OTMPThe tabletop look of the Ontario College of Art and Design’s Sharp Centre, supported by recycled pipeline, is a real mind-blower.

Toronto — It’s a cosmopolitan city of colorful neighborhoods, great restaurants and a fabulous film festival. And it’s known for an extensive subway system, with plenty of accessible stops to dip down into and catch a ride.

But today I’m walking, and looking up.

The Toronto Society of Architects offers guided walking tours to spy skyscrapers and other city wonders. Being a Renaissance kind of guy, I sign up for the one called “Toronto’s Cultural Renaissance.” It’s a $20, two-hour loop around six top cultural institutions that have undergone major overhauls or constructed new buildings in the past 10 years.

It’s a gloriously sunny Saturday. Our guide, Roxane with one n, is a graduate architecture student at the University of Toronto. She’s friendly, laid-back, happy to answer my stupid questions, lacks even a hint of tour-guide testiness and, most important, knows where the bathrooms are.

DETAILS Toronto architecture tours

What: The Toronto Society of Architects offers three guided walking tours to learn about some of the city’s best contemporary structures. They last two hours and involve about a mile of walking.

When: Now through the end of September.

Tours: The Culture and Campus Tour runs from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays and from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursdays on July 7 and 28, and Aug. 18. The Towers Tour also runs from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays and from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursdays on June 23, July 14, Aug. 4 and 25. The Art and Performance Tour runs from 10 a.m. to noon Sundays and from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursdays on July 7 and 28, and Aug. 18.

Cost: $20 (Canadian; about the same U.S.); $15 for seniors and students.

Tickets and more details: torontosocietyofarchitects

To plan a trip to Toronto: seetorontonow or 1-800-499-2514.

Our small group includes an architect (handy for a professional perspective), and a lifelong Torontonian (handy for everything else). We meet in front of the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art at 111 Queen’s Park West. This is just south of Bloor Street near the Bloor-Yorkville neighborhood known for its shopping and sidewalk cafes. The Gardiner doesn’t do much for the eye, at least from the outside. Opened in 1984, it added 14,000 square feet during a three-year renovation in slate and glass because, Roxane tells us, it desperately needed the three Rs: room, retail, restaurant.

Just around the corner is the massive Royal Ontario Museum, which houses 6 million objects of world antiquities and natural history. Its imposing front juts out at the bustling Bloor Street (though its address is 100 Queen’s Park). The museum added an enormous new fa ade to its entrance in 2007, designed by Daniel Libeskind. It’s called the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal because of its crystalline shape and because benefactor Lee-Chin gave the museum $30 million.

Doug BrownNew meets old in this side view of the “crystal” entrance to the Royal Ontario Museum.

Five interlocking structures compose the crystal, connected to the old museum building by bridges. It is 75 percent steel and 25 percent glass. Roxane says the objective was to create “The Bilbao Effect” — referring to Frank Gehry’s masterful melty-steel design for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain — in hopes that tourists would come just to see the building (let alone step inside). An “if you build it, they will stare” strategy.

I am impressed that the project required 38 tons of bolts, but I must confess that I doubt people would journey all the way to Toronto just to glimpse the entrance to the museum. Massive, yes. Imposing, definitely. But ultimately: uninviting.

The group heads west down Bloor Street, and I can’t wait to use “crystalline” in a sentence.

Next stop is a double-bill: The Telus Centre for Performance and Learning, and the Royal Conservatory of Music at 273 Bloor St. West. Inside, the conservatory is a lovely mix of rich wood, soaring glass and an atrium connecting old building to new. Opened in 1886, it is Canada’s oldest and largest arts education institution. Slogan: “The finest instrument is the mind.” Inside one of the studios a student is playing Chopin. (Insert broad smile here.)

The tour moves back outdoors and we take a stroll through the University of Toronto campus (25 King’s College Circle). The beautiful, winding path through wide open greens takes us past vintage school buildings, churches and chatting students. It makes you want to sit under a tree and read a book.

