Toronto 22 Condominiums | ?m | 23s | Lanterra | architectsAlliance

I think you are absolutely right about having entered into an "age of anxiety." But I think extends beyond marketers and their selling of supposed safe yearnings for better days gone by. This anxiety extends well into the notion that the city is going to hell in a hand-basket in every respect. Sure, the city needs help, but that's a part of what city-building is all about.
 
Eglinton East btw/Yonge + Mt Pleasant was already visually incoherent in the 1960s, Union Carbide notwithstanding...
 
That's what i'm puzzled about most: when did developers in Toronto lose touch with a common neighbourhood aesthetic? Look at a Victorian neighbourhood or a 1940's neighbourhood: similar scale, brick colour, building form.
Look more carefully at a lot of those "Victorian" neighbourhoods and streetfronts. They're not as "common aesthetic" (or "common scale", "common function", etc) as it may appear; more often than not, they came about and got pushed and pulled in a pretty ad hoc way over the decades, too. A lot of what was committed then would be considered out-of-context urban solecisms today--imagine the outcry if modern-day NIMBY attitudes had existed in 1890 or 1910 or 1930.

Conversely, you might someday find that there's more commonality among today's Toronto Style and retro than it may seem...
 
Victoria reigned for 63 years, so Toronto inevitably experienced stylistic shifts as new ideas were adopted - late Georgian, Mock Goth, Richardson Romanesque, early Arts and Crafts, and the local Bay and Gable style.
 
Hoarding down at "22"

The hoarding at 22 is finally down.



 
Nice to see the hoarding down in time for Pride - when a million people will be checking out the neighbourhood.

This project has turned out to be a wonderful success!
 
I like it too. Good functional floorplans in this building and large, usable balconies. Nice project all around.
 
Photos by Sir Novelty Fashion

Taken from his original thread to be found here:
http://urbantoronto.ca/showthread.php?t=5935

The Wellesley station tower (22, is it?) is almost done.


My camera is amazing for low-light, but can't handle bright sunlight.
 
22 Wellesley - July15th

Looking just fine all shiny and new. Shame about the graffiti





 
I walked past the front of the building the other day and it looks...well...horribly cheap. The concrete overhang is chipped and shoddy looking and the base looks like the back of a condo, not the front. Maybe some landscaping or something can save it.
 
Yeah, the crumbling concrete is even visible in those photos. Developers should be held accountable for shoddy buildings. Ugh, they don't build 'em like they used to.
 
That overhang looks almost as bad as the one on the west Apex tower at cityplace. Why a developer would cheap out on one of the most visible elements of a building is beyond me.
 
Um, this isnt done yet. Give them time to finish off the details like capping etc.
Geez.....
 
are balcony undersides gonna get painted? that's what really annoys me about toronto vs vancouver: attention to details==from landscaping to painted columns and balconies, vancouver can't be beat. Toronto, get your crap together!

You know, while glass is nice to look at, I wonder if next decade won't produce a backlash against glass cladding? Why? (Having to recently clean a ton of glass myself--it's not fun:( ) I'm thinking million dollar condos with dirty glass most of the year is not gonna make some millionaires very happy. So, some kind of cladding--laminate wood panelling?/metal?/ceramic?/brick? might be trendy in the 2010's. Anyhow, just thinking 22 looks kinda nice from a distance but up close it'll be dirty, cheap and noisy (glass is poor sound insulator expecially with the subway and buses running all day next door.)
 
HVE is next door to Skydome, and you cant hear anything from inside the units, even when the crowds let lose. Glass is more noise-proof than you may think.

Yes, you are 100% correct in questioning if glass is going to be looked upon as a horrible building material 20 - 30 years from now. Concrete was the way buildings were constructed 30 years ago. We think they are ugly now. In the 70's and 80s buildings were clad in granite, metal etc (see the financial district). Now it is glass. Trends will always change.
 

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