Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Toronto's lost shell


The Kauffman Centre for the Performing Arts, inaugurated last year in Kansas City, could have been at the corner of Bay and Wellesley in Toronto. In fact, that’s where it was originally meant to be built.


The project, discussed in the 90s, never took off and the "Toronto's Ballet-Opera House" was never built. (Instead, Toronto got the scaled-down-but-still-nice Four Seasons Centre.


Architect Moshe Safdie, the same architect who signed Montreal’s Habitat, shopped his design around for his double-header (Symphony and Ballet) for another decade. Ironically, who first proposed the project was the late Muriel Kauffman, an erstwhile Torontonian, whose name christens the Centre in Kansas City, which was funded by her family’s foundation in the US.

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