A
adma
Guest
No. Glen Quagmire. Giggedy-giggedy
|
|
|
No. Glen Quagmire. Giggedy-giggedy
A
adma
Guest
Besides, you must remember that the most profound architectural/aesthetic/whatever event of our lives is an act of architectural destruction. It's even more profound than any of this "constructive" stuff.
So maybe I'm Stockhausen, then...
So maybe I'm Stockhausen, then...
A
adma
Guest
BTW to get this thread back on track (and like it or not, it is a thread about sentimentality, etc), of course, any useful networking w/either John Martins-Manteiga of Dominion Modern or Dave LeBlanc of the G&M is useful.
And by and large, why not look back? To use newfangled lookit-me-I'm-hip ref points, IMO it's better (and far less precious) to perceive the built, lost, found, high, low, constructive, destructive world as just one big mash-up/iPod shuffle. Aga Khan and Chaka Khan and Louis Kahn, all in one...
And by and large, why not look back? To use newfangled lookit-me-I'm-hip ref points, IMO it's better (and far less precious) to perceive the built, lost, found, high, low, constructive, destructive world as just one big mash-up/iPod shuffle. Aga Khan and Chaka Khan and Louis Kahn, all in one...
S
shawnmicallef
Guest
RE: McDonald - i've already writting a short bit about it. I love it. I had no idea about the insides until last year when i had to go apply for my long-form birth certificate. There's this hot art in the stairwell. and all that lobby glass is so nice. makes me happy to be ontarian. ontario-ite?
A
Archivistower
Guest
I work nearby the Mowat / Ferguson etc. Blocks and I love these buildings. To me, they epitomize a 1968 view of government - it's a serious, substantial role that government plays, newly expanded, modernizing, gradually opening up to the public. The optimism of the art along the walls is striking, and the interior courtyard is beautiful. I love the solidity and width of the hallways on the first two floors. Whenever I am in these buildings, I feel good about what I do as a government worker.
Moving from these buildings to the Ferguson Block, with its 1920's exclusivity and bookish feel is quite striking. I also love the Ferguson, but I relate to it less. Ferguson Block is "God Save the Queen", while Mowat etc. is "A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow".
The 2005 equivalent is a kiosk in a shopping mall. That's out of paper. No jingle.
Moving from these buildings to the Ferguson Block, with its 1920's exclusivity and bookish feel is quite striking. I also love the Ferguson, but I relate to it less. Ferguson Block is "God Save the Queen", while Mowat etc. is "A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow".
The 2005 equivalent is a kiosk in a shopping mall. That's out of paper. No jingle.
B
building babel
Guest
Archivist: Mowat / Ferguson represent the modernist world I grew up in - the Nanny State, Big Government etc. - an age of optimism in the power of the collective. I still hope it'll make a comeback, that it is "just resting" and not "pushing-up-the-daisies". Now we live in an age when the local BIA defines design in the public realm more than our elected governments do.
Rarely, when nice buildings are razed, do they remain in the public consciousness for very long, especially in a city like Toronto that is always cannibalizing the past. We see the TD towers every day, but who ( save Adma ) remembers the Bank of Toronto building that died for them? It isn't so much a question of "asking people" to forget about old razed structures. They fade from the consciousness regardless. The territorial imperative triumphs.
Perhaps there will be a block or two in the Facade District for modernist edifices like Bata?
Rarely, when nice buildings are razed, do they remain in the public consciousness for very long, especially in a city like Toronto that is always cannibalizing the past. We see the TD towers every day, but who ( save Adma ) remembers the Bank of Toronto building that died for them? It isn't so much a question of "asking people" to forget about old razed structures. They fade from the consciousness regardless. The territorial imperative triumphs.
Perhaps there will be a block or two in the Facade District for modernist edifices like Bata?
A
adma
Guest
You mean Ferguson, or Whitney?
Incidentally, re the Macdonald complex, I adore the way it captures a crossroads in the history of "public art"--that is, truly contemporary, yet still civil in a way that now suggests some tranquil far-off time of propriety and decorum. I guess if 1968 is a watershed year in all sorts of culture, including artistic culture, Macdonald is just barely "before". (For a fair example of "after", witness the artworks around, say, Metro Hall.)
And you know...I agree, to a point. Or maybe even beyond your point; I'd even venture so much that the argument goes for the real internationally-famous cause celebres like Penn Station or Euston Arch or Les Halles, even if their replacements aren't anywhere close to TD's distinction. (Trouble is, to overargue that point into dogma gets into web-kooky George Conklin territory.)
