Toronto Union Station Revitalization | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto | NORR

EastYorkTTCFan said:
why? It's never been anything nice to look at it's a train shed it's just steel and concrete. I could see if it had some architecture thath looked like Union station or but to me i's always been ugly.
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It's one of the few remaining train sheds built to this design in North America.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of it either.
 
APTA-2048 said:
It's one of the few remaining train sheds built to this design in North America.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of it either.
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Make it three with me. Old is one thing, but old and ugly does not demand preservation in my book. Not every old thing needs to be saved.
 
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Markster said:
It's historical, and Toronto spent the 60s and 70s indiscriminately tearing down its history and is still repenting.
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So we repair this by saving utterly forgettable structures? There is a picture of a Calatrava train shed lurking somewhere here and you'd forget the current shed about 3 seconds after you walked into that Calatrava shed.
 
TransitBart said:
So we repair this by saving utterly forgettable structures? There is a picture of a Calatrava train shed lurking somewhere here and you'd forget the current shed about 3 seconds after you walked into that Calatrava shed.
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Exactly why not just keep the outside walls and build a new structure that looks like it but can serve the upgrade to electric engines.
 
The roof isn't even visible from anywhere but a few feet of space on Bremner. Even all the recent events hosted by MLSE set up on Bremner had a stage that blocked it and often restricted access far enough west on York to not even be bale to see it around the Telus building. The train shed roof is a triviality that deserves the least costly option as because it has no impact on the city. Every dollar spent on design here is a horrific waste given the lack of dollars spent at DOZENS of more prominent locations.
 
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I think people are mixing up "historic" and "attractive".....and that is kinda dangerous.

What determines "historic" is (largely) time....so, yes, this train shed is historic......it is from a specific style of train shed common in North America of which (as far as i can tell) there are only 2 left in Canada and 4 in all of North America. It is historic because it represents one of the last in use versions of something that people used to see regularly as they travelled the continent by train......"historic" is not subject to the personal opinions of people it is measurable.

Is it attractive? Even if I thought it was, would the next person...."attractive" is a purely subjective opinion and if we are only going to preserve/maintain that which some sort of majority (if you could somehow find that) thought was "attractive" then we are going to preserve a very skewed version of history.
 
Heritage preservation has to balance the pure preservation goal with the context and continued function of the structure. We preserve historic buildings that did not have plumbing for their first 100 years - but we don't preserve the outhouse, nor do we insist people use the outhouse just because that's a heritage attribute of the building.

The mistake made with Union's trainshed preservation was to put a green roof on top. (one progressive agenda, quite a good idea in other contexts, too far). Had the roof been retained with translucent panels, a better compromise could have been reached.

I sit on one of the city's Heritage Preservation panels, so I'm not going to speak out against preservation...... but forcing the travelling public into a dark, dreary structure just because that's what travellers traditionally experienced is not a wise strategy either for preservation or for urban development.

My suggestion would be - nix the green roof - or at least reduce its area - change the roofing material, but keep the trainshed structure.

- Paul
 
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crs1026 said:
Heritage preservation has to balance the pure preservation goal with the context and continued function of the structure. We preserve historic buildings that did not have plumbing for their first 100 years - but we don't preserve the outhouse, nor do we insist people use the outhouse just because that's a heritage attribute of the building.

The mistake made with Union's trainshed preservation was to put a green roof on top. (one progressive agenda, quite a good idea in other contexts, too far). Had the roof been retained with translucent panels, a better compromise could have been reached.

I sit on one of the city's Heritage Preservation panels, so I'm not going to speak out against preservation...... but forcing the travelling public into a dark, dreary structure just because that's what travellers traditionally experienced is not a wise strategy either for preservation or for urban development.

My suggestion would be - nix the green roof - or at least reduce its area - change the roofing material, but keep the trainshed structure.

- Paul
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Not a bad thought....of course another one is preserve the roof and improve the lighting underneath it?
 
Personally, they could have preserved the shed for only three or so tracks perhaps (maybe the VIA tracks...) and really optimized with a full length glass shed. I am going to miss the light when the green roof goes up. The GO concourses do not have direct stairways into the glass shed area...
 
crs1026 said:
Heritage preservation has to balance the pure preservation goal with the context and continued function of the structure. We preserve historic buildings that did not have plumbing for their first 100 years - but we don't preserve the outhouse, nor do we insist people use the outhouse just because that's a heritage attribute of the building.

The mistake made with Union's trainshed preservation was to put a green roof on top. (one progressive agenda, quite a good idea in other contexts, too far). Had the roof been retained with translucent panels, a better compromise could have been reached.

I sit on one of the city's Heritage Preservation panels, so I'm not going to speak out against preservation...... but forcing the travelling public into a dark, dreary structure just because that's what travellers traditionally experienced is not a wise strategy either for preservation or for urban development.

My suggestion would be - nix the green roof - or at least reduce its area - change the roofing material, but keep the trainshed structure.

- Paul
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Hear hear!
 
TOareaFan said:
Not a bad thought....of course another one is preserve the roof and improve the lighting underneath it?
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Quite doable - but now you have the solar panel advocates fighting with the green roof advocates ;-) I suspect ML wants bragging rights on the building being energy efficient, so natural light is the best way.

- Paul
 
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