Canadian Art

The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts is not what it used to be. In 1880 it was incredibly important in Canada in giving artists a way to convene and work together, as well as to gain recognition and publicity.
It still does this.. but today the RCA has over 700 members operating in more than 20 art forms..... I don't even know what all 20 of those art forms would be! I checked out the website, but unfortunately it wasn't generous enough to tell me what exactly all twenty of these visual art forms were, without repeats. Though it does range from architecture to filmmaking to fine craft.
Two things.. OKay, I wouldn't have said architecture in that list of 20, though it definitely is acceptable! Also, what exactly is fine craft??? I hate these vague terms that seem to be applied to the arts because no body knows how to explain something so broad and progressive. I just thought that on a big list like that it may have gotten a bit more specific.
Oh well.
There is an RCA medal that gets awarded to, well I would assume to those of exceptional warrant within the academy. One of the first ones was awarded to Viljo Revell, an architect. I had never heard of Revell before this, but having an interest in architecture, he jumped out at me.
Turns out he is a finnish man who designed Toronto City Hall. And yes, that is apparently the only significant building that he designed in Canada. Good-job Royal Canadian Academy. What am I missing her? Some nationalistic sentiments or something?

Toronto City Hall (this image makes it look significantly more pleasing as a result of the HDR, its really quite grey). 

I don't think I've ever noticed the city hall the few times I've been in Toronto... it is evidently very modern in style, but also very very grey. It is supposed to resemble a large eye in plan and so has been nicknamed the "Eye of the Government". Okay, it's a pretty cool city hall - the one thing I just don't really like about it is that it has a pretty good view looking over the water, from what I can tell, and yet it seems like all the windows more so look across at each other. Who wants to look out the window from  desk and see more people working? Maybe it increases productivity with the employees through some sort of Panoptican effect?

Anyway, turns out that Revell died a year before the building was complete... so thats pretty unfortunate and also still leaves me wondering why he won the award. Maybe I'll have to do some more research on this. If anybody wants to save me some time and fill me in that would be great!