Ontario Place

Ontario Place: The Search for a Modern Landscape examines one of Canada’s most significant architectural and landscape works of the twentieth century. Designed by architect Eberhard Zeidler and landscape architect Michael Hough and opened in 1971, Ontario Place embodied a Utopian vision for a new kind of civic waterfront: an accessible public realm of winding paths, dense plantings, elevated pods, canals, lagoons, and the world’s first permanent IMAX cinesphere. Conceived as an urban microcosm of social equity and environmental imagination, it represented a radical integration of architecture, infrastructure, and landscape.

Set against the backdrop of Toronto’s rapid growth and ongoing debates about modernist preservation, this book tells the site’s history and documents its design and cultural significance. Essays by distinguished authors Bridgitte Shim, Ken Greenberg, Alissa North, Jane Wolff, Béatrice Grenier, as well as by contributors from the Future of Ontario Place Movement trace the evolution of Ontario Place, its role in shaping Toronto’s modern identity, and its global position within the megastructure movement.

Richly illustrated with materials from Zeidler’s and Hough’s archives and a recent photographic record captured before demolition of Ontario Place began, the volume offers an unprecedented visual and intellectual chronicle of a landmark now at risk.