7. Cloud Gardens - 14 Temperance Street

Here in Cloud Gardens is the Monument to Construction Workers on the east wall by the greenhouse. It’s an explicit celebration of craft and trade workers that would make the Bauhaus proud. Artist Margaret Priest collaborated with Baird/Sampson Architects and twenty-seven Ontario trade unions on this eighty-five-foot-long structural steel grid with insert panels. Each trade union fabricated a panel representative of their specific materials and expertise, based on Priest’s original drawings. For example, Copper Shingles evokes roofing, pipes for pipefitters, concrete rebar, clusters of wire, and so on.

Priest said of her work here, “This monument is dedicated to the many skilled men and women who, drawing upon generations of knowledge and tradition, have wielded the materials of the built world, forming them expertly according to the needs of each finished building.”

The greenhouse, when open, is also a lovely brief refuge, especially in the winter.