Toronto Clear Spirit | 131.36m | 40s | Cityscape | a—A

Urban Shocker said:
It looks to me as though the city bureaucrats are doing exactly what one assumes they would do, in the dance with the developer over this project, so I don't see what their fellow-travellers on this board are getting so hyper about.
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Bureaucrats and planners aren't always right.
 
unimaginative2 said:
No, it would mean reusing the heritage building that's part of a national historic site by renovating and restoring it, rather than levelling it for a condo and parking garage. I've been inside renovated buildings of the exact same size and type as those barrel warehouses, and they're lovely. My father works in one. Get Barton Myers to design it; he has experience.
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I agree.

Using US logic we might as well tear down all unused heritage buildings.
 
But syn you're contradicting yourself if you think the city bureaucrats are wrong to want buildings that aren't as tall as aA's proposed towers, since that is exactly what you have proposed yourself on this thread many, many times.

Why should Barton Myers redesign the Distillery District? We already have a fabulous design!
 
Urban Shocker said:
But syn you're contradicting yourself if you think the city bureaucrats are wrong to want buildings that aren't as tall as aA's proposed towers, since that is exactly what you have proposed yourself on this thread many, many times.

Why should Barton Myers redesign the Distillery District? We already have a fabulous design!
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I misread, sorry. How much shorter does the city want the towers to be?
 
How much support would there be to separating the construction updates from the debate over land use and planning? It would mean that one thread would have the updates and discussion on how it is turning out (ie comments about the parking garage, podium etc), the other debating the merits of the condo towers themselves and what people want for the district.

I did the same with 1 St. Thomas, though there turned out to be some opposition there.
 
^I'm not sure about that. It probably wouldn't get as much attention.

I think the updates also keep the debate going. They're all tied together.
 
I agree. Construction update photographs - in this thread and others - have played an important part in promoting lively discussions about design, land use, and planning issues.

I don't know how tall the city wants the towers to be, syn, I don't have the "magic number" you're after, but in my quick discussion with the ERA architect about how the project is progressing the usual design culture vs. bureaucracy frustration was clear. I immediately sympathized with him, and others here would no doubt have taken a different tack. We've seen similar issues before, when Will Alsop proposed a "planning-free" approach to developing parts of the west end for instance. I don't know how practical Alsop's proposal was - more a throwing out of ideas about new ways of approaching problem-solving in order to loosen-up traditional, linear thinking, I think. But it was a design-led rather than regulations-led approach, from someone who generates cultural objects and exemplars rather than one who consumes and regulates them.
 
I'd add an after-the-fact concurrence in there too, Sean. I know that it's important to keep discussions on-topic, but conversations are organic things. Mechanically separating them into different threads isn't necessarily the best idea.

The ebb and flow, and dilly-dallying around related subjects, is part of the joy of the forum. (So is the occasional moderator stepping in and growling at the kids to get back on topic.)
 
Urban Shocker said:
Why should Barton Myers redesign the Distillery District? We already have a fabulous design!
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Because he has experience working with barrel warehouses that doesn't involve tearing them down! I'm sure aA would be capable of handling an adaptive reuse, too, so I wish somebody, anybody, would mandate the preservation and adaptive reuse, rather than demolition, of the entirety of a national historic site.

I also agree with everyone else about not splitting the threads.
 
^ No, no no...the debate here isn't whether or not we should keep and reuse such a building, the debate is should its replacement be 30 storeys or 32 storeys?

And this thread should be kept as is...unlike the 1 St. Thomas thread, this one has not veered off into a discussion about architects and architecture.
 
u2: Well of course the brick from Rack House 'M' is being reused, and the footprint is maintained, which is better than leaving it as a windowless hulk. And retail ( your favourite street level thing, no? ), not parking as you claim, is proposed as an additional use of the building. The historic designation talks of, "the architectural cohesiveness of the site characterized by a high degree of conformity in the design, construction and craftsmanship of its constituent buildings" but even a cursory glance shows that the hulking Rack House 'M' which is built much later doesn't match the earlier - and attractive - Rack Houses that surround it. So clearly, once it bites the dust, improvements can be made. Hurry the day.

And one of the character-defining elements the designation refers to as the, "spatial arrangement of the buildings on the site arrayed along lanes and streets" is actually being expanded by this new development, of which Clear Spirit is a part.

There is nothing in the historical designation that singles out Rack House 'M' as a structure of particular merit, unlike several important buildings on the site which are mentioned for interior and exterior detailing and finishes. We're talking about creative reuse of the whole site, and high quality architecture that will redefine the Distillery District and create something new out of it.
 
I'm not one of these streetfront retail nuts. I think that it's plunked down without care in a lot of stupid places, and that's why we have so many Rabba-Movie-Store-Drycleaners strips. In a retail neighbourhood like the Distillery, yup, I think it's a pretty appropriate use!

Keeping the bricks and footprint is hardly preservation, hardly adaptive reuse, and hardly good enough for a national historic site. The entire complex was deliberately made a national historic site, not just a handful of buildings.

I don't know if you've ever been inside a rack house, but the wooden beams and internal structure are absolutely beautiful, and could make a stunning space if restored and re-used, instead of demolished
 
Urban Shocker said:
Though obviously not in this case, or it would have been proposed.
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Of course it was not proposed. The developers could not make as much money preserving the building as they could by knocking it down and replacing it with a condo tower. It would have been proposed had preservation of historic structures been a prime motive (and enforced by the city).
 
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