yyzer
Senior Member
Well, this seems like a gigantic FAIL for Toronto, doesn't it?
Toronto Forma | 308m | 84s | Great Gulf | Gehry Partners
- Thread starter golodhendil
- Start date
fedplanner
Active Member
Patrick Smyth
New Member
Just to be sure - this is 3 towers in one community, right? Boy, some communities sure are more equal than others.
The whole thing all looks so costly and un-planned. Are people just now waking up to the possibility that communities might reach their maximum capacity? I sense they're finally starting to think about that now in the Toronto Planning Department.
I'm still gob-smacked at all the attention this is getting at Council. (Maybe they've figured-out that green roofs are a bunch of crap?) They usually don't give a shit about things like infrastructure or public realm outside of downtown. All part of the big divide, I suppose. Pity.
The whole thing all looks so costly and un-planned. Are people just now waking up to the possibility that communities might reach their maximum capacity? I sense they're finally starting to think about that now in the Toronto Planning Department.
I'm still gob-smacked at all the attention this is getting at Council. (Maybe they've figured-out that green roofs are a bunch of crap?) They usually don't give a shit about things like infrastructure or public realm outside of downtown. All part of the big divide, I suppose. Pity.
dt_toronto_geek
Superstar
It does, save for the BIA who would benefit enormously and the applicant.
I don't think they'll head for the OMB - at least not yet, a project of this size likely won't get the favorable reaction most other projects do given the exceptional circumstances here. They'll move forward to try and work through the issues, and there are many.
yyzer
Senior Member
The problem is, this is not just a real estate development - it's also a work of art. I truly believe that. To mess with the artistic vision proposed here would be both disrespectful and disastrous, imo....
I wish I shared Peter Kofman's optimism...
I wish I shared Peter Kofman's optimism...
gabe
Senior Member
Gehry’s big dream not another condo project
MARCUS GEE
The Globe and Mail http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/t...-project/article16049406/?service=mobile#menu
The City of Toronto’s motto is “diversity our strength.” Maybe it’s time for a change. Maybe “think small” would fit better.
Consider what is happening with the Mirvish-Gehry proposal. David Mirvish, son of “Honest Ed,” is one of Toronto’s most thoughtful business leaders, a theatre impresario and art collector with a hunger to build something unique and beautiful in his hometown. Frank Gehry is one of the world’s most renowned architects, famous for dramatic projects from the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles to the renovation of the Art Gallery of Ontario here in Toronto, where he was born.
Together they are proposing something remarkable: a complex of three residential towers, each more than 80 storeys high, on the site of the Mirvish lands on King Street West. These are not the usual glass cereal boxes you see around downtown. Mr. Gehry envisions buildings fronted by metallic grids and then wrapped as if in tissue paper. Nor is this just another condo project. It would incorporate a private galley for the Mirvish collection and new space for the art students of OCAD University.
Inspired ideas like this don’t come along every day. A forward-looking city would grab it with both hands and make it happen. Instead, the city is threatening to turn extraordinary into mediocrity.
The city’s planning department says that the project is too big for the site. Jennifer Keesmaat, the city’s chief planner, worries that the building would block out the sky and cast massive shadows on the surrounding district. Heritage experts note that it would mean tearing down century-old warehouses.
City planners want to whittle down the project to something more, well, Toronto-ish. In a new report, they propose three towers of 60, 55 and 50 storeys instead of the 86, 84 and 82 in the current design. They would force Mr. Gehry and Mr. Mirvish to retain three of the unremarkable warehouse buildings and incorporate them into the design, in effect plopping the towers on top.
Attempting that in a project of this size and ambition would be an awful mistake. An architectural consultant for the developer found that “the warehouses could not be successfully integrated within the development without greatly compromising the functional and aesthetic design.”
Planners have a host of other complaints about the project. It doesn’t have enough parking (though, in such a central location, many residents would walk or take transit.) The area doesn’t have enough parks for all the new residents (though David Pecaut Square is right across the street). It would overwhelm local transit service (though the King streetcar goes right by and St. Andrew subway station is steps away).
The planners don’t stop there. They also say the plan violates city guidelines that ensure new projects are “compatible with the built-form context and heritage character of the adjacent buildings” and “that massing provides appropriate proportional relationships.”
Good grief. Faced with this kind of pettifogging, it is a wonder that Mr. Gehry wants to build in Toronto at all. He is 84 and impatient to make progress.
Now city council has voted to add another layer of complexity by setting up a 14-member community panel to forge a compromise between Mr. Mirvish and city hall. Architecture by public committee. Grand. Howard Roark would be spinning in his grave, if he weren’t an invention of Ayn Rand.
Saving old buildings is all very well, if they are worth saving. But a city of ambition has to think of the heritage it is building for the future, too. It would be a shame to drown Mr. Gehry’s big dream in a babble of planner-speak.
MARCUS GEE
The Globe and Mail http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/t...-project/article16049406/?service=mobile#menu
The City of Toronto’s motto is “diversity our strength.” Maybe it’s time for a change. Maybe “think small” would fit better.
Consider what is happening with the Mirvish-Gehry proposal. David Mirvish, son of “Honest Ed,” is one of Toronto’s most thoughtful business leaders, a theatre impresario and art collector with a hunger to build something unique and beautiful in his hometown. Frank Gehry is one of the world’s most renowned architects, famous for dramatic projects from the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles to the renovation of the Art Gallery of Ontario here in Toronto, where he was born.
