Ryerson: Master Plan

[Observer Walt]

Well I think I can understand where Urbanvillageboy is coming from. Like many, I have fond memories of walking down Yonge on a summer Saturday night, revelling in the grunge, the strip places, the record stores, the cheap bookstores, etc. etc. We could still use some of this. It adds character to the city.

But there's too much of it on Yonge, specifically including the east side between Dundas and Gerrard. There's one building that I believe has merit, on the southeast corner of Gerrard. I would not be sorry to see the rest of it bulldozed and replaced by something striking.

 

[wyliepoon]

well the winners were announced today. 4 people from my third year achitectural course won the big prize. the 2nd one was a single person from the university of illinois i believe. and the 3rd prize was won again by four third year students in architecture.

I'm a very good friend of the guy who won second place (he is currently studying at Urbana). We graduated from RyeArch in 2006.

re: Yonge Street

Sure, you can bulldoze Yonge Street from Dundas all the way to Bloor, but what are you going to replace the demolished strip with?

Faux-historic buildings? Too Disneyfied.
30-storey towers? Would look like New York or Hong Kong but would put the street in perpetual darkness.

I'm sure there are creative ways to work with the current building stock. Clean up the facades, encourage good use of upper floors of the old buildings (converting them into restaurants, retail, art space or multi-purpose community meeting rooms, etc.). I certainly would agree to developing the corners of major intersection if they're underbuilt, but demolishing the whole strip is way too much.

 

[smuncky]

I'm a very good friend of the guy who won second place (he is currently studying at Urbana). We graduated from RyeArch in 2006.

re: Yonge Street

Sure, you can bulldoze Yonge Street from Dundas all the way to Bloor, but what are you going to replace the demolished strip with?

Faux-historic buildings? Too Disneyfied.
30-storey towers? Would look like New York or Hong Kong but would put the street in perpetual darkness.

I'm sure there are creative ways to work with the current building stock. Clean up the facades, encourage good use of upper floors of the old buildings (converting them into restaurants, retail, art space or multi-purpose community meeting rooms, etc.). I certainly would agree to developing the corners of major intersection if they're underbuilt, but demolishing the whole strip is way too much.

i totally agree.

many people just say, "it's so ugly, lets just take a bulldozer and take it all down." but if you say this, back it up. what are you going to do in place of it. and justify it.

without that, you're just wasting you're breath.

 

[adma]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I hope that Ryerson does all it can to build on Yonge Street. Almost anything would be an improvement on what's there now. Yonge St. from Dundas to Bloor is an ugly, undignified, embarassing mess. It seems to be a holy cow that can't be touched. Heritage, shmeritage- most of those old buildings are of limited architecural value no matter how old they are. They're ugly and the spaces inside them are too small for any decent retail. My fantasy is to take a bulldozer and run it up both sides of the street, leaving aside the very occasional structure like Eaton's College Street and the Gloucester Mews building. The block from Sam's north would not be spared. Thank you for the opportunity to rant.

 

[urbanvillageboy]

I'm glad to stir up some debate here because I think that people are too complacent in this city and important issues like streetscapes, civic beauty and pride in the appearance of our streets and parks are rarely up for public discussion and solutions. We deserve better than this as our main street. I''ve lived near Yonge Street for many years south of Bloor. I don't know how many of you do. It's easy to be fond of the street if you don't have to cross it every day. I don't revel in its grunginess- it's ugly,depressing and dispiriting. Most of the stores are junk and there is a lot of turnover. The merchants and/or landlords make little effort to improve the appearance of the buidings, the storefronts, or the street itself. It's been going downhill rapidly particularly since the recession in the early 90's. That's a long time and I don't see that there's much chance of improvement.
If we're concerned about what's going to replace it then set up a Yonge St design committee to ensure that only the best of modern design goes in there. But for God's sake, do something about that street. We've got enough talent and ingenuity to come up with some solution.

 

[interchange42]

I am sure that will happen, but it will take time, and it should take time, and I certainly support an architectural review panel being part of the redevelopment process. I just don't want to see Yonge turned into a long line of monolithic megaprojects: I like the piece-meal makeup of the street...

but it would be good to have better piece-meal.

In regards to Ryerson, I do look forward to them getting Sam's and the Future Shop for a redevelopment site (and I'd love to see Citytv at the corner of Gould as a tenant and partner of Ryerson's), but I don't want to see Ryerson take any more of Yonge Street than that.

42

 

[urbanvillageboy]

There's no reason that a renewed Yonge St should be dominated by monolithic monuments. That's part of the ongoing problem. Our aesthetic standards are too low and government at all levels lets developers get away with murder. We seem fine with a deteriorating main street and pug-ugly and oversized condominium buildings. It all goes together. We need to expect more of ourselves and our city. We want to attract high-end tourists nowadays. You need an attractive downtown district to do that. I think this city is still very provincial in that regard- it has yet to realize and somehow hopes people will just come regardless of what they do with the city. We need aesthetic standards and we have to invest the time and energy required to attain them. I also hope that Ryerson will be held to a decent standard when it comes to redeveloping their part of Yonge St., whatever it will be. ( I still think they'd be hard put to do a worse job than what is there now)

 

[ganjavih]

If Yonge is razed altogether and redeveloped, it will end up looking like Bay Street north of Queen... a bunch of sterile lifeless condos on a sterile lifeless street. We've lost the ability to create vibrant retail strips. Ever notice how every lively street in Toronto is lined with 2 or 3-storey 100 year old buildings?

