Hey
@Jimto, I'd like to genuinely apologize for what I said and how I said it. I was being too intense and unkind and reacting badly. And much of what I was saying as criticism of you applies to me — it takes more than one to argue after all and I was definitely crossing over into being rude, in particular in my last post.
By saying that your point was silly originally, which set things off badly, I was just trying to in a light way be like "I get where you're coming from but you're taking this kinda a bit too far". But I didn't need to say it in that way and I can see how it would be insulting how I said it and if I'm going to start off like that — even if it was meant in a light way — I can't really complain if you don't take it well or come back strongly at me.
I was getting heated and frustrated from the assumptions you made about me and how you assigned me motivations and opinions based on those assumptions, and then from what I felt was a moving of the goalposts about what you originally said — which is what people were reacting so strongly to in the first place — and pivoting away from fair criticism through that or by making assumptions about peoples positions on things or knowledge of the area. But despite that, it's not an excuse for me to be unkind. I'm sorry and hopefully I can help shift this discussion back to a more respectful place of understanding and back to the substance of the question and engage with that without being heated and rude. Very sorry about before.
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I think there were kind of three layers of why people were reacting badly to what you were saying:
- I think to many of us the building seems obviously junky and uninspired, and doesn't feel like something that needs to be expanded on in our reactions to it, but I can imagine this just seems like subjective bashing or even possibly reactionary groupthink if you don't share the same priorities or aesthetic preferences, or if you thought the criticism was coming from an anti-development motivation.
- Your point that the street experience being really the only thing that matters and architectural design otherwise not mattering was, to me, overstated and reductive leading to a polarized zero-sum kind of discussion and set the conversation off in a unproductive way due to how absolute it was and how it dismissed quite strongly things other people value — and that in particular isn't going to go over well on a forum full of people really into architecture haha
and with people who are often depressed or jaded seeing the (what is at least perceived as) low standards of architectural quality in our city.
- Accepting that premise that it's only really the street level that matters primarily and the rest doesn't really matter much, the ground level of this and what it offers to the public realm doesn't even seem that good to me, and the rest of the building's mediocrity being justified or excused by having a small sliver of the sidewalk cut out seems like a despair-inducing situation where we are bargaining for the most bare minimum of things with development in this city and justifying the low-quality work because, well, it could be worse, we could not have a tiny little triangle of space.
However, things are subjective, and it's possible that we are overreacting and the building isn't so bad — but I do kinda think it's bad, or at least it's just completely emblematic of the cheap generic mediocrity that is common and the lack of effort and care put into the architectural expression of a lot of developments that we see. While I wasn't even particularly in the first place commenting myself on the quality of the building, just commenting on the absolutism of the idea of street level being >>>>>>> than everything else to the point of the everything else basically not mattering (I agree street level is incredibly important and often neglected, but that doesn't mean neglecting other things is good either), since you are asking why people don't like it, I will try to give a picture of why I personally think this design isn't that great:
I don't mind the massing too much, and I like the angles on the corner. I think it has good presence, but the rest seems like a bit of a jumble of snap-together budget-bin building components. The big thing that stands out to me right away is the seemingly significant surfaces in prominent locations that are likely to end up messy spandrel-checkered window wall. Possibly it could be alright and be done crisp and clean, but I'm nervous.
The articulation of the design of the building throughout, but in particular how it resolves at the top also just seems like it lacks coherence and isn't really doing anything architecturally but the most bland paint-by-numbers condo style roof that seems to primary serve to hide or distract from mechanical stuff in the easiest way possible. I just think upper floors of towers done like this are messy, extremely mid and generic at best, and lacking in architectural expression or even good solid geometric form.
Of course these things are extremely subjective and you're right that in many ways they don't matter to the same degree as how the building works and works in particular on the street, but I think it's also important we at least try as a culture to have standards of effort for buildings, especially big ones since they make such an impact on the city and for a very long time.
An interesting juxtaposition in that context is its neighbour across the street — a lot of people hate Crossways, and it is a
very flawed building, in particular its awful street level. But some people love Crossways too — people have even made
a t-shirt of it! Because like it or hate it, Crossways is at least going for something architecturally, even just at the level of plain compelling geometry or texture of materiality. By contrast I think it's very hard to imagine in 50 years someone making a t-shirt of this building.
