My comment was not meant to be elitist, since I have never worked on a project that is particularly earth-shattering from an architectural point of view - generally in Toronto we are limited to very conventional, standard ways of doing things, largely due to the budgets for condo projects being relatively limited, and residential developers being risk-averse (read: looking to maximize profit at any cost).
I am frustrated at how many people on UT gawk at buildings that are incredibly standard, falling for rendering techniques and developer marketing-speak over and over again. I wish people could see how hollow and copy-paste that marketing text is and how it has little bearing on reality. The projects, despite cosmetic tweaks, are incredibly standard. For a project like M City to call itself groundbreaking or inventive architecture, it causes those who work in the field of architecture to roll our eyes because we know just how standard in almost every way a project like M City is. Stop listening to marketing talk. If you are really interested in housing design, multi-unit housing and its typologies, read books about the many (many!) variations housing can take; look at architecture blogs. No, not blogs from the real estate industry, but blogs that come from the design side. (Archdaily is a great starting point, although it's a bit archi-porny itself sometimes, with heavy emphasis on renderings or photographs over drawings a lot of the time - but it's very accessible and interesting content). Demand better from developers and talk to others about the various urban housing typologies that are possible - people think that density only comes in several forms. In reality, there are a range of highrise housing types. Residential units are architecturally flexible - they can be treated as modules, stacked and shifted. Corridors can be placed every several floors so that units are two-storey and one of the levels in each unit faces out of the building on both sides. You can create more privacy, you can have a breeze moving through units to provide natural ventilation, and sunlight can enter the unit from more than one face. Buildings can be arranged as courtyard blocks, bar blocks, raised courtyards, at-grade courtyards. Building floorplates can be made shallow so that sunlight accesses the building and its units more effectively. I am listing some standard architectural techniques from housing that were popularized in early modernism - but there are plenty more.
To respond to the post above by 67Cup - unfortunately I can't think of a single project in Toronto using thermally broken balconies because developers don't include such things in their pro forma. It's not considered cost effective. Single aspect units and double loaded corridors are used almost universally for their incredible efficiency from a developer point of view (amount of area per floor area that can be sold), for better or worse, and because people will buy them. However, it could be argued that different site dimensions and urban contexts, and different types of buyers/homeowners/renters demand different home typologies. I'm sure there are occasionally projects in Toronto that are midrises with cross-ventilated/dual aspect units, but it's incredibly rare.
District Lofts and Twenty Niagara are two early projects that are probably the most innovative recent housing projects (in terms of typology) that we have in Toronto that are in the midrise/highrise category. That they are from years and years ago will tell you something about the lack of typological innovation we've had in Toronto's condo boom, as far as housing goes.
There are some great books on multi-housing typologies that will explain it far better than I can in a message board post. But it's important for people to know that they are being given almost no choice in their housing in Toronto, even at high price ranges. We can talk all day till we're blue in the face about window wall vs. other cladding techniques, but real choice in housing would come from the application of different typologies of units and real innovation instead of marketing-talk that is really just a new way to describe the same old condo we've been getting in Toronto since ~2000. This is not a critique on architects but primarily developers and the general public's attitude toward urban housing. Although I do think architecture schools fail to teach enough to students about the range of housing typologies that are available.
The photos posted by Jasonzed are not architecturally innovative with regards to housing typology or sustainability, they look more like examples of being attention-grabbing and trying to visually shock and awe. That's not what I'm speaking of. The best way to learn about innovations on typology would be housing from 1920s modernists, earlier work from MVRDV, and other progressive firms interested in housing. Some Toronto firms deserve credit for doing a lot with a little in terms of condos - putting basic components together in creative ways; Picasso condos is a commendable example of this, as well as most work by aA, HPA, etc. The real critique is aimed at the developers who have no interest in providing a variety of choices to people, and the general public who have allowed housing to be commodified to the point of no return.
That's my stream of consciousness for the day.
