Toronto Fabrik Condos | 56.99m | 17s | Menkes | Giannone Petricone

maestro said:
Thankfully, it's a mid block tower.
Click to expand...

Well, it's a mid-block building, but the pie-shaped site to its east, at the corner of Richmond & Spadina, is unlikely to be developed. Given that, the design expression of the east façade, on axis with Richmond, will be prominent for a long time and is worse than disappointing. It deadens the entire intersection.

Ironically, one of the earliest new developments in the neighbourhood, District Lofts, by aA, also had blank walls facing Spadina, but managed to deal with it in a much more elegant fashion. Granted, the fragmentation of its massing helped, but the materiality plays a large part.

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I work next door, and there are qualities I like about this building but the sloppy workmanship on the eastern side facing the intersection is terrible. I hope it's not done, you can see spray foam or something similar oozing out everywhere. I love the colour though.
 
The fenestration on the office building to the south is going to make that incredibly difficult. With setbacks, you only get a +/- 150sm floorplate. The ground floor is also only +/- 380 so fitting all the required loading, and servicing space in there would be very tough.
 
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I'm thinking more along the lines of the fenestration being removed and the office floor plate expanded over this site. This is Toronto afterall. Same owner too.
 
They should look into covering that charcoal-coloured eastern wall with a mural...

Or maybe someone will do us all a favour and paint it for free ;)
 
It needs a billboard plastered over it, with a curated artwork that's changed every year. How about make it a contest where the prize is the year-long display. Make it a big deal that attracts interest from around the Globe. Menkes can put up half the cash for foisting this upon us, and the City can put up half the money for allowing it.

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Yeah, I think it needs something like that too. It's worth seeing in person to get a feel for how unfortunate it is. I haven't been down there in months and I was surprised, it's really too bad. It looks like hell.

Not to mention, it's particularly unfortunate when you think that this could have been easily overcome by a more careful planning of the interior layouts, so that the units themselves didn't use the east-facing wall that part of the interior that uses fewer windows (e.g. bathrooms, hallways, whatever). I haven't looked at floor plans, but I'm assuming the east-facing wall for those lower units isn't a family room or kitchen.
 
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