Opening Doors to mods and post-mods

Toronto presents fifth annual architecture event that allows visitors to discover city's treasures

Toronto architecture will be in the spotlight next weekend as the City's Culture Division presents its fifth annual Doors Open Toronto event.
The weekend celebration of Toronto buildings is intended to raise public awareness of local architecture and perhaps inspire some Torontonians to get more involved in the public processes behind city-building. The architecture selected for Doors Open Toronto's free public tours also highlights the city's cultural diversity. If numbers are an indication, the annual event has been a success - half a million visitors have toured Toronto buildings of architectural and historic significance since Doors Open debuted in 2000. (It was originally intended as a one-off Millennium year event.)
"It's amazing how it's grown," says Catherine Nasmith, a Toronto architect and heritage consultant who was part of a small group of City staff and architects who visited Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, in the fall of 1999 to learn more about the Doors Open concept. The idea of raising public awareness of architecture through a dedicated event was hatched in the United Kingdom and Europe in the 1980s and has now expanded to 48 countries. Toronto was the first North American city to adopt the event and the Ontario Heritage Foundation will present its third annual Doors Open Ontario series of events this year.
This year's Doors Open Toronto is focusing attention on buildings of the modern, post-1945 era. The most significant example of this is legendary German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's downtown-altering Toronto-Dominion Centre. Opened in the late 1960s, Mies van der Rohe's rational and majestically precise design signalled the city's arrival as an economic powerhouse. In the residential sphere, local architect Gerald Robinson, a transplanted Englishman by way of Harvard, drew on the influence of French master architect Le Corbusier to create The Colonnade at Bloor Street and Avenue Road in the early 1960s. Its vibrant downtown mix of residential and small commercial spaces proved that Toronto could be cosmopolitan and foreshadowed the urban condo boom of today. Other local firms explored the modernist idiom as well. In 1956, Page and Steele captured the architectural mood of the day with their design of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on the CNE grounds. Leading modernist firm John B. Parkin created offices for the Ontario Association of Architects at 50 Park Road in mid-town Toronto. This exemplary modern structure is 50 years old this year.
Post-Modern buildings are also well-represented during Doors Open weekend. Visitors will want to get a closer look at British architect Will Alsop's daring design for the Ontario College of Art and Design. Alsop has created a multi-storey school building which is perched incredibly on nine storey-high steel stilts. Other recent and acclaimed architecture available for weekend public tours include Taylor, Hariri and Pontarini's collegial McKinsey and Company building, Kohn Shnier's translucent headquarters for home plastics manufacturer Umbra and the University of Toronto's Bahen Centre of Information Technology, a sustainable design by award-winning firm Diamond and Schmitt.
Perennial favourites such as Osgoode Hall, Fort York, St. James Cathedral, and Finnish architect Viljo Revell's iconic design of City Hall are among the more than 150 buildings included in this year's edition of Doors Open. Equally compelling local architectural examples from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are also included this year. Buildings such as the Argonaut Rowing Club, the Province of Ontario building, Union Station and the former Eaton's College Park auditorium and restaurant - now known as The Carlu - trace Toronto's transition from a solid regional centre to a metropolis with aspirations beyond its boundaries.

Doors Open Toronto tours are scheduled for Saturday May 29 and Sunday May 30. For a complete list of participating buildings and tour times, visit www.doorsopen.org.

Publication Date: 2004-05-23
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3988