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

buildup said:
Some people object that he might make big money, others object on the basis he might lose money. I don't see any reason he'd demolish unless he had reached the 70% sold mark or something like that. I see these proposed buildings adding to the public good - practically the ONLY project that comes with a world-class art collection! Is your last point (above) an argument against the very existence of the Central Business District - the Financial Core? This thread gets more outlandish by the day.
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Just to clarify, my problem with this project is Mirvish's "my way or the highway" attitude to civic engagement: "I'm giving you Gehry and a bunch of AB/EX, now let me demolish these heritage buildings and build one of the biggest development projects this city's seen since the 1970s. Don't try to tell me how this project could be improved. I don't make compromises."

This is the kind of attitude that prevailed in the Mad Men era of the 1960s when development was dominated by a small group of corporate elites who were given free reign to do whatever they wanted. I'm not against the CBD per say, but we certainly would have planned it differently these days than they did in the 1960s.

I'm sure starchitecture fanboys will say, "but great architecture can't make compromises! How dare the public try to tell the great Frank Gehry how to improve his building! No committee ever designed good architecture!" And they would be very, very far from the truth. The fact is that two of Toronto's greatest buildings in the last decade were designed through close community consultation: Gehry's AGO and Alsop's OCAD. Both projects had to be extremely sensitive to the surrounding neighbourhood, to greenspace, to heritage, to public space and public uses. And it is arguably BECAUSE of those compromises that we ended up with two very original buildings rather than a clone like the ROM Crystal, aka the Denver Crystal, aka the Las Vegas Crystal.

And even if the democratic process didn't produce good architecture, I'd still choose democracy and community consultation over it any day. For those who think architecture is more important than democracy, perhaps they should go live under one of those pampered sultans in the UAE.
 
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adma said:
Like, if any of you think warehouses aren't worth seriously regarding as heritage, imagine how absurd and out-there the case for the High Line once might have seemed
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I doubt most of the public support for keeping the High Line was for its heritage vs. its overwhelming contribution to public space. M-G will have much more public space than these warehouses, so your comparison is shortsighted and shallow.

adma said:
Not that the "warehouses aren't heritage" crowd would know what said precedent is.
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It has become obvious hat your argument has little to do with the subject matter and more to do with the people in the opposing camp, so it is no surprise that insults, such as this one, have become the backbone of your "argument."
 
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It shows that historical preservation and conservation was a fundamental aspect of the High Line project. Playing that down and suggesting it wasn't a significant part of the narrative simply isn't true.
 
You could build public space anywhere. To do something so seemingly unintuitive as building it on a decaying and abandoned elevated railway suggests that there's something about that structure that's significant.

Silence&Motion said:
Just to clarify, my problem with this project is Mirvish's "my way or the highway" attitude to civic engagement: "I'm giving you Gehry and a bunch of AB/EX, now let me demolish these heritage buildings and build one of the biggest development projects this city's seen since the 1970s. Don't try to tell me how this project could be improved. I don't make compromises."

This is the kind of attitude that prevailed in the Mad Men era of the 1960s when development was dominated by a small group of corporate elites who were given free reign to do whatever they wanted. I'm not against the CBD per say, but we certainly would have planned it differently these days than they did in the 1960s.
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It's not that the attitude is necessarily bad; actually, such people tend to get things done. However, some people with that attitude might have flawed proposals, which simply have to be stopped. Such people can either modify their proposal and build something great without issues or go off and do something else. If this project is stopped for failing heritage preservation, you can bet that all the heritage advocates aren't going to say "sure, save just the facades and tack them onto your banal glass box" to the next developer. Heritage preservation laws can't be hollowed out.
 
junctionist said:
It's not that the attitude is necessarily bad; actually, such people tend to get things done. However, some people with that attitude might have flawed proposals, which simply have to be stopped. Such people can either modify their proposal and build something great without issues or go off and do something else. If this project is stopped for failing heritage preservation, you can bet that all the heritage advocates aren't going to say "sure, save just the facades and tack them onto your banal glass box" to the next developer. Heritage preservation laws can't be hollowed out.
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Yeah 'cause that didn't happen with the Concourse Building. The economics of this property will dictate what happens to these warehouses not heritage preservation laws. This land is likely worth over $100 million dollars. I can guarantee you that any developer will argue that full preservation would be prohibitive from a cost perspective. Unless the city is willing to buy this property, the most the "pro heritage" camp can hope for is a facadectomy. There in lies the fundamental flaw of these laws, economic reality. There is no way the city can stop a developer from creating banal boxes, as long as they conform with the current height and density precedents in the area. Likewise as the precedent has been set re facadecomy's the city cannot control this either. Reality check people, reality check.
 
junctionist said:
The law is the law. If it's strongly in favour of building preservation, it doesn't matter how much the land is theoretically valued for condo development.
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Fair enough, but that is not how the heritage laws have worked thus far in Toronto. It also leaves the city open to multi-million dollar lawsuits if the city dictates full preservation as it will affect the value of the land. There is a limit to what the city can do with privately held property. Just offering a realistic argument here, as Mirvish owns these warehouses, not the city or the heritage preservationists. Because of this, compromise is a very likely outcome here (by both the developer and the city), which has historically happened with many other developed heritage sites.
 
And to go back to the "vested interest" thing, I think I'm also reading something of an ingrained professional-class disdain for the heritage-psychogeo axis perspective as being dilettantism--an approach that's less into urban building, than urban scavenging. Almost like, to take a Ford-ian spin on things, the reason why they're so into every existing nook and cranny of the city is because they're spare-time loafers who aren't working hard or earning their keep...
 
junctionist said:
It's not that the attitude is necessarily bad; actually, such people tend to get things done. However, some people with that attitude might have flawed proposals, which simply have to be stopped. Such people can either modify their proposal and build something great without issues or go off and do something else. If this project is stopped for failing heritage preservation, you can bet that all the heritage advocates aren't going to say "sure, save just the facades and tack them onto your banal glass box" to the next developer. Heritage preservation laws can't be hollowed out.
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According to Toronto's planning department, to heritage advocates, and local community members there are flaws in this proposal. Part of mixed use, inclusive planning is to take multiple points of view into consideration and try to come up with a proposal that not only balances these viewpoints, but synthesizes them into something even better. If Gehry is such a great architect, he should be able to design buildings to fit into their existing context. Part of that context is dealing with the things that people currently value (like heritage architecture, the need to balance new residence with the amenities available in the neighbourhood, etc). He did this very well with the AGO. Why can't he do it in this proposal? Why must he reduce an entire block to nothing in order to build something great?

The Walker Court in the AGO is a perfect example of how you can use new, creative interventions to actually enhance heritage architecture. Gehry heavily modified that space from its original state, but in doing so actually returned it to its former glory as the centre of the gallery. And that new development at the NE corner of University and Dundas is going to modify a heritage facade in order to create a colonnade.
 
http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2013/cc/comm/communicationfile-42460.pdf

Great debates take place on this forum, and some excellent points regarding the merits of M+G have been brought up on both sides. I strongly encourage everyone that cares about the outcome of the M+G proposal to share their opinions with city council.

On that note, the letters are flowing in. See attached
 
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