Toronto Pace Condos | 146.3m | 42s | Great Gulf | Diamond Schmitt

ksun said:
and now we are complaining that a new condo which is supposed to bring back some vibrancy to this seedy intersection, is not fancy enough?
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Who said anything about fancy? I love me a good no-frills, no-nonsense piece of architecture. But I like design that is thoughtful. The Pace building isn't.

Anyway I won't start a whole debate about standards, given how many times we've had the same discussion here on UT. But I think sometimes people conflate "could have been worse", "good enough for _______" with a defense of architecture that missed its mark. Nobody here is saying that we expect that a developer would put the most of their money into a project with lower unit costs, etc., but I would expect that the architects would work within that budget to create something well-considered.

A grey spandrel mess with punched-out green-glass windows and occasional red treatment (with no governing theme for where red appears or doesn't) is not a well-considered choice, even for a project with a lesser budget. There are no overriding themes for the materiality or the horizontality or verticality, or... anything, really. There's no clear idea at work here other than "put a ton of condos into a simple floorplate!" It irks me, even as someone who loves a lot of simple/no-frills condo towers.
 
I love it ! exceed my expectation for a building that sold for under $600 a foot -- if it was $850 I would expect far better design.
 
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modernizt said:
Who said anything about fancy? I love me a good no-frills, no-nonsense piece of architecture. But I like design that is thoughtful. The Pace building isn't.

Anyway I won't start a whole debate about standards, given how many times we've had the same discussion here on UT. But I think sometimes people conflate "could have been worse", "good enough for _______" with a defense of architecture that missed its mark. Nobody here is saying that we expect that a developer would put the most of their money into a project with lower unit costs, etc., but I would expect that the architects would work within that budget to create something well-considered.

A grey spandrel mess with punched-out green-glass windows and occasional red treatment (with no governing theme for where red appears or doesn't) is not a well-considered choice, even for a project with a lesser budget. There are no overriding themes for the materiality or the horizontality or verticality, or... anything, really. There's no clear idea at work here other than "put a ton of condos into a simple floorplate!" It irks me, even as someone who loves a lot of simple/no-frills condo towers.
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You are definitely entitled to your preference and wishful thinking, but in reality, no city in the world functions the way you hope for. Even the most well designed buildings have an economic motivation behind it. Even in downtown's more prominent locations there are far worse buildings than PACE, and that's the world we live in. of course as a common citizen who doesn't put a cent into it, it is easy to criticize and demand better design, but your decision might be the same if you were in charge of the project yourself. For example, I can easily criticize the way you dress yourself and argue it doesn't really cost that much to buy better clothes that make you look better, and that you should always look the best of yourself any time of the day, but the reality can be quite different because you might not want to spend the time on it, or it is simply not that important to you.

Could Pace be better? Of course, but I am fine with it as it is. I'd rather have it here today than expecting a great building in certain unforeseeable future. There is good reasons why X condos are Jarvis/Charles are a lot sharper looking than Pace at Jarvis/Dundas because companies always have to choose where to put their limited resources. Do you always dress yourself as meticulously as your first job interview? No, you don't. Pace is a huge improvement to the ugly neighbourhood, so what's to complain?
 
Hardly about limited resources. You just don't see additional effort put into making designs work both inside and out as the market will buy pretty much anything providing the inside (somewhat)works.
 
maestro said:
Hardly about limited resources. You just don't see additional effort put into making designs work both inside and out as the market will buy pretty much anything providing the inside (somewhat)works.
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It is indeed very easy for an outsider to put down a project like that (including dismissing its "somewhat" working inside - not sure you did the investigation before throwing such sarcasm). But what would you differently without incurring additional costs? And how exactly does the design not work currently?

And let me why do you expect a company to care about things that its target customers don't care at all? I am glad that we expect more from developers, I wish all buildings are exquisite too, but I am afraid in this case such expectation is not only unrealistic but also useless. Using your own logic, all the public housing projects as well as rental apartments built in the city could be a lot nicer too if additional effort is put into them, couldn't they? It didn't prevent most of them from being boring towers and nothing else. You probably can use the same rhetoric to accuse 95% of Toronto's building too but what's the use of it? The thing is, developers are there to serve its customers with their city-approved projects. They are not there to make the city pretty to people like you and me. I am sure in coming up with any design they consider the benefit and costs of "putting more effort" (and its own reputation) and in this case the decision happens to be that it is not worthwhile to do so. You can't expect everyone to be a perfectionist. You are not one either. It is far easier to forgive a mediocre design/execution for PACE than for AURA.

It is Dundas and Jarvis. Honestly, if you don't even consider living there, or care about the neighbourhood that much, why insist that developers should come up with fantastic buildings? They are just businessmen.
 
