OCAD Toronto

[Character1st]

Behold the new $30 million Ontario College of Art & Design classroom and studio building by British architect Will Alsop -- a totemized retro-futuroid coffee table joined umbilically to its Soviet-style predecessor below. The message, apparently: art and design are nothing but fun fun fun. Nothing to get serious about. A playful spirit of induced hazard will keep students wondering when the checkered box might wobble free of its cute swizzle-stick legs and come crashing down on their heads. This exercise in hyper-entropic avant garde faggotry is so cutting edge that it is already out of date. The only question: which of the two conjoined buildings is more cruelly ridiculous? ...James Howard Kunstler

Thoughts?

[helloinsane]

Pics here:

http://canada.archiseek.com/ontario/toronto/ocad/index.html

I kind of like it. It was very much a victim of its own excesses - the budget placed severe constraints on the exterior for example. The checkerboard pattern was executed in a very basic metal cladding system.

My main issue with it is that it really doesn't capitalise on the elevation gained by raising it up. Toronto's actually quite a low city outside of the downtown core and I'd imagine the views would be phenomenal [haven't actually managed to get up into it yet]. I can't help but feel it would have been far more successful as an open-ended box, with large areas of glazing to the south [lake views] and north. I'm also not sure how much advantage is taken of roof-lighting.

Alsop, yet again, demonstrates his inability to manipulate [or complete indifference to] issues of scale.

[Paul Clerkin]

I like it too - its different, and Toronto needs some building that break out of the corporate look that most new developments have.

Since those picture were taken, they have painted up the Victorian semi underneath it.... quite garish now...

[LOB]

Looks like it had a collision with a dyno-rod van.

Overground art supplies.........nice one!

[Turkish]

Playful but not succesful IMO....