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The likely winner, however, is Toronto landscape architecture firm, Janet Rosenberg Associates. It envisions a square by the water, hard-surfaced and dotted with armchairs. The highlight would be an environmental artwork by California-based Ned Kahn.

The three-part piece would have a shallow pond, a "roof" and a giant 20- by 13-metre "screen" made of clear "pixels" that blow in the wind.

The idea is to embrace the weather, to make it a part of the square, to illustrate it somehow and actually make it visible.

The double row of trees that extends along the lake's edge would break up here to allow for maximum access to the water.

Though the three finalists are all quite different, in their own way each takes conventional notions of public space and carefully turns it upside down. This is exactly what Toronto's waterfront needs.

It's reassuring, too, that the square will sit on land that could easily have been ignored and left untouched. Yet it is precisely this sort of detail that will bring the waterfront to life and attract an audience beyond the immediate.

Perhaps the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. – now Waterfront Toronto – should create an idea bank, an inventory of schemes that can be brought out when opportunities arise. In this case, all three finalists have done projects on the waterfront; it might be that this familiarity allowed them to produce such excellent schemes.

"I'm very excited," says Chris Glaisek, Toronto Waterfront vice-president of planning. "This space didn't exist, but now I think it's going to be one of the best public places on the water's edge. It'll be a space people love to come to."