Toronto Spectra at Concord CityPlace | 123.13m | 39s | Concord Adex | RAW Design

Great, just what Toronto needs, another grey, glass box. It doesn't look like there is retail, from the rendering but I hope Interchange 42 is right. That tiny dash of colour is just silly. If you want to give a building colour, do something interesting and creative, not some tiny strip.
 
Great, just what Toronto needs, another grey, glass box. It doesn't look like there is retail, from the rendering but I hope Interchange 42 is right. That tiny dash of colour is just silly. If you want to give a building colour, do something interesting and creative, not some tiny strip.

Are we looking at the same rendering? :confused:
 
The entrance area rendering focuses on the courtyard between Spectra and Quartz. The retail, however, will face Fort York Boulevard.

Also, there are quite a few coloured elements to the building, especially on the podium.

42
 
I find CityPlace to be very handsome. Personally, I think Concord wants their Signature Tower.. to be a Signature Tower. Which is why we have seen all the towers in CityPlace have a certain aesthetic.
 
I walked over to the cityplace presentation center at Bremner and Spadina last night and had a look at the model. I walked away completely underwhelmed by Spectra. It really doesn't do anything to stand out from the rest of cityplace and I was quite disappointed in the design. Lots of spandrel, and it really is just another box and I agree that the strip of colour seems a weak attempt to spruce up an otherwise unimaginative, ordinary building.

The tower will be set back quite a ways from Dan Leckie and should provide a nice stagger beside Quartz. The courtyard should be nice too. Overall though, if anyone was hoping to see something fresh from Concord, I think they will end up disappointed.

I am optimistic though about the rumoured retail on Fort York as that seems like a great place for it. I think that a stretch of retail is badly needed in the area to inject some life into such a densely populated but ghost-townish and suburban feeling neighbourhood.
 
The ground floor looks pretty underwhelming (save for the patterned slate-looking sidewalk.. what's the chances that actually materializes?) but overall I'd give this a thumbs up.
By all means this is building is colourful (certainly by Toronto's standards in general, let alone being in CP). It would have been great if they took that black stone/brick accent on the podium and continued it a bit more throughout the building. Unless of course it's precast (chances are), then that is more than enough.
 
There's nothing innovative about it. Nothing architecturally, or aethetically. Not a bit.

It's a Toronto box with a few tweaks. The tweaks change slightly from building to building, but the standard form is untouched. This tweak is the inclusion of coloured panels. That's nice. But not innovative.

Standard, mainstream, inoffensive, perfectly fine. It'll fit right in.

There's a lot of derisive slang online about "commie blocks". What could you call this kind of building?
'A dollar box'? A 'glassy-faire'? A 'debt palace'? A 'capital crib'? A 'structural deficit'? A 'profit-or roll'?
 
All cityplace really needs is a bar, a couple restaurants and a few touch ups once the construction finally ends. Of course street life is going to seem dead, the entire neighbourhood is a construction site. I have high hopes for cityplace, we shouldn't judge the development as a whole until its finished.
 
A friend is considering getting a unit. We visited the presentation centre and snapped a few shots.

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hey, nice pics, anddan, thanks for posting!
 
I like the base of this building - it's nice. But the rest of the building is terribly "blah" and, like others, it feels like the colours have been added on for no real good reason at all. Though I will admit I do like the use of the colours for the podium.
 

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