Warmth, domesticity and the outside under wraps

With apologies to Frank Lloyd Wright and his fan base (which includes this writer), no matter how much an architect nods to nature via the creation of low rooflines or blurs the transition between indoors and out, architecture, mostly, is about absolute control over the environment. The unpredictable nature of, well, Mother Nature, is not welcome.

That’s why, even as a child, I was fascinated by the rigidity and absolute control Mies van der Rohe’s brooding, black TD Centre had over the corner of King Street West and Bay Street. Heck, even where ‘nature’ was allowed, in the courtyard between the towers, it was in the form of a perfect square of shorn grass.