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This bulding houses exhibition space, a theatre, and administrative offices.
The Queen Elizabeth Building was designed by Page and Steele Architects (with Peter Dickinson), now affiliated with IBI Group. It stood as one of the first buildings on site that would be used year round, this changed the entire structure of the once limited seasonal uses of the Exhibition Place. During the modernist movement a wave of new designs hit the Exhibition Place. This changed how we thought of design. There was more thought towards the future of design and what the Exhibition Place could become.
The building is formally divided into three sections including: a two-storey office/admin building, a 1300-seat theatre, and a large one-storey exhibition hall. This building was designed due to the growing Women’s Department programming at the CNE. The new building was proposed in 1954, and by 1955 they had desinged and built the Queen Elizabeth Building.
The Queen Elizabeth building’s unique concrete roof comprised of folded plates allows for the large interior uninterrupted spans, the glass walled lobby and the freestanding spiral staircase. Dickinson’s modernist design emphasizes the clean lines, forms and open spaces of modernism. Simply, modern buildings are designed to be functionally adaptable, they should reflect the current culture of design, they should employ ingenuity and creativity and should be courageous visions of the future. This building exemplifies the modernist building, with clean angular lines, flexible plans and very minimal ornamentation.
The mid-century modern style is very evident in Dickinson’s design of the Queen Elizabeth Building. In addition to the flexible and open plans the theatre foyer had a large spiral staircase a polychromatic floor. The theatre had the largest performing stage of its time in Canada.
The theatre held many events and performances that made the building a very popular venue at the CNE. Various fashion and cooking shows were held in the theatre which drew large crowds. The theatre was also used for a number of other events such as the CBC Trans Canadian Talent Show (1959), Miss Teenage Canada Contest (1969), the Juno Awards (1975), and many more.
The Queen Elizabeth Building was built in one of the most historically rich locations in Toronto. The Exhibition Place is located just west of Toronto’s downtown on the shore of Lake Ontario. The site has had various types to trading, buying and selling since the 18th century, in which French forts were built to establish successful furs trade routes. Later, the grounds were officially established as the Exhibition Place with the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1879. The buildings designed since reflect the societal shifts architecturally, from the early 20’s through to post war modernism to current day innovative designs.
This building and the many other mid-century modern designs at Exhibition Place mark this very impactful era of design that heavily shifted our thinking towards the way architecture can look and feel. Peter Dickinson the British lead architect of this building was an extremely creative and energetic designer whose passion for modern design influenced not only Toronto but Canada’s minds on this new very experimental and futurist way of designing. These modern techniques as seen in the Queen Elizabeth Building encourage flexibility and adaptability through open plans while also keeping very geometrically familiar clean lines and forms. Dickinson’s modernist intervention in the Queen Elizabeth Building and other modernists designs on site transformed the preconceived notions of what design could be.
