Setting aside the intense activity we've seen in the past few years with all the new cultural buildings, it would be interesting to compare the quality of 2007's condos, offices, and single family houses with those being built twenty years ago during the last construction boom.
None of our big new office towers strike me as being qualitatively any better, as attractive landmarks on our skyline, than the former BCE Place or Scotia Plaza were in their day. We're in an age where computer software allows designers to create compelling new forms, and a city like Toronto with a history of having once built tall office towers of international significance is a great location for something unique and new. If it can't be done with a brash corporate tower, where ought it to be done? Bay Adelaide in particular strikes me as a huge missed opportunity to add that next generation of structures to our skyline - it will sit on a large lot, offering possibilities of scale now scarce in the downtown core, and doesn't exploit it.
But architects, including some involved in our new cultural projects, are reclaiming the high-rise condo field from developers with nice results. I think this is one area where we can unequivocally celebrate the strength of our local design talent. They don't feel compelled to make each condo tower a screaming landmark, intended to compete with corporate office towers, either. There's an interchangeability of general style, where fitting in seems as virtuous as standing out, regardless of whether KPMB, Diamond+Schmitt, aA, Hariri Pontarini, core, or whoever produced it. Still, we're not entirely out of the historicist woods yet, as ROCP and the Regency show. And there's the easy-sell populism of the Met, Lotus, Malibu and Panorama, with their I'm-not-a-glass-box curves, that can't be ignored either.
Maybe some of our better architects will hook up with builders and start designing attractive single family homes, in the hinterlands or wherever they're building them now for the masses, one of these days too.