1 St Thomas (Lee Development, 29s, Stern)

[Pep'rJack]

“Art is inherently different from architecture.†The greatest architects have often aspired to create art through their work ... Art is not just found in paintings and statues, nor is architecture just a craft. I guess I don’t see what is inherently different in achitecture that excludes art.

Just to clarify: I can't say exactly what Bogtrotter meant with that statement, but I didn't take it at all to mean that architecture can't be art, or that architects are never artists, or anything like that. Gehry, Calatrava and others are pretty clearly artists first and architects second, if you will. What I understood the statement to mean was that as a (potentially) artistic medium, architecture is quite different from painting, dance, music, or whatever else, because of its functional and civic roles. A couple of extreme examples to quickly illustrate what I mean: An Escher drawing is great on paper, where anyone can either choose to look at it or not, but an office building with a similar design, in which people were expected to do their jobs, wouldn't work terribly well. In this sense, there is a 'freedom' to drawing that really can't exist in the huge majority of architecture (the functional factor). Similarly, one could create a highly provocative, controversial, and to many extremely offensive sculpture, put it in a gallery where anyone could either choose to look at it or not, and that would be just fine. Creating a building in the middle of a city using the same design wouldn't fly (the civic factor). In other words, architecture is hugely more constrained and guided by its purpose and by its place in society than any of the other arts.

Those who reject Stern, implicitly subscribe to one canon, and are narrow minded in not accepting Stern’s contributions.

Not necessarily - one can reject Stern, or anything else, and not automatically be a one-canon-subscriber. It just seems that in this particular case, in this particular thread, that a great deal of the criticism of Stern apparently stems from rigid, single-canon-ish beliefs.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Perhaps 1 St. Thomas is more of our time than some Toronto Style box that's inspired by something that was innovative back when my great grandparents were still alive, back before colour tvs and jet travel and internet forums. People like Stern's style and people are never wrong. Of course, people will buy literally anything as long as it has a doorbell...

 

[Zephyr]

Stern is no choirboy, absorbing all that criticism from jealous modernists, especially of the glass box school. One of the reasons I went into that long discussion of how Stern had attacked modernists in the past is because a number of the senior members of that group have probably never forgiven him for it. Somewhat like a "you started it" argument by modernists, which bounded back in a more muted form.

As a postmodernist, Stern grouped them all into one massive, nearly monolithic, group of architecture, and pointed out what he thought that work collectively lacked, and how we needed to get back in touch with references to our past. As a modern traditionalist, he went directly to the past, references be damned.

There are many variations of the defence of Stern, and I'm sure you can add others: that group is attacking good architecture because it is not modern; that group is more narrow-minded than Stern and his proponents; what is wrong with this architecture if I like it; what if I don't want to live in a glass box; modern can be a great deal worse than what Stern has donel; its better to have well done architecture, regardless of style, and this is well done architecture, etc.

Historically the big guns have been aimed more frequently on progressive and modern architectural styles throughout the twentieth century, than the reverse, but these styles that are collectively grouped under contemporary, modern, avant-garde and their kin, whatever the name it seems to keep coming, and keep morphing, onto a number of skylines around the world.

But we all know Toronto tells a different story. This is not Detroit where the skyscraper inventory has been depressed for a number of decades despite the hype over each new Renaissance Center tower, because of the long-term decline in the economic engine there. This is not Miami, with the emphasis on color and glass and neon, and the lure of a tropical holiday. This is not Las Vegas, fueled by gambling and now family-style entertainment junkets that create, and recreate larger, hotels (not office buildings or needed residential towers for locals). Vancouver and Calgary are not models - some say. Montréal seems to be from another country. Maybe Chicago - the lake, similar population size, match in cultural institutions - but not really the same confusion in its commitment to a wide-ranging architectural palette, steeped in a rich legacy. So this is not Chicago either (though maybe there is something selectively to draw from that city that could be usefully placed in Toronto).

Torontonians may be unsatisfied overall, but which way does it lean? One tower, One St. Thomas, will not definitively tell us about Toronto's future, but what is intriguing is that it is like a prism that displays the different sides of the urban debate, without intending to do so. Will 1ST be just one more execution of good architecture, or is it a Trojan horse that will unleash a backward turn, or is it an alternative for those people who don't want to live in glass houses, for us and/or them to hurl rocks? While I don't know the answer to this riddle, I maintain personally that One St. Thomas will be the wrong way to go in the long run, and a decided distraction in the interim.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

1 St. Thomas doesn't need to be defended at all. If a supposed "backward turn" leads to other buildings that look as decent, well, then bring it on, archi-snobs be damned.

 

[adma]

Having a building look like a 1930's art deco apartment building, in 2007, is like getting Chinese at a French restaurant.

Though a more charitable (and "urbanistic", no less) judgment might be that it's like eating Chinese (or some-such-ethnic) food in a French city.

