yyzer
Senior Member
There have been renderings floating around for a while now on this one - a fairly attractive point tower proposal for Burlington...
ARCHITECTURE
Burlington gets an 'urban anchor'
Architect Roland Rom Colthoff brings big-city sophistication to the 'burbs
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
From Friday's Globe and Mail
E-mail
May 9, 2008 at 12:00 AM EDT
The affluent Toronto suburb of Burlington needs no lessons from anyone about the high cost and environmental downside of sprawl.
More than a decade ago, the burgeoning town crafted a progressive plan intended to blunt the impact of strong growth by encouraging greater population densities north of the Queen Elizabeth Way. Among the scheme's sensible proposals was the development of a new urban centre at the intersection of Upper Middle Road and Appleby Line, with tall buildings being the focus in the north Burlington expanse of low-rise suburban housing.
This proposed urban concentration has been slow to materialize. Apart from one building about 10 storeys tall, nothing pokes up much above the spread of big-box stores and tract houses around the intersection. But after the construction of a new condominium complex called Ironstone, the corner will look at least a little more like a piece of real city fabric.
Designed by architect Roland Rom Colthoff, partner in the Toronto firm Raw Design, Ironstone will feature a 16-storey point tower and two wings, one six storeys, the other four. All told, the project will offer 201 units in configurations ranging from the usual condominium apartments to two-storey lofts and live/work accommodations.
Shops and services will cover 12,000 square feet of floor space at grade.
This being suburbia, there will be parking galore: two levels underground and some 300 spots above ground. Instead of leaving the lot a bleak asphalt apron around the base of the tower, Mr. Rom Colthoff will throw a landscaped deck over the parking spots. This move will soften the harsh visual effect produced by great swaths of open-air parking — one of the ugliest things about the precincts of suburban tall buildings — and it will provide condo-dwellers high aloft with a view of at least a little green down below.
If the unit sizes and layouts are mostly standard-issue for buildings of this sort, the fifth-floor lofts in the tower are more interesting than that. These two-storey apartments, with terraces on each floor and cross ventilation, update the old modernist determination to have light and fresh air coming in from all directions — a very good determination, too often ignored in contemporary condo design.
The facades of Mr. Rom Colthoff's tower present a public face of precast concrete and brick frames for off-the-rack glazing systems. Viewed as a work of art, Ironstone does not measure up very well to this architect's most striking residential work. I am thinking here of the beautiful (if unfortunately unbuilt) N-Blox condominium scheme in Toronto that Mr. Rom Colthoff designed with Richard Witt, and the pair's Cube, which is going up on the former N-Blox site on College Street. But the decision to keep Ironstone tame was deliberate.
"There was a debate among the design team about how far we could push the town of Burlington," the architect told me. "There was the sense that Burlington wasn't quite ready for Cube yet. And the colour scheme evolved from aggressive black and white to the more muted earth tones, which is more contextually appropriate. We are surrounded by brick and masonry structures, red and buff colours, that we needed to relate to."
The more interesting aspect of Ironstone has to do with the building's impact on the environment and homeowners' energy budgets.
"The actual construction of the building is relatively conventional," Mr. Rom Colthoff said. "It will have good, but not extremely special, insulation levels in the wall assembly and window system. But it will have a geothermal system. Between the structural piers and the parking garage we will drill 40-odd wells, just bore-holes 10 inches to a foot in diameter, down 400 feet."
Using a well-understood technology, water will be pumped down into the ground, where the unvarying subsurface temperature will warm it in winter and cool it in summer.
The water will then be brought back up and distributed to heat pumps located in each suite — saving each consumer between 30 and 40 per cent in heating and cooling bills.
The warming of water for each apartment by solar panels on the roof also makes gas-fired furnaces unnecessary.
The hitch that has prevented more developers from putting in geothermal systems has been the high capital cost. At Ironstone, homeowners will pony up a premium to pay down this initial outlay over 20 to 30 years, after which the geothermal apparatus will belong to the condominium corporation. Though hardly off the grid, Ironstone will likely deliver a considerably smaller blow to the natural environment than the usual energy squandering condominium complex.
