Architect’s buildings changed Toronto
Will Alsop, the irreverent English architect who brought a serious sense of playfulness to his work, has died.
Though known as the bad boy of British architecture, the 70-year-old architect/artist/teacher had a special relationship with Toronto, where his most celebrated contribution was the Sharp Centre for Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Better known as the “flying tabletop,” the unique structure, a black-and-white pixelated box held aloft by a series of crayon-like columns, raised eyebrows around the world. It also raised Toronto’s international profile and managed to make a cold city seem cool.
Alsop first came to global attention for the Peckham Library, which opened in London in 2000. Not only did the aggressively whimsical building increase membership threefold, it earned him the U.K.’s most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize. With that in hand, he set out to remake architecture and the planet as a series of a brightly coloured blobs with bean-shaped windows and, as often as not, legs.
But as avant-garde and startling as his architecture may be, he also wanted it to be fun. Whether designing libraries, schools, apartment buildings or ferry terminals, Alsop never failed to bring a smile to the viewer’s face. Though often dismissed as lacking seriousness, especially by other architects, he took the view that all aspects of life should be informed by the pleasure principle. If people aren’t engaged by a building, they tend to ignore or avoid it when possible.
For Alsop, every project was an excuse for play. The Sharp Centre was one of the best examples of Alsop’s conviction that work should be play. Along with Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art, his OCAD addition is the most remarkable and original such institution anywhere. Not only does it inspire students to boldly go where no one has gone, it gives them permission to have fun in the process.
At the same time, Alsop’s building changed this city. That isn’t something that can be said of many structures. As Mirko Zardini, director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, said of the Sharp Centre at an exhibition he curated in 2008, “If a building doesn’t add anything to a city, it doesn’t matter. Architects here in Montreal are obsessed with the objects. Alsop goes beyond these limits.”
As Zardini also pointed out, Alsop “doesn’t need a lot of money to do something. OCAD is a good example; you can do brilliant things with not much money ... I thought it was important to pay homage to Alsop and his building.”
In an age of empty architectural spectacle and one-note “starchitects,” the lesson that less can be more has been all but forgotten. Indeed, not only are Alsop’s eccentric structures visually striking, they solve mundane urban problems of circulation, connectivity, program, purpose and the like. Only the greatest practitioners manage to produce architecture that is both practical and artful. Alsop was among them. Little wonder he was also a painter, at one point even abandoning the drawing board for the canvas.
Though relatively few of his designs were built, he also was responsible for two stops on the subway extension to York Region and Vaughan that opened last December. In particular, his Pioneer Village station embodies everything Alsop tried to achieve in his work. Clad in treated steel, the building rises magnificently above the bleakness of its location on Steeles Ave. In any location, it would be an object of attention, but all the more so in Toronto’s unloved north end. Alsop’s desire to bring some enjoyment to the banalities of the daily commute couldn’t be more clearly communicated.
In 2000, when Alsop came to Toronto for the Sharp Centre, he made no effort to hide his feeling that the college on McCaul St., its surroundings, even the sidewalks, were a mess. Regardless, he developed an obvious affection for this city and at one point opened an office here. Though he closed it several years later, he remained committed to the city and its cultural life. His paintings were exhibited at the Olga Korper Gallery on several occasions.
Despite chronic difficulties getting projects off the ground, especially in the U.K., Alsop was in the midst of a comeback of sorts before his death. Perhaps the world had finally caught up with him and his architecture of pleasure. As unabashedly outlandish as his work could seem, it was always firmly rooted in his belief that architecture should be approached more as an experience than an object, an experience to be enjoyed. Christopher Hume is a former Star reporter who is a current freelance columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @HumeChristopher