Toronto’s civic theatre agency announced the winning design for the St. Lawrence Centre from prominent Toronto architects Hariri Pontarini, with the Indigenous-led firms Tawaw Architecture Collective and Smoke Architecture as well as LMN Architects and landscape architects SLA. The winning design features a long strip of glass and wood along the façade, which is meant to evoke a wampum belt.Hariri Pontarini Architects, LMN Architects, Tawaw Architecture Collective, Smoke Architecture, and SLAHariri Pontarini Architects, LMN Architects, Tawaw Architecture Collective, Smoke Architecture, and SLA/Supplied
Good news for Toronto. The city is building a large new cultural facility with input from some of the world’s leading architects.
Or, to be more precise: It hopes to. Last Friday, civic theatre agency TOLive announced the results of a design competition for the “STLC Next” project. The winning team is led by the prominent Toronto architects Hariri Pontarini, with the Indigenous-led firms Tawaw Architecture Collective and Smoke Architecture as well as LMN Architects and landscape architects SLA.
The architects’ task was to take the 1970 St. Lawrence Centre in downtown Toronto, a Brutalist performing arts complex that was one of the country’s “Centennial Projects,” and replace it with a larger set of spaces including a theatre, acoustic hall, rehearsal rooms and public gathering space. The plan is hugely ambitious. If it is built – more on that in a moment – the facility would be 180,000 square feet and could cost up to $400-million.
One thing is clear from this process: Design competitions work. The city agency CreateTO ran a good competition; it enticed some of the world’s leading designers of public buildings by allowing them to compete on the strength of their ideas.
And locals won. Last Tuesday, Toronto architect Siamak Hariri and colleagues presented their design at a public meeting alongside four other shortlisted teams. These included the New York avant garde fixtures Diller Scofidio + Renfro, world-leading Dutch firm Mecanoo, the lesser-known but ingenious New Orleans firm Trahan, and prominent locals Diamond Schmitt.
Four of their proposals, including the winner, are both beautiful and plausible. (The Diamond Schmitt-led design is the exception, both spatially and conceptually inelegant.)
The new arts facility will be 180,000 square feet and could cost up to $400-million. The rebuilt St. Lawrence Centre would be part of a 'cultural campus' providing studio and rehearsal space.Hariri Pontarini Architects, LMN Architects, Tawaw Architecture Collective, Smoke Architecture, and SLAHariri Pontarini Architects, LMN Architects, Tawaw Architecture Collective, Smoke Architecture, and SLA/Supplied
The winning design clearly shows Mr. Hariri’s deft hand with space and his taste in materials. A long strip of glass and wood meanders along the façade; this, according to the design team, is meant to evoke a wampum belt. (That idea will need to be carefully elaborated, since wampum are symbolic rather than decorative.) Inside, curved planes of limestone dance below ceilings lined with bleached wood. This warm palette is familiar from the lucent Tom Patterson Theatre in Stratford, Ont., and will likely show up in a coming renovation of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
The highly flexible main theatre opens onto a large “living room,” which in turn opens up onto the street. The Hariri team’s innovation was to put the hall’s flat floor at street level, allowing it to open seamlessly for performances or events. Rehearsal halls and the other performance venue are tucked into the fourth floor.
To the north is Front Street and Berczy Park, which is one of Toronto’s most-touristed spaces; to the west, quiet Scott Street and then Meridian Hall, the magnificent concert hall originally known as the O’Keefe Centre. The STLC design would add a bridge between the buildings, an anti-urban idea that should be cut immediately. But it would also make Scott Street a pedestrian plaza and widen the sidewalks on Front Street. The city should make those changes right now.
TOLive describes its project as a service to performing arts organizations, and also to the neighbourhood and to downtown Toronto. “We all know that downtown needs to change dramatically, and to welcome more people to live and play,” chief executive officer Clyde Wagner said in an interview. The rebuilt St. Lawrence would be part of a “cultural campus” that provides needed studio and rehearsal space as well as room for residents to linger.
The centre's main theatre will be flexible to accommodate various performances and will open onto a large living room, which in turn will open up to the street.Hariri Pontarini Architects, LMN Architects, Tawaw Architecture Collective, Smoke Architecture, and SLAHariri Pontarini Architects, LMN Architects, Tawaw Architecture Collective, Smoke Architecture, and SLA
The current St. Lawrence Centre, which is a designated heritage building, would largely vanish. Only fragments of walls and skylights would remain. This is perverse, but typical of how heritage planning works in Toronto. I’ve written that the old centre should be retained and expanded. But that ship appears to have sailed.
Or has it? The STLC scheme is a sophisticated answer to a particular question, but it’s not clear whether that question is the right one.
While TOLive’s downtown revitalization pitch makes sense, such a major public investment in the arts could also be spent differently and in different places. Could rehearsal or studio space be moved to neighbourhoods that have room and need the boost? Mr. Wagner disagreed with that idea, but he also admitted: “This is the site we own, and so it’s what we are working with.”
Conversely, should the centre be combined with a high-rise tower of housing, perhaps including artists’ housing? Since the old building is planned to be demolished, the only obstacle is the city’s own planning policies.
It’s time for this project to receive more intense scrutiny at a citywide level, and it will. This year TOLive will present a business plan that counts on funds from all three levels of government, as well as major philanthropy, over a five-year period of planning and construction. This process must ensure that the vision is realistic and backed with plausible funding. The STLC’s budget “is a big ask,” Mr. Wagner acknowledged. “But there is no vision without imagination.”
Certainly this project involves imagination. Unlike so much in Toronto, it envisions big things for government and for public design. And now that CreateTO knows how to run a design competition, that process should be the norm for all major civic projects. A competition produced Toronto’s magnificent City Hall in the 1960s. Today the city routinely cheaps out on architecture and landscape. Mr. Hariri’s studio isn’t designing public libraries, while much lesser architects get those jobs. The St. Lawrence project, if nothing else, proves that better is possible.