Founded 1876, elevated 26 metres in 2004
OCAD University
Canada's oldest art and design school shares a park with the AGO — and its newest building looks like a giant tabletop lifted on brightly coloured pencil-shaped legs.
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Across Grange Park from the Art Gallery of Ontario sits Canada's oldest school dedicated entirely to art and design — one whose newest building has become almost as recognizable a piece of Toronto architecture as the AGO itself.
Founded in 1876, renamed five times
OCAD University was established by the Ontario Society of Artists in 1876 as the Ontario School of Art, with just 14 registered students — making it the oldest continuously operating art and design school in the country. It went through five subsequent name changes over the following century and a half — Toronto Art School, Central Ontario School of Art and Industrial Design, Ontario College of Art, Ontario College of Art & Design — before gaining full university status in 2002 and becoming OCAD University in 2010.
The Sharp Centre for Design (2004)
British architect Will Alsop was commissioned in 2002 to design the school's most distinctive building. The Sharp Centre for Design, completed in 2004, looks like a black-and-white checkered tabletop hovering roughly 26 metres above the ground, supported by a forest of brightly coloured, pencil-thin structural legs — a genuinely strange piece of design that's become one of the most photographed academic buildings in the city.
A shared neighbourhood with the AGO
OCAD's campus sits directly across Grange Park from the Art Gallery of Ontario, whose current Frank Gehry-designed building is covered in our art guide — putting Canada's oldest art school and one of its largest art museums within a five-minute walk of each other, part of the same downtown arts corridor.
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Sources
- OCAD University — History
- Wikipedia — OCAD University
- The Canadian Encyclopedia — Ontario College of Art and Design University