Moore Park architect draws the world

It’s not surprising to hear architect A.J. Diamond’s Moore Park home is filled with hundreds of sketches.

But they’re not all blueprints for future world-renowned buildings.

The founding principal of Diamond and Schmitt Architects, responsible for Toronto’s acclaimed Four Seasons Centre, says he’s kept a sketchpad and watercolour paints by his side since he was a child.

He estimates he’s made 300-500 sketches of everywhere from Israel to Italy. Now, fans of Diamond’s work can see a different side of the award-winning architect’s personality with Sketches from Here and There, a collection of his watercolours, line drawings and words.  

The book is an intimate journey into Diamond’s life and his many travels to places such as France, Poland, the Caribbean, South Africa and Canada.

Mostly buildings and landscape, one piece features a Roman street, while another depicts a Caribbean summer home.

“I have an urge to do it because there is an enormous sense of gratification,” Diamond says from in his open concept office in downtown Toronto earlier this month.  

Diamond rarely parts with his sketches, saying he’s probably only given about a dozen away in his lifetime.

“Once I gave a very nice girl one and the only way I could get it back was to marry her,” Diamond says with a grin.

His childhood sketches led him on the his creative path. Diamond has created buildings heralded for their design and sustainability around the world.

The Order of Ontario recipient and Officer of the Order of Canada came to Toronto in the mid-1960s, opening his then one-man architect firm in 1975.

Apart from the Four Seasons Centre, his firm is responsible for St. Michael’s Hospital’s Cardinal Carter Wing, and the recently opened Corus Quay building on the waterfront.

Nowadays, Diamond has over 100 architects under his wing, designing buildings in the areas of healthcare, the arts, sciences and private projects in more than a handful countries.  

The city and his firm have grown together, Diamond says.

“Toronto has transformed from a provincial town into a cosmopolitan metropolis,” he says. “I came at a nascent time...it was pure luck.”

Being based in the Big Smoke has afforded his firm the opportunity to bid on internationally innovative projects, he says.

In turn, Diamond and co. have helped shape Toronto’s contemporary scene, designing buildings that since the 1970s have turned Toronto from the lackluster to the sublime.

“As I say in my book, ‘I don’t really see a building until I draw it,’” he says.

Diamond’s interest in change has led him to a number of academic appointments and positions at public agencies.

From 1986 to 1989, he served as a commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and in 1995 he was part of a five-member taskforce recruited to manage the growth of the GTA.

Diamond has held academic appointments at the University of Toronto, York University and at the universities of Texas and Pennsylvania.

Does Diamond ever consider retiring?  

He admits he takes longer vacations than he used to when he first established his firm, but the thought of retiring hasn’t really entered his mind.

“It wasn’t a choice,” he says of his career as an architect.

“It was what I felt I was.”