grey
Senior Member
I don't like the PoMo either, but I really love how well the massing conforms East Bayfront plan.
Toronto Monde | 149.95m | 44s | Great Gulf | Moshe Safdie
- Thread starter Mike in TO
- Start date
syn
Senior Member
I can't really fault him for having similar looking designs. Many if not most architects do, including the greats. A lot of Mies Van De Rohe projects were essentially the same, yet he's never called out on it.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Isn't he? I thought the derogatory term "boring Modernist glass box" was coined with him in mind - or, rather, the talentless imitators of his work.
There's an undeniable retro vibe to this Safdie thing - "PoMo Revival" almost. I can't think of many other major architects who spawn so many designs yet get so few built. It'll be interesting to see how the waterfront design review panel deals with this one.
Waterfront plan raises questions
Peter Kuitenbrouwer, National Post
Published: Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Is this the way the Miller mayoralty unravels, with the Mayor zipping off to Europe to fight climate change while his underlings cancel City Hall news conferences willy-nilly, because they are unprepared for the vagaries of council?
David Miller, the Mayor of Toronto, is going to Copenhagen on Dec. 11 for the global warming pow-wow in his capacity as head of the C40, a group of the world's largest cities committed to tackling climate change. During his week in Denmark, Mr. Miller presumably wants to carry in his back pocket the latest city environmental policy: "The Power to Live Green -- Toronto's Sustainable Energy Strategy."
And so yesterday he made the green strategy his priority item at city council, meaning that council would discuss that before anything else.
The problem with that plan was that Moshe Safdie, the renowned Cambridge-based architect, was on a plane to Toronto for a 1 p.m. news conference at City Hall, to unveil his design for a 36-storey condo tower at the foot of Sherbourne Street. The Mayor's office had assumed council, by lunch time, would have unanimously approved the condo project.
However, Councillor Rob Ford (Etobicoke North) held up approval of the condo.
As the council meeting got underway, a concerned Councillor Pamela McConnell (Toronto Centre-Rosedale) warned that Mr. Safdie, "a very elderly but well-renowned architect," was on his way to City Hall, and asked, "could we deal with this [the condo] this morning?"
"That is highly unlikely, councillor, because the Mayor's priority items come first," replied the speaker, Councillor Sandra Bussin (Beaches-East York.)
At 1 p.m. the press gathered in the Member's Lounge for the Safdie event. John Piper, the Mayor's advisor on waterfront issues, abruptly appeared beside the podium.
"This news conference will not go ahead," Mr. Piper said, "and it's mostly my screw-up. We really apologize for having screwed up. The Mayor just felt the news conference was inappropriate, given that the item had been held."
Mr. Piper then squeezed Marissa Piatelli, Waterfront Toronto's vice-president of government relations, in a one-arm bear hug. "Marissa is mad at me," he said, planting two kisses on her forehead. She looked uncomfortable.
The Waterfront Toronto folks, though, were not born yesterday -- they had scheduled their own event with Mr. Safdie down at their offices at 20 Bay St., which nobody from City Hall could "screw up." Mr. Safdie showed us his building, designed a bit like a boot pointing at Lake Ontario, with stripes going up the calf, explaining, "We modulate the facade of the building into a series of terraced gardens which face south towards the sun." Rob Granatstein of the Toronto Sun asked: "What's the wow factor?"
"First of all, I don't like the word, 'Wow,' " said Mr. Safdie (though, looking at his Terminal One at Pearson airport, or his Habitat dwellings in Montreal, one is inclined to say, 'Wow.')
"As a profession, we have been suffering from capricious and arbitrary 'wows,' " Mr. Safdie added. His building, he said, is designed to function for its users -- condo dwellers, office workers, retailers and children in daycare.
Still, there are questions about the choice of Mr. Safdie and Great Gulf Group, the Toronto developer, to build the first condo on city land on the East Bayfront. First, John Campbell, Waterfront Toronto's chief executive, acknowledged that his group did not pick the highest bidder for the half-hectare parcel, but rather the project they like the most. If we grant unelected people the power to sell off our land based on arbitrary criteria, how do we keep the process honest?
What is the basis selecting Safdie/Great Gulf ? Good design? Waterfront Toronto cut its own design critics out of the selection. At the end of yesterday's event, Bruce Kuwabara, the Toronto architect who heads the Waterfront Toronto Design Review Panel, walked in. I asked him what he thought of the Safdie building. "It's the first time I've seen it," he said.
People whom we have not elected are making big decisions about our city's future. We need a Mayor to keep watch over this process. Not one whose heart is in Copenhagen.
