Early in the book, while talking with Pomphrey, Harris muses, ‘before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting’. Toronto’s filtration plant is a testament to this kind of imagining, an architectural anomoly mysteriously beached on the shores of Lake Ontario. Contemplating this beaux arts composition with its grass terraces, palaces and commanding views, it is almost sacrilage to believe that its raison d’être was simply to solve Toronto’s water purity problems by processing millions of litres of lake water.
The architecture is modernist in the direct way that structures and their placement reflect the inward flow of water and the industrial production of clean drinking water. In contrast, the architectural styling shares nothing with a reductive modernist sensibility. The materials alone — yellow brick, limestone, copper, bronze, terrazzo floors, black marble, herringbone tile work and fine plaster, coupled with inventive detailing and fine craftsmanship — create a sumptuous environment in which the mechanics of the pumps and controls are elevated to a shining, functional art.
on site review 17
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