Hume article
Architectural jewel goes straight to L
By Christopher Hume
Urban Issues, Architecture
October 16, 2009
It's not pretty watching a city destroy itself, not even when we're told destruction is something to celebrate.
Welcome to Toronto, where next Wednesday will mark the official start of construction of the so-called L Tower. Normally the launch of yet another condo would warrant little more than a groan. In this case, however, the condo will be built beside and on top of the Sony Centre. Formerly known as the O'Keefe Centre, the old concert hall is one of the best remaining examples of 1960s architecture in Toronto.
This exuberant landmark, which stands on the southeast corner of Yonge and Front Sts., may be a few years short of becoming a heritage site, but once the new building appears, that will never happen. The Sony will be so compromised, designation wouldn't make sense.
That would be true even if the condo were a masterpiece, which it isn't. Designed by Daniel Libeskind, he of the Royal Ontario Museum's Crystal, it is called the L Tower because it rose, shank-like, from a horizontal feature resembling the foot of a boot. In the beginning, that foot was to have included various cultural uses. Since then it has disappeared; the L is now an I.
The only masterpiece on this corner is the Sony, which opened in 1960 and stands out as one of those remarkable pieces of postwar architecture that had the power to change Toronto and the way the city saw itself.
With its soaring canopy, limestone cladding and clean, crisp lines, it exudes optimism. Designed by the English expatriate architect Peter Dickinson as a roadhouse – a place where productions came before they went to Broadway – it has an easy sophistication that makes it a unique presence on the Toronto skyline.
But ever since the main tenants, the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada, moved to the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, which ironically is as dull as ditchwater, the Sony has sat largely empty. To make matters worse, it has the misfortune to be owned by the city, which doesn't have a clue. To municipal politicians and bureaucrats, it is nothing more than an expense we can't afford.
So when developers came along with the ill-conceived scheme of constructing a condo literally on top of the property, city council leapt at the opportunity.
Will blunders never cease?
"The city's approach to heritage is to trash it," laments Councillor Adam Vaughan. "Council's more worried about the balance sheet than making it work. It's an abomination."
Already, terrible damage has been inflicted on the building. Several weeks ago, a sewer backed up and the orchestra pit was flooded. The landscaping on the west side along Yonge has been destroyed and the place is a mess.
True, the Sony presents a challenge; the backstage is too small, the hall too big. Even though the interior of the hall will be renovated, this doesn't justify the desecration of one of the city's few remaining modernist icons.
But at a time when the city's reserves are depleted, when its deficit hovers around $350 million and we can't begin to maintain our fast-crumbling infrastructure, it's little wonder there's such enthusiasm for the project. And yet, a city willing to hand itself over to developers willy-nilly is not one that inspires confidence in residents or visitors.
In our panic to raise money, city assets suddenly become possible sources of revenue. One day it's the Sony Centre, the next it could be Toronto Hydro.
Who knows where it will end? But selling the city is no way to save the city.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/711131--architectural-jewel-goes-straight-to-l
.... It would have been just better to implode it and start from scratch with a world class design. Truthfully i dont see nothing regarding this building other than it has survived the past 50 years.
