News   Mar 28, 2024
 1K     2 
News   Mar 28, 2024
 566     2 
News   Mar 28, 2024
 862     0 

Toronto architecture: a general observation

Ladies Mile

Active Member
Member Bio
Joined
Jun 17, 2009
Messages
310
Reaction score
2
A general observation.

It is my opinion that Toronto architecture punches far above its weight: is, in fact, probably the greatest urban ensemble in North America. It is also my opinion that most people, including Toronto natives, are either unaware of this or dismissive of the fact in the face of glittering hyper-projects and desiccated landmarks from elsewhere.

Alas, my argument led to a threadjack in the World Photos forum :eek:, so I thought I would start this thread as a way to discuss opinions relating to this topic.

My fear is that we are poised as both a society and an economy to lose our special distillation of Modernism—something rooted in Mies but with its own scale and agenda—in chasing after big budget scaleless wonders like the AGO façade and the Alsop project, neither of which, I submit, is a particularly useful or beautiful structure now let alone 30 years from now.

Do we have a built environment worth defending and developing as a unified approach to space, function, time and art? Or are we destined to become famous for the big foreign thing in the front yard a la Sydney, Australia?
 
Where did this idea of foreign architecture come from? Is the AGO really a 'foreign' object, even though it was designed by a local boy? Isn't that the definition of home-grown?
 
Frank Gehry is not what I think of when I think "Canadian architecture." But really, I don't care where he's from, the style he slapped up has as much to do with Toronto as a New Mexican pueblo would.
 
Frank Gehry is not what I think of when I think "Canadian architecture." But really, I don't care where he's from, the style he slapped up has as much to do with Toronto as a New Mexican pueblo would.

Doesn't that seem overly precious? Canadian Frank Gehry isn't Canadian architecture?

I would be hard-pressed to find many differences between the modernism we build here and the modernism built in any other major, modern city. Which seems kind of obvious as Toronto modernism owes a lot to the International Style (though it WOULD be quintessentially Torontonian to try and co-opt the title of "International Style" as our own) :D
 
I would argue otherwise. Toronto may have pockets of nice buildings here and there, but overall our architecture is either boring (plain glass and big box sky-scrapers) or just plain ugly like the UofT Athletic Centre & Grad House residence.

What Toronto is missing is a real section of historic buildings. Most of them have been burned down, and the ones that remain are in dilapidated state. Also, the main problem in Toronto is that there are poor architectural standards and coherence. Many buildings don't fit well with each other, and often there are stark contrasts between old and new, tall and low.

There aren't many buffer zones, and we often see a small building like a church being completed overwhelmed by glass towers (like at University/Bloor). It looks terrible. Some areas work well in the city, but mostly it's generic forgettable architecture. Look at our office skyscrapers.

They are mostly all boring boxes, with very little to distinguish them except maybe colour or height.

The main issue in Toronto in terms of architecture is the public domain. Our streets have ugly utility and hydro poles. The light standards are ugly and very generic. Our street-furniture while improving, looks cheap and tacky, and filled with ads (My main beef are those InfoToGo signs for tourists. If I were I tourist I wouldn't even know there is a map there, as the prime sides are ads, and usually the side hidden away from view is the map, vs the other way around).

I do think though that with all the money being spend on urban improvement projects like St. Clair, Queens Quay, Bloor and Transit City, eventually the public realm will improve over time.
 
Be Not Afraid, Ladies Mile.

I think we've got all of the Big Hair foreign starchitect buildings we're going to get for quite some time. I can't think of any major local cultural or academic entity that's on the lookout for a new home, can you? These were buildings of their time, and times change.

Our city has always absorbed foreign influences, our design culture isn't a simulacrum of somewhere else, we're the third or fourth largest employer of designers on the continent, and we're a major cultural centre. We say "thank you" in our usual polite way whenever a guest comes to visit, and we see them to the door and wish them well as they jet off to some desert kingdom or other to build something iconic.

Yes, TKTKTK, Gehry had his Canadian citizenship restored by Chretien, but doctors routinely restore the virginity of Muslim women so their husbands won't suspect - these things are only skin deep. Before Frank Gehry became "FRANK GEHRY" nobody hereabouts wanted one of his buildings, he was perfectly at home working in the States, and the only reason the AGO hired him was because everyone else wanted him because of Bilbao.

Utzon and Revell were both expressive Scandinavian Modernists of the same era, neither produced buildings that were particularly practical for the users ( an opera house with poor acoustics and an impractical twin tower civic office building with windows on one side only ... ) but we chose not to spin our building as frantically as Sydney did theirs.

