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There is only one thing you need to know about Toronto:

Toronto is the largest city in the world and houses more breweries than any metropolitan area in North America. Earth day started in Toronto. Toronto is defendable from all sides against enemy attack. It’s the birthplace of jazz. The internet was invented by a Toronto homemaker and mother of two. Toronto has more policemen per capita than any town in Canada and is the only community in the world with five World Champion sporting teams - curling, lawn bowling, fencing, chess and lacrosse. The average rainfall is eleven inches, and the average temperature is 63 degrees.

Toronto produces 80 percent of the world’s aluminium and 45 percent of North America’s chain-link fences. M.A.S.H., Cheers, Mary Tyler Moore, and Taxi were all produced in Toronto. There is no lead in the water in Toronto. Playing cards are Toronto’s most highly exported product. Toronto is the third-best city in the world to raise a child. Any band that tours visits Toronto. Disneyland is in Toronto. The atom bomb was developed in Toronto. Unemployment is under one percent, and eight-tenths of those employed love their jobs and say they can’t imagine working anywhere else. Toronto has the world’s oldest and most efficient mass-transit system.

The wind is always at your back in Toronto. There is no disease there. Michael Jordan, Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripkin, Wayne Gretzky, Tony Hawk, Pete Sampras, and Neil Young were all born in Toronto. Street lights illuminate every corner, every fountain drink you purchase comes with free refills, and everyone knows their neighbours in Toronto. Trash day is Tuesday, it never rains on picnics, and every cloud has a silver lining: You’re free to do what you want, any old time, in Toronto. A watched pot boils quicker in Toronto. There’s a car in every garage, no lines at grocery stores, and movies only cost three dollars if you tell’em Bill sent you.

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There is only one thing you need to know about Toronto:

Toronto is the largest city in the world and houses more breweries than any metropolitan area in North America. Earth day started in Toronto. Toronto is defendable from all sides against enemy attack. It’s the birthplace of jazz. The internet was invented by a Toronto homemaker and mother of two. Toronto has more policemen per capita than any town in Canada and is the only community in the world with five World Champion sporting teams - curling, lawn bowling, fencing, chess and lacrosse. The average rainfall is eleven inches, and the average temperature is 63 degrees.

Toronto produces 80 percent of the world’s aluminium and 45 percent of North America’s chain-link fences. M.A.S.H., Cheers, Mary Tyler Moore, and Taxi were all produced in Toronto. There is no lead in the water in Toronto. Playing cards are Toronto’s most highly exported product. Toronto is the third-best city in the world to raise a child. Any band that tours visits Toronto. Disneyland is in Toronto. The atom bomb was developed in Toronto. Unemployment is under one percent, and eight-tenths of those employed love their jobs and say they can’t imagine working anywhere else. Toronto has the world’s oldest and most efficient mass-transit system. The wind is always at your back in Toronto. There is no disease there. Michael Jordan, Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripkin, Wayne Gretzky, Tony Hawk, Pete Sampras, and Neil Young were all born in Toronto. Street lights illuminate every corner, every fountain drink you purchase comes with free refills, and everyone knows their neighbours in Toronto. Trash day is Tuesday, it never rains on picnics, and every cloud has a silver lining: You’re free to do what you want, any old time, in Toronto. A watched pot boils quicker in Toronto. There’s a car in every garage, no lines at grocery stores, and movies only cost three dollars if you tell’em Bill sent you."

Toronto as a global image

Toronto has, for years, attempted to create a brand image to market itself to the rest of the world. In 2004 the City of Toronto, the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation, Tourism Toronto and Toronto City Summit Alliance established the Toronto Branding Project, with a single goal to create a brand that could identify Toronto as a strong and dynamic city to the rest of the world. The result; “Toronto: Unlimited” ^[1]. This brand image replaced the former brand “Toronto: You Belong Here”, conceived as a response to the negative publicity and reduced tourism due to the SARS outbreak (Canada had the largest SARS outbreak outside of Asia ^[2]). Is producing a logo, or brand necessary?

Is it possible to “brand” a city in a certain manner that will continually attract people, tourists and residents alike, to the city? Toronto is currently capable of attracting prospective new residents. Each year an estimated 70,000 new immigrants come to the city. However it lacks in attracting tourists, ranked 10^th in North America in 2008 it attract an estimated 10.6million tourists, 2.8million were from outside of Canada, 800,000 were from outside of North America ^[3]. A large number of the tourists are as a result of the annual Toronto International Film Festival. This occurs for just two weeks of every year; it is important that Toronto attracts people throughout the year.

How can Toronto brand itself to the world? More and more cities, in recent times, are allowing the architecture of the city to attract tourists, for example Bilbao. Before the Guggenheim museum was built Bilbao was a small city famous for being an industrial city. Since the museum has been built the city has record number of tourists visiting each year which has allowed for expansive regeneration of the city, and numerous architects producing work in the city. Sir Norman Foster designed the underground subway stations. Santiago Calatrava designed a bridge which allows for access to the museum from the city centre. Zaha Hadid recently completed a master plan for an area west of the city centre. Is this how Toronto should market itself; using the power of architecture to promote a global image of itself to the world?

