The Globe and Mail

His expansive body is defiantly unascetic and the all-black wardrobe may be a little off-palette, but it's not hard to see Will Alsop as the saviour. Without his playfully uplifting studio on stilts for the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto would still feel trapped in its earthbound malaise. Post-OCAD, anything seems possible. Away with all the other false prophets of urbanism -- we've found our miracle-maker. Or rather, he has found us. The 57-year-old Englishman, who first came to Toronto on a tourist's whim ("I'd never been here: I thought I'd do the OCAD interview, not get the job, and then tick the city off my list"), has opened a branch of Alsop architects on Mercer Street to go along with offices in London and Shanghai.