Nathan Phillips Square is Toronto’s most important landmark, symbolising the city’s rejection of its conservative and monocultural past, in favour of a diverse, modern and global future, cast in Modernist urbanism and architecture. Today, Toronto is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, in a country widely considered the most successful multicultural society in the world. However, what role the built form of the city’s microscale public spaces plays in supporting this pluralism remains largely unresearched. This paper attempts to contribute to this gap through an empirical examination of how Nathan Phillips Square enables and constrains ethnocultural differences and intercultural encounter. The paper begins with an exploration of literature on encounter in public spaces, and the agency of built form in mediating such interactions. The paper then presents three key findings based on an actor-network ethnography. This paper is critical of the emphasis placed on the square’s symbolic capital, at the expense of the multi-ethnic everyday life of the city. As a result, the failings of Modernism appear locked in, largely reducing the square to a spectacle. It is hoped that these findings will better inform urban designers and governments in shaping public space for ethnically diverse Western cities.

内森·菲利普斯广场（Nathan Phillips Square）是多伦多最重要的地标，象征着该市拒绝其保守和单一文化的过去，取而代之的是多样化，现代和全球性的未来，并融入了现代主义的城市主义和建筑风格。如今，多伦多已成为世界上种族最多样化的城市之一，在这个被广泛认为是世界上最成功的多元文化社会的国家中。但是，城市的微型公共空间的建筑形式在支持这种多元化方面所起的作用仍未得到充分研究。本文试图通过对内森·菲利普斯广场（Nathan Phillips Square）如何实现和限制民族文化差异和跨文化遭遇的经验检验来弥补这一差距。本文首先探讨了有关在公共场所相遇的文献，并探讨了建筑形式在中介这种互动中的作用。然后，本文基于演员网络人种志提出了三个主要发现。本文批评了对广场象征性首都的强调，却以牺牲城市多民族的日常生活为代价。结果，现代主义的失败似乎被锁定，大大减少了人们的视线。希望这些发现能更好地为城市设计者和政府提供信息，以帮助塑造具有种族差异的西方城市的公共空间。