picard102
Senior Member
Love the disinformation and conspiracy theories people are coming up with on this.
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Ontario Science Centre
- Thread starter hawc
- Start date
DSC
Superstar
Member Bio
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2008
- Messages
- 19,802
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- 28,671
- Location
- St Lawrence Market Area
Should you want to email Mr Ford you can do so at https://www.ontario.ca/page/premier
DSC
Superstar
Member Bio
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2008
- Messages
- 19,802
- Reaction score
- 28,671
- Location
- St Lawrence Market Area
rdaner
Senior Member
adma
Superstar
And I think that's where you'll find "horseshoe theory" on the part of the so-called "left" who opts to side with, or at least burnish the case for, DoFo's OSC scheme: some notion of "people don't like Brutalism". That is, they're already indisposed to the notion that there's any architecture worth being "sensitive" to here.Yeah, "to put it mildly". But, Mallick's had a history of hyperactively framing Modernism/Brutalism in what one might call architectural #MeToo terms (like its defenders are akin to Polanski apologists or something).
Like, a decade ago, *this*.
Heather Mallick: Meet the man who ruined a century of cities: Mallick
If I could travel back in time to kill someone, it would be the world’s worst architect, Le Corbusier.www.thestar.com
Personally, I'd rather abide by a "Doors Open pluralism" default re what "people" are open to appreciating.
4hghr
New Member
Exactly! People are quick to forget Mcguinty and Wynne! Two pathetic individuals. I actually was employed at the centre when those 2 clowns were in power
UtakataNoAnnex
Senior Member
It's Doug's fault now. And whataboutisms can only cover his arse so far here as he is one who pulled the trigger. /shrug
4hghr
New Member
Worked there for over two decades and the higher ups didn’t care to maintain it. funny thing is that they started closing for a full week in the first week of September and asked all the staff to do maintenance work like painting and patching dry walls. Instead of hiring the right people to do the work they would find ways to cut corners to save money for their bonuses at the end o
rdaner
Senior Member
rdaner
Senior Member
^Good news! Maybe now is the time to start bringing in other users for this vast and under-prized property. Maybe the Aga Khan Foundation has some ideas? Or Transeuropehalles which specializes in converting old buildings for new cultural uses?
We don’t have to reinvent the wheel as the City of Toronto has created a really successful model of marrying heritage structures and new users in The Bathurst Quay/Silos Project.
We don’t have to reinvent the wheel as the City of Toronto has created a really successful model of marrying heritage structures and new users in The Bathurst Quay/Silos Project.
Northern Light
Superstar
CBC Toronto has a piece on the condition of roof, nothing revelatory, but an illustrative image some may appreciate.
"The green areas represent panels of the Science Centre roof that engineering reports labelled as having a low risk of collapsing. The yellow areas are at medium risk. The red areas are at high risk and the blue areas were at critical risk. Areas with no highlighted colours weren't inspected." (caption for the photo below, from CBC)
Credit CBC/Steven Silcox from the link below:
"The green areas represent panels of the Science Centre roof that engineering reports labelled as having a low risk of collapsing. The yellow areas are at medium risk. The red areas are at high risk and the blue areas were at critical risk. Areas with no highlighted colours weren't inspected." (caption for the photo below, from CBC)
Credit CBC/Steven Silcox from the link below:
adma
Superstar
And you know what my present hunch is? That the whole spin about how "nobody likes Brutalism" (needless to say, implicitly or explicitly advanced by bad actors on the right as well as the Heather Mallicks on the left) is a smokescreen. Because as I said, the real mass instinct might be more along the lines of a "Doors Open pluralism". People *aren't*, in and of themselves, hung up over its being "ugly", any more than they are over modern art being more "displeasing" than traditional portraits and landscapes.
