Mongo
Senior Member
^because any apes in the neighbourhood would suddenly become intelligent, and before you know it, they're building space shuttles.
Bill
Bill
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
Actually, I'm starting to like the idea of these overbearing towers. If you're going to dwarf the surrounding city, you might as well max the envelope. It'll be like those leftover scraps of colonial America hidden among the dense mangle of Lower Manhattan towers.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
lol! You guys are killing me.
I'll take the glass over the monoliths. Their piercing scream at sunrise would be too much.
Sir Novelty Fashion
Senior Member
A common misperception I keep reading in this thread is that the Distillery District has a "character" that's worth preserving.
If only. Look: cobblestone streets and taxidermed heritage buildings are all well and good. But the Distillery is pure Main Street Muskoka: an assemblage of overpriced boutiques selling kitsch, sometimes in edible form, to the passerby. With the significant exception of the theatre, the District neither has the air of a cultural project or a community centre. Appropriately enough for a distillery, it's a crass commercial project that happens to look good. More power to it.
The scale of the towers really is an issue, I think, but not because it threatens to put Distillery-goers off of buying $25 import stainless-steel toothpick-holders. We are, however, trying to build an actual neighborhood just across the road. I want to know how these towers will integrate with the West Donlands. I don't remember seeing anything about 50-storey towers in the precint plans...
If only. Look: cobblestone streets and taxidermed heritage buildings are all well and good. But the Distillery is pure Main Street Muskoka: an assemblage of overpriced boutiques selling kitsch, sometimes in edible form, to the passerby. With the significant exception of the theatre, the District neither has the air of a cultural project or a community centre. Appropriately enough for a distillery, it's a crass commercial project that happens to look good. More power to it.
The scale of the towers really is an issue, I think, but not because it threatens to put Distillery-goers off of buying $25 import stainless-steel toothpick-holders. We are, however, trying to build an actual neighborhood just across the road. I want to know how these towers will integrate with the West Donlands. I don't remember seeing anything about 50-storey towers in the precint plans...
Pep'rJack
Active Member
^ Lol
dt_toronto_geek
Superstar
No offense Jayomatic but those photoshopped images above give me the creeps. They look like ghosts of the former WTC towers 1 & 2 looming in the background.
adma
Superstar
It depends whether you uppercase or lowercase the "Distillery District" concept. Otherwise, you run the risk of cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Sort of like how Niagara-On-The-Lake's a little kitschy-wretched these days; but that's no excuse to obliterate it...
Jayomatic
Active Member
Yeah. Sorry about that. Just did a really quick job. I'm really interested in seeing any renderings of the 2 towers.
syn
Senior Member
Here are some pics from the Aa website I found after checking out their Four Seasons collection...they're just so far out of scale:
cassius
Active Member
^ LOL. You beat me to it by a few seconds! 
Okay - ignoring the context just for a moment - these are nicely, minimally, slightly twisted designs. Restrained and refined.
Bringing the context back into it...
...it should be fine. They'll look like Spire, not those flat black monoliths from Jayomatic's pics.
Glass towers + Victorian amusement park. What's the problem?
42
Bringing the context back into it...
...it should be fine. They'll look like Spire, not those flat black monoliths from Jayomatic's pics.
Glass towers + Victorian amusement park. What's the problem?
42
syn
Senior Member
^ LOL. You beat me to it by a few seconds!
Sure, sure...
So what do you think of them?
syn
Senior Member
Andrew3D
Active Member
I like them but go figure. The only thing I'm disliking here is that they look to similar in height. Who here knows what the height of the three buildings will be?
Archivist
Senior Member
Low rise commercial
Fascinating. I had not paid enough attention to the plans for this building, and didn't really look at the low rise building which is evident in the renderings. I am so very pleased that it will be modern in nature, and will envelope the historical buildings. This could perhaps save the district from itself.
I wandered through Liberty Village this week, and though much of the new construction is horrible, there's a lot of landscaping going on and new businesses everywhere and it has a kind of "real" feel because so many people work there. The addition of modern buildings into the heart of the district may make it less kitschy feeling.
Fascinating. I had not paid enough attention to the plans for this building, and didn't really look at the low rise building which is evident in the renderings. I am so very pleased that it will be modern in nature, and will envelope the historical buildings. This could perhaps save the district from itself.
I wandered through Liberty Village this week, and though much of the new construction is horrible, there's a lot of landscaping going on and new businesses everywhere and it has a kind of "real" feel because so many people work there. The addition of modern buildings into the heart of the district may make it less kitschy feeling.