Toronto Eau du Soleil Condos | 227.98m | 66s | Empire | Richmond Architects

The ski jump crown on the Sky tower is close to topping off

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The towers are looking better and better as the balcony railings are slowly installed

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**Constructed building not looking like render shocker**


are we really still doing this?

So, riddle me this, Batman: what is the point of having a DRP and developers submitting the list of materials with their proposal if in the end no one holds them accountable to what they delivered versus what they promised?
 
The podium looks like a data centre or some other kind of infrastructure office IMHO. Not sure if that was the intention (probably not). Oops!
 
So, riddle me this, Batman: what is the point of having a DRP and developers submitting the list of materials with their proposal if in the end no one holds them accountable to what they delivered versus what they promised?

DRP is nonbinding. The city would have to secure the materiality in the SPA. Even still, there's often 'or equivalent / or similar' language which also gets inserted.

"Holds them accountable" is also difficult. Sometimes companies go out of business or they discontinue certain products. If you had a legally binding agreement which held someone to a product or a company which may no longer exist, how do you enforce it?

Teams also change across the life of a large project. It's not uncommon in an architectural office for none of the original team to be on a project by the time it finishes. 'Differing visions' is why we have 'substantially in accordance' clauses written in.
 
Taken this (hazy) morning, showing the view from Jane at Bloor. The taller tower now dominates the skyline (a skyline that was essentially non-existent from here before Lago):

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So the commercial building cladding is almost finished and it looks absolutely nothing like what was proposed.

Render:
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Reality:
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In typical Toronto fashion, not a single shred of color made it to the finished product other than shades of grey.


To be honest...I actually prefer it like this than the rendering. I always thought that the rainbow window glass did not compliment the building itself.
 
I am personally not a fan of either the rendering nor what it turned out to be, simply pointing out the trend of stripping all the color out of the design even if the original proposal had color. Same thing happened with River City 3. These buildings now really compliment the grey skies, the salty pavements and the dirty snow. I have a new conspiracy theory: Toronto developers are in cahoots with big pharma companies. They purposely build depressing looking buildings in order to drive up the sales of antidepressants.
 
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So the commercial building cladding is almost finished and it looks absolutely nothing like what was proposed.

Render:
View attachment 164074


Reality:
View attachment 164075


In typical Toronto fashion, not a single shred of color made it to the finished product other than shades of grey.
That rendering was made when the proposal included above-ground parking in the podium. The City nixed that part of the plan… add IIRC it was the HBSCA that poo-poohed the colour, finding it too garish or something…

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That rendering was made when the proposal included above-ground parking in the podium. The City nixed that part of the plan… add IIRC it was the HBSCA that poo-poohed the colour, finding it too garish or something…

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Ah, how fitting. It would be the Great Grey Wall of Condos Association that would be horrified to see a colorful design in their midst.
"Thou shall not upstage us! Thou shall not make us look worse than we already are!"
In regards to the renderings though, did Empire never produce any updated ones? Also, do we have HBSCA to thank for the muted 'wood' color of the balcony cladding instead of what looks like orange in the renders? Or is that one solely on Empire / Dream United?
 
The HBSCA can be blamed for many things (and believe me, the list is as long, if not longer than Grimes'), but not for the developer's cladding choices.
 
No, they never produced new renderings of that area of the building.

I doubt the orange becoming brown can be lad at the HBSCA's feet. That's just the kind of thing that goes one way on a rendering long before it's actually "specced out". By the time the working drawings were being put together, they would have looked at exactly what materials they were going to use, and may not have had the option of the colour they originally envisioned, or they may have simply changed their minds about what tint for any number of reasons.

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