1960s Toronto

[Mustapha]

The original design for New City Hall incorporated the Registry building, but a group of architecture students at the U of T denounced it in The Varsity, and the publicity they helped to generate created enough opposition that the design was subsequently defeated in a plebiscite. This paved the way for an international competition that selected Revell's scheme.

Here's the original design, by Mariani & Morris, Mathers & Haldenby and Shore & Moffat:

http://www.toronto.ca/archives/images/pt344_c_5.jpg

Never seen this rendering before. Would have worked for me, but what do I know.

 

[androiduk]

I had supper with Mrs. Prii and two journalist friends earlier this week, over at the RCYC. She's nearly 84 now, and hanging in there pretty well. A very gracious lady, who reads Spacing and is in touch with contemporary Toronto. She and Uno chose to live here and never regretted it, coming from post-war Europe after enduring some terrible times. They were avid sailors, but she sold the boat a year after he died, and goes over to the yacht club several times a week during the summer. Uno wasn't part of the "in crowd" of the architectural establishment, and frankly couldn't have cared less about being so. He also painted and sculpted, and architecture was just one of the things he did. The Prii's did know just about everyone, however - including Peter Dickinson, who I tried to find out more about but wasn't able to. I told her that 77 Elm and the Jane Exbury towers were my favourite examples of his designs.

You can find a bit more about Peter Dickinson on www.dominionmodern.ca. Did you know he designed Church Street Public School?

androiduk

 

[Urban Shocker]

Also, apparently, the high school I went to when I arrived - 17 and hot out of England - in 1970: York Mills C. I.

 

[Lone Primate]

And the irony is that that *isn't* the style of the 1955 Toronto scheme. Edmonton and Hamilton, especially, are flat-out vernacular Corbusiana. Whereas Toronto's was stodgy, retardataire "modern classical".

Well, I think he means in general conception. A slab with a box in front on a concrete tray. Here's your plate, here's your cheese, here's your Premium Plus crackers. Snoooooooooooooze.

I mean, Toronto's City Hall was far-out enough to make it into an episode of ST:TNG. That's pretty cool, actually.

I can't imagine Mississauga's doing that.

 

[adma]

I mean, Toronto's City Hall was far-out enough to make it into an episode of ST:TNG. That's pretty cool, actually.

I can't imagine Mississauga's doing that.

Except that as an international architectural landmark, Mississauga's has more in common with Toronto City Hall as built than with the 1955 proposal.

Well-earned architectural acclaim doesn't exactly go hand in hand with Star Trek guest spots, y'know.

 

[Lone Primate]

Except that as an international architectural landmark, Mississauga's has more in common with Toronto City Hall as built than with the 1955 proposal.

Sorry, I'm using the English dictionary. The word you wanted in this sentence was "eyesore", I believe, rather than "landmark".

 

[adma]

Sorry, I'm using the English dictionary. The word you wanted in this sentence was "eyesore", I believe, rather than "landmark".

Given that it's the product of an international competition that was as illustrious in its time as Toronto's was in its time, and adorned the cover of one of the editions of Charles Jencks' "The Language of Post-Modern Architecture", "landmark" is still correct. And even the CCA/Docomomo crowd would have your arse whupped for blithely brushing away Mississauga City Hall as an "eyesore", out of fashion and "discredited" in some quarters though it may be...

 

[Lone Primate]

And even the CCA/Docomomo crowd would have your arse whupped for blithely brushing away Mississauga City Hall as an "eyesore", out of fashion and "discredited" in some quarters though it may be...

I lived there while it was being built; it was never "in" fashion, except among people who spent so long in the rarefied atmosphere of modern design courses that the part of their brains capable of native aesthetic appreciation was starved of oxygen. I remember people asking when the thing was due to be completed, and being astonished to be informed that it was. Apart from the distaste most people I know have for the exterior, the thing isn't even redeemed by its interior. The disjointed nature of the space and its various destinations lacks any semblance of logic that I've ever been able to discern, and bears a disturbing similarity to a dream of dislocation. I think by far the most senseless aspect of the building is that vast, nightmarish staircase. Not only does it become, for no reason I can imagine, increasingly narrow as one approaches the top, it also leans to one side, lopsided, as you near the top. It's as though the thing were designed by a drunk, with the intent being to have something to lean against while it aided him at aiming his key to his doorknob. About the only aspect I have a kind word for is the interior of the Council Chambre. If you could keep that, haul down the rest and build something even workable, if not actually attractive, around it, I'd be entirely pleased.

Not all international competitions, or their resulting edifices, are created equal.

 

[adma]

So, then, maybe it's more of a 1980s version of this.

And I reiterate my point about the CCA/Docomomo crowd having your arse whupped.