Barrie Lākhouse | 33.24m | 10s | AALTO | ISM Architects

Workers on site today:

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Cladding details:

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I still hate it.

Exceedingly poor fit for the site.

Aside from being too close to the water's edge, and having a terrible relationship thereto, it doesn't have the right 'vibe' for what they're trying to pitch. Tear it back down, bill the developer, the architect and any member of Barrie Council that voted for it.
Immediately downzone the whole site to parkland and make the current building legal-non-conforming pending demolition.
 
Northern Light said:
While @Undead has me ranting, I'm going to add, what a terrible streetscape plan, mostly embayed parking, with relatively little sidewalk, and next to no trees.

The antithesis of walkable. Ugh.
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All I care about is that it boosts the value of the Undead family crypt property holdings in the area.

Yeah, the ground level treatment is poor along both the street and water. And I don't like the cladding colour and materials choices: should have just been one of each all the way around and up.
 
Undead said:
All I care about is that it boosts the value of the Undead family crypt property holdings in the area.
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From a height precedent point of view, it may; though depending on where your holdings are sited, it may decrease their value by:

- Removing previously available lake view.

- Blocking lake view to a height that can't be overcome by nearby properties (can you build tall enough to see over the new building)

- By setting a precedent for other buildings that will similarly obstruct lake view in the area.

- By offering a standard of architecture that I don't think will have wide appeal

- By offering a streetscape that is neither attractive nor pleasant and unlikely to sustain high quality retail.

- By creating only a very narrow strip of parkland, that feels isolated, even from the building itself, such that people may feel unsafe along the trail (particularly women) and offers no programmatic amenities.

On balance, this is not what you want here, to me.

Intensify by all means, but differently.
 
It's a really bad building for the location in that it feels overbearing, has no relationship with the waterfront public space that neighbours it, and has no contextualism to the design. It shows that municipalities should be more aggressive in acquiring these waterfront sites for public uses. I can't think any medium to large city in Ontario that got it right in terms of preserving public space at the water's edge, except perhaps for Windsor.
 
junctionist said:
It's a really bad building for the location in that it feels overbearing, has no relationship with the waterfront public space that neighbours it, and has no contextualism to the design. It shows that municipalities should be more aggressive in acquiring these waterfront sites for public uses. I can't think any medium to large city in Ontario that got it right in terms of preserving public space at the water's edge, except perhaps for Windsor.
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I know it's easy to forget that Ottawa is part of Ontario, but Ottawa has got this right for both the Ottawa and Rideau rivers + canal. There certainly are ways that ought to be explored to improve that public land, but pretty nearly all of the 100s of kms of waterfront in Ottawa are public.

Of course, much of this is NCC owned rather than municipal, but still...
 
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