Metro Centre: The “Very Obvious Job” that was never Built

One of the largest and most ambitious projects in John Andrews’s career, Metro Centre was an imposing yet unaccomplished development plan for Toronto’s downtown that was elaborated between 1968 and 1971. Targeting a large area of underused railway tracks dividing the city from Lake Ontario, the scheme was one of the first opportunities for Andrews to operate at urban scale in an already established context, confronting with existing street patterns, traffic flows, and pedestrian movements. The essay looks at the history of the project, in particular at the involvement of the clients – Canadian National Railways and Canadian Pacific Railway —, at the role played by the design team, at the specific context of Toronto and Canada between the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s, and at the fate of the entire operation. The plan for Metro Centre reveals key aspects of the design philosophy that Andrews espoused, but it is also emblematic of the historical period and the cultural climate of the time.