Sometimes you have a love/hate dilemma with a building, this one gives me a smile/frown. Libeskind often does that to me.
He can also make you feel a more serious emotion. I feel the pain and anguish intended in his design for Jüdisches Museum in Berlin with few windows, most facing the sky; the curiosity that leads to knowledge expressed in the pop-up structures that face opposing directions, but peak in all directions in his London Metropolitan University – Orion Building; his modern fortress with his fewest windows to date for the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, UK.
We already know about the ROM addition, the Denver and New York City designs.
The feeling here in the L-Tower is “party style”. Couldn’t be mistaken for an office tower in any city, and there is nothing subtle about it - with that disco-like boot shape, clearly a ‘70s homage. Toronto, no doubt, needs a bit of this type of breakout, forward-leaning, urban architecture. But I thought the investment would be in the form of low-risers, not a skyscraper. Why? Because a skyscraper will possibly be with us for a longer time to come, and there is something about this building that projects “fleeting” to me, almost throwaway.
That is where my frown enters. It is too literal for me over the long haul. Perhaps I’ll get over this; if I do it will take time. In the moment, I shall marvel at how there is a modern building being built in Toronto, that is so clearly un-Toronto-like according to some, yet garnering such enthusiasm out of the gate. Portends a change that I hope will lead to bigger-and-better things.
