ericmacm's Developmental Concepts [SketchUp Rendering]

[ericmacm]

Hello, UrbanToronto.

A couple of months ago, I first started working on SketchUp renderings for proposed developments in the Mississauga area. Now that most of the significant proposals have been fleshed out, I've started working on another SketchUp project in regards to future developmental concepts for the city of Mississauga. It's been quite slow to come along, as I have been busy with university. I've been messing around with some ideas as to how the downtown core and other major nodes of the city could fill out and develop into more dense communities. At the moment, a lot of things are still rather unorganized as this was done in many separate pieces, and as my skills in SketchUp have been evolving, some buildings are done much better than others. Designs will get refined over time as I continue to work on this.

Now, one might ask, what is the point in doing this? There really is no point, I just find working with SketchUp fun and really like to be able to visualize ideas like this. Hopefully it can also help give inspiration to people in terms of how we can develop this city.

The first area that I have been focusing on is Mississauga City Centre. At the moment, it is very empty, despite being the heart of Mississauga's development at the moment, so one could only imagine how it will change as all of the Square One parking lots begin to fill in with development in the future. I have done some modelling work detailing how I would envision the area getting developed. In terms of office buildings (shown in black) offices will develop over major parts of Square One, using the footprints of the large retail stores as podiums. These will surround the central area of the mall. This makes it appear similar to the Moscow International Business Centre in Russia, where there are large office buildings surrounding a central mall. Residential buildings (shown in gray) develop similarly to how they are already developing in Mississauga (mainly drawing from PSV and M-City), for the most part, where large empty blocks become home to two or three towers joined by a podium. In these images, there are also other buildings with various uses shown in lighter gray, including a soccer stadium (hoping we get a CPL team and stadium someday), a hockey arena (I'm hopeful for a second NHL team in the GTA as well), hotels, and additions to the Sheridan College Hazel McCallion Campus. Everything in white is proposed or under construction.

I'm going to keep updating this thread as I go along, in addition to my other thread about the active development proposals. I hope everyone enjoys!

 

[ericmacm]

The next area I have been working on is the Erin Mills area. It is where I grew up, and it is one that I would love to see change. The current major problem with Erin Mills is the large amount of empty and underused space that exists around the Erin Mills Town Centre. There are currently developments ongoing for apartment and condo complexes along Eglinton Ave, so the area is starting to increase in population density. However, the lands adjacent to the mall property are either totally empty or play host to a few retail locations and restaurants. It could be used for so much more than that. When I walk at the intersection of Eglinton and Erin Mills, it feels like a major downtown intersection (almost like Yonge and Sheppard) without the downtown actually being there. With the mass redevelopment of mall space occurring around the country, I see this mall as no exception, and has a lot of potential due to the sheer amount of space it takes up.

The current version of this concept only focuses on the area directly surrounding the mall. The teal buildings are office buildings, the orange buildings are condos, and the green buildings are apartments. I didn't want many of the buildings being too tall, I feel having them a little shorter kind of suits the area a little more. If office space were ever to develop here (highly unlikely in my opinion), smaller office buildings would likely be more attractive than larger ones. Ideally, there would be a mix of small roads and pedestrian pathways between the buildings. I figure the small roads should only really connect with the internal ring road, and there would be no more extra roads connecting the ring with Eglinton, Erin Mills, Glen Erin, etc, as these roads already have many intersections with lights as it is.

 

[TRONto]

Nice post Eric. Looks like you've put a lot of thought and hard work into this. This seems to be a passion of yours, have you thought of creating a blog around it?

 

[ericmacm]

Nice post Eric. Looks like you've put a lot of thought and hard work into this. This seems to be a passion of yours, have you thought of creating a blog around it?

Hey, thanks! Yeah, I honestly find it a lot of fun, it honestly started as a way to learn how to use SketchUp (I'm trained in other CAD programs and wanted to learn more) but being able to mix my interest in skyscrapers and development, it's become a really fun creative outlet.

I have thought of doing a blog for it, I'm thinking it won't be a bad idea.

 

[ericmacm]

With the new Indigo store opening up inside Square One, it means Chapters at the corner of Station Gate and Rathburn is shut down (with Starbucks likely moving inside the mall too). This marks a potential opportunity for an unused chunk of the lot to get redeveloped into something greater. I've thrown together this small concept for potential towers on the site. Hopefully a developer will take advantage of this new space sometime.

 

[ericmacm]

It's been a long while since I've had something new for this thread. Here's a fun concept I've been working on - a 3-tower office complex for downtown Mississauga, called "Hurontario Place". Heights are 165m (40s), 145m (35s), and 65m (16s). The towers are pretty basic, but I wanted it to have a bit of a Bay Adelaide Centre look, because that's more or less what I would expect to see if a developer decided to build Mississauga's first office tower. I plan to do more stuff like this in the future.

 

[ericmacm]

This new concept is another office complex for downtown Mississauga, situated on the Mississauga Executive Centre parking garage that fronts Absolute Ave. These towers, 41s and 25s, are connected by a 4s wintergarden at ground level. These are styled with elements of the existing Executive Centre towers. I also included a sloped roof with a spire on the taller tower to make two look different. Both towers have fins on the top with crown lighting. I have also added some lighting for my other towers.