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What style of design would you like to see more of?

What design form would you prefer to see more of?


  • Total voters
    43

vegeta_skyline

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The fundamental question here really is;
-would you prefer that architectural firms and developers play it safe and further embrace and refine Toronto's conservative style or;
-would you rather see some more diversity in designs, perhaps at the risk of the occasional blunder?

Option 1) Maintain or increase the number of glass-clad, neo-modernist, minimalist box designs being built i.e. The Four Season's, Bay-Adelaide Center, X, X2, Theatre Park, 18 Yorkville, Telus, RBC, Southcore office towers, TCHC: Block 32/510 Bremner, 501 Yonge st. preliminary massing, Casa, 42 Charles East, Murano, Spire, Pure Spirit, Clear Spirit, Gooderham condo's, Quay West, Nicholas Residences, M5V, The Bond, U Condo's, MYC, Peter Street Condominiums, the King Charlotte, Pace, 415 King West, 120 Harbour etc.

Essentially this option is for both A) those who like the current status quo, as the majority of new highrise buildings downtown fall under this category. And B) for those who would like to see the ratio towards this type of building increase even further.

or
Option 2) Build more 'out of the box' designs i.e. Aura, The Ritz, L Tower, Absolute World, ICE, The Met, Encore, Panorama, Shangri-La, Monde, Chaz, 77 Charles, One St. Thomas, One King West, 88 Scott, Picasso, etc.
 
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Option 2) Build more 'out of the box' designs i.e. Aura, The Ritz, L Tower, Absolute World, ICE, The Met, Encore, Panorama, Shangri-La, Monde, Chaz, 77 Charles, One St. Thomas, One King West, 88 Scott, Picasso, etc.

I question how "out of the box" most of those designs are. Mostly, they're boxes pretending not to be. Only Absolute World, and maybe Ice, have coherent aesthetics that express something non-rectilinear - the rest are poorly-disguised boxes with curved sides ( L Tower ) or angles ( Ritz-Carlton-Gumbytower ) or historicist throw-backs ( 1 St. Thomas )..
 
I think your categories are really confusing and mixed up but I'd like to see more:
-variations on aA like Market Wharf and ICE, or Wallman's Lumiere
-more like Picasso
 
I agree with SP!RE, and would also like to see more evolution of the neo-modernist designs. The newest wave of aA buildings are great. I love Theatre Park, King Charlotte, and 1Thousand Bay. Other firms I enjoy are Core, RAW, Teeple, and HP. They all usually design quality buildings for the most part. Toronto (recent) resident architecture actually ranks rather well compared to other cities in the world.

I would like to see less spandrel usage like Crystal Blu and almost everything up-to-date by Tridel. Using quality glass materials makes such a large difference. Less typical, ugly waterfront green glass condos designed by firms like G+C and P+S. And hopefully no more faux-historic dreck in the downtown core.
 
I question how "out of the box" most of those designs are. Mostly, they're boxes pretending not to be.

By 'outside the box' I mean outside the simple square box form, as practically every building has boxes within their form.

the rest are poorly-disguised boxes with curved sides ( L Tower ) or angles ( Ritz-Carlton-Gumbytower ) or historicist throw-backs ( 1 St. Thomas )..

That's exactly what distinguishes them from the buildings in the first category.
 
My main liking for the humble Toronto Style box is that it meshes so well with our predictable street grid. We carry that grid in out minds wherever we go in this city, it is a measuring device for wayfinding, and the whole built environment exists in relation to a huge ravine system that angles across the otherwise unremarkable landscape and interrupts the order of the street grid.

With a rectilinear street grid and box-like buildings that always align with it, you get fabulous views of the city at 45 degree angles - I get one from across the valley in Riverdale that's breathtaking. That wouldn't be possible if we had winding roads everywhere and every building was a novelty shape aligned every which way. The order of the place sets us up for the disorder.
 
My main liking for the humble Toronto Style box is that it meshes so well with our predictable street grid. We carry that grid in out minds wherever we go in this city, it is a measuring device for wayfinding, and the whole built environment exists in relation to a huge ravine system that angles across the otherwise unremarkable landscape and interrupts the order of the street grid.

With a rectilinear street grid and box-like buildings that always align with it, you get fabulous views of the city at 45 degree angles - I get one from across the valley in Riverdale that's breathtaking. That wouldn't be possible if we had winding roads everywhere and every building was a novelty shape aligned every which way. The order of the place sets us up for the disorder.

Interesting commentary re a psycho-geography that emerges from Toronto's rational grid system that overlays the natural ravine system. You've portrayed the tension beautifully. My view of these cityscapes is a little deeper, - almost neo-classic, thanks to your, " what oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed ".
 
