Toronto Canary Park Condominiums | 54.25m | 16s | DundeeKilmer | KPMB

Grey brick is fine, it's just a building material. It's the application that is poor in most cases. It seems like most developers pair it with window framing and details in similarly low contrast colours. If it was paired instead with vibrant, contrasting colours and materials I imagine it would look quite good.
 
Hence why grey brick is so popular (and why red brick before it was so popular): if there is a material that makes no claims about striving above your station, it is brick.
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Didn't Toronto's red brick history have something to do with the place where said brick was made (The Brickworks)?
 
Parkdalian said:
... if there is a material that makes no claims about striving above your station, it is brick.
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Ummm what about aluminum or vinyl siding?

Textured and grey masonry brick is reminiscent of stone... it's trendy to use it right now to be sure, but I don't think there is some inherent quality that makes it "so toronto" or whatever... it's just a trendy material right now and is fairly cheap to spec. Don't think there's much more to it than that. In time it might be cool to have a district of the city built primarily in grey brick (like the distillery is in red brick). The uniformity night be refreshing since the rest of the city is pretty heterogeneous.
 
UrbanFervour said:
Ummm what about aluminum or vinyl siding?

Textured and grey masonry brick is reminiscent of stone... it's trendy to use it right now to be sure, but I don't think there is some inherent quality that makes it "so toronto" or whatever... it's just a trendy material right now and is fairly cheap to spec. Don't think there's much more to it than that. In time it might be cool to have a district of the city built primarily in grey brick (like the distillery is in red brick). The uniformity night be refreshing since the rest of the city is pretty heterogeneous.
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It is a fairly Toronto material. If you read any interviews with Toronto architects (I'm thinking particularly of Babak Eslahjou), they sometimes complain that they *have* to use brick rather than some more interesting, newer materials. There are many reasons for this, including heritage ones (brick fits into the existing Toronto buildings, and as I said, is a signifier of its blue collar past). Think of how few buildings in Toronto have used stone or pre-cast imitations of stone - but we get many, many buildings with imitations of brick.

Aluminum is unpopular because it reads as "low class" - just look at what people are saying about the cladding on Picasso, or think of what people said about the cladding on the ROM! Brick reads as solidly working, unremarkable, middle class. Real brick may even be more expensive than stone in some cases, but it's the signifier of your class status that is important. Torontonians do not like to be flashy: they will often pay extra money to appear less rich.
 
There's so much that can be done with brick like glazed, polychromatic brick or clinker brick. Contemporary architects should embrace it--there are a lot of creative possibilities. Many probably choose grey brick wanting to be modern and still fill a marketing or bureaucratic requirement that you have to use brick in Toronto.
 
Parkdalian said:
Torontonians do not like to be flashy
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With all due respect, I think that is a sweeping generalization. It might be considered tacky in old-guard WASP circles to ostentatiously show off, and I guess it's uncool to be bourgeois in certain downtown neighbourhoods (like the hipster haven of Parkdale maybe?). But there are many, many people in Toronto who are more than happy to make a spectacle of their material wealth. Look at all the McMansions built from pre-cast & EIFS that have replaced sober old brick houses in Forest Hill & Lawrence Park.. or the people who drive around Yorkville in Maseratis. Look at Karla Ford's instagram photos, or the people who go out to party in the "Entertainment District"! I don't think your thesis holds up... it's sort of like saying Torontonians have an aversion to spicy food and that's why there are so many strip-malls with fast food restaurants.
 
Thursday, from the train:

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