What kind of development were you expecting of Toronto Life Square?
Something more impressive than a giant backyard shed.
In Times Square for example, can you recount the beautiful architectual buildings? No. Times Square is an attraction because of the advertising showcased. The buildings are hidden, passe and an after-thought. The true architectual wonders are found throughout NYC away from Times Square. It makes sense.
I know that people call this place Toronto's Times Square, and yes, it's the closest thing we have to it, but in truth the two are very different. Times Square is several blocks long and has dozens of buildings of different ages and sizes fronting it, so it's hard to make generalizations about the totality of the place that holds true to so many of its individual buildings. Yes, many of Times Square's buildings are hidden (to a great degree, but not entirely) by advertising, but often its far more imaginative and well-thought out. The only thing that approaches the quality level of TS's better stuff is TLS's curved screen and its surrounding screenlets (the placement of which has been the source of some consternation on the part of several Forum members - why the big gap on the right?). Meanwhile, there are a number of interesting buildings along Times Square that are well designed and executed, in amongst others that are shabby and shabbier. In the end, Times Square is SO BIG, with SO MUCH to look at that one never really sees the buildings, not because they're completely or partially hidden, but because there is so much else to look at that's throbbing and glowing and flashing.
Finally, if one were to look at TLS the way that much of TS is looked at - at some distance - then the best view of TLS would be from the other side of Yonge, at about Shuter Street. From that distance one does not see TLS's tin-shed corrugated cladding - one only sees the ads.
The point here, is that Toronto Life Square was never built to be iconic or architectually award-winning. It was built to lure audiences for a gathering place, to congregate, to see big city life of signs and buzz.
While I cannot see those two goals as mutually exclusive ones, you seem to believe that the pursuit of big city life, signs and buzz obviates any need for architectural striving. Why can't big city life, signs and buzz be achieved from a structure that shows some signs of intelligent thought behind it? It's a wonder that PenEck managed to keep the backlit signs from overlapping each other on this monster.
The meeting place provides an outlook for activity and visual expression - the purpose of Toronto Life Square, just like Times Square. To mix this purpose with an outstanding architectural focus would be confusing and unworthy. Would you really want advertising of this nature on beautiful award winning architectual buildings? I doubt it.
Hmm. Suffice it to say that the reasoning in that paragraph doesn't necessarily follow. Grey says it well above.
So Interchange 42 (why 42?),
(a number of reason)s
perhaps your expectations of Toronto Life Square were destined for failure from the beginning: the elected city council vision and purpose of the TLS was different from yours.
Well, you're right about my expectations, but wrong about why. Why has nothing to do with elected city council vision, of which there is little, as at the time this project began its clunking churn into existence there was no architectural review panel around to protect us from stuff like this. The fault here lies squarely with Pen Equity who first dumbed-down the Olympic Spirit centre with embarrassingly cheap materials and forms compared to what their renderings had promised us, and then went on to do the same with TLS. It's a process we call The Cheapeningâ„¢ around here. As it turned out I should never have dared to hope that TLS would end up any better than Olympic Spirit, but my optimism checked my cynicism at the time.
In retrospect, TLS is one place, we have the whole city for architectural masterpieces. Maybe we'll see Interchange 42 at the forefront of the activity.
Wha? Huh? Wait - you're right, I should get my own development company going and shut up about the other travesties around town. Of course if I stop writing editorial on the forum, you should too, and so should everyone else.
42