So, what's the matter with that? Unless you're a Lepeniste or something...

 

[alklay]

Hey, if you go to Paris for the Chinese food, all the power to you!!

 

[Tewder]

Perhaps 1 St. Thomas is more of our time than some Toronto Style box that's inspired by something that was innovative back when my great grandparents were still alive, back before colour tvs and jet travel and internet forums. People like Stern's style and people are never wrong.

I couldn't agree more. All these so-called cutting-edge, glass boxes that apparantly are supposed to speak of 'our' generation are pretty much faux copies too... and much to the consternation of many here, I'm sure, it all basically comes down to fashion, no matter how one may try to spin their particular brand of fashion into being somehow inherently better, more original, more relevent, or of better design. It's all been done before, baby.

 

[buildup]

The fact is there are two other new towers going into the same corner at Charles & St Thomas. They are both "modern". We should insist that they excel in the modern style, rather than expect 1 St Thomas to provide it, because its attempting something else entirely.

BTW, while I was in Paris a couple of years ago, I did a lot of Chinese because I needed the variety.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Dane: I haven't heard anyone here arguing that neo-Modernist buildings of the type designed by Peter Clewes should be "the only thing that should be put up..." What we are doing is assessing the value of pastiche buildings such as 1 St Thomas as vehicles for expressing the spirit of the age we live in, and by extension questioning the place in design history of Robert A.M. Stern.

You take the more-is-more point of view that many heavily marketed-to victims of conspicuous consumption take ( "when I'm paying upwards of 3 million dollars for my condo, I want the limestone front, the details around the windows, the Herringbone hardwood floors ..." ) as if adding lots of stuff gives a structure automatic design credibility, which it doesn't.

yyzer makes a similar claim, that "To suggest that all architecture must follow modernist lines, or be irrelevant, is ridiculous" yet fails to explain why he believes Stern's art deco pastiche is relevant. He dismisses the idea that the Arc de Triomphe is "faux" yet in a general sense it is - just as Mock Goth is - but he doesn't seem to realize that it was built in the neo-Classical house style of the early 19th century when European leaders and thinkers were drawing inspiration from Ancient Greece and Rome and drawing on that culture to represent their aspirations. We don't live in that empire-building era any more, so faking styles from the past to give value to our present makes no sense in 2007.

buildup claims that 1 St Thomas is "attempting something else entirely" but so far hasn't explained what, precisely, that is.

 

[caltrane74]

hey! this building is different and upscale, I like it!

If nothing else it is pretty when viewed from all angles...

.... who cares what its trying to do in the larger scale of things, in the end its going to be place for people to live, and far better than the concrete slab buildings which surround it, eh

 

[maestro]

What we are doing is assessing the value of pastiche buildings such as 1 St Thomas as vehicles for expressing the spirit of the age we live in, and by extension questioning the place in design history of Robert A.M. Stern.

You're not assessing really anything as you're mind is already made up

yet fails to explain why he believes Stern's art deco pastiche is relevant.

and all you've come up with is a cliche - expressing the spirit of the age - which , ironically, is currently alot like the Deco era

 

[Urban Shocker]

You may be living in a Busby Berkeley world but I don't know anyone else who is.

 

[ShonTron]

US: I know that you prefer modernism, and that anything else is "faux", but, really. I don't see anything wrong with a well designed, properly executed historist building once in a while. It fits the neighbourhood, it's not crass, it's not French Quarter, lousy, cheap "faux".

I am tiring a bit of hearing how everything must be a Clewes modernist box (as good as his work can be), or nothing.

 

[urbandreamer]

hey why are you guys debating a building that was the vision of a single developer and his team of marketers? 1stT is a product--no different than a Ford Fairlane--designed to sell. It sold to people from its targeted demographic. Big deal. The fact it's almost complete proves that just like at the bottom end of the market the top end is equally diverse. $1 million will buy a nice annex victorian, a nice bigger house in thornhill, a luxury condo downtown or a farm in Perth County. Using a single building as proof toronto architecture is going down the tubes--silly!

 

[Urban Shocker]

Sean: I, for one, have never argued that everything should be a Clewes modernist box. I adore the work of the new generation of designers who use the possibilities of computer software to create new forms - technological change of that sort can define our age culturally as well as in the built forms we adopt. OCAD, the ROM, the AGO - I love them all too.

On this thread:

* I've advocated for Picasso's "Great artists steal, bad artists copy" point of view when it comes to using influences from the past in buildings.

* In the same vein, I've pointed out that Gehry acknowledges the influence of Borromini on his work, and suggest that it shows.

* And in my second post I stated, "I was hoping that Stern would have grabbed deco and given it a twist, reinvented it somehow for our age - not done a straightforward faux number. Oh well ..."

As you say, 1 St Thomas fits the neighbourhood - and I assume the kind of buildings you're talking about are the faux neighbours, none of which adopt the approaches outlined above.