Toronto Forma | 308m | 84s | Great Gulf | Gehry Partners

While I won't go to such extremes in saying that we barely had any heritage, I think this line is worth repeating:

We have an opportunity to create something that can be looked on with pride for centuries if the thing actually gets built
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AoD
 
Really?

supercilious said:
I would hope so. Europe actually has some actual heritage to protect.

Toronto was practically just a train stop until 100 years ago. I honestly find it embarrassing that people would care so much about something so meaningless as what is standing on King street currently. Especially when you compare it to what is envisioned to be built in that space.

It reeks of inferiority and grasping at "heritage" straws that most other people would scoff at.

Toronto has barely any heritage... On the other hand, we have an opportunity to create something that can be looked on with pride for centuries if the thing actually gets built.
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Maybe Toronto doesn't have as much heritage as it could/should is precisely due to attitudes like that.
 
Danielinthecity:

Well, partially - also partially because we're young as a city, and born after the age of kings, tyrants and autocrats came of age even later .

AoD
 
supercilious said:
The original Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_Astoria_New_York) was demolished and the Empire State Building built on top of it.

And we are worried about knocking down some warehouses.
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Absolute straw man. New York has the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a body of over 60 individuals including historians, architects, landscape architects and planners who's mandate is to: "Safeguard the city's historic, aesthetic, and cultural heritage." I'd like to see you try and get something like Mirvish+Gehry built in that city.

I'm not in any way advocating the demise of Mirvish+Gehry but simply calling out those who claim cities across the globe are joyfully tearing apart their history for something bigger and grander while Toronto is bound to some sort of artificial, elite-driven stasis.
 
Whether or not things are torn down is clearly not the point of my post. You're really just throwing things out there and seeing what happens. How's about you do a little digging into the actual preservation policies you claim to know so much about ("Europe tears down thousand year old buildings without batting an eye") and report back when you've got something substantive?
 
I wasn't replying to your post specifically.

I gave my opinion on the warehouses and you gave me yours. Needing to substantiate my personal opinion based on preservation policies is irrelevant.
 
'Cause why would we want facts to get in the way of anything? You've also misrepresented your 'opinion' as 'fact' in earlier posts but hey, who cares right?
 
The 1,000 year old demolition comment was clearly tongue in cheek. I can understand why you would disagree with my opinion regarding the warehouses, but there's no need to diminish my views based on the validity of my comment about Europe.

Everyone's allowed an opinion, and neither you nor I will decide what the fate of those warehouses are, so save it.
 
freshcutgrass said:
For me, it's the context that tips the scales in favour of the Gehry design. This section of King screams for the Gehry, and while there's nothing wrong per say with the white-washed warehouses, they don't stack up when faced with the proposed project. While these buildings don't have the character of the King-Spadina warehouses, I'm sure Allied would do a nice job with them as restored post & beam offices. Except this property is too valuable and the warehouses too dull to make it economically.
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I'm not sure why this already dynamic and successfully urban part of the city is 'screaming' for Gehry? You make it sound as if it's in the throes of death and can only be saved by some Bilbao-effect starchitecture, which we know isn't the case. As for the existing stock of listed buildings? I find it a little rich that Gehry is adding wooden beams to 'evoke' the very heritage he wants to destroy. Why evoke something that is deemed so disposable to start with??


freshcutgrass said:
Well, that's very easy for you to say, but you aren't the owner, and you aren't the artist. I probably would have had an opinion on how Davinci could have painted the Mona Lisa differently too.
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Owner or not, these buildings are listed. I get to have my say... and no it's not about telling Da Vinci how to paint his Mona Lisa, it's about saying he can't just paint it over something else, like the cave paintings at Lascaux or something. Ok i'm stretching but you get my point.

freshcutgrass said:
Facadism is laughable considering the rather dull/unattractive facades involved, and the unlikelihood that Mirvish/Gehry would compromise serious architecture simply to appease someone.
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I'd never want Gehry to do something just to appease somebody. I know we are all aching for a pure and unadulterated Gehry, it's just that nobody ever gave him the blank canvas to work with in Toronto... which is odd when you think of how many empty parking lots, brown fields and reclaimed lands (including waterfront) there have been to work with here. It's not necessarily regrettable though. Gehry has been given some very interesting contexts to work with here, even if they weren't just blank canvases.


freshcutgrass said:
Well firstly, you can use the term, but you are either using it incorrectly out of ignorance, or using it on purpose to mislead and over dramatize. Neither of which is good. Is your position that weak that you need to resort to that?
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I choose the term because it is aptly descriptive. It is pedantic to quibble when everybody knows what's being implied. Is this what you are resorting to?

freshcutgrass said:
Secondly, you are saying that there is no place for building new by replacing the old. This is false. This is not to say we endorse ripping down neighbourhoods to build St Jamestowns.
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No, I don't deny that there are times when older stock has to go. We just have to be careful. We are always finding reasons to knock stuff down or let stuff fall down, there is a very bad precedent for this in Toronto.


freshcutgrass said:
A: Toronto is not Paris (or Venice or Rome)
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No Toronto is Toronto, historic industrial warehouses included!

freshcutgrass said:
B: You do realize the "Centre City" Paris is a "master-planned" project, that demolished all of medieval Paris to build?
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... yet I don't believe for a second they would do it there today. The sensibility has evolved. The odd infill project? Absolutely. Just not the sort of wholesale destruction you could get away with under Louis XIV, Napoleon I or III.
 
You do realize the "Centre City" Paris is a "master-planned" project, that demolished all of medieval Paris to build?
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This simply isn't true.
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If Haussmann's Paris doesn't qualify as master planning...I don't know what does.


