The Vancouver-based Patkau Architects have just won a plum competition: for new cottages on the grounds of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, with a strong green agenda. Details are here – and details of a Pittsburgh museum show (also featuring shortlisted Canadian firms MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple and Saucier + Perrotte) are here.

Yes, there is a Toronto connection. The Patkaus, one of Canada’s best and most innovative architecture firms, haven’t worked much in Toronto – but they are designing a visitors’ centre at Fort York National Historic Site, together with Kearns Mancini Architects. (I mentioned this back in January.)

Here are some images of the project, which will sit next to the 1812 fort and under the Gardiner Expressway, on what was once Toronto’s lakefront.

It will face Toronto’s historic Lake Ontario shoreline with a new rampart of Cor-Ten steel.  The centre, the architects say, “participates in an architecture of lines and liquid landscapes. The south wall of the Centre acts as a new escarpment, re-establishing the original sense of a defensive site.” Here is a detailed project description in a PDF.

This shows the planted “liquid landscape” that extends under the highway.

A lobby and cafe on ground level, with gallery spaces above.