Architectural photography usually involves photographing interesting buildings – new, creative buildings, or historic period buildings. Average buildings aren’t usually that interesting, unless you can find an interesting angle. Almost any building can be made interesting just by looking for qualities that make the building stand out.

Consider the photographs below, of one of the buildings in Canada Square in Toronto. The building is simply known as 2180 Yonge Street, and was built in 1972 for the Canadian Tire Corp. This is a building that has only been around for 52 years, but like so many buildings is due to be replaced sometime soon by some neomodernist nightmare. I don’t really know what architectural style the building exhibits, perhaps internationalism? I don’t think most people really think about the building when they walk by it – it is fairly nondescript, from afar it looks like a black block.

But it does have one interesting characteristic – it is festooned with mirrored glass. This can be used to create a series of photographs that reflect the changing neighbourhood. Unlike the many flat modern mirrored buildings, the face of this one has a textured appearance created by different colours of horizontal glass, and vertical banded divisions. This creates an abstract mosaic effect of the the buildings reflected from the opposing side of the road. It almost makes the building seem like a huge screen, bringing it to life. So the interest is not in the building per se, but it’s interaction with its surrounds.