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

Back to the topic at hand, the canopy is scheduled to begin being installed this coming week. It'll have 2 legs instead of four but will be slightly different than the most recently released design. Once done, the stage will be clad in fritted glass and wood matching the skating pavilion next to it.
 
MetroMan said:
Back to the topic at hand, the canopy is scheduled to begin being installed this coming week. It'll have 2 legs instead of four but will be slightly different than the most recently released design. Once done, the stage will be clad in fritted glass and wood matching the skating pavilion next to it.
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Which part of the stage will clad in glass, the sides? Will the cement stairs and stage also be covered in another material? (like stone)
 
The sides will have glass railing as well as the top of the canopy. The lower sides of the stage will be clad in the same faux stone tiles and the sides of the second tier of stairs will receive a wood treatment like the skating pavilion.

Once the stage is completed, they're going to move on to renovating the West walkway. We'll see wood decking and a new stainless steel railing. There was talk about replacing the entirety of the walkway walls with the fritted glass but I think that was dropped. It's a shame because this would lighten up the imposing quality of the walkways while allowing them to remain and serve their purpose of enclosing the square and provide a place for people watching and to contemplate the square.

The fountains are essentially complete. All that is missing are the grates. Once those are in place, the fountains will be turned on (this summer).

Work on the Queen St. forecourt is going to begin later in the summer or early fall. This will involve removing the lawn, rebuilding and reorienting the West garage entrance so it faces the square, recladding the East garage entrance in the same stone, wood and glass as the skating pavilion and levelling the HVAC exhaust vent with the sidewalk. On this, there is little information that I could dig up but the intention as recently as January was for an artist to be commissioned to build a piece that would be both a sculpture and functional as a funnel for the air without blocking the sidewalk as it does now. Work will continue into next year to tile the forecourt with a stone pattern that is intended to eventually become the signature for the City Hall district -- hopefully extending to Old City Hall in a future phase.
 
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My only real regret about the construction of City Hall/ Nathan Phillips Square is the loss of the beautiful Beaux-Arts Registry Building.

1199_registry_office.jpg


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Though I suppose the whole "futuristic" look of it wouldn't have worked with that right beside it.
 
MetroMan said:
Work will continue into next year to tile the forecourt with a stone pattern that is intended to eventually become the signature for the City Hall district -- hopefully extending to Old City Hall in a future phase.
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It would be great if they do extend the Nathan Phillips Square "look" to the Old City Hall lawns etc. as the current arrangements there are really very tacky (partly due to poor grounds-keeping and badly maintained pathways).
 
MetroMan said:
Once the stage is completed, they're going to move on to renovating the West walkway. We'll see wood decking and a new stainless steel railing. There was talk about replacing the entirety of the walkway walls with the fritted glass but I think that was dropped. It's a shame because this would lighten up the imposing quality of the walkways while allowing them to remain and serve their purpose of enclosing the square and provide a place for people watching and to contemplate the square.
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Well, IMO if they were to replace the whole railing, they might as well have replaced the whole walkway. And at a certain point, we start tipping into betraying NPS's fundamental 1965ness of being. So: restraint, kiddo, restraint...
 
My only real regret about the construction of City Hall/ Nathan Phillips Square is the loss of the beautiful Beaux-Arts Registry Building.
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Actually, I find the Registry Building an unremarkable garden-variety Beaux-Arts box, not worthy of sullying the modernist environs of City Hall.
 
MetroMan said:
Work on the Queen St. forecourt is going to begin later in the summer or early fall. This will involve removing the lawn, rebuilding and reorienting the West garage entrance so it faces the square, recladding the East garage entrance in the same stone, wood and glass as the skating pavilion and levelling the HVAC exhaust vent with the sidewalk. On this, there is little information that I could dig up but the intention as recently as January was for an artist to be commissioned to build a piece that would be both a sculpture and functional as a funnel for the air without blocking the sidewalk as it does now. Work will continue into next year to tile the forecourt with a stone pattern that is intended to eventually become the signature for the City Hall district -- hopefully extending to Old City Hall in a future phase.
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Thanks for keeping us filled in with all these interesting details of the NPS renovation plan. It's in these details that I've come to appreciate it a lot more, for instance learning that even garage entrances will be reconfigured and reclad with the quality materials we've seen so far. The details about changes to the Queen Street side of the square are also promising. Art made and installed to also serve a functional purpose can be quite interesting, like the idea for the HVAC exhaust vent art installation that will hopefully come to fruition.

