Toronto Star

It's the big projects that get the attention, but often it's the small ones that deserve it. None more so than the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, easily the most compelling, even exhilarating, example of architectural excellence to have appeared in Toronto in some time. True, all eyes have been focused this week on the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, the city's much-anticipated opera house, but where it stumbles, the Gardiner soars. Designed by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, the new Gardiner (111 Queen's Park, just south of Bloor St.) is a model of urbanity; it is a building that goes well beyond its function as a repository of art objects to become a vital part of a larger whole — namely the city. This connection informs every aspect of the museum; indeed, it's the subtext of the project. Again and again it reminds us that every act of architecture also represents an act of city building. The new spaces created by KPMB are fully conscious of this; indeed, they celebrate it.