The Globe and Mail

In November of 2000, the University of Toronto's Graduate House took the city by surprise. This wasn't your usual dull residence, not with its cantilevered cornice projecting out over Harbord Street and ending in the now-famous Giant O. Instead, onlookers beheld a building that, in the words of the graduate school dean Michael Marrus, "chooses brazenly to engage the world around it." In September, 2005, the university marks the end of a remarkable building boom by unveiling two towers at its southeast entrance, the $75-million Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building and the $96-million Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research. This time no one should be shocked -- out-of-the-ordinary design has almost become the rule at a university that found both the need and the desire to turn itself into a showcase of architectural style.