Lisa Rochon recently wrote that for people living in Winnipeg, it's possible to understand the electric moment when two rivers come together... and that as cities such as Toronto intensify and densify, the imperative for energizing the metropolis is found, increasingly, through the confluence of architecture.

That "confluence of architecture" in Toronto is currently best characterized by four recent projects, three of them completed, that have been called "cultural superbuilds":

  • the redesigned Gardiner Museum by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects,
  • Jack Diamond's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts,
  • the extension to the Royal Ontario Museum by Daniel Libeskind, and
  • Frank Gehry's redesign of the Art Gallery of Ontario, currently under construction.

Lisa's most recent writing on these projects are available below.

A year before liftoff, Gehry's AGO already soars

  • Despite moving through the rain and cold, despite having to travel down wooden ladders and through muddy puddles on the floor, the truth about the redesign of Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario is already plain to see: one year away from being completed, the Frank Gehry redesign is a staggering success (more)

Crystal scatters no light

  • It's hard, aggressive and in your face. It cantilevers dangerously over the street, shifting the ground from under our feet. Do not expect shelter from the $135-million Michael Lee-Chin crystalline addition to Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum by Daniel Libeskind. Expect the exaltation of one architect, one man, one individual. Expect the stuff of Libeskind: an exile, a brilliant thinker, a marketer with a silver tongue (more)

New-look Gardiner a museum of our times

  • The deep satisfaction provided by the Museum of Ceramic Art comes in its framed views of its neighbouring buildings on the civic boulevard of Queen's Park. Standing on the third-floor terrace defined by wooden floors and a clear glass balustrade, Toronto has never looked more captivating (more)

Outside blah, inside awe

  • While the exterior brick wrap of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts is mean to the street, the interior of the new opera house is nothing short of triumphant (more)