VanderPalette

These two university athletic facilities demonstrate vastly difference attitudes toward connecting with the street and campus. The University of Toronto Athletic Centre (left) is an unwelcoming fortress with no indication that healthy activities might take place within. By contrast, the recently opened Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport, designed by Patkau Architects and MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (right), is visually connected with the street and conveys a message of energy, health and accessibility.

Buildings that don’t connect with the street come in all shapes and sizes, but they tend to have the same dismal effect.