It was time to remember more deliberately. It was time to remind Torontonians, Canadians?and perhaps the world?of how we stood guard for our country. When the American troops invaded in 1813, the fort at the edge of Lake Ontario was the ground for the Battle of York. And afterward, for a long time, Fort York struggled to remain relevant.
A national competition in 2009 resulted in the design and construction of a new visitor centre at the Fort York National Historic Site in downtown Toronto. The joint venture team considered the site as the birthplace of Toronto; the fort is home to one of the oldest collections of fortifications in Canada, dating back to the War of 1812. Today, the Fort York Visitor Centre, completed in 2015, commemorates the historic significance of the site, providing a contemplative opportunity for visitors to reflect as they ascend to the Fort Commons to a final prospect overlooking the fort and the city beyond. With its frosted glass and rusty steel exterior, the centre is a long linear structure that sits southwest of the fort just north of the Gardiner Expressway. The weathering steel plates that comprise the façade are reminiscent of the area?s industrial past. Despite having been value-engineered within an inch of its architectural life, the centre is exquisitely detailed and spatially coherent. The project?s main facade is intimately interwoven in alternations of transparency and solidity, which seek to evoke glimpses from within the fortificatio...