Re: It sucks.
From the Globe, by Rochon:
A sinking feeling
On the lake, Globe and Mail architecture critic LISA ROCHON sees a lost opportunity
LISA ROCHON
Of all the words of mice and men,
the saddest are 'It might have been.'
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
This week's decision by the city's waterfront design review panel to rubber-stamp a ho-hum building by architect Jack Diamond on a spectacular lake site is hardly surprising. Mediocre building is the legacy of Toronto's waterfront, and part of the long, unrequited love affair Torontonians -- including planners, architects and citizens -- have sustained with Lake Ontario.
The lake gives of itself every day. It isn't to blame. What is remarkable is the regular disdain hurled at its endless vistas, its meditative waters, its furious, seething mass.
And, so, the latest rebuff: a 10-storey building broken politely into two pieces and clad in a cold skin of glass. There is no kindly gesture extended to the water, not even a graceful canopy to acknowledge the lake. But there is a large, gaping entrance to a parking garage within metres of the crashing waves, and an atrium that depends on artificial lighting to achieve something like luminosity.
There might have been champagne. The site on Jarvis Quay is inspired.
The urban design review panel is mandated to shoot for excellence. Nearby, a series of exceptional landscapes by some of the world's best landscape architects will appear after winning design competitions. But there's no pop to the commercial building on Jarvis Quay, which will be the first stroke in a reinvented Toronto waterfront.
And Mr. Diamond, who has contributed tremendously to the tight urbanity of the city, isn't entirely to blame. The City of Toronto and the Toronto Economic Development Corporation, the city agency that hired Mr. Diamond, are responsible for upholding a time-honoured tradition along the waterfront: putting up buildings quick and dirty.
The process for "Project Symphony," as it is unfortunately named, has been fraught from the beginning.
Mr. Diamond was appointed by TEDCO without a design competition. Rather than spearheading a campaign of remarkable architecture on the waterfront, Mayor David Miller -- who assigned Mr. Diamond as his co-chair during his first electoral campaign -- has been pushing for the building to go ahead. A subcommittee of the urban design review panel was formed to accommodate TEDCO's hurry-up schedule. Paul Bedford, the former chief planner of Toronto, agreed to sit on the committee with architects Siamak Hariri and Bruce Kuwabara, the chair of the review panel.
For the first two meetings, Mr. Diamond didn't bother to show up, leaving a colleague, David Dow, to field questions and absorb recommendations. TEDCO wants shovels in the ground by July -- all of this to please its secret tenant.
This Thursday, during the third public review of the project, several of the panelists expressed their disappointment with the design. "What I've seen today is a substantial improvement over what we've seen in the past," said Mr. Bedford, referring to a previous, much boxier design that would have blocked public views to the water. "It speaks to the value of this urban design review panel. But," he added, "I don't think it's orgasmic."
Architect Tania Bortolotto called for an iconic building. "It doesn't have to be an OCAD," she said, referring to Will Alsop's startling design for an addition to the Ontario College of Art and Design. "But it should be something that architecture students around the world will come to see."
Architect Peter Clewes asked out loud: "What makes a waterfront building? Mr. Diamond's work has been to create modest buildings -- fabric buildings. . . . In Europe, there's an exuberance to their waterfront buildings."
From landscape architect Janet Rosenberg: "We have spent months and months reviewing works about the public realm. We always said as a group that the first building that came along for the waterfront really had to be in the spirit of the public realm. I don't feel that this is a public-realm building."
Mr. Diamond gathered his most imperial tone to admonish the panel for their temerity. "Iconic and exuberant -- that speaks to me of provincial insecurity. Toronto is made up of continuity and not discontinuities," he said.
By this, does Mr. Diamond mean to imply the public should expose itself to only one genre of literature, one sound, or indeed, one level of architecture? Is that all we can expect in this town, more of the same?
Let Hamburg hire Swiss luminaries Herzog & de Meuron to build its astonishing Elbe Philharmonic Hall, which lords over the river like an ethereal ship. Let Weiss/Manfredi architects carve a sculpture garden for the Seattle Art Museum next to Puget Sound. But on Toronto's waterfront, apparently, experiential architecture that engages and intrigues is destructive. As Mr. Diamond put it: "I think it's the destruction of our cities to endorse American individualism."
Oh, dear. What will the Americans think?
No matter. In the end, Mr. Diamond triumphed. The Toronto way triumphed.
And, sadly, Mr. Kuwabara caved under pressure from the mayor and TEDCO to get something, anything,built on the waterfront. It's not that Mr. Kuwabara thinks it's an exceptional design -- he says he'd give it a seven out of 10 -- but because, well, in Toronto, these things need to go ahead.
Only last week, Mr. Kuwabara spoke with passion about the possibilities for the site: "There's great waterfront architecture that's being done around the world. I keep showing the Institute of Contemporary Art by Diller and Scofidio because it's so engaged with the waterfront and it's become the cover image for Boston.
"Why not do a pier, something sculptural? In a very real way, this one is the first on a very prime site, and because it's on the water you'll see it twice, not only reflected in the water but also from the water itself."
Approval for Project Symphony is conditional, with the requirement that Mr. Diamond meet with the review panel to get the details of his design right. That should prove to be entertaining, especially if Mr. Diamond actually shows up.
lrochon@globeandmail.com
AoD
