The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

THE INNER STUDIO
good too because we are a city self-conscious about beauty and too
introverted to like expression. City Hall is an authentically lovely
place, the perfect style for Toronto. After the construction the
mayor had the courage to put a large modern sculpture by Henry
Moore into the square. You would have thought he had suggested
poisoning the city’s water supply by the opposition he encountered,
but somehow he persevered. The large civic square includes
a skating rink–a brilliant civic feature now copied in many towns
in Ontario. On a winter’s night, with skaters dancing around the
rink, it’s as though some secret gyroscope within the bosom of the
city is in motion. The new City Hall has nothing to do with the
city’s architectural or cultural past and so gives Toronto a heart that
anyone can claim. This is perfect for a city of newcomers. The
public plaza gave us our first modern space, a place that can
contain new civic identities. We need more places that can hold our
global voices.
The Leslie Street Spit:
Nature Contradicted and Unintended
The way this place developed and what it has become is pure
Toronto. Engineers were concerned about silt collecting in our
proposed new harbor, so they carefully designed a large protective
barrier out into the lake. We never built the new harbor, but we
began the spit and continued to allow debris from demolished buildings
and other urban excavations to be dumped here. Then a strange
thing happened. Enormous numbers of migratory birds began to use
the place. The spit is as flat as cardboard, but soon its top layer of
bird droppings, rust, concrete, and glass was sporting a thick mat of
wildflowers and grasses and soon trees took hold and the miraculous
transplant was under way. Coyotes have been spotted here as they
wander from the northern edge of the city to the lake.
You will always need thick-soled shoes to walk on this postindustrial
earth. The place is a cross between the apocalypse and a
weekend up north. It’s become a great place by accident, a kind of
Freudian slip of a place, and that is the way we like our great
places. Unintended, so no one has to declare a vision. The archipelago
reaches so far into Lake Ontario that you get to see Toronto
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