by Snell in Architecture on Thursday 23 August 2007

British architect Will Alsop’s design for the new Filmport complex in Toronto has just been unveiled and is set to be one of the largest film studios on the North American continent. The building is a giant sectional arc, its outer face wrapped by punctuated Cor-Ten Steel and its inner face a glass curtain wall that, with the arc, bends to form a large outdoor space. The building, as Alsop says, ‘curves as it rises’. A primary goal has been to create public space in the surrounding emerging neighbourhood — an admirable one, though we do wonder how much steel, and how much embodied energy, will be used.