Uno Prii - Style and Recognition

Style and Recognition

Prii was concerned that big apartment buildings tended to be seen as anonymous human filing cabinets, that unadorned rectangular towers did not offer tenants an identity. Apartment buildings with unusual and interesting exteriors could encourage a collective identity among tenants. Clients who wanted something unique from the repetitious geometry of the International style came to him. His best-known buildings were built in the 1960s—distinctive and original towers with a sculptural quality. Prii’s apartment buildings suggest an unsubtle protest against severe, autocratic, and humourless Modernism. In his free time he painted and sculpted, activities which he claimed to have influenced his compositions.

Critics considered the buildings strange. Like Morris Lapidus in the United States, Uno Prii found himself popular, but not acclaimed, receiving no awards or recognition from his fellow architects. He noted in a 1999 interview in Taddle Creek that “they thought my work just looked funny...they didn’t like me...they didn’t like my work at all", though he remained proud of his original compositions, observing that "originality is the hardest thing to come by."

However, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new generation of architects and architectural enthusiasts had rediscovered the work of Uno Prii. Architects such as Michael McClelland of E.R.A. Architects, John Shnier of Kohn Shnier Architects, the University of Toronto's Larry Richards, past chairman of the Toronto Society of Architects Joe Lobko, and heritage architect Catherine Nasmith, have spoken of the importance of his work. As of 2007, 16 buildings designed by Prii have been listed in Toronto's Inventory of Heritage Properties.