Images of the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada by Moriyama and Teshima Architects.

Bata Shoe Museum

Raymond Moriyama and Teshima Architects
1995

Museum as container
This shoe museum in downtown Toronto collects, preserves, and exhibits footwear from around the world. "With an international collection of over 13,000 shoes and related artifacts, the Bata Shoe Museum celebrates 4,500 years of footwear history in four distinctive galleries" (press release). The architect designed the building as a container, evoking an opening shoe box; the roof suggests a lid resting on an open box. With age, the copper-clad trim will develop a green patina thus making the lid effect more evident. Although not as radical as some version of deconstructivism (see Coop Himmelb(l)au or Daniel Libeskind), this building has some characteristic features: non rectilinear angles (walls are canted), a wall that peels out from the facade, and an extravagant angled entrance portal, a transparent glass wedge.

A warm container clad in a limestone
Note how the wall peels out from the facade. See a post-modern example of this effect: Venturi Scott Brown's fire station in New Haven.

Dramatic angled entrance

Return to Toronto Index.

Click here to return to index of art historical sites.

Click here to return to index of artists and architects.

Click here to return to chronological index.

Click here to see the home page of Bluffton University.

© 2010 Mary Ann Sullivan. I have photographed (on site), scanned, and manipulated all the images on these pages. Please feel free to use them for personal or educational purposes. They are not available for commercial purposes.

	Museum as container This shoe museum in downtown Toronto collects, preserves, and exhibits footwear from around the world. "With an international collection of over 13,000 shoes and related artifacts, the Bata Shoe Museum celebrates 4,500 years of footwear history in four distinctive galleries" (press release). The architect designed the building as a container, evoking an opening shoe box; the roof suggests a lid resting on an open box. With age, the copper-clad trim will develop a green patina thus making the lid effect more evident. Although not as radical as some version of deconstructivism (see Coop Himmelb(l)au or Daniel Libeskind), this building has some characteristic features: non rectilinear angles (walls are canted), a wall that peels out from the facade, and an extravagant angled entrance portal, a transparent glass wedge.

A warm container clad in a limestone Note how the wall peels out from the facade. See a post-modern example of this effect: Venturi Scott Brown's fire station in New Haven.



Dramatic angled entrance