By Christopher Hume Star Columnist Mon., May 14, 2018 Will Alsop, the irreverent English architect who brought a serious sense of playfulness to his work, has died. Though known as the bad boy of British architecture, the 70-year-old architect/artist/teacher had a special relationship with Toronto where his most celebrated contribution was the Sharp Centre for Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Better known as the “flying tabletop,” the unique structure, a black-and-white pixilated box held aloft by a series of crayon-like columns, raised eyebrows around the world. It also raised Toronto’s international profile and managed to make a cold city seem cool. Alsop first came to global attention for the Peckham Library, which opened in London in 2000. Not only did the aggressively whimsical building increase membership threefold, it earned him the U.K.’s most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize. With that in hand, he set out to remake architecture and the planet as a series of a brightly coloured blobs with bean-shaped windows and as often as not, legs. But as avant-garde and startling as his architecture may be, he also wanted it to be fun. Whether designing libraries, schools, apartment buildings or ferry terminals, Alsop never failed to bring a smile to the viewer’s face. Though often dismissed as lacking seriousness, especially by other architects, he took the view that all aspects of life should be informed by the pleasure principle. If people aren’t engaged by a building, they tend to ignore or avoid it… [Read full story]
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