Posted Feb 19, 2016, 7:33 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 10,676
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Quote:
Inside a bold Forest Hill home of quiet surprises
John Bentley Mays
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016 8:00AM EST
Last updated Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016 2:17PM EST
The streetscapes of Toronto’s upmarket Forest Hill neighbourhood are staid, poshly ordinary and a bit on the dull side, which, it appears, are the things that residents like about them. You don’t expect to find much evidence of fresh architectural thinking among the mock-Tudor and faux-Georgian homes of the district. It simply wouldn’t be tolerated.
Or so I thought until a mild afternoon late last year, when an errand brought me into the attractive cluster of middle-brow shops and restaurants known locally as Forest Hill Village. I parked my car on little Relmar Road, at the edge of the commercial settlement, and was about to head out on my errand when something caught my eye.
It was a pair of tall, flat-topped semi-detached houses that did not look like the rest of Forest Hill. Instead of turning a politely dark, retiring, fustily historicist front toward the sidewalk, for instance, the small modernist complex faced the city boldly, and made no apology for being high-spirited and lyrical in humdrum company. The dramatically sculpted façade’s broad abstract planes of light stone and blackened brick seemed to crack apart and slide over and under each other, creating strong visual rhythm reminiscent of cool, smooth modern jazz. To switch the image: If there could be a Cubist façade treatment, this was it.
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Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home...home-of-quiet-surprises/article28697975/
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