A concrete peacock beloved and mocked in equal measure
Robarts Library
The University of Toronto's massive Brutalist central library, opened in 1973, is famous for its distinctive triangular floor plan and a nickname — Fort Book — that says as much about its critics as its architecture.
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Robarts Library opened in 1973 as the University of Toronto's central research library, an enormous Brutalist concrete structure whose distinctive triangular floor plan, when viewed from above, has been compared over the decades to everything from a peacock to a turkey. Named for John Robarts, Ontario's premier at the time of its construction, the building was designed to hold millions of volumes in a period when university library systems across North America were racing to build capacity for rapidly growing postwar enrolment.
Fort Book
Students nicknamed the building "Fort Book" for its fortress-like concrete exterior, narrow window slits, and imposing scale relative to the surrounding campus — an aesthetic typical of the Brutalist style but one that made the building a lightning rod for architectural criticism almost from the day it opened. Despite, or partly because of, that reputation, Robarts has become one of the most recognizable buildings on the University of Toronto campus and remains one of the largest academic library buildings in Canada.
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