There's an undeniable retro vibe to this Safdie thing - "PoMo Revival" almost. I can't think of many other major architects who spawn so many designs yet get so few built. It'll be interesting to see how the waterfront design review panel deals with this one.
Waterfront plan raises questions
Peter Kuitenbrouwer, National Post
Published: Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Is this the way the Miller mayoralty unravels, with the Mayor zipping off to Europe to fight climate change while his underlings cancel City Hall news conferences willy-nilly, because they are unprepared for the vagaries of council?
David Miller, the Mayor of Toronto, is going to Copenhagen on Dec. 11 for the global warming pow-wow in his capacity as head of the C40, a group of the world's largest cities committed to tackling climate change. During his week in Denmark, Mr. Miller presumably wants to carry in his back pocket the latest city environmental policy: "The Power to Live Green -- Toronto's Sustainable Energy Strategy."
And so yesterday he made the green strategy his priority item at city council, meaning that council would discuss that before anything else.
The problem with that plan was that Moshe Safdie, the renowned Cambridge-based architect, was on a plane to Toronto for a 1 p.m. news conference at City Hall, to unveil his design for a 36-storey condo tower at the foot of Sherbourne Street. The Mayor's office had assumed council, by lunch time, would have unanimously approved the condo project.
However, Councillor Rob Ford (Etobicoke North) held up approval of the condo.
As the council meeting got underway, a concerned Councillor Pamela McConnell (Toronto Centre-Rosedale) warned that Mr. Safdie, "a very elderly but well-renowned architect," was on his way to City Hall, and asked, "could we deal with this [the condo] this morning?"
"That is highly unlikely, councillor, because the Mayor's priority items come first," replied the speaker, Councillor Sandra Bussin (Beaches-East York.)
At 1 p.m. the press gathered in the Member's Lounge for the Safdie event. John Piper, the Mayor's advisor on waterfront issues, abruptly appeared beside the podium.
"This news conference will not go ahead," Mr. Piper said, "and it's mostly my screw-up. We really apologize for having screwed up. The Mayor just felt the news conference was inappropriate, given that the item had been held."
Mr. Piper then squeezed Marissa Piatelli, Waterfront Toronto's vice-president of government relations, in a one-arm bear hug. "Marissa is mad at me," he said, planting two kisses on her forehead. She looked uncomfortable.
The Waterfront Toronto folks, though, were not born yesterday -- they had scheduled their own event with Mr. Safdie down at their offices at 20 Bay St., which nobody from City Hall could "screw up." Mr. Safdie showed us his building, designed a bit like a boot pointing at Lake Ontario, with stripes going up the calf, explaining, "We modulate the facade of the building into a series of terraced gardens which face south towards the sun." Rob Granatstein of the Toronto Sun asked: "What's the wow factor?"
"First of all, I don't like the word, 'Wow,' " said Mr. Safdie (though, looking at his Terminal One at Pearson airport, or his Habitat dwellings in Montreal, one is inclined to say, 'Wow.')
"As a profession, we have been suffering from capricious and arbitrary 'wows,' " Mr. Safdie added. His building, he said, is designed to function for its users -- condo dwellers, office workers, retailers and children in daycare.
Still, there are questions about the choice of Mr. Safdie and Great Gulf Group, the Toronto developer, to build the first condo on city land on the East Bayfront. First, John Campbell, Waterfront Toronto's chief executive, acknowledged that his group did not pick the highest bidder for the half-hectare parcel, but rather the project they like the most. If we grant unelected people the power to sell off our land based on arbitrary criteria, how do we keep the process honest?
What is the basis selecting Safdie/Great Gulf ? Good design? Waterfront Toronto cut its own design critics out of the selection. At the end of yesterday's event, Bruce Kuwabara, the Toronto architect who heads the Waterfront Toronto Design Review Panel, walked in. I asked him what he thought of the Safdie building. "It's the first time I've seen it," he said.
People whom we have not elected are making big decisions about our city's future. We need a Mayor to keep watch over this process. Not one whose heart is in Copenhagen.
syn
Senior Member
If I recall, this meeting in Copenhagen was scheduled long before this news conference.
I'm sure if he stuck around for it columnists would be complaining he missed an important conference to showcase Toronto on the world stage for another condo announcement in a city full of them.
I'm sure if he stuck around for it columnists would be complaining he missed an important conference to showcase Toronto on the world stage for another condo announcement in a city full of them.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
The only part of the article that I found interesting was Kuwabara's comment.
