^It's an ugly forgettable JD building with overwrought blank walls, dead spaces and washed out Toronto-style colours. It's quite possibly the ugliest Y(MCA) in the country.
Adma: I "get" it. EJL's OCH>JD's Y.
I would argue you may be the rigid inflexible architectural snob that Toronto has too many of. If the tower that will replace the current Y within my lifetime is better looking, better designed, and a better urban fit for the location, then I see that as a positive. JD's bland barren building belongs in some suburban strip plaza, not downtown Toronto.
Okay. For perspective's sake, and acknowledging that what you dub "rigid inflexible architectural snobs" happen to rule that particular realm of, uh, "expert judgment" and aren't likely
not to unless a Mayor Rob Ford takes charge--or, if not that, a generation of raised-on-Sim-City twerps comes to political and planning-board power and uses its message-board populism to tell said snobs to roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news--
may I suggest that if a top 5 or 10 list of 1980s architectural landmarks in the former City of Toronto were compiled for the benefit of the Toronto Preservation Board, the Central Y would be firmly in there. Honest. The acclaim it received in its own time, combined with its continued functionality and the fact that it's never been reviled on a Boston-City-Hall level, ensures that fact.
The "problem", I suppose--that which fuels your judgment of its being bland/barren/suburban--is, if I may play Urban Shocker for a second, it's not "big hair" 1980s, not in the way that the nearby Police Headquarters or Mississauga City Hall or (at least through skyline prominence) Scotia Plaza is. It's not demonstrative enough for those demanding lots of mousse and crimping iron. It's not keytar enough. And in spite of being a mid-80s Y, it isn't leg-warmers-and-Michael-Sembello's-"Maniac" enough. It's too subtle; it's for those archi-nerds for whom the name "Louis Kahn" rings a bell.
And yet; and yet. In the long term, there's virtue in subtlety.
Sure, one can point to the the fate of the AGO additions by JD's ex-partner Barton Myers as proof of how nothing's sacred re this style of architecture--but let me tell you this: if, indeed, a tower-replacement proposal
will (as you wishfully imagine) come within your lifetime, you can probably expect the Central Y to be the kind of preservationist cause celebre that Parkin's Bata HQ was. Especially given that by the time that happens, that'll be enough "seasoning time" relative to the present (something which, fortunately or not, the Myers/KPMB AGO additions lacked, esp. vs a 500 pound gorilla like Gehry).