Toronto is the largest city in Canada with approximately 3million residents, 7million within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). It is the capital of the Ontario province, and located alongside Lake Ontario. Toronto is already famous for its street car system. The ‘red rocket’ is a symbol of Toronto alongside PATH, another of the key city infrastructures. PATH is an underground networking linking over 27kilometres of shopping, services and entertainment within the downtown core ^[4]. Both of these infrastructures are important to the daily running of the city, but do not attract tourists. What are the important attractions for Toronto to encourage tourists to the city?

The Toronto skyline is defined by the CN Tower (completed 1975), the tallest freestanding structure within the Western Hemisphere which acts as a centre of tourism for the city. However, according to architects who have designed buildings in the city, Toronto has limited visual appeal to visitors and residents. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that there is no single dominant architectural style. Toronto has been designated the United Nation’s most ethnically diverse city in the world for 5years running ^[5]; which has caused the city to become a network of neighborhoods with varying ethnicities. Almost 50percent of Toronto residents are immigrants, while another 20percent are second generation immigrants. There are more than 80ethnic groups speaking over 100languages ^[6]. Perhaps for this reason, it has been difficult for Toronto to maintain a single architectural style. But is having a single architectural style important?

In the past 50 years Toronto has managed to attract world renowned architects to the city. One of the earliest and most distinct landmarks of the city, designed via an international competition, is the City Hall by Finnish architect Viljo Revell. The popularity of the competition (over 500 entries) illustrated the importance of Toronto within the world. The City Hall was opened in 1965, and was designed to replace the Old City Hall. The building is composed of a rectilinear base of two storey’s which results in a roof terrace (which is inaccessible to the general public due to the proximity /  security concerns with the council chamber), with two towers on top which are curved in plan to imitate the outline of an eye. The towers are of differing height; east tower 27storeys, west tower 20storeys. When completed many people believed the building was extremely futuristic, which is still the opinion of some people today. However this hasn’t prevented the buildings’ towers to become the symbol of the City of Toronto on all of its released documents. More recently, in an effort by the City to improve sustainability within its buildings, the City Hall has undergone a series of sustainable upgrades. Amongst the upgrades, the roof terrace which has become a green roof garden (it is yet to be decided whether the space shall become accessible to the public).

Many of Toronto’s most prominent buildings are found within the financial district, centered at Bay and King St West intersection. It is made up of some of Canada’s oldest companies; the ‘Big Five’ banks (Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce). The most dominant of these structures is Mies van der Rohe’s Toronto Dominion (TD) Centre and Banking Hall started in 1967 (completed 1991) which is a cluster of six towers and a pavilion. The buildings are the global headquarters for TD Bank, and provide office and retail space for many other businesses. The buildings are modernist steel structures painted black with bronze tinted windows. It is an example of the International style Mies van der Rohe produced during his North American period which began in New York in 1957 with the Seagram Building, and also included the Kluczynski Federal Building (1975) in Chicago. The dominance of the TD Bank in Toronto, is one of the reasons why the city has been likened with other North American cities, namely Chicago. Toronto and Chicago share many similarities due to their proximity in geographical locations. Both cities have been built upon a city grid system, and both founded next to lakes (Toronto next to Lake Ontario, Chicago next to Lake Michigan). However Chicago has managed to maintain an architectural image for itself (even becoming the location for Gotham City in the latest Batman movies).

In 1992 a design competition resulted in Santiago Calatrava designing the Allen Lambert Galeria between the two towers at Brookfield Place (formerly BCE Place) office complex; which is also found within the financial district. Toronto had been operating relatively quiet within the world scene of architecture for some 20 years, however this project brought Toronto back into the limelight, and enabled some well deserved publicity for Calatrava who was relatively unknown at this stage of his career. It illustrates Calatrava’s organic architectural style with a vaulted ceiling supported by ‘tree-like’ columns. The Galeria has since become one of the most photographed areas of Toronto.

From the 1960’s Toronto has been producing occasion sources of architectural inspiration, but there has been no continuity. Occasional competitions limited the exposure of Toronto within the world. Within the past 10 years Toronto has recognized the coverage architecture has created throughout the world. Looking at the example of how Bilbao transformed itself through architecture, Toronto has steadily built buildings of notice. Will Alsop (who now resides in Toronto) was the first of the current wave of architects producing work within the city. Alsop designed the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) renovation. For many years OCAD had been located within a series of nondescript buildings in the western part of downtown. In 2004, it was transformed by Alsop’s design which consisted of a black and white ‘chequered’ box suspended 4 stories off the ground (above the existing building) and supported by a series of multi-colored columns at varying angles. The building has since gone on to win numerous awards, including the first ever Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Worldwide Award. It is perhaps this building which started and illustrates the current thinking of the City of Toronto, that they are not afraid of pushing boundaries; that they are willing to allow such designs into the city and let them define how the world perceives them.

