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

[Urban Shocker]

Aye lassie. And if you touch it ... it'll gruesome more!

 

[Archivist]

There is a lot of attention to detail in this building. Of course, there had better be, because there's no shortage of details to give attention to.

 

[lawsond]

it's a beautiful building.
i hope the uptown folks take as much care with that tower.
care is rare around....here. even if you don't like the faux-ness, it looks like they took some time with it instead of barfing concrete into the air.

 

[lawsond]

Aye lassie. And if you touch it ... it'll gruesome more!

could you drop over and touch the bay adelaide centre and put it over 1000 feet?

 

[Bogtrotter]

Bring on the gargoyles i say! Actually despite all the heckling from the Modernist camp I quite like this building.

 

[interchange42]

No, no. You are supposed to hate this and like the sophisticated contemporary brick parking garage podium at the Distillery with its thoughtfully designed hole revealing the essential truth of its garageness.

Mock away. Yawn.

42

 

[interchange42]

I'm waiting.

42

 

[interchange42]

Okay, what is it we're supposed to like about this tower?

That it sparkles in the sunlight? That the windows couldn't get blacker? (It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.) That all those fussy details add up to Toronto's cuddliest skyscwapah?

Look, for a building that pretends it was built long ago, (and there are lots of buildings in this city that pretend they are from another time), this is one of the better ones: you just have to head a couple of blocks up Bay to see the more confused Regency to prove that point. It's just that for some of us this tendency to look back over ones shoulder to create some supposedly richer architectural history for this city that doesn't actually exist gives us a pain in the neck. Some people don't mind if things go up that look like the buildings pictured in their bedtime storybooks, but that's not what I'm looking for.

42

 

[Tewder]

Look, for a building that pretends it was built long ago, (and there are lots of buildings in this city that pretend they are from another time), this is one of the better ones: you just have to head a couple of blocks up Bay to see the more confused Regency to prove that point. It's just that for some of us this tendency to look back over ones shoulder to create some supposedly richer architectural history for this city that doesn't actually exist gives us a pain in the neck. Some people don't mind if things go up that look like the buildings pictured in their bedtime storybooks, but that's not what I'm looking for.

42

...and modernism is now about as original and cutting-edge as impressionism. It's all been done before.

 

[Andrew3D]

So interchange, what are your thoughts on X which is also a building pretending to be built decades ago? I see no problem with mimicking an era if it can be done well. Why should the deco style of architecture be locked up and never revisited again? If musicians and film directors can look to the past for direction why not architects? After all architecture is just a technical form of art.

 

[ShonTron]

Exactly!

1 St. Thomas is an excellent building by most standards - excellent materials, an attention to detail, sure it pretends in a way to be from another time, but in this context (nabe, architecture) it works. It's a refreshing change from modernist glass boxes, that in some cases (X in particular) are from another era - the 1960s.

And I didn't think I'd like it at first, but it has grown on me for two reasons - it now appears to work much better than I though it would have, and that we got something as good as advertised, and didn't suffer through the Cheapening.

 

[tkip]

My two cents worth....

I have absolutely zero knowledge of the differences between architectural styles but I know what I like and I like this tower. Enough said.

 

[Zephyr]

...and modernism is now about as original and cutting-edge as impressionism. It's all been done before.

So this is your assessment. What if others disagree, are they out of touch?

• Cutting edge, first of all, is always changing, and is not as such a movement, although it may become one, and automatically move out of that category by the passing of time.
  
  
• This building is not original second of all, it is a representation of the past, and specifically a representation of Classicism. Does it succeed on this score: probably, if you don't care to have any standards in judging it.

 

[Zephyr]

Exactly!

1 St. Thomas is an excellent building by most standards - excellent materials, an attention to detail, sure it pretends in a way to be from another time, but in this context (nabe, architecture) it works. It's a refreshing change from modernist glass boxes, that in some cases (X in particular) are from another era - the 1960s.

And I didn't think I'd like it at first, but it has grown on me for two reasons - it now appears to work much better than I though it would have, and that we got something as good as advertised, and didn't suffer through the Cheapening.

Why is it a 'refreshing change,' because it is different from Modernism. What about on its own merits, without the strawman of Modernism.

The competent use of materials of high quality is not an indication of good Architecture. If that is what is being taught in schools today it is a mis-read of what Architecture is suppose to be. Post-Modernism created 'Modernism.' Before that label of Modernism, it had another label that was not of a style but of a conglomeration of changes that started back in the post World War I era, and later added a number of other different styles into the mix.

Stern and others framed a number of different, even contradictory styles under that label for rhetorical reasons, when in reality he was focused on only a subset of his own label.

What if the Architect was a Formalist or a Deconstructivist or a Mid-Century Moderne-ist, those are technically under the label of Modernism if you look back at what Stern labeled as such, but they took a back seat to the Bauhaus and the Corbusian styles which were really the group that he was reacting to in his diatribes.

This building represents more of a nostalgia and sentiment than anything else. If you buy into it, that is OK with me, but it is not progressive Architecture in my book, even as a reaction to other styles that are Modernist, cutting edge or other.

 

[buildup]

"Look, for a building that pretends it was built long ago,"

Seriously, who'se pretending? No-one is trying to fool anyone. There are references to the past. For example, I've neve seen an archway like that in old buildings.

Even US and Zephyr seem to be putting up just token resistance.