So what, ultimately, renders the cause for good preservation and "memory" any different from the cause for good architecture? Hey, one might even argue that the pure banal utilitarianism of the current Penn Station/MSG complex is more "comprehensible" than TD's Miesian abstraction. So we see the towers every day--big deal. Few "think" about them--much less sympathetically. And if they do lean t/w sympathy, very often it's in a potboiler fashion, i.e. the Time/Life Guide To Modern & Contemporary Architecture. Does that mean we must stoop to that level?
And for that matter, what makes the kind of opera-foppery you sometimes engage yourself in around this joint any different? There, too, as w/dead buildings, it's a matter of out of sight, out of mind, for most people out there. So, then, why waste our collective time with any of this high-minded stuff? What's so hot about an Opera House in Toronto? (Rhetorical argument.)
You see, ultimately, the best (or at least most philosophically-minded) preservationists, or architecture fanatics, or opera fops or whomever, are in touch with the inherent "futility" of their obsession. IOW basically, you're no less f'ed than I am. And by some strange kind of osmosis, that in-touchness makes it less futile--even broadens and synergizes our Weltanschauung (I'd hope).
That's why it's just fine to adore Mies's pavilion and lament the razing of its predecessor at in the same breath. And it's why Stockhausen was, in his funny way, "correct" (or at least on a right track) about 9/11, and even a preservationist worth his/her salt ought to understand the fact. And lo and behold, even in NYC etc, "life goes on" after 9/11.
S
shawnmicallef
Guest
Dude, you're freaking out my thread.
A
adma
Guest
And back on topic...
Shawn, have you ever been to Scarborough College? Because if anything was a true icon of cutting-edge 60s architecture in Toronto, that's it--more so than City Hall and T-D--in fact, it's as internationally important to 60s Brutalism as Mississauga City Hall was to 80s Postmodernism. And what's more, in spite of all additions bad and (especially lately) good, John Andrews' original Scarborough College complex remains sublimely intact and sublimely impressive, and remarkably unsung as an architectural landmark.
In fact, John Andrews' surprisingly prolific Toronto career (which is on a common international-significance level w/Expo-era Montreal, firms like Arcop etc) is definitely a subject deserving of further study (maybe as a Dominion Modern follow-up?); next to him, Peter Dickinson was but an interesting regionalist.
The biggest strike against Andrews was, I guess, his Brutalist vocabulary--and of course, he was the (st)architect of the ill-fated, Union Station-destroying Metro Centre scheme. Of which the CN Tower is the sole vestige; and even if John Andrews deserves only token/vestigial credit for its final design, its tripod form remains "Andrewsesque".
Also in the vein of archetypal/prototypal Toronto Brutalism: the equally underrated/undermolested 1962 Central Tech Art School by Macy DuBois...
Shawn, have you ever been to Scarborough College? Because if anything was a true icon of cutting-edge 60s architecture in Toronto, that's it--more so than City Hall and T-D--in fact, it's as internationally important to 60s Brutalism as Mississauga City Hall was to 80s Postmodernism. And what's more, in spite of all additions bad and (especially lately) good, John Andrews' original Scarborough College complex remains sublimely intact and sublimely impressive, and remarkably unsung as an architectural landmark.
In fact, John Andrews' surprisingly prolific Toronto career (which is on a common international-significance level w/Expo-era Montreal, firms like Arcop etc) is definitely a subject deserving of further study (maybe as a Dominion Modern follow-up?); next to him, Peter Dickinson was but an interesting regionalist.
The biggest strike against Andrews was, I guess, his Brutalist vocabulary--and of course, he was the (st)architect of the ill-fated, Union Station-destroying Metro Centre scheme. Of which the CN Tower is the sole vestige; and even if John Andrews deserves only token/vestigial credit for its final design, its tripod form remains "Andrewsesque".
Also in the vein of archetypal/prototypal Toronto Brutalism: the equally underrated/undermolested 1962 Central Tech Art School by Macy DuBois...
A
adma
Guest
Hey, nothing like a little strategic/ambidextrous shock'n'awe to shut the hostile up real good...
A
adma
Guest
And once again on-topic: one cannot forget the 50s/60s schools built under the municipal tenure of architect F.C. Etherington (Lord Lansdowne, etc). They're iconic, the kind of 60s pop-modernism everybody who's anybody adores--not as "important" in the big, international picture as John Andrews, but maybe that's their virtue. (And I can't remember if Etherington was responsible for other public works in Toronto, like the big drum at the foot of Coxwell; but it all seems part of a common optimistic design ethos, anyway.)
