Recent content by telefann

Can't disagree with that, but one has to remember that the path from mediocrity to excellence must start somewhere. For a place like Toronto with a long history of apathetic provincialism in its mindset and DNA, that will have to come in a series of incremental steps. You raise a valid point...

Part of me remains cynical that these OL stations will fall victim to traditional Torontonian cheapening, but looking at how one of the Finch West LRT's underground stations is turning out (itself a noticeable improvement over Eglinton Crosstown, let alone TYSSE) I do feel somewhat hopeful that...

Not sure if this interior rendering from a recent open house has been posted yet. Link here: https://www.metrolinx.com/en/projects-and-programs/ontario-line/events/pape-danforth-in-person-open-house-june-19-2024

Thoroughly trashy. When will the powers-that-be muster up enough pride and dignity to ban the likes of G+C and DIALOG from inflicting further aesthetic and civic abuse on our supposedly "world-class" city?

Unacceptable for the year 2024. I could understand if a Concord-esque balcony-gimmick design like this (inevitably executed with spandrel-and-mullions galore) came out in 2010, but I'd like to think that our city's aesthetic culture has matured quite a bit since then. Clearly not everyone is yet...

Brings to mind some of the "Putinblocks" going up in the post-Soviet sphere since the new millennium. Cold-War "commieblock" aesthetic dialed up to 11 with a generous dose of bombastic autocratic petro-state psychoticism.

Can't disagree with that, @Skyhighzz. However, cultural change (and a growing appreciation/acceptance for quality, finesse, etc.) is inevitably and necessarily incremental.

Right, but it can't be denied that the behaviour of developers, consumers, policymakers, etc. is really just a reflection of ourselves and what our collective metropolitan/national culture upholds or fails to uphold.

Need I mention Daniels, Canderel, Concord, et al. (and YC, City of the Arts, Nobu, et al.) to prove the point that a good share of Toronto's developers exhibit hardly a modicum of civic pride as they erect one cheap spandrel heap after another in the centre of the largest city of a G20 nation...

Canadian tall-poppy syndrome epitomized. Cutting down excellence, rather than championing it, has been part and parcel of our cultural DNA since time immemorial.

Insipid, janky trash. Tasteless and without a trace of aesthetic or material dignity. I'm looking forward to the day when this flimsy charcoal spreadsheet pile peels off and shatters (not into passerby pedestrians, let's hope).

An Aqualuna-wannabe design gesture pasted on a cheap back-painted window-wall box with exposed spreadsheet gridlines. Desperate pig-lipsticking.

This will cement Giannone Petricone's reputation as one of the new(er) rising stars in Toronto residential architecture, with its evolving design language of bold colours and sleek materials as an empathic counter-thesis against the status quo of grey cheapness.

Equally pathetic is the notion that "the suburbs" are somehow less deserving of competent (let alone high-calibre) architecture worthy of a major global metropolis by virtue of being hidden away from the world's limelight. Lack of civic pride has long been a sore point in Toronto's cultural DNA.

The calibre of design and fine-grained attention to shape, colour, and texture we're getting here are nothing short of world-class. Something that will truly elevate the culture of architecture and development in this historically parsimonious and timid city.