Toronto Star

Will Alsop, the famously playful and provocative English architect, has been hired to design an iconic building at Filmport, the Toronto Star has learned. Filmport is the massive new $275 million state-of-the-art film studio complex set to rise on the waterfront under the terms of a long-term lease. Alsop is both celebrated and denounced all over the world for his avant-garde work. In Toronto, he gained instant celebrity with his attention-getting tabletop addition to the Ontario College of Art & Design, which sits at the nine-storey level on multicoloured stilts. And Toronto Film Studios, which won the right over several other contenders to build a massive $275 million film village on a city-owned site east of Cherry St., is counting on Alsop to bring razzle-dazzle to its project.