Charles Durning Carroll

Will Alsop, a British architect, is the crazy mind behind the Sharp Centre for Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design. When I first moved to Toronto, it was one of the few buildings I saw that provoked any excitement, that provided any kind of challenge to Toronto’s bland architectural sensibilities.

Now Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic for The New Yorker has written an article on Alsop and his Toronto creation in the latest issue of the magazine. Goldberger states:

The Sharp Center has upped the ante for architecture in Toronto, which has more often been defined by bland efficiency than by stylistic invention.

This would be a grotesquely accurate description of Toronto–a city I’ve come to appreciate by living here, but that remains so far from beautiful that one comes upon the Sharp Centre with the joy of a thirsty man finding an oasis in the desert. Never was a better city joined to worse architecture than is the case in Toronto. Bravo Mr. Alsop, both for listening to people and for having the courage to be bold.