The Globe and Mail

There's a reason art galleries are bright, airy spaces with little visual clutter. A simple step over the threshold takes you into a quiet, meditative world far removed from the frenetic pace of daily life. Early on, designers of the Ontario government's massive Macdonald Block at Queen's Park (completed in 1968) realized that the wide, marble-lined corridors and many two-storey foyers would be perfect places to install original, commissioned artwork. In the process, they created what I consider to be one of this city's greatest modern art galleries. And it was there that I meditated, for two full days last month, on the future of modernist architecture. I was attending "Conserving the Modern," a series of presentations and workshops by Parks Canada dealing with the rather new area of preservation and restoration of buildings from the 1940s to the 1970s. What came to mind wasn't that we continue to lose examples in the commercial world (the most recent being the former Bata Shoe headquarters by John B. Parkin Associates at Eglinton Avenue and the Don Valley Parkway), but rather the fate of residential architecture.