Toronto Union Centre | 298m | 54s | Westbank | Bjarke Ingels Group

I maybe wrong, but I think RSH's St. Lawrence Market North will a glass elevator shaft as well.


AoD

Are these also glass from the interior? Also,where are the Well's elevators? I'm surprised they would go with glass as it's not a side core (I don't think). Curious to learn. The CN Tower isn't really relevant because it isn't adjacent occupied spaces.
 
Are these also glass from the interior? Also,where are the Well's elevators? I'm surprised they would go with glass as it's not a side core (I don't think). Curious to learn. The CN Tower isn't really relevant because it isn't adjacent occupied spaces.

It is a side core - north facing for the Well. Not sure about interior glass - but the structure suggests that possibility.

AoD
 
Building G very much is a side (north) core.

The Well.PNG
 
Sorry no news but it (finally) dawned on me that, as proposed at 900 ft / 274.18 m, Union Centre is just two feet shorter than Scotia Plaza. Don't think the renders convey that height, no doubt due in part to its hefty waist-line.

What's the BIG idea?

I also got to thinking about how busy Bjarke Ingels Group has been in Canada with Telus Sky in Calgary, the upside-down version of Telus called Vancouver House, the kinda/sorta horizontal version that is echoing a bit in KING Toronto's design.. and the terracing atop Union Ctr. Anyone else see some copy and paste thinking, or wonder if BIG should use a new sketch pad for their next Canadian project? I realize we live in a city of hundreds of clones, but maybe a BIG firm like this could withstand a teeny bit of scrutiny.

Again, sorry for the no news thread bump, but this is a discussion forum about buildings so feel free to comment. And my psychic aunt told me this thread bump will trigger actual news within 17 days. :)
 
Last edited:
All of BIG's Canadian work so far has been for the same two clients, often in JVs. What's more, if you go through either Yes is More or Hot to Cold and you'll see that no idea really 'dies' at BIG. They've been pushing the pixelated, terracing, mountainous, typology across the globe for at least 12 years now.
 

By Alex Bozikovic.

Apparently the project is being held up because of the...width? I think my head is going to spin right off.

But city urban design staff don’t like that the tower is about 90 metres wide, citing its impact on the skyline. “This width is wider in its east-to-west-dimension than any tower in the core, with the exception of the Manulife Tower at Bloor and Bay. A reduction in width … will address many of the issues,” Lynda Macdonald, director of community planning for Toronto and East York District, said in an e-mail.
 
The City seem to like to choose the weirdest hills to die on.
For sure. This doesn't make any sense. Someone is proposing (hopefully, seriously) to build thousands of square meters of high-quality office space in a highly-walkable location, along with district-energy system and...it gets stalled?

Upsetting. Sometimes I really do give up hope for Toronto.
 
For sure. This doesn't make any sense. Someone is proposing (hopefully, seriously) to build thousands of square meters of high-quality office space in a highly-walkable location, along with district-energy system and...it gets stalled?

Sometimes I really do give up hope for Toronto.

Don't get me wrong, we noted early on this building is wide - but I am not sure how that becomes such a deal-breaker on dead-end alleyway of a site.

AoD
 

By Alex Bozikovic.

Apparently the project is being held up because of the...width? I think my head is going to spin right off.
Huge tall office towers are usually that wide to hold the company's workers etc ! It's just up against alot of condos and hotels which are slim and tall in this area. And the office tower that are there aren't too tall keeping the shadowing down. This issue will become balanced when other huge office towers come on stream in this area in the future.
 

By Alex Bozikovic.

Apparently the project is being held up because of the...width? I think my head is going to spin right off.

I agree that this is, taken in isolation, an odd thing to hold up this project over.

But I have some sympathy for the City..........

Due to an argument made in the article, I take it, by Allied's CEO.......

"...........To think of how we as a society get to net zero, there needs to be 10,000 projects like this.”

For the record, that would be be a 9km long uninterrupted wall; and yes, I would oppose that.

I do sympathize with bureaucrats concerned with precedent.

Should there be room to say 'yes' here? .....Of course there should.

But I don't consider the matter as outrageous as some would have it.

A 30,000ft2 floor plate for an office tower is huge.

It's huge if it's a square, never mind if it's 90M in one dimension.

It's quite right to point that it's an alley, that there is no block being eliminated by the huge floor plate.........

But it's also something I wouldn't want to see commonly replicated either.

The next version won't be from Allied or Big............
 
.

Amazing that the City could be so picky with developers in these uncertain Covid times,
....Gee most world cities would die to have this architect/development build in their town....sorry to say but we are spoiled here

The developers don’t want public money, and they want to start building now, COVID-19 be damned. “We’d start digging tomorrow if we could,” said Westbank CEO Ian Gillespie. “We have enterprises who are very interested, but we can’t say when the building will be complete because we don’t know how long the process of approval will take.”

Where’s the rule that says buildings should be narrow from east to west? There isn’t one. “There’s nothing in the bylaws that limit the width of the building,” Mr. Gillespie said. “It’s a purely subjective argument. And during a pandemic, this is what they want to argue about? To think of how we as a society get to net zero, there needs to be 10,000 projects like this.”
 
Last edited:

By Alex Bozikovic.

Apparently the project is being held up because of the...width? I think my head is going to spin right off.


The quote "A reduction in width … will address many of the issues,” begs the question after reading the article - what are the MANY issues exactly? I only counted one - that its width has a (too dramatic) impact on the skyline
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure they can make this building thinner from the office space requirement versus the lot dimensions it's supposed to be constructed on.

...though I am almost tempted to say in credulity, if the City looked at the building from and East/West perspective it would remarkably alleviate their concerns of its girth. Just saying.
 

Back
Top