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TORONTO - The granite benches at the Toronto-Dominion Centre have been trashed. Not by roaming bands of graffiti artists or ripper skateboarders, but as part of a larger "courtyard improvement project" undertaken by the suits at Cadillac Fairview, the owners of the TD Centre.
The surgical incisions, as wide as a man's hand and deep enough to reveal a lighter tone of granite, have been made at regular intervals around the edge of each slab bench. Works that belonged to an epic story of 1960s minimalism in the downtown have suffered a slam — a bad, unexpected fall from grace. I'd rather see the disfigured benches removed from the plaza than witness the body blow.
The Toronto-Dominion Centre, conceived in the mid-1960s, was designed by the legendary modernist Mies van der Rohe with Toronto's John B. Parkin Associates and Bregman + Hamann as two mountains and one banking shed of serious, corporate darkness surrounded by hard plazas and oases of greenery.
The benches once lined the flamed-granite plaza as singular, reliable places to sit or lie down during the lunch hour. The calculated defacement is an attempt by the landlord to forever prevent the grinding, fakies and fat tricks of skateboarders who occasionally invade the privately owned plaza.
The landlord considers the incisions to be part of a necessary restoration more appropriate to the mess of people who increasingly want in on some downtown action. "We're restoring our benches, rather than replacing them," says Steven Sorensen, general manager of the Toronto-Dominion Centre.
"The cuts were made to discourage skateboarding activity, which plagues all of downtown Toronto. Skateboarding activity is a bit of a hazard to our tenants."
Perhaps the landlord is a hazard to itself. When you mess with the centre, you mess with the unforgiving rigour of the Miesian aesthetic. And the cerebral legacy.
Toronto-Dominion Centre (1964 — 1971) was designed by the legendary modernist Mies van der Rohe with Toronto's John B. Parkin Associates and Bregman & Hamann (B + H) as two mountains and one banking shed of serious, corporate darkness surrounded by hard plazas and oases of greenery.
When you mess with the centre, you mess with the unforgiving rigour of the Miesian aesthetic. And the legacy.
It has hardly been an intervention worth the time and money. Here's the irony: Despite the damage inflicted on the body of the benches, the skateboarders are still showing up at the TD Centre.
The three boys I saw there during one recent Sunday afternoon had set up a small launch ramp, the better to catch some air and ride across the centre of the benches. The ride was more dangerous than before — what with the chinks cut out of the edges — but perhaps a little more exhilarating.
One of the kids, who looked about 10, had to regularly abort his ride, but he stood patiently at the side, observing the tricks of the older, more experienced boys. It looked to me like an instructive bit of mentorship, though (I know) skateboarding can grind away any hard surface lip and leave tracks of rubber on the pavings. But it seems a whole lot healthier than a boy stuck inside, growing addicted to his Xbox.
