Toronto Church of Scientology | ?m | 8s

thedeepend said:
how much time do you have?
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+1. How are those two buildings similar? They're on corners?

The render looks awful. Too busy. It does nothing to preserve the building, which is actually quite nice, apart from bits of the ground floor. If you swapped out some window treatments and worked on the HVAC I think it would look much less "shabby", or whatever the latest snarky word about Yonge St. is.
 
adma said:
no wonder people like Urban Shocker et al have given up on the forum, when these kinds of taste-yokels hog the scenery...
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I think even more people have given up due to the awful, inflexible, puritan pro-modernist arrogance. If UT do another one of their pub nights, I'd love to go and see if some of you guys are as annoying in person as you are on this forum.

Does anyone know of any Toronto skyscraper forums that aren't full of pretentious drama queens? I think I'm done here...
 
Thanks for playing!

Door.jpg
 
Hey, I'm with adma. Maybe I'll say good bye as well.

Now Project End can lord over the place with his cute pictures.

Enjoy the Scientology dreck.
 
Wow. Think it's time for UT to build some bridges on the forum (too late for Cityplace :)). Never seen morale so low. I rarely post. Miss the old days where passionate debate was sprinkled occasionally with a bit of genuine enthusiasm about the city and this club we belong to... maybe a UT ball cap should be distributed. Mods? Ed? "Why can't we be friends....".
 
3Dementia said:
Wow. Think it's time for UT to build some bridges on the forum (too late for Cityplace :)). Never seen morale so low. I rarely post. Miss the old days where passionate debate was sprinkled occasionally with a bit of genuine enthusiasm about the city and this club we belong to... maybe a UT ball cap should be distributed. Mods? Ed? "Why can't we be friends....".
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You're right. We have to be civil to each other. But let's not pretend the tarting up of this building doesn't matter. Everyone talks about preserving our architectural heritage, but how can we achieve that goal if we can't recognize quality when we see it? A good number of the posters on this thread are like crows in sight of a shiny object.
 
There are a lot of lower-quality buildings from the same era as 696 Yonge, and many people have gotten used to their dullness and see other, better buildings in the same style as also unattractive. I might not have given this building a second look at a different point in my life. When these buildings in the Modern style have some window air conditioners and other compromises, the good examples become even less likely to be appreciated by people. But when one looks closely and sees the unique sash pattern on the windows, the repeating bands of warm brick floating on glass with windows sections meeting each other on every floor at the corners without interruptions, and the crisp proportions, one may see it as the worthy Modern building it is--not another cheap block from the era. It's the 1950s Peter Dickinson look: subdued yet nicely detailed with an eye for proportions and for getting the small details right like the uninterrupted windows.

Everyone should at some point in their lives as residents of a major metropolitan city like Toronto think about what the merits are of each style of architecture in their city, from 2 centuries ago to 20 years ago be it Georgian or Brutalism. It's part of what makes life worth living here, where you'll see great things in the built form that you won't find in most other cities in your day to day life. It's depressing to think that for decades, most people will be ignorant of the good stuff Postmodernism offered us and we'll perhaps see a generic glass reclad of Scotia Plaza, getting rid of the zipper for a little extra officer space, or then they'll start obtusely recladding aAs and Teeples with the most generic stuff out of the contemporary catalogue. It doesn't have to be that way. Architects should also take a stand against this ignorance because it'll be their own proud design work getting destroyed in just a couple of generations.
 
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Oh, BTW, embracing the present proposal as "truer"-a-la-Pepsico to a certain supposed Modernist spirit is really taking a "Wyatt The Destroyer" approach to our existing postwar-modern fabric (cf. James Wyatt's legendarily derided Georgian-era "restorations" of English cathedrals).

Incidentally, a couple of things have so far been absent in this thread, (a) the architect of the remodelling, and (b) the architect, or really, *any* significant data re the existing building. I mean, it's a fascinating early modern office block; but whether it's because of being weighed down by the cloud of years of Scientology or not, very little is known about it--it's the ultimate underrated sleeper of its sort. Casually speaking, I'd imagine it being an early 50s Page & Steele-y thing--and yet there's something very primevally "Modern Movement" about it; like, were it of concrete or some such smooth finish rather than homely yellow brick, it could pass for something from 20s/30s Europe. Even those existing windows, in their energy-inefficient, air-conditioner-peppered glory, have an odd transparent delicacy that mysteriously evokes the glassy strip-windowed Bauhaus futurism of an earlier time.

It's definitely a building meriting extended reflection and a bit of digging as to its architectural provenance--all by way of, well, a preemptive gesture, and an intelligent, thoughtful sensible one, prior to acting on anything drastic, much less the advocacy of the same.

Though a bit of a disclosure here: even I'd agree there's a longstanding acquired-taste grottiness about the place. Even some 30 plus years ago (and I don't know whether Scientology had fully set in yet), I found the building oddly scary and unappetizing. But that was 30 plus years ago, and I'd probably have said the same about the original Yonge subway stations with their Vitrolite adulterated by Gloucester-car greasy stink. Taste and tolerance and "scope" pendulums swing...
 
adma said:
Oh, BTW, embracing the present proposal as "truer"-a-la-Pepsico to a certain supposed Modernist spirit is really taking a "Wyatt The Destroyer" approach to our existing postwar-modern fabric (cf. James Wyatt's legendarily derided Georgian-era "restorations" of English cathedrals).
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I wasn't saying that - just reacting to the idea that the proposal would be destroy a modernist building, it belongs in Markham, etc. So I made the obvious point that there's nothing un-modernist about vertical mullions. (Or coloured spandrel for that matter.) But no this building will never be Pepsi-Cola. It never was.

If I owned these buildings we're losing on Yonge and had money to burn, I would restore and preserve them all. But most folks want shiny new stuff. This proposal looks like a serious effort to give them that, while holding on to the essential modernism of the building.
 
Isn't it pointless to be arguing that the Church of Scientology should retain the original look of this building? If the "Church" is spending Millions on renovations they will naturally want the renovated building to end up resembling some kind of Church (for marketing reasons) as opposed to retaining the look of the 1950's office building that has housed the Church of Scientology in Toronto for decades.

Given this fact of life I think that what is being proposed here doesn't look all that bad, especially compared to the eyesores that abound around it.
 
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If the Church owns the building and their design proposal is within the existing bylaw governing that site - is there really anyway to stop what they want to do? Not that it isn't worthy of debate. Just curious.
 
Peepers said:
Given this fact of life I think that what is being proposed here doesn't look all that bad, especially compared to the eyesores that abound around it.
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Uh, a few doors to the south is an exemplary Second Empire row by E.J. Lennox, you know.

Ultimately, the only rationale behind this being "not all that bad" is that this'll be spanking new, rather than old and, uh, "lived-in".

(And ironically, I'll betcha that those accusing some of us of "awful, inflexible, puritan pro-modernist arrogance" would just as obtusely ignorant re the Lennox row, or accusing *its* defenders of "awful, inflexible, puritan pro-Victorian arrogance", or something...)
 
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