A child of the ’60s shows its age
City square’s early lines now blurred Plan calls for a redesign competition
Nathan Phillips Square turned 40 this fall, just in time for a mid- life crisis.
This afternoon, councillors sit down to debate a $40 million facelift for official Toronto’s aging centrepiece, which found itself in the middle of a minor storm last week. Councillor Doug Holyday started the trouble by suggesting the city should pay for renovations — including $ 16 million in repairs — by selling naming rights to a corporation. Outrage ensued.
Citizens registered their disgust in a flood of emails to the Toronto Star’s
website, while the Canadian Jewish Congress expressed dismay that the city would remove the name of its first Jewish mayor from a major monument. Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) said he meant no offence and insisted that any redesign should honour the legacy of Phillips, who was mayor from 1955 to 1962. His point, he said, was to draw attention to Toronto’s looming fiscal crisis, driven by such costs as a half- billiondollar backlog in maintenance work, including the Nathan Phillips project.
“ The square definitely needs help,” Holyday said a few days later, adding he still won’t support the redesign plan when it comes before the administra- tion committee today.
Cost isn’t the redesign’s only hurdle; there are also aesthetics. The clean, modernist vision that Finnish architect Viljo Revell laid down for the 5- hectare space in 1965 has been diluted by four decades’ worth of bric- abrac. Part of the challenge the city has set ahead of next summer’s deadline for redesign entries is how to restore the original look.
Finalists, who will be judged by a panel of design and architecture experts, will have to figure out what to do with a range of visual non sequiturs, like the peace garden, a neglected speaker’s corner and a series of underground parking entrances marked by kitschy animal signs. They will also have to improve on major structural elements, such as the elevated concrete walkway that frames the square and leads north toward the arid expanse of concrete at the base of city hall’s twin towers. The walkway has come in for criticism over the years as being a physical — and visual — barrier to the square. Councillor Peter Milczyn ( Ward 5, Etobicoke- Lakeshore) called for it to be torn down last spring, when the redesign competition was announced, but staff decided it should remain. He now says the $40 million plan will be approved over Holyday’s objections, and go to city council for final approval next month.
Milczyn hopes Nathan Phillips Square soon takes its place beside the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum and the new opera house as part of a civic design renaissance.