Toronto 212 King Street West | 250m | 80s | Dream Office | SHoP

Northern Light said:
The first, wider section would contain the office floors and be faced partly with white terracotta panels;
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Notable as SHoP of course used terracotta on their stunning 111 W. 57th tower to dramatic and winning effect. Now, it's not reasonable to expect quite that level of quality in TO given the dramatically different market economics in TO vs. NYC, but it's encouraging nonetheless.

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SHoP

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SHoP

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NY YIMBY

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NY YIMBY
 
I for one will be sad to see the Elephant and Castle Pub go. Those other new British Pubs in the area don't quite have the same feel. Hopefully they will install a version 2.0. On the bright side it looks like they are retaining the outer walls of the building and a healthy setback giving a facsimile of the original. This worked out well with the Westinghouse building in the entertainment district so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
 
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Wow ...I'm gobsmacked and did not expect this!
It looks as though this façadism is going in the right direction as well with maintaining the overall 'look' of the heritage structures.
 
I would kill to have a Chipperfield tower like The Bryant here in Toronto. Looking at the taller tower for this site made me think of it.
 
.dwg said:
That's what Toronto developers do. Between the developers and the city, interesting ideas get haggled down into the most austere version of themselves.

I don't mind a simple tower, especially with some good facade detailing (terracotta sounds promising), but it does seem like SHoP could be leveraged to bring a more interesting idea to the site. Slapping an interesting soffit on it isn't going to cut it for me.

That said - this is an early take and we know that SHoP does a lot of work on the facade. So as more details emerge and it evolves, maybe it will become richer.
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I'm not convinced this is that early a take.That's not to say that the building will go forward as proposed without some modifications—there likely will be some, it is impossible to say just how major or minor they might be—but they're already at a highly-detailed level of exterior design, and in fact I do see some very nice details in the skin, including that interesting soffit…

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but even more so, get a load of the detail in the twisting terra cotta framing:

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(These images are detail shots taken from a Norm Li-credited rendering)

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interchange42 said:
I'm not convinced this is that early a take.That's not to say that the building will go forward as proposed without some modifications—there likely will be some, it is impossible to say just how major or minor they might be—but they're already at a highly-detailed level of exterior design, and in fact I do see some very nice details in the skin, including that interesting soffit
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Detailed renderings are not indicative of a design being highly resolved or finalized. We do renderings all the time that are a very early idea - maybe nicely modelled with a high level of detail, but still a concept in flux nonetheless.

In the case that it doesn't evolve much more - those facade details look gimmicky to me. Shallow, overly delicate and don't really add much. I'd rather just a Chipperfield grid than small twisty pieces that don't really add much depth to the expression.
 
.dwg said:
Detailed renderings are not indicative of a design being highly resolved or finalized. We do renderings all the time that are a very early idea - maybe nicely modelled with a high level of detail, but still a concept in flux nonetheless.

In the case that it doesn't evolve much more - those facade details look gimmicky to me. Shallow, overly delicate and don't really add much. I'd rather just a Chipperfield grid than small twisty pieces that don't really add much depth to the expression.
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Unfortunately you are right - look at many project renderings here on UT and then look at the finished products!
 
This may be off subject but King St rules when it comes to skyscrapers and now supertalls. Which brings me to saying why is the Relief Line running through Queen St when it should run on King St to serve the hart of the financial district and now entertainment district. Costing cheaper because is doesn't have to zigzag from the railway to Queen but to King Street ,
 
cd concept said:
This may be off subject but King St rules when it comes to skyscrapers and now supertalls. Which brings me to saying why is the Relief Line running through Queen St when it should run on King St to serve the hart of the financial district and now entertainment district. Costing cheaper because is doesn't have to zigzag from the railway to Queen but to King Street ,
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This building would be approx. 110m from St. Andrew Station.
 
I may be a bit cynical, but of course the developer is going to say the Mirvish/Gehry project is moving ahead, because he needs that building's height to justify the height of this new development (what we don't know is why Mirvish/Gehry is still being delayed and thus the lack of transparency is going to lead to cynical conclusions).

All that being said, this looks like a decent development (with good detailing and a great mix of uses) and while I do not love facadism, I am not naive enough to think that these buildings will remain forever in their present form.

I am in favour of this project, only if Mirvish/Gehry starts construction first (and remains true to the original design). Make that a condition of constructing this. ;)
 
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