Toronto Star

After months, no, years, of controversy, the official opening today of the Sharp Pavilion at the Ontario College of Art and Design will inevitably be a bit anticlimactic. Designed by leading English architect Will Alsop, the huge flying tabletop has been the most discussed project in Toronto since pictures of it were first released way back in 2000. Naturally, many Torontonians, especially architects, hate it. Others don't know what to make of it. Some think it's fantastic, the best thing to have happened to building design in this city, maybe ever. Certainly, Toronto has never seen anything remotely like it. A building on stilts, multicoloured stilts at that, has always been a cultural impossibility in a city with such a deep-seated fear of the new, the novel and excellence in any form. Until the advent of Alsop's table, our most adventurous structure was the new Toronto City Hall. Though it also created enormous controversy, it has become one of the city's most genuinely popular buildings — indeed, the architectural icon of Toronto. Nowhere is the shock of the new felt more keenly than in Toronto. Though the Sharp Pavilion is unlikely to achieve such exalted status as Viljo Revell's civic masterpiece, it has already entered the city's psyche. It has helped redefine the city both here and abroad. Any number of articles have appeared in the foreign press either extolling Alsop's virtues or criticizing his inadequacies. Whether they love it or hate it, the stories are ultimately about Toronto, increasingly perceived as a city willing to take risks. Nothing could be further from the truth, but perception is everything.