"It is pioneering," Mr. Rom Colthoff said of his Ironstone project out in the middle of sprawl. "It will take more years, but we are establishing an urban anchor for the neighbourhood, which is excellent. It's good for the city of Burlington."
website is http://www.ironstonecondominiums.com
ARCHITECTURE
Burlington gets an 'urban anchor'
Architect Roland Rom Colthoff brings big-city sophistication to the 'burbs
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
From Friday's Globe and Mail
May 9, 2008 at 12:00 AM EDT
The affluent Toronto suburb of Burlington needs no lessons from anyone about the high cost and environmental downside of sprawl.
More than a decade ago, the burgeoning town crafted a progressive plan intended to blunt the impact of strong growth by encouraging greater population densities north of the Queen Elizabeth Way. Among the scheme's sensible proposals was the development of a new urban centre at the intersection of Upper Middle Road and Appleby Line, with tall buildings being the focus in the north Burlington expanse of low-rise suburban housing.
This proposed urban concentration has been slow to materialize. Apart from one building about 10 storeys tall, nothing pokes up much above the spread of big-box stores and tract houses around the intersection. But after the construction of a new condominium complex called Ironstone, the corner will look at least a little more like a piece of real city fabric.
Designed by architect Roland Rom Colthoff, partner in the Toronto firm Raw Design, Ironstone will feature a 16-storey point tower and two wings, one six storeys, the other four. All told, the project will offer 201 units in configurations ranging from the usual condominium apartments to two-storey lofts and live/work accommodations.
Shops and services will cover 12,000 square feet of floor space at grade.
This being suburbia, there will be parking galore: two levels underground and some 300 spots above ground. Instead of leaving the lot a bleak asphalt apron around the base of the tower, Mr. Rom Colthoff will throw a landscaped deck over the parking spots. This move will soften the harsh visual effect produced by great swaths of open-air parking — one of the ugliest things about the precincts of suburban tall buildings — and it will provide condo-dwellers high aloft with a view of at least a little green down below.
If the unit sizes and layouts are mostly standard-issue for buildings of this sort, the fifth-floor lofts in the tower are more interesting than that. These two-storey apartments, with terraces on each floor and cross ventilation, update the old modernist determination to have light and fresh air coming in from all directions — a very good determination, too often ignored in contemporary condo design.
The facades of Mr. Rom Colthoff's tower present a public face of precast concrete and brick frames for off-the-rack glazing systems. Viewed as a work of art, Ironstone does not measure up very well to this architect's most striking residential work. I am thinking here of the beautiful (if unfortunately unbuilt) N-Blox condominium scheme in Toronto that Mr. Rom Colthoff designed with Richard Witt, and the pair's Cube, which is going up on the former N-Blox site on College Street. But the decision to keep Ironstone tame was deliberate.
"There was a debate among the design team about how far we could push the town of Burlington," the architect told me. "There was the sense that Burlington wasn't quite ready for Cube yet. And the colour scheme evolved from aggressive black and white to the more muted earth tones, which is more contextually appropriate. We are surrounded by brick and masonry structures, red and buff colours, that we needed to relate to."
The more interesting aspect of Ironstone has to do with the building's impact on the environment and homeowners' energy budgets.
"The actual construction of the building is relatively conventional," Mr. Rom Colthoff said. "It will have good, but not extremely special, insulation levels in the wall assembly and window system. But it will have a geothermal system. Between the structural piers and the parking garage we will drill 40-odd wells, just bore-holes 10 inches to a foot in diameter, down 400 feet."
Using a well-understood technology, water will be pumped down into the ground, where the unvarying subsurface temperature will warm it in winter and cool it in summer.
The water will then be brought back up and distributed to heat pumps located in each suite — saving each consumer between 30 and 40 per cent in heating and cooling bills.
The warming of water for each apartment by solar panels on the roof also makes gas-fired furnaces unnecessary.
The hitch that has prevented more developers from putting in geothermal systems has been the high capital cost. At Ironstone, homeowners will pony up a premium to pay down this initial outlay over 20 to 30 years, after which the geothermal apparatus will belong to the condominium corporation. Though hardly off the grid, Ironstone will likely deliver a considerably smaller blow to the natural environment than the usual energy squandering condominium complex.
"It is pioneering," Mr. Rom Colthoff said of his Ironstone project out in the middle of sprawl. "It will take more years, but we are establishing an urban anchor for the neighbourhood, which is excellent. It's good for the city of Burlington."
website is http://www.ironstonecondominiums.com
