I think it's a few things. Yes, clearly the exhibit building has no achitecture to speak of but even with what they did up top, the journey from the entry level across the bridge (when it was open) to the Great Hall and down as was still a unique creation which I would put in the same league as the pods and bridges. I just the latter is more picture-postcard friendly and so there's a lot of people, the kinds who don't hang out on UT, who don't understand the importance of what Moriayama did with the OSC because it's less "aesthetically pleasing," in a superficial fashoin.
Yeah, that's why I said my example didn't quite work
But I still think the nature of your average person is to look at the Cinesphere and think it's cool and look at even the most impressive piece of Brutalism and be dismissive of it (and if we're talking about two equally great buildings, one in North York and one downtown, it likely goes without saying which one will get more attention.)
Actually, the *real* "problem", public-impression-wise, with OSC relative to Ontario Place has nothing to do with a Brutalist aesthetic, but with how, thanks to the valley setting, the primary photogenic aspects are hidden from common public view unless you're actually within the complex. Whereas w/Ontario Place it's "plain and simple" to the casual passerby. What the non-paying-admission public presently sees of OSC is basically the 90s-Zeidlerized frontage--and even when that had its Moriyama integrity, it presented a comparatively discreet, ground-hugging, fountain-and-greenery-shielded presence that wasn't, to the Don Mills-travelling passerby, "in your face". So one could say that as "monstrous carbuncles" go, it wasn't "carbuncular" *enough*--unlike, say, Robarts Library.
In fact, OSC has *always* been, in its own right, "picture postcard friendly"--the trouble is, the postcards in general are either aerial-view or focussed upon the "trillium" middle building, not aspects the common passerby see. (And the same aerial-view-friendly, valley-rather-than-street-elevation focus plagues that other 60s Brutalist opus in Toronto, John Andrews' Scarborough College. And even from within the valley, you can't really see it unless you come close because of all the forest and foliage. Which is as it should be; like, you don't clearcut the setting of FLW's Fallingwater to make it "visible".)
However, when it comes to "the importance of what Moriyama did": it isn't so much that, especially in our Doors Open age, that's inherently *lost* on people--rather, that it's being deliberately suppressed by those championing the move, who just want to present it as an old and dated facility that's had its day. Like they might as well be allowing the comparatively dispensable 90s frontage to guide the narrative here. (And "Brutalist-bashing" as a fallback in case anyone seeks to dig deeper)
And remember that the Ford gov't's tried that "deliberate suppression" tactic before--like, when this whole Ontario Place redevelopment pipe dream started, deliberately removing the province's "heritage page" on OP (and being called out for it once a concerned community member recovered it via the internet archive). Or their whole handling of the Dominion Foundry issue. Sort of like, bully-boy kicking under the table and "Heritage? What heritage? I don't see any heritage here."
But actually, re the whole 90s frontage vs original Moriyama elements thing--when you *really* think of it, maybe, especially these days, the kinds of casual Ford-voting Joe Blow demos either don't know the difference, or don't care? When they visit OSC, they disconnect *altogether* from any space-and-time conception of the architecture; other than generic notions of relative "datedness", what's of 1969 or of 1999 is lost on them. It's all just a readymade "package", maybe a bit more hifalutin but in the end little different from the sardine tin at Yonge & Dundas that contains Little Canada.
Maybe *that's* what Ford's banking on--and it might as well be the way *he*, with his professed Joe Average values, rolls.
But it's also a way that I find to be characteristic of cohorts that grew up conditioned within, shall I say, a Canada's Wonderland age--a different scale of stimulation. And I sometimes even see it innocently reflected in comments on UT, and it seems more "naturalized" among younger cohorts--like, there's something about the DoFo born-in-1964 perspective that might as well be born in 1994 instead, unless it reflects how the born-in-1994's were born to Generation DoFo and thus, either directly or by peer proxy, don't know better.
Thus when it comes to reverential memories of Ontario Place, I find that (DoFo cases aside) those who experienced it in the 70s, even as young Children's Village types, bring more of a "civic consciousness" to their nostalgia and fond memories--they're the ones who, even as children back then, intuitively "felt" the Zeidler-and-Hough idealism in their bones. Whereas to those whose nostalgia and memories are more recent, their fond memories are more front-loaded upon the Soak City-type kiddie attractions, to the point where you barely notice any Zeidler/Hough there. IOW Millennial Ontario Place nostalgia as more along the lines of Canada's Wonderland nostalgia--and unlike OP or OSC, Canada's Wonderland is strictly about corporatized "entertainment", always has been, capital-A Architecture is beside the point (even more so than w/earlier theme parks like Disneyland/Disney World, where there's always been more of a foundational World's Fair operating idealism), and if the property's owners decide to sell the site for redevelopment, it's all just the cycle of life even if the not-unjustifiably fond memories never die.
Which I think also relates to changing approaches to parenting--that is, in the 70s, kids were more "along for the parental ride", junior spectators in tow much as they'd be in family trips to the mall, walking the grocery and department-store aisles with Mom & Dad. Whereas subsequently things became more "child-focused"--sort of like depositing the kids in a Kiddieland while Mom & Dad went about their business; or even reversing the dynamic so that it's the parents "along for the kiddie ride" instead.
The unfortunate thing there is how it can turn childhood into a ADHD-massaging cultural silo, with very little meaningful, unmediated "bleed" from the adult world. Thus the vacuumland element of an Ontario Place visit excessively frontloaded upon the kiddie attractions with negligible relationship to the original OP idealism--like the junior version of the Molson Amphitheatre/Bud Stage squatting upon the OP Forum site: just a "facility", whereas the Forum aspired to "something higher". (And tellingly, the original Ford Gov't redevelopment scheming for OP left the Bud Stage alone--true, as an independently-operating cash cow, but also in a way that tells you where this gov't's values lie.)
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