Stroll

by Micallef, Shawn

• ISBN13: 9781552452264
• ISBN10: 1552452263
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-05-31
• Publisher: Coach House Books

Summary

What is the 'Toronto look'? Toronto architecture is rich with superlative facts ' 'tallest' this, 'first retractable' that ' but, taken as a whole, the city's built environment is underappreciated. Here, glass skyscrapers rise beside Victorian homes, and Brutalist apartment buildings often mark the edge of leafy ravines, creating a city of contrasts whose architectural look can only be defined by telling the story of how it came together and how it works, today, as an imperfect machine.Eye Weekly columnist Shawn Micallef has been examining Toronto's architecture for many years, weaving historical information on its buildings and their architects with expansive ambulatory narratives about the neighbourhoods in which these buildings exist. Stroll collects Micallef's expanded columns alongside a number of new, unpublished essays; together, these psychogeographic reportages situate Toronto's buildings in living, breathing detail, and tell us more about the people who use them, how it feels to be exploring them in the middle of the night and the unintended ways in which they're evolving.Writer Rebecca Solnit said that 'cities move at the speed of walking.' Stroll celebrates Toronto's details ' some subtle, others grand ' at that velocity and, in so doing, helps us understand what impact its many buildings, from the CN Tower to Pearson Airport's Terminal One and New City Hall, have on those who live there.Features dozens of hand-drawn maps by artist Marlena Zuber, a foreword by architecture critic John Bentley Mays, a fl'neur manifesto and a four-panel fold-out colour map.Stroll is co-published with Eye Weekly .

Author Biography

Shawn Micallef is a senior editor at Spacing magazine (spacing.ca); a columnist for EYE WEEKLY; and a co-founder of [murmur], the location-based mobile-phone documentary project (murmurtoronto.ca). He writes about cities, culture, buildings, art and politics for a variety of media outlets, and he is also an instructor at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 8
Flâneur Manifesto	p. 10
The Middle
Yonge Street	p. 18
The Toronto Islands	p. 42
Harbourfront	p. 46
The CN Tower	p. 54
Nathan Phillips Square and the path System	p. 58
University Avenue	p. 68
Yorkville	p. 76
Metro Central YMCA	p. 82
Westish
Dundas Street	p. 88
Pearson Airport	p. 104
Markland Wood	p. 108
Alderwood and Lake Shore Boulevard	p. 112
The CNE and the Western Waterfront	p. 120
Bathurst Street	p. 132
Dupont Street	p. 146
Northish
Spadina	p. 152
St. Clair Avenue	p. 164
Eglinton Avenue and the Borough of York	p. 172
Yorkdale Mall	p. 178
The Sheppard Line	p. 184
The Finch Hydro Corridor	p. 196
Eastest
Rouge Park	p. 202
Kingston-Galloway and Guildwood Village	p. 206
Scarborough City Centre and Bendale	p. 212
Dorset Park	p. 220
Thorncliffe, Flemingdon Park and Don Mills	p. 230
Eastish
The Danforth and Crescent Town	p. 240
Downtown East Side Zigzag	p. 248
Castle Frank and the Brick Works	p. 270
Gerrard Street	p. 274
The Beach	p. 282
The Port Lands and Leslie Spit	p. 286
Acknowledgements	p. 300
Photo and illustration credits	p. 303
Index	p. 304
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.