The oblong home at 157 Coxwell Avenue seems to bring up more questions than answers, like “Is it a spaceship, or a Rubik’s cube?” or “Why is it on stilts?” But now there is one more thrown into the mix—”Who is going to buy it?” In December, Torontoist introduced you to the tenants of 157 [...]

Unseen City goes where the public can’t. When modifications to Roy Thomson Hall’s interior were announced in 2000, Arthur Erickson, the building’s original architect, was incensed with an intensity particular to misunderstood artists—and screaming infants. “I am deeply grieved that this could happen while I am still in practice and known to have the flexibility [...]

Last week the National Film Board held a screening of One Millionth Tower, an interactive documentary imagining the future for a highrise in northern Etobicoke. The six-minute film asks viewers to reject the idea of the highrise as failed experiment and instead contemplate the potential locked within vertical living. To help provoke conversation, a panel [...]

The announcement that two giant billboards may soon grace the north- and south-facing sides of the Toronto Dominion Centre’s Ernst and Young tower, officially known as Tower Five, has prompted a call to arms among local architecture aficionados. Cadillac Fairview, the owners of the Toronto Dominion Centre complex, put in an application to the City [...]

There’s a concrete pad in front of 52 Division (east of University Avenue and Dundas Street) where the police park their cruisers. Lots of people know that it was originally intended to be a public space. But Mark Osbaldeston, whose second book of local city-planning nonstarters, Unbuilt Toronto 2, was released on October 24, discovered [...]

We Live Here unlocks the stories behind some of Toronto’s most unique, quirky, and all-out weird homes, the people who live in them, and the people who live with them. When Darren Berberick decided to rent a new home with his partner, Benjamin Walsh, he sent a link to his father. The response wasn’t exactly [...]

In a partnership that lasted from the mid-1890s until 1923, Frank Darling and John A. Pearson left an indelible mark on the streetscape of Toronto and communities across the country with grand bank buildings, early skyscrapers, university buildings, and cultural institutions. Although a full inventory of their commissions is too long to list, their work [...]

An iconic image of Toronto: a photograph looking west from the intersection of Church, Front, and Wellington Streets, with the Gooderham Building (a.k.a. the Flatiron) as the focal point. The unusual skinny, triangular shape, which predated New York’s flatiron by a decade, was the result of the clash between Wellington Street’s adherence to Toronto’s square [...]

In early July, we reported that Hot Docs had acquired the Bloor Cinema with the intent of carrying out an extensive overhaul, both off-screen and on. With the film house nearing its 100th anniversary, and very much looking its age, news of the impending renovations was generally well received by Toronto film fans. More controversial [...]

The history, design, and development of building projects, brought to you by Urban Toronto. As classes get underway at colleges and universities for the 2011-2012 school year, many students are returning to campuses with major new facilities meant to address the growing need for classroom and other postsecondary academic space in the province. The University [...]

Toronto1960-11 from davide tonizzo on Vimeo. Compared to heritage properties from the 19th and early 20th centuries, Toronto’s architecture from the 1960s and 1970s doesn’t often receive much love. While some period structures like the curving towers of City Hall have become iconic, the merits of the modernist qualities of others are fiercely debated: great [...]

As far as downtown architectural landmarks go, it’s hard to miss the Toronto-Dominion Centre. Its sleek, black, rectangular appearance proudly demonstrates the modernist style of its architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. While Mies projects like Westmount Square and the former Esso gas station on Nun’s Island dot the landscape of Montreal, just past the western end of Highway 401 sits the world’s largest collection of his work. A short distance northeast of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel is Lafayette Park, one of the United States' first urban renewal projects.