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Toronto's Ugliest Building

77 Elm presents an ever-changing face to the street as you walk around it.

The afternoon light in DarnDirtyApe's photograph taken from the north west corner casts enough shadow to show off the decorative panels that stick up from the parking garage, and stick out from the upper level of the main block, and the block that thrusts forward at the north east corner, rather nicely I think. Unadorned concrete at its finest.

For brutalism, quite a lot of rather whimsical applied detail too - perhaps with references to Mackintosh or Gaudi in the sticky-up bits in the parking garage? Lots of play between strong horizontals ( strips recessed into the concrete below the windows ) and verticals ( panels that stick out from the sides of the building and zip up the sides to break up the roof line at the top ) to engage the eye. Plenty of podium to provide useful roof space for future uses of the building too. One of my favourite modern Toronto buildings.
 
For some reason, the ornamentation of 77 Elm reminds me of something Aztec. Don't know why. The handsdown winner has to be HBC at Bloor and Yonge. It manages to deface the city's most prominent intersection. Regarding the Dundas / Bloor building, I've driven past it several times and had never noticed its bifurcated nature. I think it meets the street nicely. Ganj, what's with all the hate for the new Ryerson / Canadian Tire building at Bay and Dundas? OK, its no work of art, but its scale is just about right - it reflects the height and colour of the Atrium on Bay across the street. The patterns on the concrete panels are identical to those used on the One City Hall condo. It's varied surfaces and the glass cube on an angle at its north eastern corner break up its mass.
 
borgos:

I think brutalist architecture often times refer to the Aztec/Mayan monolithic style. I vaguely recall reading something about Trent University is supposedly a mirror of such.

Another example is probably the reticulated cast concrete exterior of Medical Sciences Building at U of T, and how it mirrors intricately carved Mayan decorative motifs.

AoD
 
I did not know that. Thanks Alv, that's what I love about UT, I always learn something here.
 
What a shame that the fine lobby artwork in 2 Bloor West, contemporary with the brutalist-era building, was destroyed several years ago to make way for a shop selling tacky cut crystal souvenirs.

Until temporarily unfashionable brutalism is transformed, in the public consciousness, and is seen as an expression of an era where quality examples can be widely celebrated, such vandalism will continue I suppose.
 
borgos:

Don't quote me on this one, I could very well be wrong.

AoD
 
It's hard to pick one winner/loser for ugliest building in Toronto. There are much uglier buildings in other cities. To me, Toronto's problem is more of a blandness problem and a lack of attention to detail problem than sheer ugliness. What I do find ugly about parts of Toronto though is the incoherent streetscapes, the seemingly random developments that occurred with no thought given to the neighbourhood or context... the 'random buildings that just fell out of the sky' look. That's worse than individual buildings, IMO.
Click to expand...

Amen to that comment. It's something I just cannot understand about N. American attitudes to the built environment around them (participants of this forum excluded, of course): if it's not simple inattention, or lack of ambition and knowledge, then people seem to think anything that goes beyond a utilitarian fulfillment of design objectives is simply irrelevant.

Sure, I must not exaggerate: for instance, the Toronto Public Library makes an effort to build or renovate libraries with some real attention to creating a good public library experience by hiring good architects (e.g. a small example: the forthcoming Pape Avenue library renovation shown on Hariri/Pontarini's web site).

But anyway, I'm glad to have found this forum where I can, I hope, become better informed about Toronto's urban development than in the last 20 years of living here.
 
Welcome insertrealname

There was an article in the Star (by Christopher Hume I believe) on the Toronto Public Library building renewal.

AoD
 
The tower at St.Clair/Bathurst/Vaughan posted by Archivist is not super pretty, but it's a nice place to live - big apts, and huge patios, plus a fantastic view if facing south.

Friends of mine used to live there.
 
the two buildings posted here...Bloor/Dundas and Bathurst/St Clair have for years received my vote as the two ugliest buildings in that order.
 
The best collection of ugly buildings probably has to be the Weston and Lawrence cluster. There's a good number of the 1960s slabs+podium that are as bad as Vaughan/Bathurst, and they destroyed the town - otherwise, Weston would look more like Mimico or Long Branch.

And let's not forget one of the worst rental buildings, inside and out, at Dupont and Lansdowne.
 
Y'know, a day or two ago, something dawned on me about the oft-hated Sheraton Centre. Y'know the recent "fauxing" of the ground-floor "porte cochere" entrance? Well, I can live with that--but imagine if they well-meaningly tried that throughout the structure, i.e. if you think it's bad now, imagine it with a retro "extreme makeover".

Brutalism ain't bad, y'know...
 
On a bit of a tangent, I've long wanted to do a photo essay on the practice of fauxing of just a part of a building. Hotels are bad for this, like the very badly handled base of Sutton Place for instance, but one of my favourite examples is the Greekification of a small chunk of Metro Centre, which I always think is hilarious.
 
^From a purely aesthetic perspective I actually find something appealing about the look and shape of those parking structures.
 
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