I'm not sure why this already dynamic and successfully urban part of the city is 'screaming' for Gehry? You make it sound as if it's in the throes of death and can only be saved by some Bilbao-effect starchitecture, which we know isn't the case.
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I'm not trying to make it sound that way at all. Quite the contrary...it is precisely because of the existing "Entertainment District" components that I think the Gehry project would make a huge enhancement to it. It's the whitewashed warehouses that don't fit in with the context of their immediate surroundings. They are the kill-joy here.

Hey...if Mirvish had presented a proposal that somehow "un-whitewashed" the current warehouses as part of a complex on the site, I'd be all for it. I like old post & beam warehouse buildings....I used to own three units in such a building.

But he didn't propose that....he proposed this Gehry project instead. I like it better.

Sorry...can't put the genie back in the bottle.
 
Sorry, to be clear, I was referring to your ridiculous claim that Haussmann's renovations "...demolished all of medieval Paris to build," not whether they were 'master planned.'
 
supercilious said:
I would hope so. Europe has some actual heritage to protect.

Toronto was practically just a train stop until 100 years ago. I honestly find it embarrassing that people would care so much about something so meaningless as what is standing on King street currently. Especially when you compare it to what is envisioned to be built in that space.

It reeks of inferiority and grasping at "heritage" straws that most other people would scoff at.

Toronto has barely any heritage... On the other hand, we have an opportunity to create something that can be looked on with pride for centuries if the thing actually gets built.
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Actually, leaving aside the specific situation we're dealing with in this thread, when it comes to the broader argument about "heritage", I'd reckon that even the sensitive European heritage realm would laugh in your face. It's like you're suggesting they'd scoff at Mount Forest because it's not Montparnasse. Look: there's a universality to "heritage sensitivity"--it covers the ancient, the medieval, and the seemingly-unimportant-by-comparison recent past--and not only in North America in the latter case, given how even Europe recognizes and respects its c20 heritage these days. And yes, that includes commie blocks from the 1960s, etc.

OTOH, your attitude might well have more in common with those from those apparently more "heritage-rich" lands who move to Canada to, well, *escape* the kinds of strictures they identify with their teeming-with-heritage homelands; that is, by opting for a land of comparative unregulated freedom with, in their eyes, negligible fare that's of "historical importance". And rather paradoxically, they're prone to using the "we come from a land of rich history" alibi to excuse their own philistine insensitivity.

So, get this straight. The "most other people" you're speaking of isn't the heart of the heritage realm; in fact, they're probably more Sunday-painter amateurish in their scoffing than those they are scoffing at. Especially if you consider that those they're scoffing at are not "heritage or bust" absolutists even in this loaded case, but simply allowing for a valid heritage argument as part of the overall dialogue--believe you me, it'd be no different in Europe, however much you protesteth otherwise...

EDIT: I can't help but think back to this post

Agreed. The european system of mindless preservation of everything makes living in the city very elitist and less functional than here IMO. Hence why I immigrated.
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Sounds like the inverse of what supercilious is claiming--that is, the Euro-way would be *more* inclined t/w bogging down a Mirvish/Gehry scheme in urban/heritage/whatever discussion, *not* less.
 
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diminutive said:
Because you're using the term incorrectly to gin up emotion and cover up gaping holes in your argument. Blockbusting, actual blockbusting, was a hugely negative phenomenon which played an important part in the gutting of many inner city american neighborhoods. It's impossible to separate that term from the racial and socioeconomic prejudices which engendered it.

Blockbusting was never considered a negative because it, sometimes, happened to take up an entire block, either. Large scale developments which spanned entire city (or multiple) city blocks existed long before 'blockbusting' and doesn't have any particular negative connotation. One could just as easily accuse Union Station of being the product of 'blockbusting.'

What's more frustrating is that many perfectly accurate terms exist for what you are trying to describe. The simple term 'megaproject' is far more descriptive of Mirvish-Gehry's scale and intent.

What doesn't make sense is 'blockbusting.' If you insert Mirvish-Gehry into any standard definition of blockbusting, rather than your crass recycling of the term, it becomes clear just how misplaced it is.
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If I'm doing so, it's unintentional--or at least, filtered through the less racially-charged (or even socio-economically charged) manner in which the term came to be used in Jane Jacobs-era Toronto; that is, re anything of apparent overwhelming scale replacing/displacing something less overwhelming. In fact, it owes just as much to the more familiar casual definition of "blockbuster"; y'know, as applied to such things as cinema, etc.

In that light, if we use the gentler Toronto-fied application of "blockbuster"...well, there is a psychological difference btw/a residential/institutional tour de force something that displaces something preexisting-and-deemed-"heritage" (as here), and something that displaces parking (as w/the Bell Lightbox across the street). The former just feels more...disruptive, somehow. And "raises emotions" as a consequence.

In fact, a comparative case came to mind today: MoMA in NYC. Which, through all its increments and expansions, retains something of a "side-street scale", i.e. it really has little blockbuster/megaproject about it. Yet the net effect on its blockfront, gobbling up like Pac-Man virtually every Beaux-Arts-era townhouse remaining (and even recently threatening "ultra-modern" heritage by Diller & Scofidio) has been, well...blockbusterish. Maybe not on behalf of evil Robert Moses schemes, but to those concerned, it certainly has had the stink of offputting institutional/elite hubris--not that it shouldn't have happened, and you can't reverse things; but, you can't deny that that whole subtext is a valid part of the dialogue, nor can you paint it in overwhelmingly, arrogantly "win/win" terms...
 
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