The Globe and Mail

A building is not a one-walled affair. And yet, from the outside, this is what we are expected to believe of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. So regular, so hard, so profane are the brick elevations running along Queen Street West, Richmond Street and York Street in downtown Toronto that the building and its significance as Canada's first opera house disappear from civic consciousness. The monumental glass wall is an exhilarating addition to University Avenue, but it can hardly be expected to forgive all. A touch of the spectacular on all four sides of the centre would have gone a long way to argue the noble cause of culture. On the day of the opera's gala opening this week, architect Jack Diamond asserted that "cities are made up of continuities, not discontinuities." On this point, he and I have long differed. To my mind, cities are made up of continuities and discontinuities. Architecture tames a city. It can create order from disorder. But, without moments of civic grandeur that stand apart from the rest, a city loses itself to systems of sameness.