Since OCAD, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) has undergone a major renovation designed by Daniel Liebeskind. The renovation was part of an international competition. Liebeskind’s design replaced an existing section of the gallery with a deconstructive crystalline form which took inspiration from the recently opened crystal exhibition (rumor has it that Liebeskind won the competition with a sketch on a napkin he produced during the competition introduction walk around). The building re-opened in June 2007. Public opinion of the crystal form remains divided. Architectural critic, Christopher Hume, has hailed the building as a “monument” ^[7]. It has also been voted one of the top 10 ugliest buildings in the world ^[8]. The building continues to draw comparisons with other Liebeskind buildings (i.e. Berlin Jewish Museum) due to the nature of the architect’s style of design. This occurs at each of the architect’s latest buildings; it is possible to directly reference ROM as inspiration (if not copied) for the Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany.

The most notable recent building in Toronto is the transformation of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) by Frank Gehry. Gehry was born in Toronto, and lived in the same neighborhood as the museum. The museum is his first work in Canada. Originally opened in 1910, the building had gone through six previous expansions. Gehry was commissioned to expand and revitalize the building; to unite the building (and its expansions) and to provide a link to the neighborhood. The AGO reopened in November 2008 (after 4 years of construction work) with the transformation producing almost 50% additional viewing space, a new entrance, and a new south wing. Gehry has restrained from producing a building with his signature style. It is possible to see that he attempted such designs in his sketch design models, but ultimately produced a building that fitted its context. The most characteristic element of his design is the ‘Galeria Italia’, a gallery that spans almost the entire length of the building giving the building a frontage onto Dundas Street West. The transformation has produced wide acclaim, most notably for the restraint of the design. An editorial in the Globe and Mail stated the architect was required to “produce a low key design, sensitive to its context and the gallery’s long history” ^[9]. Which Gehry has unanimously achieved. The architectural critic for the New York Times wrote: “Rather than a tumultuous creation, this may be one of Mr. Gehry’s most gentle and self-possessed designs. It is not a perfect building, yet its billowing glass facade, which evokes a crystal ship drifting through the city, is a masterly example of how to breathe life into a staid old structure. And its interiors underscore one of the most underrated dimensions of Mr. Gehry’s immense talent: a supple feel for context and an ability to balance exuberance with delicious moments of restraint. Instead of tearing apart the old museum, Mr. Gehry carefully threaded new ramps, walkways and stairs through the original” ^[10]. The AGO transformation has again illustrated the willingness of Toronto to take ‘risks’ with prominent architects, and allow the city to become famous for its buildings. It is now one of the largest art museums in North America.

Toronto hasn’t typically been identified within the architectural world. However this is steadily changing. Many of the world’s most prominent architects have produced work in Toronto, including Will Alsop, Daniel Liebeskind, Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Morphosis and Mies van der Rohe.

Is this the route Toronto should take to become a global image? Having produced many buildings by world renowned architects the city is yet to be realized as a city brimming with architectural gems. Does the city need to be ‘branded’ to allow the world to uncover it; for Toronto to become a beacon for tourists from throughout the world.

It is important to realize that although architecture does initially attract tourists, the functionality of the architecture is what will keep people returning and recommending to others. The number of tourists who are attracted to Liebeskind’s Royal Ontario Museum because of its iconic appearance is probably equal to the number put off by the stories of poor internal layout and functionality. There is more to architecture than just appearance. Since the arrival of cheap flights, it has become easier to travel throughout the world. It is possible to view several architects work within one city which may match another city. Each city needs to have a unique selling point. Using architecture as a brand has become widespread, but it is important for each city to produce unique buildings. Barcelona has Gaudi, Bilbao was the first city to have a ‘Gehry’. Toronto has the CN Tower.

On paper, Toronto has many key attractions, both architectural and other to attract tourists. However being 10^th in visited cities in North America is a major concern. The city is capable of being mentioned in the same sentences as New York and Chicago for many attractions, but does not achieve the same status amongst tourists. Having no single, dominant architectural style does not necessarily limit tourists. What would happen if Toronto moved location away from New York or Chicago? Given an option of cities to visit within similar geographical locations, Toronto will most likely be last choice amongst the three cities. This is perhaps the reason why Toronto enjoys high levels of immigrants who are able to access nearby cities during long weekends or other reasons; but also the reason why tourists choose not to visit Toronto. No matter how much branding Toronto achieves it will not achieve the same number of tourists as other North American cities. How will this affect Toronto in the future? It is possible to brand Toronto under a number of different categories; film festival capital, CN Tower, museums. However, creating Toronto as a brand through architecture is not possible.