Locations: Trinity Square Park, Toronto ON
Claude Debussy famously said that music is the space between the notes. I have found the architectural equivalent tucked in the centre of Canada’s largest city – Toronto’s Trinity Square Park.
For a public square defined by a shopping centre, an office building and a church, the space feels private, even secretive – like a walled garden with its own microclimate. What grows here is self-awareness and peace of mind – if you let it.
At the heart of the park is a meticulously paved labyrinth, based on the one in France’s Chartres Cathedral. Standing at the centre of the six-petal rose, I do a slow pan around to take in the Church of the Holy Trinity (1843), a clock tower, Reverend Scadding’s townhouse (1862) and a row of three archways, all surrounded by a line of densely planted trees.
The start and stop of a water sculpture provides an alternating rhythm of silence and ambient waterfall sounds. The flow bubbles out from a tall outlet to wind its way into an ornamental pond, echoing the ghosts of Taddle Creek, a long-buried stream.
Most tourists seem to stumble upon the place by accident. Many homeless hang out here out of habit. My visits are all-too-infrequent treats to myself.
Form and shape cannot exist without space. Yet without these buildings, as unrelated to each other as they are, there would be no Holy Trinity Park – my favourite place.