Toronto Star

Not many buildings can change a city, but Will Alsop's "Flying Tabletop" is one of them. Officially known as the Sharp Design Centre, this is Toronto's celebrated building on legs that hovers above the Ontario College of Art and Design on McCaul St. Though reviled at first, it has become a genuine civic icon, one of a handful of structures that define our city. And let's make something clear; this has nothing to do with popularity per se. Though most Torontonians seem quite fond of the eccentric, but actually very practical, addition, its significance goes beyond being liked. If this building changed Toronto, it's because of what it says: namely, that the city can be bold, that we do have the capacity to break new ground. But as a new exhibition – Will Alsop: An Urban Manifesto – at Montreal's Canadian Centre for Architecture makes clear, the Sharp Centre went through a number of incarnations before taking on its final form. In the beginning, Alsop seems to have thrown everything he could muster into the project. The show includes posters, drawings and models of a multi-coloured structure covered from top to bottom in forms and shapes whose purpose is never clear.