Think of Etherington as a Toronto version of Hamilton's municipal architect Stanley Roscoe, pop-modern verve and all...
Think of Etherington as a Toronto version of Hamilton's municipal architect Stanley Roscoe, pop-modern verve and all...
B
building babel
Guest
Adma: I agree that the cause for good preservation and the cause for good architecture are one and the same, since they both deal with issues of quality.
We do, indeed, see the TD towers every day, and maybe we don't need to "think" about them because we experience them emotionally, whereas we can now only experience the Bank of Toronto on a conceptual level. So it's like comparing apples and oranges, the living and the departed.
The opera house is a real building. I saw it with my own eyes this morning. I can't see anything futile in embracing the world and experiencing it to the full; I find my obsessions in this regard to have very practical emotional payoffs.
( By the way, have you seen David Mangin's small-thinking redesign for Les Halles that was released about six months ago? It is safe and low key compared to the other shortlisted designs, particularly that by Rem Koolhaas, and also Jean Nouvel ).
We do, indeed, see the TD towers every day, and maybe we don't need to "think" about them because we experience them emotionally, whereas we can now only experience the Bank of Toronto on a conceptual level. So it's like comparing apples and oranges, the living and the departed.
The opera house is a real building. I saw it with my own eyes this morning. I can't see anything futile in embracing the world and experiencing it to the full; I find my obsessions in this regard to have very practical emotional payoffs.
( By the way, have you seen David Mangin's small-thinking redesign for Les Halles that was released about six months ago? It is safe and low key compared to the other shortlisted designs, particularly that by Rem Koolhaas, and also Jean Nouvel ).
A
adma
Guest
One thing to remember in hindsight re the great lost-landmark cause celebres of the 1960s is that their replacements, more often than not, were agreed to be execrable--perhaps it wasn't the loss that was lamented, so much as the substandard tradeoff?
Here's a question: what if Mies designed Penn Station's replacement? True, the notion's way too blasphemous for the heritage priesthood to consider, but think of it: a train station by Mies. A late-life masterpiece, equal to or surpassing Berlin's National Gallery, the TD pavilion, etc in sheer monumental grandeur. And a worthy successor to McKim Mead & White's masterpiece; no, really.
If Penn Central had brains, or if there was more of a post-Y2K starchitect-conscious sensibility going on, that's what it ought to have done, politically speaking. Instead, they hired Charles Luckman, which is like hiring Brisbin Brook Beynon to design a replacement for Union Station. Like, duh. How dunderheaded can you get. And in the process, they inadvertently midwifed the preservationist movement.
So, what if the "new" Penn Station were by Mies? (And MSG by, I dunno, Roche Dinkeloo or something.) Would the story of the preservationist movement, and its place in the overall scheme of things, be somewhat "different"--and maybe more to be sneered at a la anti-Minto NIMBYs?
Something for all of us to consider.
Here's a question: what if Mies designed Penn Station's replacement? True, the notion's way too blasphemous for the heritage priesthood to consider, but think of it: a train station by Mies. A late-life masterpiece, equal to or surpassing Berlin's National Gallery, the TD pavilion, etc in sheer monumental grandeur. And a worthy successor to McKim Mead & White's masterpiece; no, really.
If Penn Central had brains, or if there was more of a post-Y2K starchitect-conscious sensibility going on, that's what it ought to have done, politically speaking. Instead, they hired Charles Luckman, which is like hiring Brisbin Brook Beynon to design a replacement for Union Station. Like, duh. How dunderheaded can you get. And in the process, they inadvertently midwifed the preservationist movement.
So, what if the "new" Penn Station were by Mies? (And MSG by, I dunno, Roche Dinkeloo or something.) Would the story of the preservationist movement, and its place in the overall scheme of things, be somewhat "different"--and maybe more to be sneered at a la anti-Minto NIMBYs?
Something for all of us to consider.
G
GeekyBoyTO
Guest
adma:
Good question. I guess it utimately depends issues beyond architecture - like, what the role/what standing the building has among the general public; how much power each camp has in the decision making process, etc.
Even then, you'd probably still end up with the Toronto Bank/TD Centre scenario. Sorry, but not really.
GB
Good question. I guess it utimately depends issues beyond architecture - like, what the role/what standing the building has among the general public; how much power each camp has in the decision making process, etc.
Even then, you'd probably still end up with the Toronto Bank/TD Centre scenario. Sorry, but not really.
GB
B
Brighter Hell
Guest
not to get too far off topic, but the ottawa via station is very mies-esque. designed by parkin.
