1. Iconic Modernism:
Ron Thom at Trent
By Bernadine Dodge

3. The Modern Movement in architecture and design is a statement of the social aims of the age. ...By asserting itself against subjectivity and equivocation, it discloses a universal, purposeful order and clarity in what appears to be a mental wilderness.
Berthold Lubetkin

4. Photo Credit: Andy Turnbull
Time magazine, July 18, 1969
“Toronto architect Ronald Thom’s buildings are scaled naturally to the landscape. None rises more than four storeys and their shifting perspectives at one moment recall a walled medieval town, at the next a sculpted fortress.”
The Master Plan sets a height limit of four stories. This is set because it approximates the height of the predominant natural feature of the valley, the elm trees….
R.J. Thom
Photo Credit: Andy Turnbull

5. Site of Trent University 1960
Photo Credit: Professor Robert Stairs

6. Champlain College
The corner stone for Champlain College was laid in 1965 and the College finally opened in 1967.
Photo Credit: Parks’ Studio

7. Photographed from under Faryon Bridge
Champlain College
Photographed from under Faryon Bridge

8. The buildings designed by Ron Thom for Trent University represent a tension between the naturalistic aspects of Prairie architecture and the Brutalist elements of machine aesthetics.

10. Champlain College: Inner Court Yard

11. Champlain: Interior

12. Champlain College: The Great Hall

17. Faryon Bridge under construction 1967

18. Faryon Bridge Designed by associates from Thom’s office and Morden Yolles, Structural Engineer

19. Faryon Bridge looking across the Otonabee River to the east bank.

20. Science Complex under construction 1967
Photograph by Roy Nicholls

21. Science Building
Photograph by Roy Nicolls

22. Bata Library under construction 1968

23. Ron Thom: Trent University Master Plan, 1964
The library is considered to be the central building of the campus, the one building used by all members of the University. It has therefore been placed at the confluence of all pedestrian traffic, making it the proper hub of the University. Everyone has to pass it in his normal to and fro.

24. Bata Library

25. Bata Library: viewed from the river

26. Ron Thom: Trent University Master Plan, 1964
The main academic square, which is paved and of a size to accommodate assemblies, convocations and outdoor gatherings of all sorts, is at the front door of this main building [Bata Library] and will become the gathering point of the campus…It not only falls in the approximate geographical centre of the plan, but also on the main topographical prominence of the river.

27. Bata Library
Opened October 1969

29. Bata Library through the Faryon Bridge

30. Bata Library, 2004

33. Lady Eaton College under construction 1968

34. Lady Eaton College

36. Ron Thom’s Trent, 1969 Science Complex Bata Library Champlain College
Lady Eaton College

37. Ron Thom, Letter, 1963
“The physical character of a university must reflect its philosophical idea. This must find first expression in the plan because the plan is the underlying framework and it will qualify the patterns of activity on the campus forever.
Buildings superimposed on this framework can contradict the idea, or merely reflect it, or, ideally, extend and expand it. Buildings not only grow out of the plan, they are a part of it, one and the same thing. They are the physical reality of the plan.”

38. All photographs by Bernadine Dodge
Thom’s design of Trent University extended to furniture, draperies and fittings. He chose chairs by designers such as Jacobsen, Aalto, Wegner, Mathsson, Saarinen, Bertoia, and Eames for his buildings.
Arne Jacobsen
Hans Wegner
Alvar Aalto
Bruno Mathsson
Eero Saarinen
Harry Bertoia
[Kaare Klint ?]
All photographs by Bernadine Dodge
1989

39. 1. Arne Jacobsen 2. Arne Jacobsen 3. Hans Wegner 4. Hans Wegner 3. 1.

40. Chairs assembled by Trent University Archives for a display at Peterborough Centennial Museum and Archives, 1989