4. Shangri-La Hotel - 188 University Avenue

The Shangri La building here is fairly typical of the kind of buildings that have gone up in Toronto over the last few decades. It embraces the idea of pre-fabricated industrial construction of housing, realized by repetition in each building of standard component parts. Go into any condo unit and you’re likely to see the same heat and air conditioning panel, the same granite countertops. In theory the infinite variations on this standardization is cheaper to produce, meaning lower rent or purchase price to occupy, even if a bit monotonous at times.

Wrapping around the front façade is “Peace Pigeons,” a sculpture by artist Zhang Huan, who says he wants “mankind and nature to live in harmony”. The ornament on the standardized form here can be seen as the integration of artist and builder, a Bauhaus ideal, though rarely are artists involved in the design phase of a building in Toronto; usually they are brought on once that stage is completed. In Toronto many of these works of art are funded by what’s known as “Section 37” of the Ontario Planning Act that allows a builder to barter for more height or density by offering some public amenity, often in the form of a piece of public art. Perhaps not exactly the way the Bauhaus intended the integration to happen, but it’s how it works here.