www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, March 26, 2015 | 4
Holcim Estate restoration earns Ontario Heritage Award
by Herb Garbutt
Oakville Beaver Staff
The Gairdner family’s country retreat was an
elegant home with beautiful views of Lake
Ontario. Its well-manicured lawns played host
to social gatherings in the 1940s and 50s.
But by the time the City of Mississauga
purchased the property and hired Oakville’s
ATA Architects Inc. to restore it a few years ago,
the grounds were overgrown and vandals had
broken windows and stolen any usable material
from the house. The Holcim Waterfront Estate
had been abandoned for three decades. Its last
owners had used it as office space, dramatically
altering the home’s original interior.
ATA’s mission was to restore the Great
Depression-era estate to its former glory while
modernizing it to make it a viable site to host
weddings and other events while meeting all
current building codes.
“Melding together the old and new and making
it all work, it takes a lot of detail and a lot of care,”
said ATA principal Alex Temporale. “I think it was
a project that required love and attention and it
got that attention from everyone involved.”
That love and attention to detail was rewarded
with a Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage
Award for Excellence in Conservation, which
the Oakville company shared with the City
of Mississauga and Brampton landscape
architecture company Baker Turner Inc.
Temporale said heritage projects can be
The Holcim Waterfront Estate in Mississauga, which once belonged to the Gairdner family, was restored by Oakville’s ATA
Architects Inc. The local firm shared a Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation for
the project with its partners, the City of Mississauga and Brampton landscape architecture company, Baker Turner Inc.
| photo by Tom Ridout - courtesy ATA Architects Inc.
more challenging because of the number of
different groups involved. In this case, the
project involved various departments from the
City of Mississauga, the Mississauga Heritage
Department and, because the property bordered
on the lake, the Halton Conservation Authority.
“Everyone has thoughts of what is important
to them,” Temporale said. “You have to bring
everyone to the table and get a consensus, get
everyone to support what you’re planning.”
Because it had been converted to office
space, little of the original floor plan remained.
ATA used photographs of the original house
to “recreate, but not replicate” the interior.
Temporale said the goal was instead to give it the
same character and ambiance as the original.
ATA also preserved and restored the main
curved staircase and the second-floor library.
Among the challenges was making a threequarter century-old home accessible without
detracting from its original character. That
included installing an elevator, which was
achieved by replacing a secondary staircase.
“You want to maintain some important
elements of the past in buildings such as that,”
Temporale said, “but you have to do it in a way
that it will still play an important role in the
future of the community.”
Another challenge ATA faced was the house
was not large enough to accommodate large
weddings. While an addition could have been
built, it would have detracted from the original
symmetrical design of the house. Instead, it
was decided that a seasonal tent would be used
to connect the main house and a coach house,
which was converted to washrooms for outdoor
events, allowing both buildings to retain their
original appearance.
The restoration of the grounds’ landscape
not only returned it to its original state, it also
allowed the city to incorporate it into its park
system.
Temporale said because of the collaborative
nature of the project, it was fitting that the award
was shared.
“When you have a team approach and
everyone is working together to the same end,
those kinds are the kinds of teams you look for
when you’re doing a heritage project,” he said.
“When you’re able to restore a building and give
it new life, it’s really appreciated.”
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