Urbanism: What Good Can a Gehry Do?
Originally published in Hazlitt. Read the full text here.
In a much-quoted speech at the Empire Club last year, David Mirvish—the Toronto theatre mogul, art dealer, and property developer—complained about his home town’s architectural conservatism: “The made-in-Toronto solution is ‘fit in with what exists,’” he said. “Don’t put your head up too high, don’t stick out.” Mirvish wants to stick out: his proposed Frank Gehry condo complex—with two towers, retail and commercial space, a small gallery for his private collection, and a second OCAD University campus—will be taller and more ostentatious than any residential development in the city.
Gehry’s current model is a scaled-down version of the initial proposal, but it’s still wildly extravagant, with its cantilevers and cascades of textured glass. The plans have been rushed through briskly. Mirvish brought Gehry on in 2011 and got council’s approval last July. He bristled at having to wait so long—he sometimes implies that the city is unreceptive to real art and architecture—but by Toronto standards, three years isn’t so bad. As anybody who’s followed the transit debates of the last two decades knows, Toronto urban planning can be sluggish when there’s public money at stake. When the cash is on the table, the pace picks up.
Canadians can look to Gehry’s asymmetrical skyscrapers as the shape of things to come. Even if the towers don’t get built (and that’s unlikely), this won’t be the last time that a wealthy, aging business leader offers his city a massive cash infusion and expects, in return, to impose his vision on the skyline. The private sector has always had a hand in shaping Toronto—the Royal Alexandra Theatre (1907), for instance, was financed by a league of civic-minded gentlemen—but the business community is arguably more influential now than ever. Many previous Canadian cultural centres were built during the postwar heyday, when the fervour over Expo 67 and the country’s centennial spurred a flurry of urban-rejuvenation projects. This was the era of bureaucratic statesmen: ambitious, liberal-minded, and slightly paternalistic public officials with large-scale development schemes, which were often diminished through budget cuts and political wrangling.
Today, the bureaucrat plays backup guitar to the philanthropist and the entrepreneur. Population growth and infrastructural decay are taking their toll, and yet it’s difficult to increase government revenue. As University of Toronto urban planning professor Matti Siemiatycki pointed out to me over the phone, the three leading candidates in the recent Toronto election promised much-needed infrastructure investments, but when it came to raising property taxes, all were reticent, if not openly hostile to the idea. And so the private sector must do some heavy lifting.
This can take the form of public-private partnerships, like the Loblaw-Ryerson-Ottawa triumvirate that saved Maple Leaf Gardens; or the alliance between government, the Daniels Corporation real-estate developers, and various sponsors that financed the TIFF Bell Lightbox, an expensive residential tower and a far less lucrative cinematheque. In many instances, a single ambitious entrepreneur takes the lead: the recent renovations to the Art Gallery of Ontario (also designed by Gehry) were initiated by a $50 million gift from Ken Thomson, who, at the time, was the country’s richest man. Toronto’s new Aga Khan Museum, a centre for Islamic art, opened this fall, thanks to the largess of the Aga Khan himself, the jet-setting spiritual leader of the international Ismaili community. Real-estate developer Michael Audain is building the nascent art gallery in Whistler, BC, set to open next year. And Winnipeg’s controversial Canadian Museum for Human Rights was enabled by the powerful Asper family, although private and public sponsors have stepped up to service the ever-growing tab.
The rise of the entrepreneur/civic statesman isn’t a bad thing. As Siemiatycki argues, public-private partnerships can be mutually beneficial, so long as safeguards are in place to protect public interests. Plus, it’s hard to imagine grandiose architectural endeavours, like Mirvish+Gehry Toronto, coming about any other way. If the mock-ups and the calibre of the designer are any indication, Mirvish+Gehry will be one of the city’s most unique buildings, providing a much-needed shakeup to the financial district’s blocky modernism. Its primary purpose is residential, not cultural, but it’s intended to serve as an aesthetic capstone to an already burgeoning entertainment district. It may bring a ton of revenue into the city to boot.
But will the project dramatically bolster Toronto’s international stature, or help the city to establish a regional identity? Can individual buildings really do that? As wonderful as Mirvish+Gehry is, I suspect it’s being oversold. Even the most marvelous condo complex is still, ultimately, a condo complex, and Toronto’s most pressing needs lie elsewhere. That’s not to say we shouldn’t build it. Just that we should recognize it for what it is—and for what it isn’t.
This is an excerpt. Read the full text here.