When built, Toronto's new city hall represented everything the city wanted to be: dynamic, youthful and infused with a sense of the possibilities post-war Canada offered. With that kind of momentum, it soon became emblematic of a democratic ideal that made our city the envy of the world.
Somewhere into the city hall's middle age, though, it took on signs of overindulgence that eroded its symbolic power.

Parts of the building and square became rundown and flabby. The council chamber podium closed after a bad accident. The elevated walkway circling Nathan Phillips Square was declared unsafe.

In addition, the extra fat of too many buildings bulged the once open and light plaza. What had been the healthy heart of a modern, open gathering place became clogged by excessive good intentions.

For example, the skating rink concession stand and washroom building was never equal to the design of city hall -- it remains an awkward and uncomfortable intrusion. The peace garden intruded into the once-open plaza. While well considered as an object, it has become another piece of design cholesterol in the public body of the square.

In 2005, the 40th anniversary of city hall, councillors decided they had enough. It was time for a total makeover. They promised a $40-million competition to rejuvenate the square. Remember, when Governor-General Georges Vanier opened the building in 1965, its total cost was about $31-million. In 2006, $40-million buys us just a renovated square, and not even all of it.

Today, Mayor David Miller will announce the international competition's start and some wonder if we can once again find our youth -- at least as it was once embodied in the slim iconography of city hall.

However, do we as a culture have the vitality and confidence to embrace changes like those embraced 50 years ago by Mayor Nathan Phillips and his contemporaries? Think of how alien the city hall design must have seemed to a city just coming of age at a time when commercial jets and colour TV were rarities. Would Torontonians allow something as unequivocally new today?

Many fear the answer to that question is no. With every attempt to update and invigorate the city, we are forced back to solutions that even our allegedly conservative forefathers dismissed as too early century --20th century that is. Will this competition become another failed signpost in our ongoing struggle to reinvent a creative city?

Make no mistake. This competition involves more than fixing a few problems on the square. At its core is the issue of how we shake off our moribund body politic and its acceptance of things as they are. Now is the time to reinvent ourselves if Toronto is to compete with the best cities of the world and we cannot do that without change.

Others share a similar view.

Toronto architect Jack Diamond, of Diamond and Schmidt Architects, says it this way, ''Is the original design too sacred? Nothing is sacred ...''
''A really important idea in urban design is that history does not stop. Anything can be improved. Look how Bernini improved Michelangelo's St. Peter's Basilica Square.''

''With clutter,'' says Bruce Kuwabara of KPMB Architects and the chair of the Waterfront Design Review Panel, ''you fail to understand the idea behind the square's overall design.'' He stresses that, ''The accretion of well-intentioned little things -- from the way garbage is handled all the way up to the peace garden and temporary stage -- impede the design intent, which was that the square must reflect Toronto as a society.''

That is the attitude that abandoned us over the last generation. We somehow grew accustomed to the idea that Torontonians lived in a perfect society that needed only a few tweaks now and then to stay the envy of the world. We added but never took away, failing to reinvent our infrastructure. That is why the Gardiner Expressway still cuts us off from the waterfront and why, after so many attempts, we have not figured out how to move people to vital areas of the city effectively and sustainably.

The competition winner will be announced next spring. What direction will they take? What direction do you want them to take?

This story was first published in Tuesday's National Post as part of the Toronto Unbuilt series.

1. ”...another piece of design cholesterol in the public body of the square.”—Nice!

   But when we bemoan Torontonians’ lack of vision when it comes to measures that will “update and invigorate the city”, it’s strange that we exclude the modernization of the Toronto City Centre Airport from those measures. Maybe replacing the Airport with a gated community of million dollar condos is considered more visionary.

   Posted by Diane  on  10/06  at  09:27 AM

2. I’m not sure where people come up with this misleading idea that the airport will be replaced by million dollar condos… I haven’t heard of it.

   My vision for the island would be a protected precinct that acts a boundary between the city and the water. It would emphasize methods and examples of sustainable growth—for the sake of our children’s children. In addition, to replace the island airport, the city would build a high-speed transit way to Pearson similar to the one that Londoners enjoy to Heathrow (and Pleeeaase don’t go to the London has a central airport because it doesn’t. I know, I worked on it).

   Posted by Editor  on  10/06  at  12:25 PM

3. I like grand architectural statements. I like the new ROM Crystal. I like the Bloor Street Viaduct (and Derek Revington’s Luminous Veil, too). I like the CN Tower. I like City Hall, as well, both outside and in.

   I agree that its exterior has become cluttered and that some elements don’t work. I don’t think the elevated walkway works, mainly because it doesn’t seem to be a functional part of the design, at least anymore.

   But when a grand new plan is implemented, what working parts of City Hall will vanish? The skating rink may be unaesthetic to some, but it is a much-loved and well-used element of the city core. The chip trucks lined up along Queen have developed their own mythology. The change-rooms and bathroom have seen use as shelters on occasion; like similar public facilities, there is an unguarded intimacy in their use, in part because they are also spaces where different users of City Hall negotiate territory.

   I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to an architectural reinvention of the City Hall grounds (as long as Dennis Lee’s Governor-General Award-winning Civil Elegies<>, in which City Hall and its square feature prominently, is reissued and celebrated again at the same time). But I hope that in any such reinvention, the organic splay of the city into this terrace of the citystate is not wiped away entirely. The history of how people have come to use a space matters, too.

   Posted by Amy Lavender Harris  on  10/06  at  06:06 PM

4. !

   By the way, what a great choice of photograph—perched beside the under-construction City Hall is a building looking not unlike the Parthenon! In the process of being torn down, our course. Mike Filey wept.

   Posted by Amy Lavender Harris  on  10/06  at  06:11 PM

5. I have to agree: Nathan Phillips may not be the most graceful space in the city, but it is definitely well-used. It’s always full of people. Hopefully, the city can find some middle ground between inaction, from being too cautious, and complete erasure of what exists, to start from zero. We look to great cities like Rome as examples of how Toronto could be, but we often forget that these cities had to go through hundreds (thousands) of years of dramatic and very awkward changes to become this way. These awkward pieces of the city are signs of its lived history as much as its heroic monuments are, and deserve at least some thought to how they affect their surroundings.

   Posted by  on  10/06  at  11:25 PM

6. Whatever else might be envisioned for Nathan Philips Square, they should take down the ratty fences guarding the base of the rink’s arches. Are the arches really such a safety hazard?

   Posted by  on  10/07  at  12:56 PM

7. Are the arches really such a safety hazard?

   Yes.

   Shortly after the Square opened, friends and I would spend weekend afternoons trying to climb over the arches. We were 10 – 13 year olds. I successful did it once with a big boost to get me started. The first 20 feet are quite difficult. Very scary, as I recall. Another weekend activity involved running between stations in the newly opened Bloor/ Danforth subway. I remember doing Chester to Broadview. A couple of friends went onto Castlefrank were they were greeted by TTC employees.

   Kids today have so much more to do than to spend their time doing stupid stuff like I did when I was a kid. Still, given the opportunity, I’m sure they would try climbing over the arches. The arches just scream, CLIMB ME.

   Posted by Chris  on  10/07  at  01:48 PM

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