It would be fantastic to see a mosaic of stone pavers for pedestrian areas along Queen Street similar to the paving at Sugar Beach of three colours of granite setts arranged to form large maple leafs (though not necessarily repeating the maple leaf motif). This sort of paving is quite common in major pedestrian spaces in European cities now and beautiful. The possibility of extending it to Old City Hall in time is also good to hear. Hopefully that will mean the eventual replacement of that cheap asphalt driveway in front of Old City Hall, which is unacceptable for such a historic landmark.

freshcutgrass said:
Actually, I find the Registry Building an unremarkable garden-variety Beaux-Arts box, not worthy of sullying the modernist environs of City Hall.
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The Registry Building wasn't a groundbreaking building, but it was beautiful, historic, and irreplaceable. City Hall would stand out on its own design and not be 'sullied' by it, and there would thus be nothing wrong with preserving it. Actually, the square could have been more interesting with an additional building fronting onto it, especially a historical building to add an extra dimension to the space. Revell would have probably handled the square's relationship with the building well. Where it stood is the least remarkable part of the contemporary space, with garage ramps in its place. It could have been repurposed in time for a use that would better animate the square like a gallery, an events venue, restaurants, or perhaps even a boutique hotel.
 
freshcutgrass said:
Actually, I find the Registry Building an unremarkable garden-variety Beaux-Arts box, not worthy of sullying the modernist environs of City Hall.
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I'm in-between on this. That is, if we had to do it all over again (the demolition, I mean), we probably wouldn't, and shouldn't. However, it was demolished when it could, safely, be dismissed as "an unremarkable garden-variety Beaux-Arts box, not worthy of sullying the modernist environs of City Hall." On those grounds, I can accept it as a done deal--sometimes, we overeagerly impose our present-day values on past actions...

I somehow doubt Eric Arthur would have approved (of the building, not the demolition), either. At least in 1964. Maybe, retroactively, in 1974...
 
adma said:
I'm in-between on this. That is, if we had to do it all over again (the demolition, I mean), we probably wouldn't, and shouldn't. However, it was demolished when it could, safely, be dismissed as "an unremarkable garden-variety Beaux-Arts box, not worthy of sullying the modernist environs of City Hall." On those grounds, I can accept it as a done deal--sometimes, we overeagerly impose our present-day values on past actions...

I somehow doubt Eric Arthur would have approved (of the building, not the demolition), either. At least in 1964. Maybe, retroactively, in 1974...
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I can understand the mentality as well, but if we're going to appraise the end result today, then there's no reason to adopt a 1964 mentality. We can understand what happened, but we don't have to endorse it. An appraisal today is (if inadvertently) an expression of our values and what we'd want to do if we could gain a similar opportunity. I'd love to see another square today, a square that commemorates a significant figure or event with a grand monument, designed for events, socialization, and leisure, surrounded by historic and contemporary buildings integrated and embraced by its plan, and animated 24 hours a day. Maybe we could revitalize a downtown east end area this way. Judging from the Modernist era, I find that the practice of wiping sites to blank slates for the contemporary was misguided and overrated; architects gained too broad a canvas and often struggled to know what to do with some spaces, which ended up floating in an urban sea without historical bearings and relationships to form with the traditional fabric of the city.
 
MetroMan, many thanks for your great and detailed posts.

The renovation and improvements are turning out great. My only regret is the speed (or lack thereof) in completing the square. Yes, its on time, but only because the schedule is very unambitious. If they had a crew of 25, as oppose to 7 or so, much more would have been completed at this stage (instead, the square still looks like a ragged mess in spots, specially the forecourt).

I also hope that seating is contemplated for the forecourt, to replace the seating that will be lost with the removal of the exhaust vent. How else would one eat the gravy and fries just bought from the trucks in front?
 
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I'm not sure I understand the rationale of such slow work. Wouldn't it actually cost less to throw more workers at it and finish it sooner than it does dragging it out like this? Seems to be a typical Canadian civic approach. I can't express how bad it is here in Burlington and Hamilton area. We're definitely missing a little of the yankee 'Get 'er done!' vigour, quite frankly.
 
adma said:
Actually, you'll find that we UTers are probably less anti-Brutalist than the norm--
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Many of us can appreciate a brutalist design, yet not love what it does to the urban surroundings: 'Cool building, shame about the street'-type of thing!
 
From the report:

Replacing the existing wire mesh surrounding the base of the Freedom Arches with
another safety measure to prevent people from climbing on the arches will also be
investigated.
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