The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

A C A S E S T U D Y
Toronto:
The City Who Is Whole
I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are
quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each
person has several.
–RAINER MARIA RILKE
Imagine if the modern city were to walk into the office of a therapist.
The complaint of our city is simple: it doesn’t know who it
is or how it’s supposed to act. It worries about what it will become.
One day it feels whole, the next moment it feels dulled by indifference
and violence. The suffering our city feels is exhausting. It
wants beauty and charm, but doesn’t know where or how to begin.
It feels drugged with infrastructure and ambition, yet it wants to
please. Seldom does a day pass without intense comparing, frustration,
or crisis. What sort of personality does our city have? What
does our city project to others, and what does it know to be true in
its heart? What of the pathology and the unconscious places that
have been built and ignored? The places that are rejected are often
the only places of authenticity; the places that are embraced reflect
only what others expect us to be. Can modern cities consciously
bring into form their defining moments, their significant, oftenpainful
memories, their old wounds, and those hard-to-reach
places and moments that make up their true character?
What happens when urban design must include the psyche and
body of the city? Cities are as subject to addictions, delusions,
pathologies, and procrastinations as the individuals who live there.
Cities need to bring love to their difficult places. What if we were
to accept the idea that the city has conscious and unconscious
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