Is it my imagination, or have we been through a dark age in architecture? I am thinking of some of the buildings built in our cities over the last 30 or 40 years, replacing much older and more awe-inspiring structures. The decade of the 1970s was an especially dismal period, influenced heavily by an architectural style known as brutalism, the word coming from a French term, beton brut, or concrete with no formal finish. The form is massive in outlook and minimalist to the pocketbook. In Toronto, the fortress-like Robarts Library is an excellent example of the brutalist style.

Witness the power of pictures. Take the one directly right. Are happy memories triggering? Are you yearning to swing over there this afternoon in a wire-wheeled sedan with sidemounts, to take in a movie? "Nothing lights up a street . . . like a movie marquee," theatre historian David Naylor has written, in praise of the movie business's long-running, on-the-spot architectural advertising. So evocative is this particular view that it is fueling a debate about the theatre itself, which is the much-loved Revue cinema on Roncesvalles Ave.