UrbanAffair
Senior Member
What do u expect, its National Post, not exactly a Miller supporting type of paper, they would criticize anything he does....
DSC
Superstar
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Yes, them and Royston James in the Star. If Miller walked on water they would just say he couldn't swim!
adma
Superstar
Actually, their municipal coverage (under Peter Kuitenbrouwer, especially) is quite moderate and decent, under the circumstances.
Mike in TO
Senior Member
A few other small details:
- 540,000-square-foot development;
- Land parcel is just under 1 acre;
- Project is approx $200 million;
- ~120m in height;
- The project is aiming for LEED-gold certification;
- A daycare facility is planning within the podium;
- The design team also includes Les Klein and Sheldon Levitt of Quadrangle Architects;
- Landscaping by Janet Rosenberg of Janet Rosenberg + Associates Landscape Architects;
- Interiors by Anna Simone of Cecconi Simone Inc.;
khris
Senior Member
Great video from Waterfront Toronto.
old boy
Senior Member
I'm keeping my fingers crossed this happens in my lifetime. What a promise to what is already the most interesting city in the country.
yyzer
Senior Member
John Bentley Mays' article in today's Globe....
Moshe Safdie's Toronto
The regeneration of Toronto's desolate industrial shoreline took another bold step forward last week, when Waterfront Toronto, the crown corporation overseeing the transformation, unveiled its first private-sector development in the 55-acre East Bayfront district. The $200-million project by Great Gulf Group of Companies will go up just south of the Gardiner Expressway, on the east side of the new Sherbourne Park, and a critical piece of a new urban neighbourhood will be in place.
Called Parkside, the proposed mixed-use building will contain some 540,000 square feet of residential and commercial space, distributed throughout two elements: a tower rising to about 36 storeys beside the Gardiner and a six-level podium extending south from under the tower to Queens Quay.
What makes this plan important, however, is neither its substantial size nor its basic configuration: The tower on a podium is, after all, a familiar – perhaps too familiar, too routine – way to pack maximum population density into a restrictive site. Parkside's real significance lies in its design.Great Gulf has chosen world-renowned designer Moshe Safdie as its architect.Parkside is his first residential commission in Canada since Montreal's famously innovative Habitat opened in 1967.
The exact appearance of Parkside is unknown. Once Mr. Safdie has submitted schematic designs – something that has not yet happened – the project will undergo rigorous scrutiny by Waterfront Toronto's design review panel. That body's decision is crucial to how the building will look in its dense downtown location.
But at this early point, Mr. Safdie's artistic intentions are clear. As depicted at last week's press conference, Parkside's base will be a massive affair of glass in precast concrete frames fronting on Queens Quay and lying alongside a leafy promenade that separates the building from the adjoining park.
The monotony possible in this arrangement of a long promenade and a tall, long façade will be relieved, at least during the summer months, by shops and cafes spilling out of the bottom of the structure. The stolidity of the base will be further offset by a couple of notches in the façade above the fourth level, and the addition of a recessed three-storey penthouse block (topped by a garden and swimming pool) at the podium's south end.
In contrast to its serious base, Parkside's sturdy tower is almost playful. Long panels of concrete frames, projecting outward from the building's skeleton and alternating with recessed expanses of glass, slash diagonally across the east and west facades of the condominium stack. This surface treatment on two sides creates an attractively jaunty effect on the south façade, which looks like so many short and long slabs of perforated masonry piled on top of each other.
Parkside incorporates some design moves I've noticed in other recent high-rise projects, notably the avoidance of vast stretches of energy-wasting glass and the adoption of more opacity in the skin of the building.
Parkside does not make a stylistically daring gesture against the skyline, nor should we expect it to. There is surely room in the city for flamboyant monuments – skyscrapers that radically depart from the cereal-box designs of Modernism's yesteryear and that embody exciting new advances in building and design technology. (We can hope the skyscraper Great Gulf will be putting up at Bloor and Yonge will be such a marquee project.) But, at least for the moment, the Toronto waterfront is probably not the place for such experiments.
What's needed there is solid urban fabric, serviceable structures and parks and transportation systems that serve the common good and contribute to the making of sound neighbourhoods. Mr. Safdie's Parkside promises to be the kind of building the East Bayfront area requires: a solid piece of city, and another fulfilment of Toronto's long-standing desire to be reunited with Lake Ontario.
