thom’s Trent, 1969

Lady Eaton College

Bata Library

Science Complex

Champlain College

Ron Thom, Letter, 1963 “The physical character of a university

must reflect its philosophical idea. This must find first expression in the plan because the plan is the underlying framework and it will qualify the patterns of activity on the campus forever.

Buildings superimposed on this

framework can contradict the idea, or merely reflect it, or, ideally, extend and expand it. Buildings not only grow out of the plan, they are a part of it, one and the same thing. They are the physical reality of the plan.”

Thom’s design of Trent University extended to furniture, draperies and fittings. He chose chairs by designers such as Jacobsen, Aalto, Wegner, Mathsson, Saarinen, Bertoia, and Eames for his buildings.

Alvar AaltoHans Wegner

Harry BertoiaEero SaarinenBruno Mathsson

Arne Jacobsen

[Kaare Klint ?]

All photographs by Bernadine Dodge1989

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1. Arne Jacobsen2. Arne Jacobsen3. Hans Wegner4. Hans Wegner

Chairs assembled by Trent University Archives for a display at Peterborough Centennial Museum and Archives, 1989