Central Technical School Art Centre

Macy Dubois/Fairfield & Associates, 1962

The first building of Central Technical School, once Canada’s largest high school, was the product of a national design competition in 1912 won by Montreal’s Ross & McDonald,. For this specialized art studio building, Dubois — a young American architect and Harvard GSD graduate — chose exposed concrete, in a variety of textures, drawing on the example of Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center at Harvard.

The studios all face north, to capture the preferred northern exposure. The building steps back as it rises, allowing sunlight to penetrate the lower floors. Circulation and locker areas allow many opportunities to display art on the walls and in niches.

This is likely the first Brutalist building in Toronto, using exposed concrete in a Modernist idiom. Dubois’s firm oversaw a later expansion. It was widely published, including in the New York Times and Architectural Forum. The critic Peter Collins compared it to C.R. Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art, calling it “a noble continuation of [that] functionalist tradition.”

The centre is a designated heritage building. Its concrete shows significant signs of spalling, a sign that significant conservation work will be required.