That reunion, which is the central mission of Waterfront Toronto, is now moving forward. Construction of 1.4 million square feet of office and institutional space in the Dockside tract of East Bayfront is in progress. The 450,000 square foot office and broadcast centre called Corus Quay, home of Corus Entertainment, is nearing completion. Waterfront Toronto expects work to begin this year on George Brown College's Health Sciences Campus, which will attract 3,500 full-time students and 1,000 part-timers to the area.
Some prophets of doom still say it can't be done – that the will and investment needed to extend Toronto's urban fabric to the water's edge will never materialize. The announcement of Parkside is just the latest sign of how wrong they are
Moshe Safdie's Toronto
The regeneration of Toronto's desolate industrial shoreline took another bold step forward last week, when Waterfront Toronto, the crown corporation overseeing the transformation, unveiled its first private-sector development in the 55-acre East Bayfront district. The $200-million project by Great Gulf Group of Companies will go up just south of the Gardiner Expressway, on the east side of the new Sherbourne Park, and a critical piece of a new urban neighbourhood will be in place.
Called Parkside, the proposed mixed-use building will contain some 540,000 square feet of residential and commercial space, distributed throughout two elements: a tower rising to about 36 storeys beside the Gardiner and a six-level podium extending south from under the tower to Queens Quay.
What makes this plan important, however, is neither its substantial size nor its basic configuration: The tower on a podium is, after all, a familiar – perhaps too familiar, too routine – way to pack maximum population density into a restrictive site. Parkside's real significance lies in its design.Great Gulf has chosen world-renowned designer Moshe Safdie as its architect.Parkside is his first residential commission in Canada since Montreal's famously innovative Habitat opened in 1967.
The exact appearance of Parkside is unknown. Once Mr. Safdie has submitted schematic designs – something that has not yet happened – the project will undergo rigorous scrutiny by Waterfront Toronto's design review panel. That body's decision is crucial to how the building will look in its dense downtown location.
But at this early point, Mr. Safdie's artistic intentions are clear. As depicted at last week's press conference, Parkside's base will be a massive affair of glass in precast concrete frames fronting on Queens Quay and lying alongside a leafy promenade that separates the building from the adjoining park.
The monotony possible in this arrangement of a long promenade and a tall, long façade will be relieved, at least during the summer months, by shops and cafes spilling out of the bottom of the structure. The stolidity of the base will be further offset by a couple of notches in the façade above the fourth level, and the addition of a recessed three-storey penthouse block (topped by a garden and swimming pool) at the podium's south end.
In contrast to its serious base, Parkside's sturdy tower is almost playful. Long panels of concrete frames, projecting outward from the building's skeleton and alternating with recessed expanses of glass, slash diagonally across the east and west facades of the condominium stack. This surface treatment on two sides creates an attractively jaunty effect on the south façade, which looks like so many short and long slabs of perforated masonry piled on top of each other.
Parkside incorporates some design moves I've noticed in other recent high-rise projects, notably the avoidance of vast stretches of energy-wasting glass and the adoption of more opacity in the skin of the building.
Parkside does not make a stylistically daring gesture against the skyline, nor should we expect it to. There is surely room in the city for flamboyant monuments – skyscrapers that radically depart from the cereal-box designs of Modernism's yesteryear and that embody exciting new advances in building and design technology. (We can hope the skyscraper Great Gulf will be putting up at Bloor and Yonge will be such a marquee project.) But, at least for the moment, the Toronto waterfront is probably not the place for such experiments.
What's needed there is solid urban fabric, serviceable structures and parks and transportation systems that serve the common good and contribute to the making of sound neighbourhoods. Mr. Safdie's Parkside promises to be the kind of building the East Bayfront area requires: a solid piece of city, and another fulfilment of Toronto's long-standing desire to be reunited with Lake Ontario.
That reunion, which is the central mission of Waterfront Toronto, is now moving forward. Construction of 1.4 million square feet of office and institutional space in the Dockside tract of East Bayfront is in progress. The 450,000 square foot office and broadcast centre called Corus Quay, home of Corus Entertainment, is nearing completion. Waterfront Toronto expects work to begin this year on George Brown College's Health Sciences Campus, which will attract 3,500 full-time students and 1,000 part-timers to the area.
Some prophets of doom still say it can't be done – that the will and investment needed to extend Toronto's urban fabric to the water's edge will never materialize. The announcement of Parkside is just the latest sign of how wrong they are
khris
Senior Member
Careful, you might get yelled at for posting nothing new.
Raptorzzs
New Member
The split sections of the tower look really... unique. I think another split into the first base would make it even more intriguing.
Uncle Teddy
Senior Member
Looks good and I'm glad we're not getting another all glass tower.