Spacing’s Shawn Micallef believes a Brutalist-architecture renaissance is upon us, according to his article in the Toronto Star.
Is it possible that Toronto’s apartment towers will be cool? Gentrified? Much focus of late on the towers as spaces of “vertical poverty” surrounded by vacant fenced land paints a picture of Le Corbusier’s failed dream to reinvent the crowded city. But today’s crowded city (with clean water; sewage treatment; waste collection; distant heat and light sources; etc.) does not crave sunlight and air in the same way. But perhaps it yearns to reinvent itself, too.
For example, check out the recent article in Satellite Magazine by tower-renewal evangelist Graeme Stewart (with Josh Thorpe and ERA boss Michael McClelland) for a reflection on Toronto’s love/hate relationship with tall buildings, past and present.
1960s High Modernism: Uno Prii’s Jane Exbury towers