Brutalism then and now

In 1970s Toronto the architectural style was brutalist, a mix of intimidating concrete boxes and drab gray fortresses. The high/low point of the style is Robarts library, a soul-crushing monster with split-level windows patterned after a medieval castle. It seems to me that the building in my photo, recently completed in the new Library District on lower Bathurst, is a modern steel and glass interpretation of brutalist architecture, and in particular of Robarts unequally-sized conjoined forms.

Urban wilderness

The city has its own kind of wilderness. Not the parks or trails. These are trimmed and manicured spaces, no more natural than a bonsai tree (or kitten, remember those?). The city’s wild spaces are the product of decay and neglect, where entropy rules and anarchy prevails. 

Woods here and there

Sometimes, if I wander outside into the woods of Muskoka, I can imagine that I’m really back in the Pacific Northwest. Especially in the fall, on a cool wet day, when the moss on the ground is damp and the forest is filled with fungus of all kinds and the smell of rich earth.