innsertnamehere
Superstar
because there's structured parking. Hamilton doesn't regulate it to below ground only like Toronto does, so most projects have it. Some projects do a good job of hiding it (Design District, Cobalt), some do a crap job.
Hamilton 175 John Street North | 66m | 19s | Darpel Investments | srm Architects
- Thread starter innsertnamehere
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ProjectEnd
Superstar
A sad sign of the times. Hamilton's early and mid-century design culture was superb and was not markedly different from Toronto's. It's unfortunate that some of Canada's second-tier cities accept so much less today (especially when folks like Core Urban prove you absolutely don't have to).
Sunnyside
Active Member
Design quality, especially in Ontario, seems extremely closely linked to land values/ROI. unfortunately the old world our cities inhabited is gone and the conditions to build relatively high quality structures anywhere is nonexistent. Maybe it’s because the economics of the structures we allow require high land values to even be viable, and higher to justify any kind of aesthetics. That explains the quality of projects in Toronto, to me. It’s all equations of balancing the cost to build with returns.
For my informed opinion now… Hamilton’s geography and soil conditions make building costlier, and often we require parking in new builds. So despite high land values downtown we still see shlock like this because it’s the only way to maintain a decent margin. Meanwhile, the 905 has no such geo conditions, and seems to build higher quality stuff in lower value markets. Its quite frustrating, as logically Hamilton’s core should be seeing builds that respect a downtown of its size and history.
Edit: a lot of Hamilton’s architecture can go toe-to-toe with Toronto any day. In some cases, it is even better.