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Toronto Architecture From The 1960's and 70's

Anna said:
Surprised me too - I was looking for the first photo, which shows the complex that is currently being demolished being built(?) and in the same group I found those other photos. I didn't realize 'til after I posted them that it's the same pool.

Where is that pool? I was trying to figure out where it is in relation to the townhouses at the sw corner of Don Mills and Sheppard.
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it's north of Sheppard. you enter off of Esterbrooke and walk a long path, and down a steep flight of stairs to the pool (red arrow). one of the interesting things about the whole Don Valley Village complex (and something not visible on Google maps) is how interesting the terrain is. you really get the feeling that the whole thing was built on a series of rolling hills.

the yellow arrow points to the circular townhouse development on the right in the Spanish Villas photo you posted.

 
Goldie said:
Demolition of parkade, 22 Sheppard St. - July 2013
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thank you Goldie! i suppose there are very few parking garages that one mourns the loss of--even brutalist style 70s ones....

the only downside is that the thing replacing it is a condo that is a piece of garbage.
 
Yeah, that--part of the same scheme that's facadectomying the Concouse Building.
And actually, I think the garage is 60s rather than 70s--somewhat in tandem w/Richmond-Adelaide 1...
 
Metro Toronto Zoo, 1975.

Architects: Clifford Lawrie Bolton Ritchie Architects, Crang and Boake Architects, Ron Thom Architect











 
If it weren't so geographically isolated, the Metro Zoo would get more press as, perhaps, the most sublimely spectacular ensemble of 70s architecture in Toronto--beyond even Ontario Place...
 
adma said:
If it weren't so geographically isolated, the Metro Zoo would get more press as, perhaps, the most sublimely spectacular ensemble of 70s architecture in Toronto--beyond even Ontario Place...
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i agree with that, and it is sad that it is so overlooked...

a lot of it remains exactly the same as it was when it opened. both of the two big pavilions i saw were virtually untouched, although the interior of one had kind of been monkeyed with, and some of the original steel and concrete design elements having been covered over with some kitschy 'jungle motifs' etc.
 
thedeepend said:
i agree with that, and it is sad that it is so overlooked...

a lot of it remains exactly the same as it was when it opened. both of the two big pavilions i saw were virtually untouched, although the interior of one had kind of been monkeyed with, and some of the original steel and concrete design elements having been covered over with some kitschy 'jungle motifs' etc.
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"Monkeyed" with in a zoo?
 
And maybe another problem w/the Metro Zoo all along is that it remains haunted by that Trudeau 70s megaproject-overidealism, not unlike Olympic Stadium and Mirabel; and it's caught between a paradoxical rock of 70s zoological avant-gardism and the hard place of today's anti-zoo movement. Which, today, renders it all rather...poignant. (And surely worthy of a future Dominion Modern-type volume.)

One other noteworthy feature of the Metro Zoo when it opened is that IIRC all the food outlets were operated by McDonald's--a feature that'd surely be controversial today; yet back then, it was as benign a symbol of modern eating as the Howard Johnson outlets on the Pennsylvania Turnpike were in 1940. (And, hey; somehow, back in the day, George Cohon made McDonald's Canadian operations a source of national pride.)
 
adma said:
And maybe another problem w/the Metro Zoo all along is that it remains haunted by that Trudeau 70s megaproject-overidealism, not unlike Olympic Stadium and Mirabel; and it's caught between a paradoxical rock of 70s zoological avant-gardism and the hard place of today's anti-zoo movement. Which, today, renders it all rather...poignant. (And surely worthy of a future Dominion Modern-type volume.)

One other noteworthy feature of the Metro Zoo when it opened is that IIRC all the food outlets were operated by McDonald's--a feature that'd surely be controversial today; yet back then, it was as benign a symbol of modern eating as the Howard Johnson outlets on the Pennsylvania Turnpike were in 1940. (And, hey; somehow, back in the day, George Cohon made McDonald's Canadian operations a source of national pride.)
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these are good points--it does seem poignant there. the overgrown track for the light rail that never really worked (and was mothballed when someone was killed on it) certainly adds to the aura of failed utopianism that kind of hovers about. and as a modernist site it does all seem a bit frozen in amber. i am pretty sure there were not that many zoos built from scratch in the late modern era, so it is definitely exceptional in that regard. also, one simply can't imagine another zoo of this scale ever being built again. in the same way we can't imagine an Ontario Place or Science Centre either--but of these Trudeau era mega-projects, only the zoo would now be seen as ethically problematic or even unsavoury.

40 years on, the world is in such a different place with regards to the place of zoos in our society, and all the ancillary and associative issues--animal rights, ecological calamity, loss of habitat, species extinction etc--now definitively colour one's sense of acceptance and enjoyment of the experience that zoos provide. they are just anachronistic by definition now, and on some fundamental level we have rejected them as important or valuable cultural institutions. we can't help but see zoos as places where animals suffer. there is just a massive loss of legitimacy at play here, and i think it has greatly effected the way the architecture is perceived, and probably accounts for the relative obscurity of this place as a modernist site of some great significance.
 
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