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A City dismissed by design
Adam McDowell
National Post
Saturday, May 26, 2007
"Relatively inexpensive and safe, and still a little provincial, Toronto is too young a city to have developed a serious culture of its own," reports the Wallpaper* guide to this city, damning us with asterisked praise.
"The city might best be suited to a brief stopover," it continues, "or as an alternative to the hardness of London or the rawness of New York.? Commerce is king here, and the unifying factor bringing the various communities together." (By contrast, Londoners will eagerly take you into their homes and treat you like family, so there's no need to bring money there.)
Wallpaper*, a London-based design and lifestyle magazine that was big in the '90s, created its spinoff city guide series to steer its "design-conscious and discerning" traveller/readers to restaurants, bars and boutique hotels that bear a comforting resemblance to the ones in their home cities.
With more than 100 pages of content -- each destination taking up a whole page, if not two -- this is not an exhaustive guide to the city, just a breezy Vespa ride past a few landmarks and hangouts. Based on the Toronto guide alone, one could be forgiven for believing that the Wallpaper* aesthetic has not budged this century: The closer an eating or drinking establishment comes to looking like a London cocktail lounge circa 1999, the better its chances of receiving the thumbs-up. In the (very few) pages dedicated to our public buildings, U of T's Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building and OCAD's Sharp Centre are predictably singled out for praise, but so is Union Station.
Compared to eight or nine other cities' guides, it appears that Toronto has been researched with less-than-usual diligence. Everywhere else looks more exciting and beautiful than Hogtown through the Wallpaper* lens. Is that because the city was not investigated thoroughly, or because the city genuinely suffers from mediocre design? One hint of laziness in the research is the mention of "Winnick Tuck" among galleries on Queen Street West -- Wynick/Tuck is located at 401 Richmond St. W. And let's consider the puzzling inclusion of B Espresso, at Queen and Church, in the short bar and restaurant section. It's a nicely designed but otherwise ordinary coffee shop/lunch counter that closes at 5 p.m. on weekdays. A cynic would suggest the Wallpaper* people included it only because they were already paying a visit to the restaurant George next door. An even bigger cynic would suspect that Toronto was dismissed from the outset.
Whether or not it got a fair viewing, the big picture is that Wallpaperers are impatient for construction on Toronto to be finished. Granted, it's a young city. Whereas the core identities of Montreal, Barcelona, London and New York are long-established -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- the Toronto experience remains too dynamic and too broken up by scaffolding to tie it together in a Wallpaper*- esque fantasy.
Because impatience breeds contempt, there's no need to take this little lavender volume's slights to heart. The Wallpaper* brand experience is about presenting the just-so-ness of a perfectly executed chair, room or city without detailing the messy trial-and-error it took to create it. An adolescent city like ours excites those with a will to imagine, not those who prefer the assurance of an urban fait accompli. You'd think design freaks would relish a fixer-upper project of a city, but it appears some don't.
For all of this burg's immaturity, though, the Wallpaper* folks found a way to appreciate it. "Toronto is light, and its sophomoric softness is actually its charm," they write. Right back at you, Wallpaper*.
A City dismissed by design
Adam McDowell
National Post
Saturday, May 26, 2007
"Relatively inexpensive and safe, and still a little provincial, Toronto is too young a city to have developed a serious culture of its own," reports the Wallpaper* guide to this city, damning us with asterisked praise.
"The city might best be suited to a brief stopover," it continues, "or as an alternative to the hardness of London or the rawness of New York.? Commerce is king here, and the unifying factor bringing the various communities together." (By contrast, Londoners will eagerly take you into their homes and treat you like family, so there's no need to bring money there.)
Wallpaper*, a London-based design and lifestyle magazine that was big in the '90s, created its spinoff city guide series to steer its "design-conscious and discerning" traveller/readers to restaurants, bars and boutique hotels that bear a comforting resemblance to the ones in their home cities.
With more than 100 pages of content -- each destination taking up a whole page, if not two -- this is not an exhaustive guide to the city, just a breezy Vespa ride past a few landmarks and hangouts. Based on the Toronto guide alone, one could be forgiven for believing that the Wallpaper* aesthetic has not budged this century: The closer an eating or drinking establishment comes to looking like a London cocktail lounge circa 1999, the better its chances of receiving the thumbs-up. In the (very few) pages dedicated to our public buildings, U of T's Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building and OCAD's Sharp Centre are predictably singled out for praise, but so is Union Station.
Compared to eight or nine other cities' guides, it appears that Toronto has been researched with less-than-usual diligence. Everywhere else looks more exciting and beautiful than Hogtown through the Wallpaper* lens. Is that because the city was not investigated thoroughly, or because the city genuinely suffers from mediocre design? One hint of laziness in the research is the mention of "Winnick Tuck" among galleries on Queen Street West -- Wynick/Tuck is located at 401 Richmond St. W. And let's consider the puzzling inclusion of B Espresso, at Queen and Church, in the short bar and restaurant section. It's a nicely designed but otherwise ordinary coffee shop/lunch counter that closes at 5 p.m. on weekdays. A cynic would suggest the Wallpaper* people included it only because they were already paying a visit to the restaurant George next door. An even bigger cynic would suspect that Toronto was dismissed from the outset.
Whether or not it got a fair viewing, the big picture is that Wallpaperers are impatient for construction on Toronto to be finished. Granted, it's a young city. Whereas the core identities of Montreal, Barcelona, London and New York are long-established -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- the Toronto experience remains too dynamic and too broken up by scaffolding to tie it together in a Wallpaper*- esque fantasy.
Because impatience breeds contempt, there's no need to take this little lavender volume's slights to heart. The Wallpaper* brand experience is about presenting the just-so-ness of a perfectly executed chair, room or city without detailing the messy trial-and-error it took to create it. An adolescent city like ours excites those with a will to imagine, not those who prefer the assurance of an urban fait accompli. You'd think design freaks would relish a fixer-upper project of a city, but it appears some don't.
For all of this burg's immaturity, though, the Wallpaper* folks found a way to appreciate it. "Toronto is light, and its sophomoric softness is actually its charm," they write. Right back at you, Wallpaper*.
