"Imagine Grange Park" meeting tonight / that damned OCAD building

I’m rather busy today, so this entry is somewhat unfinished. I’m

posting it anyway because it refers to an event that takes place

tonight,

Someone dropped a flyer off in my mailbox (the physical one, just outside the front door to my house) which reads:

• Adam Vaughan, Political Specialist, CityTV
• Christopher Hume, Architectural Columnist, Toronto Star
• Catherine Nasmith, Architect
• Debbie McGuinness, parent and area resident
• Pearl Quong, area resident
• Lenore Richards, Dean of Design, OCAD
• An unnamed representative from the Art Gallery of Ontario

If can make the time, I’ll drop by the meeting and see what’s going on.

One might think that the presences of Hume, the architexpert for the

Star, and Richards, Dean of Design at a well-known art and design

school, would be a good thing. I’m not so sure; after all, they like

the retrofit of the Ontario College of Art and Design, pictured below:

Yes,

it actually looks like this. It just screams “I learned everything I

know about design by studying old Duran Duran album covers”. The

building is already up, and the new addition will be open for regualr

use in October.

Hume likes the design of the new OCAD building. In this article, he is quoted as saying “[Architect Will] Alsop’s scheme is best understood as a celebration of creativity”.

Richards also likes the design, and according to the same article, said

“The boldness in its vocabulary of form, materials and colour results

in buildings that are engaging and extremely memorable”.

Sir, Madam, I must say that after having seen the architect’s sketches

for the building, I can only respond with “I’ve seen better paper after

wiping my ass”.

My leanining is closer to James Howard Kunstler’s opinion. He saw fit to name the new OCAD building his Eyesore of the Month for November 2003:

If it’s any indication of Alsop’s design sense, the site for his firm, Alsop Architects,

is an exercise in “my art, above all else” user-hostile art-wankery.

The Flash-based front page provides no cues as to what is clickable and

what is not. Some of the clickable items aren’t even visible until you

pass your mouse over them, and none of them hint at what happens when

you click on them. It emphasizes quirkiness over design or usefulness;

instead of “here’s the information you need”, it merely announces “oh,

what a clever boy am I!”