Toronto Star

I've always enjoyed the company of strange buildings, which, for want for a better way of describing them, look as if they've been rejected by their surroundings. They satisfy the outcast in my soul. This means I find the inside-out Centre Pompidou in Paris friendly in a matey sort of way, what with its heating ducts and other functional tubing crawling up its exterior rather than hidden away inside. But I also see the merit in the endless carping about the Richard Rogers/Renzo Piano-designed building. Buildings should make the emotions take an escalator ride once in a while. I was sure the hottest new building in Toronto was not going to be Frank Gehry's spruce-up of the Art Gallery of Ontario, but British architect Will Alsop's $42.5-million design for the Ontario College of Art & Design on McCaul St.