 

[adma]

Gee whiz, urbanvillageboy, you're a Sunday painter urbanist to the max. I guess that's what these here Interweb message boards are designed to accomodate...these twerps with provincial-in-the-guise-of-sophisticated solutions to our provincialism...

 

[Tuscani01]

The winning Gould St. redesign 'idea' was selected this week, but I cant find anything on the winner. Ill post as soon as I find out.

 

[smuncky]

The winning Gould St. redesign 'idea' was selected this week, but I cant find anything on the winner. Ill post as soon as I find out.

it should be out in the ryerson newspaper for sure as there was a photographer there and a school reporter.

 

[Tuscani01]

it should be out in the ryerson newspaper for sure as there was a photographer there and a school reporter.

Posted on 10/02/07
Written by Danielle Wong

Aaron Whalen can’t see why students are funneled through one exit at the Dundas southbound station.

“There’s a natural path where you want to go,†the third-year Ryerson architectural science student said. “It feels like we’re all forced out that one exit [to get to school].â€

Whalen and his fellow architecture students Dustin Hooper, Ladan Sharifpour and Razvan Ghili-Micu, decided to try re-designing Gould Street, and won $5,000 for their efforts.

“Crossing Lines†came in first place in the Gould Street International Student Design Competition — a contest organized by Ryerson, the city and Green Communities Canada to redesign Gould Street into a pedestrian-friendly space.

Third-year Ryerson architecture students Aaron Butters, Ava Moshaver, Ghazal Taikandi and Eric Tran also won third place and took home $1,000.

“When you look at the way people walk, they don’t walk in uni-directional lines,†Hooper said. “They walk diagonally…they cross lines.â€

In the plan, the students included a new Dundas station entrance at Sam the Record Man and a PATH system touching the RAC, Lake Devo and the Toronto Life Square.

“The more lines you cross, the more interaction you’ll have with the city,†Ghili-Micu said.

No pics to go with it though

 

[smuncky]

Posted on 10/02/07
Written by Danielle Wong

Aaron Whalen can’t see why students are funneled through one exit at the Dundas southbound station.

“There’s a natural path where you want to go,†the third-year Ryerson architectural science student said. “It feels like we’re all forced out that one exit [to get to school].â€

Whalen and his fellow architecture students Dustin Hooper, Ladan Sharifpour and Razvan Ghili-Micu, decided to try re-designing Gould Street, and won $5,000 for their efforts.

“Crossing Lines†came in first place in the Gould Street International Student Design Competition — a contest organized by Ryerson, the city and Green Communities Canada to redesign Gould Street into a pedestrian-friendly space.

Third-year Ryerson architecture students Aaron Butters, Ava Moshaver, Ghazal Taikandi and Eric Tran also won third place and took home $1,000.

“When you look at the way people walk, they don’t walk in uni-directional lines,†Hooper said. “They walk diagonally…they cross lines.â€

In the plan, the students included a new Dundas station entrance at Sam the Record Man and a PATH system touching the RAC, Lake Devo and the Toronto Life Square.

“The more lines you cross, the more interaction you’ll have with the city,†Ghili-Micu said.

No pics to go with it though

ahh there we go.

i'll see if i can get some pictures of their projects if they don't pop up during the weekend. i'm too embarrased to show ours

 

[Tuscani01]

ahh there we go.

i'll see if i can get some pictures of their projects if they don't pop up during the weekend. i'm too embarrased to show ours

lol... come on! show it!

Think of it this way... anything is better than what is there now!

 

[smuncky]

ok. the idea we had was that we should focus on areas of ryerson that are the most problematic right now in terms of how they connect to the students and the city.

we chose 4 areas...

1. Gould/Yonge connection
2. Gould/Jarvis connection
3. Victoria Lane area
4. Quad and Lake Devo area

the gould/yonge intersection was chosen as the most important as it is the main gateway to ryerson from the city. with the future buyout of sams and futureshop, we decided to take it over and build a multi-use building with a walkway underneath which includes some shops and the entrance to the dundas subway platform from the north end. a transparent glass wall will bring in light to the high open space as people come outside from the subway.

the 2nd area was to provide an entrance to ryerson from jarvis and to create a ryerson presence on that street. right now the ILC building is the only building there which blocks the entrance way to gould. we proposed to extend gould by making a pedestrian walkway where the existing building is now and to create high density student housing. this tower will also be a strong symbol that people will see from yonge and bring them into the campus.

victoria lane and that whole area where the podium is was the 3rd area we chose. this area is quite dead and to put life back on the street we proposed to connect it to gerrard through some small retail facilities. jorgenson, the podium, and the existing library would be rebuilt into more modern facilities.

the last area we chose was the kerr hall area. we followed KPMB's plan which demolishes the whole quad. again, creating shops and social spaces for students to use will bring people to gould because it gives them something to do throughout the whole year and not just during the school year. so by opening up the southwest corner of kerr hall, we give people the oppoutunity to go in and experience the green quad area that is now hidden from view.

just a few comments...this project was always changing somehow due to the group not agreeing on certain things. the group had 5 people which was just too many for this project imo. some of the things proposed were changed last minute without consulting the other group members so i gotta say that it turned out a bit worse because of it. the design of the poster was also changed and makes the information provided ineffective and not in sequence. so please be kind with your critiques