Casino Hotels: four hotels

Performance runs in the halls of the resort, evening after evening, and the rooms fill and empty with it. Around that, restaurants on several levels take the traffic, and people move between them and the terraces outside. What repeats is the hall in use and the walk out into the air afterwards.

The buildings are the former French and Québec pavilions of Expo 67, on Île Notre-Dame in the middle of the St Lawrence, reached by bridge from Montréal. The halls sit on stacked levels within them, and the terraces on the upper floors face the river and the lit city standing across it.

Two exhibition pavilions built to last six months are still being filled decades later. The evening moves upward through them, from the halls to the outer decks, and the water does the work that walls would otherwise have to do.

Shows run in the resort's own theatre, and the building is arranged around them: people eat first, go in, and come out again into the same public rooms. Away from the theatre the spa and the restaurants keep their own traffic going. The lit gorge behind the windows is there throughout all of it.

The resort is cut into the slope above the Niagara gorge on the Ontario side, so its public floors look straight across at the falling water. The theatre itself sits deep inside the building and has no windows, and the glazed galleries and dining rooms around it carry the view instead.

The house turns inward for the show and outward again afterwards. A crowd leaves a dark room and walks into a wall of glass with lit water beyond it, which gives the building a rhythm that nothing indoors could produce.

Concerts are held in the resort's own hall, and the evening is built around them, with the restaurants filling before and after. Outside, the waterfront beside the marina carries walkers, boats and the light coming off the river. Both go on side by side, evening after evening, and people cross between them.

The resort stands on the middle arm of the Fraser River at Richmond, British Columbia, with a marina of its own at the water's edge. The hall is inside the complex; the quay, the moorings and the walkway lie directly outside it, and the airport flight path passes overhead.

The building has a front on the water that most resorts of this size never have, so the evening does not stay indoors. People step out of a full hall onto a working river, and the two scales sit oddly and well together.

The resort keeps a concert hall of its own, and it is in use through the season, filling and emptying the rooms around it. Beyond the building, people walk out towards Lake Couchiching. Kitchens, the spa and the golf ground carry the rest of the day around those two habits.

The resort stands on the lands of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, near Orillia in Ontario, north of the city and set among trees and water. The hall is within the complex; the lake lies a short walk away, with the golf ground and open country lying between the two.

Being on First Nation land and outside a town changes what an evening is. There is no street outside to absorb a crowd, so people spill towards the water and the trees, and the building sits in country rather than in a strip.