Toronto Ïce Condominiums at York Centre | 234.07m | 67s | Lanterra | a—A

[scarberiankhatru]

I saw the renders! They were etched into stone in one of the more obscure buildings of a famous Nabatean city of Petra. At the time, I didn't recognize them for what they were, but it's become clear to me now.

Unfortunately, they were sandstone are partially washed away. Hard to get an exact height in metres under those circumstances.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed at Petra...if you have the DVD, you could try freeze-framing near the end. I mean, it's Steven Spielberg, so it must be accurate, right?

 

[Ziggy]

Found this on the Toronto website:

source: http://www.toronto.ca/union_station/pdf/districtpresentation.pdf

 

[rather_draconian]

Thanks a lot Ziggy, that's beautiful. I wonder if the Union Staion upgrades will be able to cope with this kind of density, as it is ridiculously busy already!

 

[Redroom Studios]

amazing height and density there but it just kills all the classic waterfront views. Maybe its just the rendering but I'm not getting that great of an overall impression - hopefully it will look better in real life.

 

[Sir Novelty Fashion]

It's like a tuft of hair sticking up from the skyline.

 

[Hypnotoad]

The waterfront view is already dead (both looking up from the water and looking from the core towards the lake). That picture on page 4 extends the core down to the gardiner and fills in the brownfield gap.

I love this density and this picture showing it looks very sleak. I am concerned with the massive clump of height in such a tight space. More variation would be appropriate and perhaps Maple Leaf Square could benefit from some open space - perhaps a public square.

I also really like the Union Station entrance proposed at Telus Tower/ACC. I've never seen this picture before (page 20).

But I have to make fun of some of the their photo choices. Pages 8, 25, 27 (that shoulder), 32, 39 and 40 are all gems.

 

[Mystery White Boy]

That looks terrible. There's no variation in height. You can't clump that many buildings together of similar height and expect it to look good.

 

[Mystery White Boy]

The downtown layout by Front St. is such a mess. Why on earth did they build the core around the tracks? Another train station should be built further away from the core and those tracks at Union Station should be ripped out.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

The downtown layout by Front St. is such a mess. Why on earth did they build the core around the tracks? Another train station should be built further away from the core and those tracks at Union Station should be ripped out.

Where? Mississauga?

cripes. Someone else field this.

 

[Redroom Studios]

It's like a tuft of hair sticking up from the skyline.

That looks terrible. There's no variation in height. You can't clump that many buildings together of similar height and expect it to look good.

yes exactly - I just couldnt put it into words...

of course we all want the formerly dead space between the railway and the Gardiner filled in... with something. I might be contradicting myself by saying this, but right now I am sort of wishing they went the route of a park with outdoor activities for tourists, some treed areas for picnics, some paved areas for skate boarders, some outdoor patios etc... make it into a giant outdoor recreation center or such. It would have tied nicely into the existing park near the roundhouse, as well as the CN Tower and the Dome. Of course this land is far too valuable for those sorts of uses...

if they are going to fill this all in with buildings, I think they may have wanted to stick to previously existing heights of about 35 - 40 floors. Allowing 65 floors here would sort of fly in the face of other height reductions that tend to keep the skyline shaped like a peak.

ah well - just my thoughts at the moment. Luckily I like tall buildings too.

 

[caltrane74]

Tokyo has massive train stations in it's downtown core. And it seems to me they add so much life to the city. I could be wrong, but it's just an observation. - We should focus on what we have that encourages people to come downtown via transit and get around using our very good and improving commuter rail service in conjuction with our subway lines.

So you never know.....

Union Sation could be the next Shinjuku Station.

Surrounded by skyscrapers on all sides, it could get interesting!!

 

[syn]

There isn't that much variation in that little cluster, but across the the width of the skyline there is.

 

[unimaginative2]

The downtown layout by Front St. is such a mess. Why on earth did they build the core around the tracks? Another train station should be built further away from the core and those tracks at Union Station should be ripped out.

Building the core around a railway station is a typical development pattern all over the world, and is one to be celebrated not condemned. Moreover, Toronto's core wasn't built around the tracks. The tracks were built at the lakeside southern fringe of the core. Slowly, the lake was filled in with industrial, port, and railway expansion to the present Harbourfront. I was looking at old pictures and views of the waterfront at Front Street, and it's such a shame that we didn't keep the lake up there, lined by the old Walks and Gardens trust parkland.

When the railways threatened to push tracks through the northern built-up area of the core near Queen Street, the City should have called their bluff and not handed over the waterfront parkland for a rail corridor. The northern route would be much more likely to have been built below grade, so that it could have been easily covered like in Montreal. Assuming we could have kept a waterfront expressway at bay, we could have a beautiful waterfront right downtown, with Front Street serving as a kind of Bund.

In the 70s, there was a plan to relocate the tracks as part of the Metro Centre development. The corridor would have shifted south near the Gardiner and Union Station would have been demolished. Later plans would have preserved the Great Hall. For many excellent reasons, that plan fell through. It would have inconvenienced rail access to the core and it would have eliminated the historic railway function from Union Station. Later plans were, however, drawn up for revitalizing Union Station and trying to mitigate the barrier impact of the rail corridor. I have one of the few copies of a report from 1985 prepared for CP suggesting that burying the corridor through downtown is not only feasible but economically desirable. I wish we still had that kind of vision today.

 

[BobBob]

Redroom Studios said:

...I am sort of wishing they went the route of a park with outdoor activities for tourists, some treed areas for picnics, some paved areas for skate boarders, some outdoor patios etc...

I think it makes more sense to do a good job on the waterfront. Here, between the tracks and the Gardiner, most people would rather just walk 5 minutes and be down by the lake to enjoy any of those sorts of activities. This dead zone, right by the city core and the huge Union Station, is perfect for dense uses.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

Once the Simcoe Street underpass is complete, that will create the more "undense" path into the Waterfront from the core. If you go further west, when the CityPlace park is complete, it will be another route to the waterfront from downtown that is recreational based.

Considering these new developments are anchored on York and Bay Streets, which SHOULD be dense, I'm not against the density of this precinct whatsoever. In fact, it'll help bring the built-up core closer to the waterfront, which is something that's needed.