Reuters

Frank Gehry

High profile building projects won't transform Toronto into an architectural hot spot, and the city missed a chance by building lines of condos along its waterfront, star architect Frank Gehry said on Tuesday. Toronto-born Gehry, best known for Bilbao's undulating titanium clad Guggenheim Museum, said his redesign of Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario would not transform the city. "Bilbao ... was an industrial town and they consciously tried to change the character of the town and they succeeded. I was only one part of it," he told reporters. "When you come to a city that is established and all, it's hard to say that you are going to have the same kind of impact because there is already a persona in Toronto and it has its own character. So one little remodeling of an old building isn't going to turn the whole community around." The C$207 million ($180 million) Toronto project, to be completed in 2008, will boost the Art Gallery's exhibition space by some 40 percent and transform the building into a showpiece structure with a titanium and glass facade and an asymmetrical baroque staircase.