The new lower facade of the Eataly addition marks a change in aesthetics for the classic Manulife building in downtown Toronto on Nov. 19, 2019.Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Globe and Mail
The opening of the new Eataly has brought big crowds into an important Toronto building, Manulife Centre. And the high-end Italian food emporium is a fantastic experience – as long as you don’t look at the outside.
Along with the eatery, the 1970s complex at Bloor and Bay Streets has received a significant facelift. New two-storey pavilions wrapped in glass line its main facades.
And these new additions are no match for the landmark complex. Its meticulously detailed concrete still looks good after 50 years; the new glass additions looked sloppy on Day One.
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What happened here? It seems that the Brutalist building – which is of serious importance to Toronto – didn’t get the attention it deserves from the owners or from the city. It’s a sad parable about the state of architecture.
The complex – one of the first mixed-use buildings in the country – consists of two towers. To the south, is a 51-storey apartment building; to the north on Bloor, a 19-storey office tower. The latter has gotten the addition. “We wanted to transform the building and make it more friendly, more welcoming,” explains Michael Bardyn, Manulife managing director, who oversees the insurance company’s real estate operations in the Toronto area.
For this they hired four design firms: architects MdeAS of New York and B&H of Toronto; retail designers GHA; and signage consultants KDA.
Too many cooks, clearly. The result is a box wrapped in glass curtain wall – a type of glass assembly that allows for flush mounting and minimal hardware. But rather than minimal, it is messy. The glass panels are surrounded by black and white aluminum, as well as some off-white tile; the glass itself is cut in at least four different sizes, as well as a set of folding doors on the second level; it’s got ventilation shafts and a couple of strange bulb-outs to accommodate signage. More signs hang on the outside like loose scabs.
In short: If you look hard at the addition, you see an incoherent mess.
The rest of the tower is something much tougher but also more carefully designed. Its concrete facades go upward and outward for two floors, then straight to the sky in a consistent and disciplined grid. The floor plan folds in at the corners, forming a cross-shape when seen from above. It’s a skillfully tailored work of architecture.
Its lead architects, the Toronto firm of Clifford and Lawrie, worked with an international set of consultants to refine the design. In the book Concrete Toronto, architect Michael Clifford describes how company execs and architects travelled to Europe and the United States to look at the best precedents.
The end result is a kind of fusion of corporate conservatism and the no-nonsense brand of Modernist architecture known as Brutalism. This only could have happened at this specific moment in history.
This time around, Manulife called MdeAS, “who are known for curtain wall buildings,” Mr. Bardyn says. “Their thinking was aligned with ours.” The idea, in short: Make it glassy, and “a place that you would want to walk into,” Mr. Bardyn adds.
Fine – in theory. Glass is common, relatively affordable and transparent, and it provides a strong visual contrast to the heaviness of concrete. This would have been acceptable if done well, with compositional and technical care that matches the sculptural precision of the original building. But it wasn’t.
Meanwhile, in the Eataly interior, local architects Giannone Petricone have done an elegant job executing brand’s design formula. The interior feels, as intended, somewhere between a market and a city street populated by stylish restaurants. Oak booths, deep-hued ceramic tiles and rich marble come together in tightly detailed ensembles.
What does it say about the state of design that far more attention is devoted to the interior details – stuff that will likely get torn out in a few years – than to the parts of the building that are public and permanent?
It says that some of our best Modernist buildings are still misunderstood, even by their owners. (City heritage planners had nothing to say here.)
It also says we are too quick to accept simple ideas about architecture: that concrete is hostile, that glass is friendly and that sloppy architecture is good enough to build a city.