"Just businessmen" may be the cynical norm of how to look at all developers, but in many cases it is not true, and Great Gulf is a good example of where it's not. We would not have One Bloor East nor X nor Monde nor The Morgan, etc., if these guys were "just businessmen". This is a company that is trying harder, (and it's not the only one by a long shot).

Still, developers including Great Gulf do have a bottom line and have to be realistic or they don't survive: not every development can be a One Bloor East budget-wise. While there are others on UT (not just @maestro) who say that the market will buy "pretty much anything", that's only if it's priced right, and Pace was priced less expensively that other condos because it was the first redevelopment right at the down-and-out corner of Dundas and Jarvis. (It was positioned to appeal who investors who want to make a return on renting to Ryerson students.) If it's sold at a lower price, it has to be built at a lower cost.

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interchange42 said:
"Just businessmen" may be the cynical norm of how to look at all developers, but in many cases it is not true, and Great Gulf is a good example of where it's not. We would not have One Bloor East nor X nor Monde nor The Morgan, etc., if these guys were "just businessmen". This is a company that is trying harder, (and it's not the only one by a long shot).

Still, developers including Great Gulf do have a bottom line and have to be realistic or they don't survive: not every development can be a One Bloor East budget-wise. While there are others on UT (not just @maestro) who say that the market will buy "pretty much anything", that's only if it's priced right, and Pace was priced less expensively that other condos because it was the first redevelopment right at the down-and-out corner of Dundas and Jarvis. (It was positioned to appeal who investors who want to make a return on renting to Ryerson students.) If it's sold at a lower price, it has to be built at a lower cost.

42
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And it's the best project going in on that corner. The other towers - Dundas Square Gardens, and Grid - are also aimed at the same market (investor landlords renting to students) , and I'm not really excited about any of them.
 
For a cost-conscious project, I appreciate the cladding and design of the mechanical box, which blends in nicely with the rest of the building.

The photo below is taken at an angle through a dirty office window, but I'm uploading it because hopefully it helps illustrate my point.

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ksun said:
It is indeed very easy for an outsider to put down a project like that (including dismissing its "somewhat" working inside - not sure you did the investigation before throwing such sarcasm). But what would you differently without incurring additional costs? And how exactly does the design not work currently?

And let me why do you expect a company to care about things that its target customers don't care at all? I am glad that we expect more from developers, I wish all buildings are exquisite too, but I am afraid in this case such expectation is not only unrealistic but also useless. Using your own logic, all the public housing projects as well as rental apartments built in the city could be a lot nicer too if additional effort is put into them, couldn't they? It didn't prevent most of them from being boring towers and nothing else. You probably can use the same rhetoric to accuse 95% of Toronto's building too but what's the use of it? The thing is, developers are there to serve its customers with their city-approved projects. They are not there to make the city pretty to people like you and me. I am sure in coming up with any design they consider the benefit and costs of "putting more effort" (and its own reputation) and in this case the decision happens to be that it is not worthwhile to do so. You can't expect everyone to be a perfectionist. You are not one either. It is far easier to forgive a mediocre design/execution for PACE than for AURA.

It is Dundas and Jarvis. Honestly, if you don't even consider living there, or care about the neighbourhood that much, why insist that developers should come up with fantastic buildings? They are just businessmen.
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You completely misread what I said. This is about creating an interior layout that fits the exterior design (i.e. the facade) of the building. A wall of spandrel on a glass tower is a sure sign that little effort was made to mesh both the building's function with its architecture. It is very much a product of the people buying into these buildings. Like Toronto, there's a ton more spandrel being used in Vancouver than 5 to 10 years ago. Seeing more floor plans being designed with walk in closets facing the exterior "glass" facade or bathrooms, kitchens, etc.

Point being ... this tower would look a whole lot better with less spandrel. It could be executed for minimal additional costs. There's just no point right now.
 
The responses to my post are all missing the point of what I'm saying. Of course budgets are very much a reality, especially when units are being sold for a lower cost.

But how the architect responds to these challenges is key. I'm not convinced the design team knew how to expertly design on a tight budget. Institutional projects by D+S are at a very different calibre.

A budget doesn't have to result in mediocre design. But the team went with the punched-out-windows-in-spandrel crap that is plaguing our city, and I will continue to critique that.

Likewise, I will critique developers, especially Canadian developers which are notorious for their penny-pinching.

It's two sides of the same coin. Developers need to be realistic about what costs are involved in creating a building of an acceptable quality. And architects must open their minds to new methods in order to create a satisfactory result on a budget.

Those of you who find PACE to be likeable are entitled to that opinion. As someone in architecture school, I look at it and shake my head with disappointment. (I imagine some of the people on the team who designed it would be equally frustrated, as they were the ones who had to work on a tight budget. Of course it's easy to be an armchair critic.)
 
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