Together they are proposing something remarkable: a complex of three residential towers, each more than 80 storeys high, on the site of the Mirvish lands on King Street West. These are not the usual glass cereal boxes you see around downtown. Mr. Gehry envisions buildings fronted by metallic grids and then wrapped as if in tissue paper. Nor is this just another condo project. It would incorporate a private galley for the Mirvish collection and new space for the art students of OCAD University.
Inspired ideas like this don’t come along every day. A forward-looking city would grab it with both hands and make it happen. Instead, the city is threatening to turn extraordinary into mediocrity.
The city’s planning department says that the project is too big for the site. Jennifer Keesmaat, the city’s chief planner, worries that the building would block out the sky and cast massive shadows on the surrounding district. Heritage experts note that it would mean tearing down century-old warehouses.
City planners want to whittle down the project to something more, well, Toronto-ish. In a new report, they propose three towers of 60, 55 and 50 storeys instead of the 86, 84 and 82 in the current design. They would force Mr. Gehry and Mr. Mirvish to retain three of the unremarkable warehouse buildings and incorporate them into the design, in effect plopping the towers on top.
Attempting that in a project of this size and ambition would be an awful mistake. An architectural consultant for the developer found that “the warehouses could not be successfully integrated within the development without greatly compromising the functional and aesthetic design.”
Planners have a host of other complaints about the project. It doesn’t have enough parking (though, in such a central location, many residents would walk or take transit.) The area doesn’t have enough parks for all the new residents (though David Pecaut Square is right across the street). It would overwhelm local transit service (though the King streetcar goes right by and St. Andrew subway station is steps away).
The planners don’t stop there. They also say the plan violates city guidelines that ensure new projects are “compatible with the built-form context and heritage character of the adjacent buildings” and “that massing provides appropriate proportional relationships.”
Good grief. Faced with this kind of pettifogging, it is a wonder that Mr. Gehry wants to build in Toronto at all. He is 84 and impatient to make progress.
Now city council has voted to add another layer of complexity by setting up a 14-member community panel to forge a compromise between Mr. Mirvish and city hall. Architecture by public committee. Grand. Howard Roark would be spinning in his grave, if he weren’t an invention of Ayn Rand.
Saving old buildings is all very well, if they are worth saving. But a city of ambition has to think of the heritage it is building for the future, too. It would be a shame to drown Mr. Gehry’s big dream in a babble of planner-speak.
adma
Superstar
36-3: who were the 3, I wonder...
yyzer
Senior Member
per Marcanadian at SSC, it was Mike Del Grande, Doug Ford, & Rob Ford...almost makes me want to vote for them..
adma
Superstar
Of course, the highlighted phrase could just as well be an argument *for* the community-panel process (and against adolescent/arrested-adolescent skyscraper/starchitecture dweebs). IOW, spin away, Mr. Roark...
fedplanner
Active Member
fedplanner
Active Member
yyzer, they voted against Adam Vaughan's motion. Their no vote was not an approval of M+G. Relax, I have a feeling this one is going to turn out just fine.
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adma
Superstar
Or, it could just as well highlight the wisdom of, if not the "antis", at least the omnibus "proceed with caution" crowd. (And it sort of affirms my earlier suspicion that some of the apparent potential mass embrace of Gehry's Uncompromised Artist's Vision has an acceptable-face-i-fied touch of ferris-wheel-and-monorail bubbleheaded naivety about it.)
Though the banality of it being *those* three disappoints; I'd have hoped it were a more oddball trio, along the lines of Gord Perks voting against the request for Rob Ford to step aside. Then again, in this particular case, it might be a very telling kind of banality...
Patrick Smyth
New Member
It's very telling that Vaughan is pandering to a small bunch of NIMBYs. (And he can't understand why people believe there is a divide in this city!)
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
Only 3 starchitecture fans on council?! And 2 of them are Fords?
The thing I dislike about Gee's take (and Hume's a while back) is how they just dismiss the planning concerns outright. Why do people need a park when the awesomeness of David Pecaut Square is RIGHT THERE?! And infrastructure? Why there are perfectly empty streetcars running right by the front door, day and night!
Is it "a work of art"? I dunno, maybe. I can see that at least in that it's very much in the eye of the beholder. But we're not in an art gallery, we're in a city. Several thousand (rich) people are going to be living in this piece of art and you have to take that into account. Far be it from me to suggest what the solution is but I find it hard to agree with the attitude that city council should approve a very very ambitious plan developed by private, profit-seeking individuals instead of acting as if they're turning down a bunch of Picassos someone bequeathed to them, no conditions attached. There's more to this than that and it's not the planning staff's job to make sure Toronto is pretty. Their job is to make sure it works and with something this big, that takes time and scrutiny.
flonicky
Senior Member
And precedents? It would be one thing if the city was in control of all of this but with the OMB ever-present, only a fool would say yes to three 80+ storey towers and open the door to block-busting for a trio of 90 storey Auras.
I love the potential of this project but steamrolling ahead without some consideration would show that we haven't learned a thing from the past. The arguments on this thread in favour of knocking down the strip sound just like those in support of knocking down Old City Hall, Union Station, etc. Those warehouses may not be on the same level, but they are part of a district that's relatively complete, they mark an historic boundary of the old rail yard and there's no reason why they can't be worked into this project.
I love the potential of this project but steamrolling ahead without some consideration would show that we haven't learned a thing from the past. The arguments on this thread in favour of knocking down the strip sound just like those in support of knocking down Old City Hall, Union Station, etc. Those warehouses may not be on the same level, but they are part of a district that's relatively complete, they mark an historic boundary of the old rail yard and there's no reason why they can't be worked into this project.