yyzer
Senior Member
a great and very thoughtful post, adma.....![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Now, two things happened to effectively render the "Toronto Style" an abstraction rather than something definite or iconic. One, the main practitioners of this form, Peter Clewes and CORE architects, moved on to other designs. Secondly - and this was due to my ignorance - the "Toronto style" was not peculiar to Toronto at all. It was a common way of building residential infill across North America during the early part of the 2000s boom. In particular, Denver has just as much a claim to this form of mid-rise as Toronto does.
Great posting. Yes, it sometimes takes an 'outsider'!
I don't see X as a literal copy of the TD Centre. It is a building that pays homage to the TD, a "master piece" in the original sense of the word - by someone who has earned the right to do this because he has reached a certain professional level. It isn't an apprentice piece by someone who aspires to be something and is laughed at because he copies, but rather by someone who has arrived. Maybe we're seeing Picasso's "great artists steal, good artists copy" thing at work - maybe that's the "dialogue with Mies" that he sets up. Others Miesian dialogues are possible too as Zephyr suggests - the Ernst & Young Tower is one that we've already got, somewhat unfortunately. Maybe the dialogue Clewes sets up with Torontonians is the design of attractive high rise homes for large numbers of condo dwellers that aren't priced beyond what many can afford. He has spoken of the need for the architectural profession to reclaim residential design from developers, after all. Perhaps X is also an homage to Toronto - a city that is defined by Modernist buildings like the TD Centre, an evolution of which style our leading designers continue to work in.
I have no problem with your strong emphasis on aesthetics, it's the filter by which you understand the world. But you should realize that the rest of us don't happen to live in your world, it's ours too.
So are you dear, but at least you have the added advantage of actually existing.
I'm agnostic about a Toronto style.
I'm not sure I agree with Adma about the whole Boston vs Toronto response to the supposedly more 'difficult-to-love' stand-outs of design. The rabble of Toronto usually show themselves just as contemptuous of concrete brutalism as our Beantown counterparts. Lets not forget that we UTers are a fairly rarified bunch and Boston probably has its equivalent circle of archi-geeks who would sell you on all the attributes of their City Hall. Boston is a far older and more established city though. Brutalism in Boston may get somewhat lost in the shadow of Bullfinch but that's sort of like Boxing Day getting lost in the shadow of Christmas.
If Boston were like Toronto, 2008 would have seen disarmingly enlightening 40th anniversary celebrations, exhibitions, and public symposia on Boston City Hall. Instead, there was...nothing. I tried Googling up variations on "Boston City Hall" and "40th anniversary", and from a casual-enough observation there was...zilch.
That's sad. And shocking, in an academically-tinged metropolis that once helped midwife (through Gropius et al at the Harvard GSD, and beyond) International Modernism in North America. From a Torontonian urban-dialogue/discussion standpoint, that's tank-town level.
Possibly the Boston response to their City Hall is simply reflective of their ability to spot a turkey. The building is imposing, but having toured it, it's also pretty abombinable. And it's not exactly as if there aren't plenty of other landmarks of that style in Boston by which to judge it. Bruer, Gropius, Saarinen, Pei, Rudolph--the list includes pretty much every major player of that era. Add the fact that City Hall Plaza erased Scollay Square and you have a recipe for civic indifference all round.