The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 36

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W.F. Shadwick
that was made in the Tenth Anniversary Celebration. The
proposal for a new building, coming after the MSRI and
Newton Institutes and after my experience in creating
the temporary space at Waterloo, presented a tremendous
opportunity. The lessons learned from those projects were
used to create something that would function superbly as a
venue for the Fields Institute’s research activities.
There was never any consideration of a design that had
anything but the facilitation of the research mission of the
Institute. The extravagance of fireplaces in the Director’s and
Deputy Director’s offices was a tactic that I adopted when I
was told by the junior architect that she had been ordered by
University staff to delete the Common Room fireplace from
the plans. She asked me what to do. I told her to add two
more fireplaces, one for Jerry and one for me, because they
would never have the nerve to try to remove all three. The
result can be seen in the Common Room.
The form of the building, wrapped as it is around the open
central staircase and common space, was intended to make
it virtually impossible for anyone to enter or leave an office
without encountering other visitors or staff. This was based
on my observations experiencing the successes and failures
of the MSRI and Newton Institute buildings and provided
the vision with which architect Thomas Payne addressed the
design challenge.