Toronto Nathan Phillips Square + Spirit Garden | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto

The trucks really detract from that stretch of the street. The diesel fumes mixed with junk food vapours, combined with the fairground aesthetic and constant generator noise of the trucks themselves will continue to make this (the sidewalk, not the entire square) a place to avoid, regardless of the surrounding architecture.
 
And there was a design competition for all of this: I liked the competition entry that would have relocated the chipwagons to Bay St ... it lost, of course, too classy. That same losing entry eliminated the long air duct running along Queen, by diverting the air under the square for heating / cooling the square's hard surface. Go figure.

Oh, well, I mustn't look back at what could have been; that sort of musing is more apropos for the transit thread.
 
I would definitely get rid of those tacky food trucks. City Hall is denigrated by their very presence.
 
Toronto should take lessons from Mississauga on how to get a major civic square project funded and completed.
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I think Toronto can, and does run circles around Mississauga in terms of civic projects. If any part of the 905 had taken lessons from Toronto, it wouldn't be the mess it is now.



Mississauga is renovating a similar if not larger sized civic square. Both have roughly the same major project elements
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Keep in mind, that NPS isn't just a public square...it's also the roof of the world's largest underground parking garage (is this still true? ), that is also nearly 50 years old. I'm sure this adds a whole other degree of difficulty to the entire project.
 
freshcutgrass said:
Keep in mind, that NPS isn't just a public square...it's also the roof of the world's largest underground parking garage (is this still true? ), that is also nearly 50 years old. I'm sure this adds a whole other degree of difficulty to the entire project.
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It's nowhere near as old, but there is a parking garage under the Mississauga square.
 
It looks amazing with the peace garden taken out.... high modernist glory.

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^ So true. All the greyness of concrete at City Hall, Nathan Phillips Square and the Sheraton is unfortunate. The good news is that grey is a neutral colour that can fade to the background if splashes of colour are introduced. The dramatically expanded greenery, the warm colours of the boardwalk on the walkways and the patterned sidewalks on the Queen St. forecourt at Nathan Phillips Square will all help to alleviate this blandness.

The Sheraton for its part, could re-glaze their hotel with mirrored windows to reflect the new urban forest across the street and hide the messiness created by the different positions of blinds in all the windows. Extending the patterned sidewalk to the south side and lining them with trees to encompass the entire City Hall district would also help.
 
MetroMan said:
The Sheraton for its part, could re-glaze their hotel with mirrored windows to reflect the new urban forest across the street and hide the messiness created by the different positions of blinds in all the windows. Extending the patterned sidewalk to the south side and lining them with trees to encompass the entire City Hall district would also help.
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Er, hold back on mirroring the windows. That'd only make the Sheraton Centre look more vacuous, perhaps even compounding its "hatefulness" in the process...
 
I don't get the hate-on for the Sheraton Centre, and I think it's crazy to expect that windows should be monotonous blank spots with no signs of life behind them. Why not see the curtains variously open and closed? That puts some welcome messy humanity into the city, while mirrored glass sterilizes it. Yeuch.
 
^^^ absolutely. The Sheraton has always been one of my favourite buildings. Everything in those pics above looks like crap because its a dull gray day. On the other hand I've always thought the row of food vending trucks is an unfortunate eyesore that just screams cheap and trashy.
 
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