Toronto Bloor & Dufferin | 122.35m | 37s | Hazelview | Turner Fleischer

holographic plastic said:
Care to explain how?
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Alex expanded a bit on Twitter and I tend to agree with his points:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1120802535428616192

My issues with the project are:
1) The architecture totally overwhelms the heritage of the Kent School building. At the very least, the new buildings should have been pulled back from Dufferin to align with the front plane of the school.
2) The retention of the Bloor Collegiate building is the worst kind of facadomy and doesn't in any way respect the original form of the buildings.
3) The towers are stubby and too close together and reside on giant multi-storey podiums to get the unit count up. I would have much preferred fewer, taller towers, more widely spaced, with less overwhelming podiums.
 
smably said:
Alex expanded a bit on Twitter and I tend to agree with his points:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1120802535428616192

My issues with the project are:
1) The architecture totally overwhelms the heritage of the Kent School building. At the very least, the new buildings should have been pulled back from Dufferin to align with the front plane of the school.
2) The retention of the Bloor Collegiate building is the worst kind of facadomy and doesn't in any way respect the original form of the buildings.
3) The towers are stubby and too close together and reside on giant multi-storey podiums to get the unit count up. I would have much preferred fewer, taller towers, more widely spaced, with less overwhelming podiums.
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I agree w/ @AlexBozikovic on many things...........I'm not quite able to meet him here.

The second point is a problem for me.............I don't like the original facade of Bloor Collegiate that much and don't consider it grand......... I appreciate saving it not only as a gesture but to add some variety to the architecture of the site.

That said.......this is not a building, which on its 'face', pun intended, merits preservation to me.

Kent yes, Bloor no.

The picture Alex includes of the auditorium appears unexceptional and dull to me.

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Your 1st and 3rd points I can get behind......though I don't see either as being egregious.......rather that there is room for improvement and the density goal is a bit nuts......

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Alex's pov that the new HS is an architectural regret is an entirely legit point; but I'm not clear that that lies on the developer. (I could stand to be corrected, but I'm assuming that's on the TDSB).
 
Northern Light said:
The second point is a problem for me.............I don't like the original facade of Bloor Collegiate that much and don't consider it grand......... I appreciate saving it not only as a gesture but to add some variety to the architecture of the site.

That said.......this is not a building, which on its 'face', pun intended, merits preservation to me.
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I may be biased because I'm a huge fan of Art Deco/Art Moderne, but I think Bloor Collegiate a lovely building and very much worth saving. I'll agree that it's not "grand", exactly, but it has some beautiful details (just look at those porthole windows and curved brick corners!). I'm glad that some of that heritage is being retained in the latest iteration, but it's essentially some old brick pasted onto the front of a new building of a wholly different scale.

And I should clarify that I don't think development is bad, exactly, just a missed opportunity in terms of how it treats those heritage assets.
 
With that kind of claustrophobic massing, it reminds me of the 60s vision for St. James Town. I wouldn't be at all surprised if, in 30 years, it's widely viewed by the rest of the city as an urban hell. Hope it doesn't come to that but....
 
We all have differing comfort levels with density, scale, etc. Just because you personally feel discomfort with it doesn't mean other people do. Nor does it mean that a development will become an urban hell. I bet there are people who think Kensington is an urban hell because it's too tightly packed. There's an easy solution to that: move further out to where the density is to your liking.
 
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Lenser said:
With that kind of claustrophobic massing, it reminds me of the 60s vision for St. James Town. I wouldn't be at all surprised if, in 30 years, it's widely viewed by the rest of the city as an urban hell. Hope it doesn't come to that but....
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St. James Town's issues came from its urbanism (or lack thereof), not its density.
 
I understand what people mean when they say that St. James Town is a bad urban landscape, but walking through there recently I was struck by how good it felt to be there, how much healthier it felt as a city — in that it felt like a real city of all, and not just the few who could afford it. So in some ways, despite the architecture and urban design, ending up like St. James Town wouldn't be the worst fate for this site. Because the bigger concern is what the development of this site in this way and the neighbourhood in general will do to affordability in the area for people who live there and the communities and small businesses that make the area a beautiful and healthy part of the city.
 
I suppose that kind of density for the area is inevitable. I have to remind myself that it's on the subway line and the city is facing relentless pressure to accommodate all the additional people moving into it every year. It's not the sheer height of the towers that makes me uneasy, it's their close approximation to one another and the resultant overall effect. It just feels very heavy to me. Massive change for the neighbourhood, that much is certain.
 
The big difference to St. James Town is the empty space between towers there, which I know isn't the best urban planning but it does provide some visual relief.

Whereas the Bloor/Dufferin plan has "podiums" that are very tall (at what point does it cease to be a podium?) and tight to the property lines, and towers that barely, if at all, step back from them. This is all to cram more square footage into the site.

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I'm not anti-density, especially given the housing crisis, but I think the massing on this project is out of whack. I would have preferred lower podiums that are more street-friendly, and taller towers that are setback further. Also, as mentioned earlier, there should be more space around Kent. And the park will be very overshadowed by the adjacent towers. The pretty renderings of the hoped for street life are lovely, and if they come true then the massing problems will be somewhat mitigated.
 
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