Toronto 145 Wellington West | 213.03m | 65s | H&R REIT | PARTISANS

Beautiful looking building! Looks like some brick work slabs on the side of the building that has warm tone colours in it . But I'm not quite sure.
 
Surprisingly visible from the lake, and from the other side:

200484


200485
 
^it should be taller than 160 Front? its 65 floors tall and has an office component on the base which should make it a bit taller than an ordinary res building.
 
ushahid said:
^it should be taller than 160 Front? its 65 floors tall and has an office component on the base which should make it a bit taller than an ordinary res building.
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160 Front still surpass this structure because it's all office building which each floor is about 12 feet or higher / floor plate. The other structures is about 3/4 condo and a quarter office office structure etc. Which makes it little bit smaller than 160 Front because hotel, condo floor plate average about 10 to 9 feet / floor plate.
 
interchange42 said:
No, it doesn't seem pretty good. It's a lazy pastiche of this idea and that, none of it cohering into a pleasing whole. The angled west frontage of the podium, no doubt, is a nod to 160 Front West to the south of it (which is very poorly rendered in the images BTW). It works on 160 because the whole building (other than its podium) is designed around the canted facades. It doesn't work on 145 because it speaks to nothing else in the design. Same with the pillars around at ground floor: they speak to nothing else, their randomness not tied to anything within miles. Wanna go random with them? Randomize the whole building with odd Miro-esque lines then.

If I were at Turner Fleischer, I'd take the punched window wall, the only part that actually stands out IMHO, drag it down to ground level (why does it disappear entirely before hitting ground level? they could signal where the residential entrance is with it), and tie everything into that. Want the building to pop out closer to the sidewalk 14 storeys up? Give the punched window wall a cantilever there.

Anyway, no way I can illustrate a whole redesign in words, but I think not too difficult to start an explanation of why this does not seem good.

42
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From a distance it's not too bad. I just wonder why Toronto isn't important enough to most developers to spend some money on materials? Why all the spandrel? SOme projects have used outstanding glass elements. Whats the deal with going cheap all the time?
 
42 said: "If I were at Turner Fleischer, I'd take the punched window wall..."

42 if you were at Turner Fleischer, you'd probably be stuck designing malls like most of their staff... luckily you have a great UT gig ;-).
 
Big Daddy said:
From a distance it's not too bad. I just wonder why Toronto isn't important enough to most developers to spend some money on materials? Why all the spandrel? SOme projects have used outstanding glass elements. Whats the deal with going cheap all the time?
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It looks like they can get away in doing that! The city doesn't care about esthetics it's very practical and anything goes attitude .
 
There are a few things right with this design (like the basket weave design on the officer portion) but they are either not completed with any satisfaction, or they have to give way to some other unfulfilled design element. There is no elegance to this tower and there should be. Instead, it is a grab bag of design ideas with no relationship to each other, each distracting from each other. Very odd.
 
cd concept said:
It looks like they can get away in doing that! The city doesn't care about esthetics it's very practical and anything goes attitude .
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A lot of cities care about how their cities look and will do everything to make sure these kinds of buildings aren't built by enforcing. In Toronto the only thing the city is concerned about is height and wringing money away from the developers for their section 37 funds, how the building looks, the kinds of materials used, or if the building contributes in city building is irrelevant. Even in so called expensive areas like Yorkville the same crappy designs and materials are seen.
 
cd concept said:
It looks like they can get away in doing that! The city doesn't care about esthetics it's very practical and anything goes attitude .
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Adjei said:
A lot of cities care about how their cities look and will do everything to make sure these kinds of buildings aren't built by enforcing. In Toronto the only thing the city is concerned about is height and wringing money away from the developers for their section 37 funds, how the building looks, the kinds of materials used, or if the building contributes in city building is irrelevant. Even in so called expensive areas like Yorkville the same crappy designs and materials are seen.
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You've both been on this forum long enough to know that Toronto has not been given the power to legislate aesthetics, the City only has the power to approve or deny buildings based on planning rules. They can encourage builders to up their game in the aesthetics department, but that's all, they cannot stop a building solely on its looks. (If they did, who would get to decide if something looks good enough or not? City Councillors, who may or may not have any sense of architecture and design? Or maybe give the Design Review Panel actual power to deny approval of a building? What if you don't agree with that year's panelists on what's a good design? Public opinion, and we're a part of that, may be the better way to influence building design to a degree.)

You've both also been on this forum long enough to know that the first thing we see often changes, sometimes only subtly, and sometimes completely. Because of that, it's way too early to treat this like it's a final plan…

…so go ahead and chime in, you're right that this isn't any good so far — but why drag the whole city into this already, this could still improve considerably before it's built.

42
 
To interchange 42
If this is the case I think it's time to implement this law. Or else we'll never look as beautiful as Chicago's downtown core in the future. What a beautiful downtown area they have!
 
cd concept said:
To interchange 42
If this is the case I think it's time to implement this law. Or else we'll never look as beautiful as Chicago's downtown core in the future. What a beautiful downtown area they have!
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Implement what law?
Government defined aesthetics?
well, it was already tried: USSR, North Korea, etc were the greatest enables of such approach.. nice outcome, great architecture!
 
If you take issue with the current, preliminary design, feel free to leave your feedback via their website: https://www.145wellington.com

I did - this was the email I received soon after (and I will continue to engage, based on the response):

"Dear X,

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback about the design of the 145 Wellington St W proposal on the project website. We are early in the process and welcome thoughts and ideas from community members on the best design for this building. Please let us know if you have any specific ideas with respect to materiality, design or architecture that you would like to see on this corner.

Thank you again for providing your input.

Kind regards,

X (on behalf of the Project Team)"
 
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