syn
Senior Member
What about just the outer facades then?
Toronto Forma | 308m | 84s | Great Gulf | Gehry Partners
- Thread starter golodhendil
- Start date
What about just the outer facades then?
Peepers
Banned
You wouldn't be moving the entire building. You would be carefully disassembling the facade only - brick by brick - cornice by cornice - and reconstituting it on another project site. The costs would not be prohibitive at all because you would be recycling material - in fact if a developer is going for Leed certification they could get credits for recycling material. Also the facades do not have to be moved to property owned by Mirvish. I am sure he could partner with many developer's downtown to make such a move happen. There are many parts of downtown that could benefit by having these heritage buildings grafted onto the streets-cape.
adma
Superstar
Funny; as a beholder of Rome or other such "historic" Italian cities, I'd be perfectly able to see the value of cubic stuff from the Mussolini or postwar eras--and not only that, I'd uphold said seeing-of-value as part of a more "sophisticated" and comprehensive approach to appreciating urbanity.
IOW, when it comes to creative "historically-minded" urban beholding, you're amateurish. And I'd out-Rome you anyday.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
adma:
You have a point re: facist architecture, but let's not accuse others of being an amateur. And re: Rome - I can't help but wonder how the Romans themselves felt about tearing down chunks of their city for the sake of civic improvement - and what we are worshiping is but the Nth iteration of what's on the site. In that context, it is no different from what's happening in this city 2000 years later.
AoD
You have a point re: facist architecture, but let's not accuse others of being an amateur. And re: Rome - I can't help but wonder how the Romans themselves felt about tearing down chunks of their city for the sake of civic improvement - and what we are worshiping is but the Nth iteration of what's on the site. In that context, it is no different from what's happening in this city 2000 years later.
AoD
maestro
Senior Member
Obviously, I was refering to deconstructing and reconstructing.
Disassembling the facade and rebuilding it is not cheap and defeats the purpose of heritage preservation when the structure is key to making these buildings historical. Very easy to say a partner could be found to reconstruct the facade on to their developments. Makes one wonder why any number of historical facade currently reside in storage facilities.
ushahid
Senior Member
guys is the façade of these buildings some kind of steel like 88 spruce NY or something else and what will be material for the podium or canopy?
None of that is finalized yet ushahid, but the canopy will likely be fritted glass over a curved frame. Google Fondation Louis Vuitton Frank Gehry if you want to see another one of his projects with a similar cladding.
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ushahid
Senior Member
friend thanks for the information.
adma
Superstar
Well, I did reference the Renaissance replacement of St Peter's Basilica before...
diminutive
Active Member
Speaking of Penn Station, the Smithsonian Magazine just ran an article on Penn Station and historical nostalgia to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the station's demolition.
I can't help but feel a similar degree of nostalgia at play here. The grim fact is that, designation or no, few Torontonians recognized or celebrated these warehouses before Mirvish proposed demolishing them. People may not have been hostile to them, either, but they were just a mundane, banal part of everyday life. Now we're talking about them and terra-cotta finishes like they're the most significant architectural legacy left in the City.
Pennsylvania Station was designed by McKim, Mead, and White in 1902. McKim, a Beaux-Arts educated architect and co-founder of the American Academy in Rome, was the lead designer on the project which was a grand display of his idiosyncratic Beaux-Arts Classicism. He draws inspiration from the great train stations of Europe, the Baths of Caracalla, John Soane’s Bank of England, and surely myriad other sources, all artfully combined into a monumental pink granite structure. It was a testament to the our technological prowess, craftsmanship, and artistry. It was a monument to our culture; a station scaled to the ambitions of a country at the peak of its power – a modern Rome. And indeed, at times it seemed that all tracks lead to New York – or, to be more specific, Penn Station. It was to be a gateway to the city.
But times change. And cities change. By 1963, New York was a very different place and Penn Station was no longer the gateway into the city. New highways and air travel gave travelers more, sometimes better, options. And while automotive infrastructure was being built by governments, privately owned railways were going bankrupt and bleeding passengers. In a time of high speed and efficiency, Pennsylvania Station was a decadent, inspiring and expensive masterpiece. As it fell into decay and disrepair, the owners of the railroad believed they had no choice but to sell the rights to build on their valuable property, making it possible for a new, modern, and incredibly ugly Madison Square Garden to rise where Penn Station stood, while the while the waiting rooms, ticketing areas, and train concourses were pushed underground. The opposition to the demolition was led by a small but local group, but at the time the city was powerless to stop it. And it seems that few New Yorkers held the station in high regard because although the Penn Station that exists in the popular imaginary looks like this:
The station was quite a bit worse for wear in 1963:
...
