Toronto certainly doesn't have the contrast between new and old buildings that Paris does. We're constantly demolishing structures from our recent past ( most recently, notable Modernist ones ) as we go along.
And, at the same time, we romantically glorify just about every surviving Victorian or Edwardian building in the downtown core, often incorporating them through ridiculous facadism into new developments.
But, lacking the new/old contrast that Paris has, is maybe what makes us ... us!
And you'd think it would set us free, to construct more buildings that are of-our-time and innovative, rather than falling back on seen-it-all-before solutions like BA. The cultural sector - with such buildings as the FSCPA with a City Room that is open for concerts during the day and glows like a beacon at night, followed by the rash of locally designed contemporary styled condos popping up everywhere, seem to be doing their part in maintaining Toronto's sense of time and place, and bringing life to the streets. But we still have to look elsewhere to see office buildings that break the mould. Sad, really, for a city that gave us the TD Centre and Commerce Court one after the other in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
