Despite outrage, a roof in Don Mills is not the priority

Closing the Ontario Science Centre has distressed many people for many reasons. Some, like me, are emotional, the big ole place a warm memory from childhood, although the shabby fountainless stained concrete building in an isolated car-dependent part of Toronto makes me wince a bit now. If you love something, keep it in shape.

- HEATHER MALLICK

Modernist architecture bros stain the concrete further with their tears, like the Globe's embittered architecture columnist mourning "Toronto's great Brutalist temple of childhood wonder, Raymond Moriyama's hillside wonderland."

Brutalism is ugly, like the gloomy concrete hulk of Robarts Library and the unfixable Manulife Centre, architectural manspreading that nobody loves, especially now as life gets grimmer. Sixty years ago, trendy architects wanted huge monoliths to overawe pointless little humans.

Builders now glue glass boxes to these grim buildings to make them look more inviting. It's even worse. Remember, ubiquitous cheap glass is the concrete of our future, no match for global heating.

The late Moriyama doesn't fare well. In 2023 he wrote to the Star claiming he had used "concrete to last far beyond 100 years." But he was designing grey boxes in Don Mills, not the Pyramids, and apparently used the now-notorious lightweight RAAC semi-concrete in parts of the roof.