Studio Libeskind viewed the repurposing of a mid-modern theater into the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts as an opportunity to integrate city life with culture and the arts in Toronto, Canada.  Working as part of a public/private partnership, the firm situated a 58-floor condominium tower next to the performing arts center and created a public plaza along the west side of the redevelopment. The L Tower extrudes upward, with bold, clean lines, until it expands with a dramatic backward curve at the top of the tower that prevents its shadow from being cast onto the adjacent Berczy Park. Inset…

The extension to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), now named the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, is situated at one of the most prominent intersections in downtown Toronto. It is the largest Museum in Canada and attracts more than a million visitors a year. Its new name is derived from the building’s five intersecting metal-clad volumes, which are reminiscent of crystals—inspired by the crystalline forms in the ROM’s mineralogy galleries. Libeskind created a structure of organically interlocking prismatic forms turning this important corner of Toronto, and the entire museum complex, into a luminous beacon. The design succeeds at inviting glimpses up, down,…