Bata Shoes Head Office
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The Bata Shoes Head Office was Bata Shoes' former headquarters in North York, Ontario. It was an historic building dating to the 1960s designed by architect John B. Parkin. It was located atop a hill by the major intersection of Eglinton Avenue and the Don Mills Road.
The prominent location and bold modernist architecture made it a well known landmark in the city. It thus became a centre of debate when the Aga Khan Foundation announced plans to demolish the building to construct a $200 Ismaili centre.
Toronto Star architecture critic Christopher Hume lauded the building prior to its demolition:
"Situated on a height of land in Toronto's north end, the simple, modular edifice exemplifies the ideal of the building in a park. Simple and seemingly weightless, it rests on rows of columns, reminiscent of an ancient Greek temple. Unadorned yet poetic, the architecture pays homage to the past while extolling the virtues of the future."[1]
Globe and Mail architecture critic Lisa Rochon was more critical of the structure:
"the Bata is an imperfect work. Its north elevation is clumsy, with a porte-cochère intended as the connecting piece between the original building and a second (never built) retail space and warehouse tower. Instead, surface parking spreads out to the north and west of the building, fulfilling the deadening formula of the industrial office complex. The umbrella columns, though exhilarating to look at, are not as original as they might appear: They are a direct quotation from one of the buildings commissioned by Emhart Manufacturing Co. in Connecticut designed by the eminent American modernist firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill."[2]
In 2005 North York community council voted unanimously to reject a heritage designation for the building. The building was leveled, but as of 2009 no work has begun on the Aga Khan project.
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