New Toronto Architecture

Toronto enjoys a wealth of historic architecture but we also have some delightful, sometimes controversial new structures. For instance, architect, Santiago Calatrava's soaring Allen Lambert Galleria (1992) at BCE Place (above) and the exploding shoe box of the Bata Shoe Museum (1995) by Raymond Moriyama (below).

These new buildings all seem to be imbued with a sense of fun and playfulness. Look at Will Alsops' outrageous design for the Sharp Centre for Design (2004) and the anthropomorphic Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (2004) at the University of Toronto by Peter Clewes.

Bill loves the long, lean columns on the porch of the Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building at the U of Toronto as envisioned by Norman Foster and Partners.

And how could we end our little tour of Toronto's new architecture without mentioning Daniel Libeskind's design for the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal (2007) which cascades from the original building of the Royal Ontario Museum toward Bloor Street... 

or Frank Gehry's re-thinking of the Art Gallery of Ontario (2008) with it's ship-like, glass and wooden facade along Dundas Street. 

All fun additions to the city!