Abstract

"'The Dam Builders from Milan:' On Material Reciprocities in Canada's Postwar Constructions, 1954-1971"

Katie Filek, University of Toronto (katie.filek@mail.utoronto.ca)

The use of concrete in Canada increased rapidly following World War II. Employed in large-scale infrastructure and architectural projects alike, increased rates of cement manufacturing went hand-in-hand with state-supported ambitions for the country’s ascendance as a modern, affluent nation. At the same time, numerous foreign companies turned to Canada’s building industry as a site of economic opportunity, drawing the country’s cement and concrete industries into the shifting, expanding networks of a globalizing postwar construction industry. This paper addresses understudied links between large state-funded concrete infrastructure projects in Canada in the 1950s, the foreign construction companies that facilitated these projects, and the subsequent boom in concrete architecture across the country in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, I focus on the Italian construction company I.C.O.S., which operated in Canada through its subsidiaries Icanda Ltd. and Canit Construction and that first worked on the St. Lawrence Seaway (1954–59) before building foundation and perimeter walls for two key towers in Montreal in the 1960s, Place Victoria and the Palais de Justice. This company moved skilled labourers, engineers, and technologists from Italy to Canada, and between their various infrastructural and architectural projects. I argue that this pool of labour and expertise brought to Canada by public infrastructure projects such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, as well as a series of hydroelectric dam projects in Quebec and British Columbia, was in fact critical to the construction of tall concrete buildings in the country—and that such granular material reciprocities between infrastructure and architecture generally merit further attention by architectural historians. Studying the Canada-based activities of “the dam builders from Milan,” in this case, opens up considerations of co-creation across borders, scales, and built typologies, and the interactions of actors across fields and ambitions.