Toronto's current City Hall exists because a Finnish architect nobody had heard of beat I.M. Pei to the punch. A 1950s competition for a replacement to its Victorian predecessor drew 510 entries from 42 countries. Judges chose Viljo Revell's design: two curved towers cradling a saucer-shaped council chamber, poured entirely in concrete.

Revell never saw it finished. He travelled to England to choose Henry Moore's sculpture The Archer for the plaza outside, then died of a heart attack in Helsinki the next day. Council had not approved money for the artwork, so the mayor rounded up a dozen anonymous donors to buy it.

The building opened in 1965 to a bemused city, later gaining a different fame as backdrop to a certain crack-smoking mayor.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours set this saucer-shaped upstart against its Romanesque predecessor across the street, tracing Toronto's civic image from Victorian gravity to postwar confidence.