As for the self-dismissive thing - the we-are-not-worthy idea that the grass is always greener somewhere else because we're merely Toronto - it isn't something I hear much from people who actually work in our cultural industries or design. Mostly, the line comes from net consumers of culture with time on their hands, subscriptions to foreign archiporn journals, and access to internet forums.

So Be Not Afraid.
 
Yes, TKTKTK, Gehry had his Canadian citizenship restored by Chretien, but doctors routinely restore the virginity of Muslim women so their husbands won't suspect - these things are only skin deep. Before Frank Gehry became "FRANK GEHRY" nobody hereabouts wanted one of his buildings, he was perfectly at home working in the States, and the only reason the AGO hired him was because everyone else wanted him because of Bilbao.

How does any of that strip him of being 'Canadian', or a 'Canadian architect?' If anything it speaks to Canadians' fascination with ignoring their home-grown talent until its recognized internationally first :p

Utzon and Revell were both expressive Scandinavian Modernists of the same era, neither produced buildings that were particularly practical for the users ( an opera house with poor acoustics and an impractical twin tower civic office building with windows on one side only ... ) but we chose not to spin our building as frantically as Sydney did theirs.

Yeah, it's not like we made new City Hall our civic logo or anything.

As for the self-dismissive thing - the we-are-not-worthy idea that the grass is always greener somewhere else because we're merely Toronto - it isn't something I hear much from people who actually work in our cultural industries or design. Mostly, the line comes from net consumers of culture with time on their hands, subscriptions to foreign archiporn journals, and access to internet forums.

It comes from within our own creative industry all the time :p The criticism isn't that Canada doesn't have relevant talent, it's that the purse strings in charge of making the final decisions on things are gutless and visionless; which ends up producing a similarly dismal national product. We work in the same industry so surely you've come across this directly as well.

No talented artist/designer I know is happy with the current state of cultural and design output. The perception is that we'd have so much more, and be so much greater if we were only allowed to be.
 
How does any of that strip him of being 'Canadian', or a 'Canadian architect?' If anything it speaks to Canadians' fascination with ignoring their home-grown talent until its recognized internationally first :p



Yeah, it's not like we made new City Hall our civic logo or anything.



It comes from within our own creative industry all the time :p The criticism isn't that Canada doesn't have relevant talent, it's that the purse strings in charge of making the final decisions on things are gutless and visionless; which ends up producing a similarly dismal national product. We work in the same industry so surely you've come across this directly as well.

No talented artist/designer I know is happy with the current state of cultural and design output. The perception is that we'd have so much more, and be so much greater if we were only allowed to be.

I love this discussion irrespective of how over my head it is!
 
Last edited:
What Toronto is missing is a real section of historic buildings. Most of them have been burned down, and the ones that remain are in dilapidated state.

That's odd, I always perceived Toronto's stock of heritage properties to be one of its more impressive and endearing qualities, notable lapses in preservation judgement notwithstanding. Have you been to Cabbagetown or the Distillery or any average street in the Annex? And how many cities on this continent boast a Victorian castle? Even in glorious San Fran I found the painted ladies to be lacking in comparison with our elegant beauties!
 
Yeah, it's not like we made new City Hall our civic logo or anything.

Logo or not, it isn't the most practically designed place to work in - so it parallels Ladies Mile's reference to the Sydney opera house as an example of expressive Scandinavian Modernism that falls short functionally.

The criticism isn't that Canada doesn't have relevant talent, it's that the purse strings in charge of making the final decisions on things are gutless and visionless; which ends up producing a similarly dismal national product. We work in the same industry so surely you've come across this directly as well.

No talented artist/designer I know is happy with the current state of cultural and design output. The perception is that we'd have so much more, and be so much greater if we were only allowed to be.

Well, that speaks to what I'm saying - the talent is here and we know it is. Here's another description of the problem:

It is also my opinion that most people, including Toronto natives, are either unaware of this or dismissive of the fact in the face of glittering hyper-projects and desiccated landmarks from elsewhere.

I'd agree with Ladies Mile that, even with the drag of such de-energizing local forces, "Toronto architecture punches far above its weight" as do the arts in general. Professional bodies came into being locally, in the 1880s, when foreign architects were getting plum commissions - to design the Provincial Legislature, for instance - as a way of establishing a strong local design presence. Institutions such as the Toronto School of Art ( later OCA ) began a decade earlier. As communities, we've been promoting our local talent and identity in the face of foreign alternatives long before CanCon came along, through times of varying amounts of government support and popular recognition from the general population. I think we're in a bit of a trough right now on both counts, but it hasn't always been the case.
 
Logo or not, it isn't the most practically designed place to work in - so it parallels Ladies Mile's reference to the Sydney opera house as an example of expressive Scandinavian Modernism that falls short functionally.

