Toronto Massey Tower Condos | 206.95m | 60s | MOD Developments | Hariri Pontarini

Trump is hardly the latest anything. That hackneyed design has been kicking around the better part of a decade, and was a stale 1980's rehash from the get-go. Neo it is not.

"Neo" implies a sleek, sexier, 21st century updating of a form: à la Massey Tower's reworked 70's "late-modern", aA's pop-minimalism, or things like the aforementioned Ford Mustang, in the context of industrial design.

The closest thing Toronto has to neo-postmodernism is Robert A.M Stern's 1 St. Thomas, which, however one feels about postmodernism itself, is a singularly well-handled example of the kinds of things we talk about when we say the word "neo".

Trump is just a poorly handled retread of a dead form, along with 1 King West, Up(chuck)Town, ROCP, and the rest of the kitschy clunkers bigfooting the skyline.

None of them add a single idea to the original architectural aesthetic they ape. They are just stunningly bad, unsophisticated, utterly dated hack-jobs.

This inability to 'add to the discussion' of the corpus of architectural ideas is, in the main, what distinguishes the (all too common) bad designs we see in this city, from the relatively less frequent good-to-great ones.
 
thedeepend said:
"Neo" implies a sleek, sexier, 21st century updating of a form:
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I know this is verging on pointless semantics, but "Neo" does not imply "sleek" or "sexy", it simply implies new ideas. Granted, Trump may not totally fit that bill, even though I am a big fan.

I do however agree with you on Stern's 1 St. Thomas. I would love to see that firm back in Toronto more than any other.
 
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Perhaps it is appropriate that this new tower exemplify good neo architecture, as it is to incorporate two good examples of neo architecture at its base.
 
scrapergeek said:
I know this is verging on pointless semantics, but "Neo" does not imply "sleek" or "sexy", it simply implies new ideas. Granted, Trump may not totally fit that bill, even though I am a big fan.

I do however agree with you on Stern's 1 St. Thomas. I would love to see that firm back in Toronto more than any other.
Click to expand...

you are right--technically, the word 'neo' has nothing whatsoever to do with 'sleek' or 'sexy'. it tends to be what it largely boils down to these days, but it does indeed simply mean a new, recent, or--most crucially--a novel or original redeployment of an existing form.
 
Although, on this forum, we generally refer to the neo-Modernism of aA, D+S, KPMB etc., when it comes to what label to apply I've sometimes thought of it as a Modernist Revival - after the brief PoMo interregnum - though more often as Mannerist Modernism in the sense that there's often an exaggeration, looseness and even whimsy in the way that traditional Modernist forms are being quoted from. One such comparison might be between Peter Dickinson's terribly correct and austere 111 Richmond West and aA's more recent buildings, such as Market Wharf.
 
Does anyone know what the north side looks like?
I suspect that its a blank wall for the elevator core, as the balconies do not wrap around that side.
 
We don't know what any side looks like yet.

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This is the best new project since... well since FIVE! :D

I'm simply stunned. MOD has taken design to a whole new level.
 
My fear is that the light colour of the building will just make that stretch of Yonge cold & boring. Looking on Yonge from north to south, the two towers at the Eatons Centre both have white banding. Massey towers simply mirrors more of this from across the street. This building should have more oompf as well as more colour. It has sleek and simple design, but it just needs a touch of design ahhhh! Perhaps laser cut designs on the balconies? Contasting glass?
 
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