Suddenly we come upon a structure that cannot be a coincidence. As our group turns a corner to head south, we confront a monster. There before us stands the concrete-crazed, 16-story Robarts Library. How could such a lovely campus house such a hideous beast? Think federal prison. Think Rhodes Tower at Cleveland State, only uglier.

This is not part of the official tour. (Or is it?) My bet is that the architects’ society has sent us this way to provide contrast. After viewing such a grotesque creation, how can we not be dazzled by all the other buildings? I’m told the style is called Brutalist. Indeed.

A long walk down McCaul Street leads us past Baldwin Street. One block of Baldwin, between McCaul and Beverly streets, is packed with at least 20 enticing restaurants, bistros and cafes.

Further down McCaul, past the Sin & Redemption Pub, you hit Dundas Street and the Art Gallery of Ontario, or, en Francais, .

Its flashy renovation included a new fa ade and a roof that resembles either a dirigible or the hull of a capsized ship. Roxane simply calls it “the canoe.” It’s comprised of 1,800 wooden beams.

The art gallery, or AGO, looks wonderfully weird. Not surprisingly, the renovation was designed by that mad genius, the aforementioned Mr. Gehry. Ironically, Gehry was born in Toronto, but the AGO, according to Roxane, was his first Canadian project.

On the opposite side of the building, as seen from Grange Park, a visual trick awaits. Gehry covered the wall in blue titanium. The idea was that the gallery’s massive blueness would help blur the edges and blend them into the sky, thus creating a floating effect. Roxane admits she has never actually witnessed the “floating.”

Doug BrownFrank Gehry’s titanium exterior of the AGO is supposed to blend with the sky.

The group moves on, but I stay there staring, trying to imagine the effect. Perhaps if seen at the right time of day? Perhaps from the perfect angle? Perhaps after three glasses of wine?

Now I’ve fallen behind and have to catch up. The gang has moved across Grange Park and is already contemplating the Sharp Centre of the Ontario College of Art and Design (100 McCaul St.). This is a genuine mind-blower, the seemingly suspended college looks like a giant box of Kleenex held up by extra-long crayons.

“It’s whimsical and light,” says Roxane.

The tabletop design was conceived by British architect Will Alsop. The design echoes a suspension bridge cut in half. The 12 legs — blue, black, yellow, white and purple — are actually made from recycled pipeline and weigh 9 tons each. Housed in the suspended box, covered with a black and white pixilated exterior, are classrooms, studios, offices and student workspaces.

Alsop was presented with a challenge: How to create a new building without shutting off the view and access to Grange Park from the neighborhood across the street. His solution: Build a building on stilts so that residents could still “see through” and be connected to the park.

(Side note: A decided drawback of the tour is that we do not go inside most of the buildings. The architects’ society should cut a deal with the various organizations to allow the walking groups to take a peek. A mini-pamphlet with information on each place would also be helpful.)

The final stop is the magnificent Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts (145 Queen St. West), a 2,000-seat theater that is home to the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada. The entrance has huge glass walls surrounding a lobby called the City Room that leads to a glass stairway.

A unique design dilemma confronted the architecture firm Diamond and Schmitt: sound. Not only did the theater have to offer state-of-the-art, pitch-perfect acoustics, but it is inauspiciously built on top of a subway station. That can get a little rumbly. It is also in the middle of one of the busiest parts of the city, with clanging trolleys and honking cars whirring by.

To muffle and stabilize, undulating walls were installed, and underneath the foundation of concrete beams, they inserted “489 rubber pads to resist the shaking and mask the noise from the subway,” explains Roxane.

“489 what?” I ask her over the passing traffic.

“Rubber pads,” she says louder. “You know, rubber, like pucks.”

Aha.

Suddenly, the inevitable truth is crystalline in my mind: In Canada, everything, even architecture and sound engineering, must eventually circle back to the icy allegory of hockey.


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