Toronto St Lawrence Market North | 25.3m | 5s | City of Toronto | Rogers Stirk Harbour

Red, aesthetically, not my cuppa, however the exterior relates beautifully to its surroundings, the repetition in vertical elements replicates the same proportions of surrounding buildings and it looks civic! This is not just a market, it has 3 tennants. St Lawrence Farmers Market, POA Courts and TPA. IMO this is the only submission that has the correct massing and lightness for this site. The model sells this design more than the renderings. The interior shots of this look a tad bus terminally.
 
I'll take red as much for the interior views as anything else. I like how it plays off its beautiful neighbours.
 
Green has its appeal, but it seems almost slavish in its deference to the shape of St. Lawrence. It winds up saying SPACE MARKET OF THE YEAR 3000, which doesn't quite work.
Blue looks like Will Alsop designed a slug.
Yellow looks like it's going to ignite another debate about whether there's a "Toronto style" of institutions that involves sticking staircases in windows. Eh.
Orange is promising. Of course, it's hard to say exactly how orange it will really be. But I like the way roof shapes become wall shapes, and how the building will visually hold its own in a historic district. But there's no indication of what the interior spaces are like.
Red seems luscious from the inside, and quietly dignified from without. It seems less interested in being looked than being a vantage point for looking at other spaces. My question is whether, in its elegant politeness, it will completely disappear into the city? Maybe that's what we want - is it?

The catch is, very few of these renderings give a real sense of what the public space will look like from the inside. It's fun to talk about renderings, but we really don't have the information we need to know how we feel about these...
 
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I sent in my thoughts to the e-mail listed on the St. Lawrence Market North page and figured I'd share some of it here to add to the discussion...

"...I'll be straight-forward; I don't feel like any of the proposed projects are particularly good and in fact, some of them are actually pretty bad and embarassing.

If I had to choose though, I'd say that Team Red's (Rogers Stirk Harbour???) concept is the most elegantly restrained and sensitive to the historic buildings surrounding it (1st choice), with Team Orange also getting points for a generally well thought out plan, despite its overall ho-humness (2nd choice), Team Blue for its architectural statement (3rd choice) and Teams Yellow and Team Green being too awful to actually choose. I must admit though that Team Yellow should get points for at least alluding to non-motorized transportation (especially the nod to bicycle use which is important since part of the judging criteria involves environmental sustainability!!! Please do bring this up no matter who is chosen). Let me expand on each:

RED (#1):
Team Red I mentioned earlier and I generally like it but in being so subservient to the cupola to the north, the building feels much more secondary in look and nature than the other proposals presented. While I'm excited about the context-driven design, I'm also hesitant at how...unremarkable it is. Furthermore, I can't quite tell if the main floor is supposed to be outdoors or not, but I don't think anyone's going to use the ground level when it isn't summer if it is. Otherwise, the buildings have a very clean look to them, albeit perhaps too "glassy" for such a historical brick neighbourhood.

ORANGE (#2):
Team Orange does a decent job with the neighbourhood context plan, and the change from orange to a green skin over time is surely going to be an interesting look, but I have reservations about its intended land use of market/judicial functions since that detracts from the overall food nature of these buildings. I also like the rooftop park but the design seems overall rather unremarkable.

BLUE (#3):
While I like Team Blue's Gehry-like building skin, the complete lack of forethought into how the building would blend into the rest of the neighbourhood or even the hall immediately to the north of it gives me pause. I also have qualms with how well this design will age over time since this type of design is very popular now, but may not have lasting power. The lack of interior shots is unforgiveable given that this building is a MARKET and the contents of the building is what gives the building its relevance. This proposal is all style, little substance.

YELLOW (bleh):
Team Yellow's design is like Teams Red and Orange's: plain, but this time without any redeeming aesthetic quality at all. Not only does it look like a cheap version of the opera house on University Ave., it's hard to tell whether the ground floor is actually trying to look like a half-baked attempt at a bad George Brown building or not. The schizophrenic placement of materials and planes gives it little architectural coherency and though I do like the warmth of the covered interior market and it IS quite clear that they've put in a lot of work from their renders to their text and comments, there's unfortunately no denying that this building is UGLY and painfully out of ideas.

GREEN (I thought we'd finished with awful 90s post-modernism?):
There's really nothing to be said about this train wreck - it looks like a hockey arena in Vaughan. And from the interior shot, it sure does seem it too..."
 
i think its sad that the old building is not staying, i go down there alot and absolutely love the neighborhood. i think that sticking some fancy glass building in the middle of what they call our (pretty pathetic) "old town"....if buildings that have been around such along time, the saturday farmers market began on this site in 1803!i guess if one of these has to be picked i'd say red or orange
 
I think Red works on the inside and the outside. I believe that the lower level can be open-air in the summer and enclosed in the winter. Orange would be my second choice.
 
Different strokes for different folks I guess. Orange, which is getting lots of love here, is one of my LEAST favourite designs (blue is the absolute worst IMO). I find orange entirely too institutional looking on the ground level and hideous on the exterior. I much prefer green or red. Although all the designs are somewhat meh.
 
I think what we need is a facade on Front Street that is very much a REPLICA of what is across the street (even I am cringing but in this case I think it's appropriate) with the Jarvis & Market Lane elevations being entirely deconstructed like the red design or Centre Pompidou.
 
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