Toronto city Hall

The City Hall of Toronto, Ontario, Canada is the home of the city's municipal government and one of its most distinctive landmarks. Designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell (with Heikki Castrén, Bengt Lundsten, Seppo Valjus) and landscape architect Richard Strong, and engineered by Hannskarl Bandel, the building opened in 1965. It was built to replace Old City Hall, which was built in 1899. The current City Hall, located at Nathan Phillips Square, is actually Toronto’s fourth city hall and was built in order to replace the former city hall due to a shortage of space. The area of Toronto City Hall and the civic square was formerly the location of Toronto's old chinatown, which was expropriated and bulldozed during the mid-1950's in preparation for a new civic building.

In 1958, an international architectural competition was launched by Mayor Nathan Phillips in order to find a design for the New City Hall. This competition was won by Finnish architect Viljo Revell whose winning proposal came first amongst submissions from forty-two countries. Revell’s design consists of twin towers surrounding a white disk-like council chamber which is mounted on a raised platform, with entrances located below that are open to the public. There is also a ramp from the square that connects to the podium green roof and also leads to the council chamber. The two towers are of unequal height as the east tower is taller than the west. The City Hall is nicknamed “The Eye of the Government” because it resembles a large eye in a plan view. Revell died a year before the New City Hall was completed.

Toronto (/təˈrɒntoʊ/, colloquially /ˈtrɒnoʊ/) is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from the Mississaugas of the New Credit. The settlement was later established as the Town of York and proclaimed as the new capital of Upper Canada by its lieutenant-governor, John Graves Simcoe. In 1834, York was incorporated as a city and renamed to its present name. The city was ransacked in the Battle of York during the War of 1812 and damaged in two great fires in 1849 and in 1904. Since its incorporation, Toronto has repeatedly expanded its borders through amalgamation with surrounding municipalities, most recently in 1998.

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea.

North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), about 4.8% of the planet's surface or about 16.5% of its land area. As of July 2008, its population was estimated at nearly 529 million people across 23 independent states. North America is the third-largest continent in area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth in population after Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9.9 million square kilometres, Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.

The land that is now Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and reaffirmed by the Statute of Westminster of 1931, which declared self-governing dominions within the British Empire to be equal. The Canada Act of 1982 finally severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British Parliament.

Ontario /ɒnˈtɛərioʊ/ is one of the provinces of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province/territory and fourth largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa.

Ontario is bordered by Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay to the north, Quebec to the east, and to the south by the U.S. states of Minnesota, Michigan (portions to the west), New York (portions to the east), Ohio and Pennsylvania. All but a small part of Ontario's 2,700 km (1,677 mi) border with the United States follow inland waterways: from the west at Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence River drainage system. These are the Rainy River, the Pigeon River, Lake Superior, the St. Mary's River, Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River, Lake Erie, the Niagara River, Lake Ontario, and along the St. Lawrence River from Kingston, Ontario to the Quebec boundary just east of Cornwall, Ontario.

Modern architecture is generally characterized by simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. It is a term applied to an overarching movement, with its exact definition and scope varying widely. In a broader sense, early modern architecture began at the turn of the 20th century with efforts to reconcile the principles underlying architectural design with rapid technological advancement and the modernization of society. It would take the form of numerous movements, schools of design, and architectural styles, some in tension with one another, and often equally defying such classification.

The concept of modernism would be a central theme in these efforts. Gaining popularity after the Second World War, architectural modernism was adopted by many influential architects and architectural educators, and continues as a dominant architectural style for institutional and corporate buildings into the 21st century. Modernism eventually generated reactions, most notably Postmodernism which sought to preserve pre-modern elements, while Neomodernism emerged as a reaction to Postmodernism.

Notable architects important to the history and development of the modernist movement include Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer and Alvar Aalto.

A list of structural building types and forms of architecture.

For individual buildings, see List of buildings and structures.