Gehry Ghetto

National Post:

Architect Frank Gehry says there are only two buildings in his hometown worth saving: Old City Hall and Osgoode Hall.

Everything else is fair game to be torn down, Mr. Gehry suggested to Toronto and East York Community Council on Tuesday morning.

“I don’t know whether we should be designating heritage buildings,” said Mr. Gehry, who was born in Toronto. “I think you should preserve [Old] City Hall because I used to go there when I was a kid.”

Well that's sporting of him. Apparently the many architectural gems of the University of Toronto, the Victorian Gothic homes of Cabbagetown and Mies van der Rohe's Toronto Dominion Centre are, in the Gehry balance, nothing but dust. For a man who designs buildings that look like train wrecks, that's pretty bold. 

Comments

[Daniel Ream]

Well, he seems to not like the idea of preserving anything for art's sake; his tongue seems to be firmly in cheek on the Halls ("I have fond memories of them, so keep them").

I wouldn't think any libertarian or property-rights conservative would be on board with "heritage" buildings; if people like them so much, they can raise the cash to buy them and preserve them on their own.

[Jimmy Levendia]

How the mighty have fallen. The Modernist architects, those prophets of Le Corbusier's "Radiant Future", would have razed Osgoode Hall & Old City Hall first. Too, they would have done it with relish as men in the grip of a strong vision, one of wiping the slate of History clean and starting anew. Le Corbu's vision itself was a mere facet of that strange, all encompassing godless Puritanism called "Socialism", that marred & blackened so much of the last century.