Practical smactical, they get work done right? Though maybe that's why the calibre of city hall work is so low, hmmm...


Well, that speaks to what I'm saying - the talent is here and we know it is.

Well, that's the breakdown. We, the talent, know it is, but often the layer of people in charge are the ones with the we're-not-worthy attitude. Or maybe just a fear of treading a new path. It's not a blanket truth, because there are times when we break out and really shine...but those seem like such momentous occasions, when really they should be more common place. Arrrgh that sounds so prideful, bad Canadian.

It's that nugget of "We can do so much better!!!" that burns so bright when I diss 4SC.
 
As communities, we've been promoting our local talent and identity in the face of foreign alternatives long before CanCon came along, through times of varying amounts of government support and popular recognition from the general population. I think we're in a bit of a trough right now on both counts, but it hasn't always been the case.

But all this sycophantic back-patting isn't making the final product that much better. Bentley Mays' recent article about the criticism-averting, circle-the-wagons nature of Canadian architects makes clear the inability of our own stock to begin a dialogue about what is good and what needs improvement in our community. The absence of that dialogue/debate has fostered a culture which is not only slow on its feet design-wise, but one in which the buildings produced look remarkably, dangerously similar. We need to break free of the protective walls which assimilate our remarkably talented architects into a pool of cheap, grey modernism and allow each firm (or however you wish to divide the profession) to do what they really want.

In that vein, we must also encourage developers to go the extra mile and back projects which might restore Canadian design culture to the progressive station which Shocker falsely posits exists today. After all, an architect is only able to express him/herself if given the resources to do so. I do feel that a project's budget is simply one of many restrictions that form the problem to which an architect must respond. I am however, deeply disappointed that few with the goods are willing to invest in 'architecture' (as an abstract concept) and materials beyond poured concrete and spandrel panels. Worst of all, this has engendered a development process in which developers now have the audacity to bait and switch rather blatantly when they know a project will not receive approval the first time around. The clearest and most recent example of this was the 67 St. Nicholas debacle in which a lasciviously curvy yet clearly more expensive tower was first 'proposed' to a hostile audience before being boxed up and cheapened down and re-presented as being more 'contextual.'

I blame the bankers.
 
It's our local design culture that generated recent improvements in what's being built, shifting the agenda from developer culture, though. That's the dialogue that counts. You're a wraith to the very forces Ladies Mile and I have identified if you use words like "dangerous" to try and discredit the collective statement that's a characteristic of Toronto Style, by suggesting our creative community is fenced in by mysterious "protective walls", that they're not doing what they "really want", decrying it as "slow on its feet" because they don't chatter to Renzo the Roofer often enough etc. or get lasciviously curvy. You seem to see it all as very Reds Under The Beds - a big Torontonian plot to deny you the buildings you think you deserve. And money - trowel enough of it in and everything'll come out gold plated at the other end.

I suspect that most of the criticism you crave will probably not be what you want to hear. It'll be directed at Renzo and the boys.
 
It's our local design culture that generated recent improvements in what's being built, shifting the agenda from developer culture, though. That's the dialogue that counts. You're a wraith to the very forces Ladies Mile and I have identified if you use words like "dangerous" to try and discredit the collective statement that's a characteristic of Toronto Style, by suggesting our creative community is fenced in by mysterious "protective walls", that they're not doing what they "really want", decrying it as "slow on its feet" because they don't chatter to Renzo the Roofer often enough etc. or get lasciviously curvy. You seem to see it all as very Reds Under The Beds - a big Torontonian plot to deny you the buildings you think you deserve. And money - trowel enough of it in and everything'll come out gold plated at the other end.

I suspect that most of the criticism you crave will probably not be what you want to hear. It'll be directed at Renzo and the boys.

Though of course, the 'collective statement' to which you and the Smilin' Lady pay lip service is simply the other side of my 'dangerously similar' coin. You will surely attempt to discredit this with some hogwash about the 'trained eye,' but you and I both know this ain't a darin' town. Few are willing to take the risks, both financial and architectural, which are necessary in creating truly excellent buildings. As such, Toronto ends up with a solid stock of urbane modernist structures, but with few accenting notes which punctuate the street and make the whole that much more cohesive.

The protective walls are there Shocker and I don't need one JBM article to spell it out for me. The evidence is in that 'collective statement' which you so thoroughly enjoy. Most architects I speak to confirm what I already suspect was afoot - not some grand plan to cheat the public out of 'great' buildings, but simply a clutch of conservative bankers who see buildings more as cash registers than as meaningful, contemplative additions to a remarkably strong urban fabric. In that vein, it's not necessarily the architects who should conference with Renzo (though they would surely jump at the chance), but those with the funds to make equally excellent buildings a reality.
 

Back
Top