The World According to Tower Automotive

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Borisova-Ollas, Elegy

What a way to kick off 2010! I had heard about TLR‘s infamous New Year’s Day photo-expeditions, but this was the first time that I tagged along. Tower Automotive is perhaps easy to miss out on Sterling Road – adjacent to some massive chocolate factories, this century-old automotive factorywas to die for.

Every building that I visit and record in has a distinct character, and The Tower had personality in spades!

Believe it or not Tower Automotive in the the city’s west end was once the tallest free-standing structure in Toronto, even taller than The Royal York Hotel, at least back in 1912! This Mies van der Rohe Louis Sullivan-inspired edifice now sits abandoned in the heart of one of Toronto’s most vibrant neighbourhoods, an area rife with transition.

Having been designated historic, the good news is that this classic building will stand the test of time as it awaits its pending conversion into upscale condos, and this in contrast to other factory buildings that I have visited even in this very section of Toronto, some of which are long gone. I guess that would be the bad news: that we are losing as many buildings as are saved these days here in Toronto, or so it would seem.

So the other bit of good news? That I can afford you a glimpse of this place in its present poignant & derelict state and share this with you, acoustics and all.

This picture, kindly taken by acclaimed architect Dieter Janssen who had joined in on the UE fun that day, was snapped on the uppermost floor just steps from the reverberant concrete stairwell where I had recorded after he and I discovered this massive and graffitied wall-sized map of the world.

The acoustics in the stairwell were tensile in the extreme as I read through this piece by Victoria Borisova-Ollas, an Elegy marked Cantabile, Espressivo that I thought well-suited for this forlorn site-in-transition. Like singing in the shower, this was an extremely live echo-chamber – although if you sense a restrained quality, this was because I was extremely wary as I recorded.

The alarm had been sounded early in our expedition as we moved further into the shadowy depths of the monolith, and the text that came around was “stay away from the windows” so you might very well understand my concern in blasting away on my flute – the last thing I would want is to get us all busted! These urban exploration photographers go about their work almost religiously and in near-silence, so I played Sotto-voce almost whispering into my flute, so as not to catch the attention of the security guards who we spotted prowling around the exterior of the antiquated skyscraper!

The image is kind of fun here in how it captures the global parameters of my project, and, with graffiti veiling the world map, there’s just the right suggestion of insouciance, if that’s the right word. After all, the flute – like music itself – is the most ephemeral of instruments in an ephemeral world!

My thanks to Dieter and everyone at TLR, Ms. Borisova-Ollas for her inspired composition, and Urban Explorers everywhere! Below you will find a couple more pics of Tower Automotive from an after-hours visit that I paid to the same site back in the summer…but, well, that’s a whole other story!

…Tower Automotive is even taller than the CN Tower!!