Rather, it's about a fashionable "sticking it to the elites". It's about framing Brutalism (or *all* modern architecture) as the style of "elites", one being imposed upon "real people". In its present form, that spin's been in the air at least since Tom Wolfe's "From Bauhaus To Our House", and it became monetizable mass architectural outrage with world's-worst-buildings and carbuncle contests in the 90s and 00s. And it characterizes the post-traditional-gatekeeper mediums of stoked-outrage social media. It's the notion that those *actively championing* such architecture (or the preservation thereof) are, almost invariably, some kind of educated-elite cultural class, haughty and removed from "the people". It's not just the architecture that's evil; it's its defenders, the holier-than-thou tastemaker 1%, trying to pull a fast one on us in trying to make some kind of aesthetic "fetch" happen.
I was recently witness to a bot post on Facebook showing, without comment or context, a before-and-after of Montreal's Pointe-à-Callière--the old Custom House with its tower, and the present Dan Hanganu-designed museum--that seemed designed solely for outrage-farming, presenting it in implicit terms of "old = good, new = bad". And of course, the vast bulk of comments and responses treated it thusly, and the very few comments which tried to explain what was *really* going on there went over like a lead balloon. People weren't there to learn; they were there to vent and rage and feed Meta-style data-mining monetization of "meaningful interactions".
And paradoxically compounding it all is that very notion of the preservation of Brutalism--an old, "aging" architecture, and not Timeless Beauty like all that stuff w/columns and arches. That is, the elites in question championing Brutalism are championing its preservation, not building it in the present day--and that's where we get to the broader idea of "hysterical preservationists" being themselves "elites"; they don't wanna do nuthin', they just wanna cling to what they have, a little like that legacy media which "nobody" reads. And the fact that they're *not* championing building it in the present day is a signal of their cynical arrogance--as in, "if they like Brutalism so much, then why" etc etc. As if the appreciation of *any* preexisting style was premised upon the will to build it today--which really seems a mentality stoked within our fan-art era...
Northern Light
Superstar
The Former CEO and Chief Scientist of the OSC is out with an opinion piece in The Star suggesting that its probably time to let the OSC in its current location go.
But he doesn't advocate for demolishing the Main building up top, suggesting perhaps a repurposing.
The main thrust of his piece aside from the poor condition of the existing building is that the business model of the OSC is broken no matter where you put it, and that that needs addressing.
The OSC needs far more robust ancillary revenues (parking, concession/food, complimentary retail/merch) as well as more robust grants, and a lower cost to operate and maintain building.
www.thestar.com
But he doesn't advocate for demolishing the Main building up top, suggesting perhaps a repurposing.
The main thrust of his piece aside from the poor condition of the existing building is that the business model of the OSC is broken no matter where you put it, and that that needs addressing.
The OSC needs far more robust ancillary revenues (parking, concession/food, complimentary retail/merch) as well as more robust grants, and a lower cost to operate and maintain building.
I led the Ontario Science Centre for five years. This is the real reason it’s time to let go of the old building
Rather than fighting the relocation based on nostalgia, the future viability of the science centre would be better served by the public holding the government to account on conditions around
www.thestar.com
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sixrings
Senior Member
Doug shipped some buck a beer. I hated this location so I’m indifferent.The Former CEO and Chief Scientist of the OSC is out with an opinion piece in The Star suggesting that its probably time to let the OSC in its current location go.
But he doesn't advocate for demolishing the Main building up top, suggesting perhaps a repurposing.
The main thrust of his piece aside from the poor condition of the existing building is that the business model of the OSC is broken no matter where you put it, and that that needs addressing.
The OSC needs far more robust ancillary revenues (parking, concession/food, complimentary retail/merch) as well as more robust grants, and a lower cost to operate and maintain building.
I led the Ontario Science Centre for five years. This is the real reason it’s time to let go of the old building
Rather than fighting the relocation based on nostalgia, the future viability of the science centre would be better served by the public holding the government to account on conditions around
UtakataNoAnnex
Senior Member
I can get behind this...but I never going to let that building or it's locations. Sorry TorStar, et al, never going to accept those apologetics either.