As an architecture student in Toronto in the 1950s, Raymond Moriyama set out three dreams for his career.
The first was to design a city hall, a structure that would be based on the equality, justice and inclusion he was denied while incarcerated as a child in an internment camp for Japanese-Canadians in the B.C. interior. He built the Scarborough Civic Centre in 1973.
The second was to design a museum, which he viewed as essential to education. He built the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, the National Museum in Saudi Arabia and, most recently, the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, a building that was guided by his memories of sound and poetry from the tree house sanctuary he built as a 12-year-old living with his mother in the B.C. camp.
The third — to design a cathedral — was more difficult.
Cathedrals were very rarely constructed in the 1960s and 1970s so, in their place, Moriyama says, he began to focus on the natural environment.
"My cathedral was to pursue truth and that was the Meewasin," the soft-spoken Moriyama, regarded as one of Canada’s greatest architects, explained Wednesday as he strolled slowly along the pavilion at River Landing.
"This is closer to a cathedral than a cathedral itself."
It was 32 years ago that Moriyama, now 80, laid out his vision for the river valley, writing the principles that led to the creation of the Meewasin Valley Authority, which he named, and the development of the south downtown. His name is referenced weekly in debates about the development of the river valley.
"Everything we have here is Moriyama," explained Susan Lamb, Meewasin Valley Authority director. "His thinking, which was 25 years ahead of its time, will affect what we do here forever. It is seminal."
Moriyama, who has visited Saskatoon occasionally since 1978, is in town to speak this morning alongside Lamb at the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada national conference before giving delegates a boat tour of River Landing during the weekend.
His message to young architects and planners, he says, is to focus on the wider picture. He recalled one of the first meetings laying out the framework for his five-month investigation, led by then-MLA Roy Romanow, where he was first told to envision the river valley around Saskatoon 100 years in the future.
"I said quietly, ‘God doesn’t think 100 years ahead,’ " Moriyama said, laughing.
On Wednesday, Moriyama seemed reasonably impressed with present-day River Landing, the massive riverbank reclamation project that has been 30 years in the making.
The development is larger than he conceived, but maintains the principles he set out for the south downtown, a place for people to experience the river and a link between the city and nature, he said.
Looking up at the sign showing the concept drawing for Lake Placid’s River Landing Village, Moriyama’s first look at the landmark development that has spurred wide public debate, he seemed indifferent to the megaproject. Such large developments need to be sustainable, he said, and not dwarf their surroundings.
In the original sketch of the development, Moriyama envisioned the atmosphere of south downtown to be an area similar to the Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco or Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen where a riverside promenade would be filled with small shops, restaurants and boutiques. He also envisioned a redeveloped City Hall, a wharf, an enclosed glass walkway and a winter garden on the A.L. Cole site.
"It needs to be about sustainability," he said of River Landing. "It has to be considerate of its context."
Some concepts developed in 1978 were "wild ideas" designed to get people thinking big, he said. One of the ideas was for the Meewasin Valley interpretive centre to be slung underneath the north bridge along with a pedestrian walkway to give visitors vistas of the river as they learn about its history.
Such details, he said, were bound to be changed by new realities and modern perspectives.
"We do the sketches so it gives someone an idea. Now, 32 years later and it’s taking shape, and in reality it was never expected to be exactly the same. The broad principles — health, balance, links and nodes — are the important part and they’re here."
The lessons learned on the Meewasin have been applied elsewhere. Moriyama presided over the 100-year vision for Niagara Falls, a 26-kilometre plan in a much more populated area and, most recently, the decade-long revitalization of a 120-km stretch of the nearly dead Wadi Hanifah River in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which is drawing international acclaim.
"Everything good takes time," Moriyama said. "More people need to think about long-term vision and not ego and greed. You have to ask, ‘what would nature do,’ not technology. You have to ask yourself about legacy and what you leave behind."
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