Superstar architect Frank Gehry, born and raised in Toronto, has no illusions about his hometown.

“Toronto has grown to look like every other screwed-up city,” says the 84-year-old practitioner. But as Gehry also makes clear, he hopes to do something about it.

And if David Mirvish gets his way, he will.

Impresario and city-builder Mirvish has plans for Gehry to be the star of his biggest show ever, redeveloping a block and a half on the north side of King St. between John and the Royal Alex. Today the site is given over to century-old warehouses and the Princess of Wales Theatre. Mirvish and Gehry want to replace them with an extraordinary complex that would have a trio of towers rising from a glass podium he calls “the cloud.”

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The first proposal, presented last October, was an instantly recognizable Gehry set piece; the expected curvilinear planes reached out over the sidewalk from a building apparently exploding in slow motion.

The latest offering, though equally Gehryesque, explores new architectural territory. The embrace of complexity is no less evident, but now things feel more organic, integrated and fluid. Looking carefully at the towers, one sees brief moments of Euclidian order, but for the most part, these three skyscrapers — 82, 84 and 86 storeys — are loose and asymmetrical. Their undulating surfaces move in and out to a rhythm at once urban and idiosyncratic.

They form an ensemble, one unparalleled in Toronto, and most cities for that matter.

“It’s pretty rare to have three buildings at this scale,” says Gehry partner Craig Webb. “It’s something we haven’t done before. The three individual expressions emerge from a cloud-like podium. We don’t want to create another dark glass tower; we want something silky and soft. We want lightness.”

From the city’s point of view, however, the only issues are heritage and height. Planners want each tower chopped by at least 30 storeys and the warehouses kept in one form or another. Though the current scheme continues to ignore these demands, both Gehry and Webb admit this iteration is better for city input.

“We’ve done a bunch of studies,” Gehry explains. “We’re searching for that way of expressing old Toronto without copying what they did. It’s not hard to do a skyscraper; but how do you do one that has some Toronto DNA in it? I lived not far from the site. I remember the warehouses. It was the industrial section where the factories were. But we need to bring a new kind of life down there.”

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The latest podium features wooden beams — vertical, horizontal and diagonal – intended to be reminiscent of the industrial structures that would be torn down to make way for the new stuff. Whether or not the addition of wood, however much we love it, will have the desired effect remains to be seen.

There are two types of heritage, let’s not forget: one we inherit; the other we bequeath. Toronto planners, those earnest guardians of the rules, have yet to grasp that Mirvish’s scheme represents an opportunity that comes along once in the life of a city. Surely, their response should be to put aside the checklist and do everything they can to make it work?

Rules, of course, were meant to be broken. The trouble here is not that we break rules, but that we break them for the wrong reasons. This time the height and heritage cards are trumped by the possibility of gaining a major architectural landmark, Toronto’s first of the 21st {+ } century.

Gehry muses about designing “the quintessential Toronto building.” He’s probably the only architect alive who could pull that off. Certainly, he’s one of very few we’d like to see try. Quintessential or not, the results would be definitive.

Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca

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