Raising the roof, and Toronto’s imagination
Will Alsop’s playful OCAD U building helped city grow up, despite being controversial
Last in a series taking a second look at Toronto’s architectural showpieces 10 years after the building boom.
When Will Alsop first considered pitching his skyward vision for OCAD University, he didn’t have particularly high hopes.
The British architect had to be persuaded to initially consider the project (after a tip from Greg Woods, then of Toronto’s Robbie/Young & Wright Architects). When Alsop’s firm made the shortlist, he recalls thinking: “Oh f---.” He figured he stood little chance but thought he’d take the opportunity for his first trip here, so at least he could “take Toronto off (his) list.”
On the flight over, Alsop distracted himself by reading the project brief created by OCAD U for the building and grew both drowsy and irritated (“if you ever want to go to sleep on a plane, read that brief,” he quips.) When he eventually met with the university’s leadership, he was characteristically blunt.
“I tore up the brief in front of them,” he remembers. “I said, look, I’ve done abit of research, and all I know is that you need to get the building permit very quickly to meet your objectives and I know from the AGO’s experiencethe locals were vociferous about anything happening around Grange Park.
“Much to my surprise, when I got back to London, OCAD called me up and said, ‘we’d like to give you the job.’ I thought: ‘Oh s---, now I’ve got to go back to Toronto.’ ”
A moment later, he adds a reconciliatory aside: “I should explain, I think Toronto in 2017 is much different than Toronto in the year 2000. It has definitely improved.”
Perhaps some amount of credit is due to Alsop’s checkerboard in the sky, which with playful irreverence set a bar for risk-taking architecture in the city just ahead of a transformative boom in reimagining Toronto’s cultural icons.
Alsop’s $42.5-million Sharp Centre for Design is almost always remembered as being controversial. Indeed, the debate began long before the building actually existed over plans that would be gradually changed.
The core idea to hoist the new facility nine storeys above the ground and have it dance on colourful and spindly steel legs was always intact. Alsop has long said he wanted to accommodate the concerns of Village by the Grange residents who were protective of their park views, as well as OCAD U students looking for more campus space to assemble.
Other details changed. The original image issued by OCAD to considerable fanfare depicted a larger flying rectangle with boldly coloured walls and an eye-catching pink underbelly hovering over floating pods. Gradually, a tight budget required a rethinking of some details, and observers worried. The Globe and Mail’s architecture critic Lisa Rochon wrote in 2003 that over the course of these compromises, “the original zap of the building got garbled.”
Upon the Sharp Centre’s opening in 2004, however, criticism from vocal local architects was counterbalanced by critical enthusiasm and international validation in the form of the Royal Institute of British Architects Worldwide Award. Thirteen years later, the main knock at the time — that the whimsical building would be dated almost immediately — rings hollow.
“I still find it quite fresh,” said Marco Polo, former editor of Canadian Architect magazine and professor in Ryerson University’s department of architectural science. “I think the reason for that is you don’t see anything else quite like it. It’s not like people have gone around and tried to duplicate it.”
Rob Shostak remembers with colourful clarity the first time he saw the building.
It was12 years ago and he was visiting from his hometown of Montreal, strolling the unfamiliar downtown as he weighed whether to attend the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture that fall.
He got off at the wrong subway stop and found himself meandering — “I tend to meander” — when he happened upon the Sharp Centre and stopped in his tracks.
“I immediately was just like, ‘What is this building?’ I had no idea OCAD even existed at this time,” recalled Shostak, now a creative director at Kasian Architecture.
“Seeing this really colourful building in a city that was known for less interesting buildings — it was that sense of possibility that really made me feel like this was the right city for me. I wanted to study in a city that allowed this kind of building to happen.”
Just how devoted is Shostak? He eventually spent months crafting a Sharp Centre-themed Halloween costume so detailed that Alsop himself marvelled at it.
It’s not easy to evaluate whether the Sharp Centre has been as persuasive a draw for OCAD students. The country’s oldest art and design school isn’t immune from the enrolment challenges that have faced other arts-based institutions. In September 2016, OCADU saw a 3.6-percent dip in enrolment from high school students over the year prior, according to numbers from the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre.
It’s worth noting that while a fall 2014 drop in high school enrolment of 15.4 per cent generated headlines and raised eyebrows, OCAD U did bounce back in 2015 with a 10.4-per- cent increase.
There were other less tangible benefits. OCAD U’s esthetic reinvention came just as the school was transforming itself academically; in 2002, OCAD began conferring Bachelor of Fine Art and Bachelor of Design degrees and over the ensuing years rapidly expanded its graduate offerings. In 2010, Ontario College of Art and Design officially became OCAD University.
The Sharp Centre, well, set the table for that metamorphosis.
“It communicated a spirit and a next stage for the institution, saying: ‘Here we are,’ ” OCAD U president Sara Diamond said. “A lot of the sense that we are undergoing a transformation was reinforced by having this exciting, beautiful but also delicate building.”
Right now, the university is in the process of a Creative City Campus project that could see 50,000 square feet of new construction and 95,000 square feet of renovated space again changing the feel of the institution.
That project includes a plan to renovate the interior of the Sharp Centre, which has always been less inspiring than its ebullient exterior. Inside, the space became overly compartmentalized to meet the original demands of the institution. Polo calls the interior space “generic,” “chopped-up” and “a bit of a rabbit warren.”
Alsop himself was also never satisfied with it.
“It’s interesting today that they want to refurbish and get rid of some of the rooms inside — which is exactly what I predicted in 2000. Too many rooms here,” Alsop said. “You can’t teach art students like they’re still at high school.”
For Alsop, who was once dogged with a reputation for conjuring grand visions that would never be built, OCAD U has become an international calling card.
“The amount of attention that building has gathered around the world is almost embarrassing,” he said. “I just came back from China last week — people were asking me about that.”
But he loves it. “What I’m proud of is that people in Toronto either love or hate it. There’s not much indifference toward it.”
The Sharp Centre was also the beginning of an unlikely relationship between Alsop and Toronto. His aLL Design has since helped to author the soon-to-open Finch West and Pioneer Village TTC stations.
He’s also blunt about the fact that he feels OCAD U should have appointed him as architect for the renovation to the Sharp Centre, because the building was designed to be extended to the north or south.
Well, perhaps he’ll soon find another reason to visit.
“Right now I’m doing nothing else in Toronto — which I’m sad about,” he said. “Unlike 2000, when I didn’t like to come, I like to come now.”