Well, I think that our understated flat-topped rectilinear Modernism, and the repitition of the form ( the famous "boring Toronto glass box" ), does have something in common with the neo Classical ideal. The Mock Goths swept Classical elegance and proportion away in the 19th century and replaced it with an emphasis on skyline and asymmetry, but the Classical Age of Georgian architecture, not Victoriana and the stylistic chaos of that century, is Britain's most important contribution to the architectural world - and I think we could do a lot worse than stick with what's distinctively our own form of expression.
 
I always want to see more creativity: more curves, more angles, more tapering, more setbacks, and more diversity in form. If we could genuinely be worried about a lack of cohesion in architecture, we'd have a good problem on our hands. But we're quite far from that. I want more colourful cladding, accentuation, grandeur, and contrast. It would be good to have more historical awareness and architectural features that evoke something meaningful in the local or national context, or even universally. It's inspiring to see an architect who can produce excellent minimalist boxes, but also produce buildings beyond that one form with all the different options available to the creative designer, some of which I mentioned above. The fact is that all sorts of styles can be quite functional; the box doesn't have the monopoly in that regard.

If done well, many styles will fit the Georgian grid nicely. Sometimes, the minimalist box doesn't work with Toronto's grid, which is actually imperfect. Quite often, a street ends at a T intersection or curves, and the site holds the potential for a great vista. Some American cities have more rigorous grids than we do, and thus few interesting vistas. The most interesting vistas tend to be where the building has an interesting shape against the sky in the background, and the box is the least interesting shape now that it's ubiquitous. It's also too serious to be picturesque. That's not to preclude New Modernist architecture--Teeple's Picasso will probably be a fine vista for instance--it just means more creativity is needed in terms of overall form.

The box is also the least interesting option for rarer not uncommon wedge-shaped sites and when it comes to facades on curving streets. The box is very serious in its absolute focus on functionality; some contexts demand something more whimsical. Creativity and diversity in design is good. How can one not respect the Postmodern love of irony, historical references, ornament, contextualism, and wit? The fact is that it was overplayed to the point of banality, but why exclude those characteristics from architecture when it can engage more tastes and open up new avenues of design? Yet overall, I would like to see a continued work towards a completely new style expressed in high-rise architecture. Perhaps it could be more geometric and angular, referencing math concepts and formulas and using scientific imagery as the basis for never seen before ornamental motifs, a truer spirit of our time as opposed to variations on the nearly century old Modernist theme.
 
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The few local examples of buildings that break from the street grid in a way that actually works, as far as I'm concerned, are Modernist and rectilinear: on a large scale there's Peter Dickinson's Regent Park South slabs ( which are angled to better align with sunrise and sunset, giving their apartments more natural light ) and Macy DuBois' smaller but Brutalistically powerful 45 Charles East which is set at 45 degrees to the street and still shocks some. The Dickinson apartments ( only one is to be saved ) raise the intriguing question of how much more energy-efficient our city might be now if Simcoe had skewed his street grid in the same way.

Wedge-shaped sites? Well, aA's condo tower at the end of the Esplanade is a box sitting on a rakish prow, and Wallman's 10 York steals the idea. I think the box-on-wedge works at both sites. And whimsy? OCAD is pure whimsy ... and pure box.

Colour can be quite alarming if the hand's overplayed - that refuge for at-risk women on Elm Street that looks like a giant, blue J-Cloth comes to mind as a handsomely proportioned building that gains little if anything by maxing out on coloured panels. Colour sense is very personal, and one man's stunning blue titanium AGO box is another man's "blue insulation panel" nighmare. I agree that Teeple does colour very well - he uses it sparingly but effectively for highlights at Picasso, as he does at 60 Richmond. Hot pink works just swell at Umbra, given the location!
 
Curves, curves, ah ... "sexy curves" ... ooh la la! In a city with street grid such as ours, and mostly boxy buildings, a curved building will obviously stand out more than a square one will - just as a building with brightly coloured cladding ( the aforementioned J-Cloth on Elm Street maybe ... ) will command more attention than one that fits in with the neighbours by matching them. The question I ask in such situations is what justifies breaking with the polite, neighbourly norm, what's wrong with fitting in? Is there something more important about that building to justify upstaging the neighbours? Usually I get the impression - especially when they're done badly - that there's no value-added component to the spectacle, it is just spectacle, and easy enough to accomplish from the designer's bag of tricks. I'm left with the impression that we'd be better off in such cases if there was a reason for departing from the norm.

Most of the circular / curvy Toronto buildings that I love are built that way for structural, functional reasons rather than for flashy spectacle - and they're often structures that we've lost, such as the huge Consumer's Gas gasometers at Front and Parliament, and over on Bathurst, which were such massive presences on the skyline for decades and spoke to our sturdy, functional, industrial past. The clusters of oil tanks in the port lands are all gone too. And the curvy grain elevators down by the harbour are fewer in number and still at risk. And the Planetarium is slated to come down. And the Cyclorama at Front and University was demolished in the 1970s. Zeidler's geodesic Ontario Place Cinesphere survives, thankfully.
 

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