The Globe and Mail

'Buildings are judgment," observed Allen Ginsberg in his poem Howl. And this seems especially true of the present era, with its heightened awareness of design issues and the built environment, where the container is deemed to be as important as what it contains, often more so. This dance between space and function, form and content gets a real workout at the multilevelled Corkin Shopland Gallery in Toronto's historic Distillery District. Housed inside an 1873 building once used for the manufacture and storage of hard liquor, it achieved almost instant iconic status upon its opening late last year. Indeed, it's one of the most beautiful rooms in Canada's largest city, and certainly the most beautiful privately owned commercial gallery here. "If this was in Europe, this would be a small museum," remarks award-winning architect Howard Sutcliffe who, with fellow architect and wife Brigitte Shim, designed the ambitious retrofit, the in-demand duo's first gallery project.