By the time of its demolition, Penn was full of unsightly newspaper kiosks, advertisements, and an jarring, modernist ticket counter that drastically changed the circulation through the building’s waiting room. But that is not the Penn Station we remember. There’s a line in The Eternal Space about a soldier who died in World War II: “how perfect he seems in death.” The same could be said about the station. Penn Station lives on through widely distributed photographs depicting the station at the peak of its monumental grandeur, such as those seen at the top of this post. The Penn Station we miss–even those of us who weren’t even a gleam in our father’s eye at the the time of its demolition–is one that hadn’t existed for a long time. And yet, these photos create a longing.
I can't help but feel a similar degree of nostalgia at play here. The grim fact is that, designation or no, few Torontonians recognized or celebrated these warehouses before Mirvish proposed demolishing them. People may not have been hostile to them, either, but they were just a mundane, banal part of everyday life. Now we're talking about them and terra-cotta finishes like they're the most significant architectural legacy left in the City.
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RC8
Senior Member
It's not nostalgia, it's seeing potential when it's in front of you. The warehouses on the site could be turned into fantastic spaces if preserved properly.
Otherwise we may as well have let go of these buildings that were in a terrible state of disrepair:
What we have down at King is a landlord who has not made the most of what he has because he wants to tear it all down. We shouldn't allow this. What he wants to do is outside of the official plan, in violation of heritage guidelines, and would - if approved - set a disastrous precedent for the preservation of every other warehouse in the King-Spadina neighbourhood.
I really love the Gehry design, but there's so many problems with this proposal that I can't see the city saying 'yes' to this. It would just be poor planning to allow it in this epoch.
Otherwise we may as well have let go of these buildings that were in a terrible state of disrepair:
What we have down at King is a landlord who has not made the most of what he has because he wants to tear it all down. We shouldn't allow this. What he wants to do is outside of the official plan, in violation of heritage guidelines, and would - if approved - set a disastrous precedent for the preservation of every other warehouse in the King-Spadina neighbourhood.
I really love the Gehry design, but there's so many problems with this proposal that I can't see the city saying 'yes' to this. It would just be poor planning to allow it in this epoch.
diminutive
Active Member
The Smithsonian's point wasn't that Penn Station deserved to get demolished or something, it was that people nostalgize it in its peak. By the 1960s the PRR was carrying less than a 1/10th of what it was carrying a few decades before, the railroad was verging on bankruptcy and the original station was extremely expensive to maintain.
In hindsight, we can all look at Penn Station's impressiveness and MSG's utter... ugliness and think 'wow, what a bunch of idiots.' It wasn't quite the case of aesthetically oblivious vandals tearing down an otherwise perfectly suitable building, though.
Likewise, you can conspiracize that the current buildings haven't been used appropriately because Mirvish wants to demolish them, but you're ignoring the impracticalities of the current structures. It's ridiculous to not have accessible street presences, for instance.
One Nut Kruk
Banned
I love that old Royal Alexandra sign. I wish Murvish would bring that back; or something similar. The current backlit signage looks awful.
renvel
Active Member
Significant legacy
Yes it is significant for Toronto . There are not many like them were ever bilt in this town , let alone remain till today. By the way the POW Theatre would be a great loss too ...
Yes it is significant for Toronto . There are not many like them were ever bilt in this town , let alone remain till today. By the way the POW Theatre would be a great loss too ...
RC8
Senior Member
Again, it's not about nostalgising anything, but rather realising that those buildings are very valuable and irreplaceable, and can as a matter of fact be brought back to life.
People wanted to demolish Toronto Union Station too, and Old City Hall as well. We didn't, not because those buildings were in particularly good condition, but because they retained enormous potential.
The King St. strip can be made accessible and safe without the need to completely erase all the buildings. It can also be built upon without the need, once again, to raze the whole thing. Those buildings are currently not being used to their full potential, far from it.