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Toronto City Hall: How Finnish architecture rebranded a city
September 18th, 2010
By Lisa Rochon
Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...architecture-rebranded-a-city/article1712186/
Made modern: That was what happened to Toronto when it launched a 1958 international design competition and landed an emerging star of Finnish modernism, Viljo Revell, to design its futuristic City Hall. It was an alien thing: a building of sublime concrete instead of Victorian brick; a building mandated by the sophisticated Nathan Phillips, Toronto’s first Jewish mayor, in a city dominated by a Protestant ethos. New City Hall was architecture that imagined something wide open and worldly for a collective consciousness. When it opened in 1965, the city was instantly rebranded.
Conceived together with his Helsinki teammates, Bengt Lundsten, Seppo Valjus and Heikki Castren, Revell proposed two curved tall towers of asymmetric heights that seemed to cradle the council chamber in a powerful embrace. It was as if a massive column of concrete scored with vertical fluting had been cracked open to reveal a civic surprise: a mushroom, a space ship, possibly a white pearl.
This September, two birthdays are being celebrated – Revell’s centenary and the 45th anniversary of City Hall – with an exhibition and symposium, Revell/Toronto/Helsinki: Finnish Architecture and the Image of Modern Toronto. The exhibition, curated by Helsinki-based architect Tuula Revell, daughter of Viljo, kicked off at City Hall on Sept. 13 with impassioned tributes by Mayor David Miller, former mayor David Crombie and Ambassador of Finland H.E. Risto Piipponen.
Finland is a land of birch trees and jagged outcrops of rock that inspires epic pilgrimages among architects. Legendary Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry, who spoke at the exhibition opening to an overflow audience in the council chambers, has travelled to the Nordic country seven times.
His first exposure to the Finnish aesthetic – one that privileges craft, innovation and the pleasure of pure graphic form – came during a public lecture in 1946 at the University of Toronto, when acclaimed architect Alvar Aalto displayed one of his early laminated plywood chairs, designed during the 1940s. Three decades later, Gehry travelled for his first time to Helsinki to visit the Aalto office; Aalto was out of town, but his assistant allowed Gehry to simply sit in his office chair, soaking up the spirit of the man, his books, the art hanging on his walls.
A symposium and exhibit are being held to mark the 45th anniversary of the building designed by Viljo Revell – and his colleagues
City Hall under construction in June of 1965
September 18th, 2010
By Lisa Rochon
Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...architecture-rebranded-a-city/article1712186/
Made modern: That was what happened to Toronto when it launched a 1958 international design competition and landed an emerging star of Finnish modernism, Viljo Revell, to design its futuristic City Hall. It was an alien thing: a building of sublime concrete instead of Victorian brick; a building mandated by the sophisticated Nathan Phillips, Toronto’s first Jewish mayor, in a city dominated by a Protestant ethos. New City Hall was architecture that imagined something wide open and worldly for a collective consciousness. When it opened in 1965, the city was instantly rebranded.
Conceived together with his Helsinki teammates, Bengt Lundsten, Seppo Valjus and Heikki Castren, Revell proposed two curved tall towers of asymmetric heights that seemed to cradle the council chamber in a powerful embrace. It was as if a massive column of concrete scored with vertical fluting had been cracked open to reveal a civic surprise: a mushroom, a space ship, possibly a white pearl.
This September, two birthdays are being celebrated – Revell’s centenary and the 45th anniversary of City Hall – with an exhibition and symposium, Revell/Toronto/Helsinki: Finnish Architecture and the Image of Modern Toronto. The exhibition, curated by Helsinki-based architect Tuula Revell, daughter of Viljo, kicked off at City Hall on Sept. 13 with impassioned tributes by Mayor David Miller, former mayor David Crombie and Ambassador of Finland H.E. Risto Piipponen.
Finland is a land of birch trees and jagged outcrops of rock that inspires epic pilgrimages among architects. Legendary Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry, who spoke at the exhibition opening to an overflow audience in the council chambers, has travelled to the Nordic country seven times.
His first exposure to the Finnish aesthetic – one that privileges craft, innovation and the pleasure of pure graphic form – came during a public lecture in 1946 at the University of Toronto, when acclaimed architect Alvar Aalto displayed one of his early laminated plywood chairs, designed during the 1940s. Three decades later, Gehry travelled for his first time to Helsinki to visit the Aalto office; Aalto was out of town, but his assistant allowed Gehry to simply sit in his office chair, soaking up the spirit of the man, his books, the art hanging on his walls.
A symposium and exhibit are being held to mark the 45th anniversary of the building designed by Viljo Revell – and his colleagues
City Hall under construction in June of 1965