Toronto Minto Westside | 68.88m | 20s | Minto Group | Wallman Architects

Pic taken Dec 5, 2018


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ADRM said:
Good aerial shot by Jenn Chan on Flickr.

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I secretly like this monster. The streetwall on Bathurst is intense in an exciting way (seeing it through the trees when coming from the west on Niagara!) and I appreciate how it solidly anchors this otherwise desolate corner — like a prow of a ship almost — and how it defines the edge of what is becoming a very dense district.
 
Something feels off about this building but I can't put my finger on it. If you squint really hard, you can somewhat see the resemblance to the renderings but the devil is in the details. If you have a closer look, the final result (despite not being finished) looks nothing like the renderings so far.

Aside for the fact that the intricate white maze-like arrangement is not even close to the rendering, I think the main disparity comes from the fact that in the rendering, the windows were filled in around the white frames. Some floors don't even look lined up. In actuality, Minto kind of just slapped the white frames wherever they could around standard floor plans. It's kind of hard to explain so hopefully someone else can chime in.

After looking through all the projects around the city, I can confidently say that Minto is one of the worst liars in the industry, to me at least. Look at Minto Yorkville as well; they bait and switch buyers with upscale and eccentric renderings and then fall flat with the actual result.

Concord gets a lot of flak on this forum but at least their junk is relatively consistent between renderings and real life.

Minto Westside.jpg
 
Stefan said:
Something feels off about this building but I can't put my finger on it. If you squint really hard, you can somewhat see the resemblance to the renderings but the devil is in the details. If you have a closer look, the final result (despite not being finished) looks nothing like the renderings so far.

Aside for the fact that the intricate white maze-like arrangement is not even close to the rendering, I think the main disparity comes from the fact that in the rendering, the windows were filled in around the white frames. Some floors don't even look lined up. In actuality, Minto kind of just slapped the white frames wherever they could around standard floor plans. It's kind of hard to explain so hopefully someone else can chime in.

After looking through all the projects around the city, I can confidently say that Minto is one of the worst liars in the industry, to me at least. Look at Minto Yorkville as well; they bait and switch buyers with upscale and eccentric renderings and then fall flat with the actual result.

Concord gets a lot of flak on this forum but at least their junk is relatively consistent between renderings and real life.

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I completely agree. The white paneling is horrid, and the light grey spandrel is terrible, way too visible at a glance which really ruins the design.

The massing is very unique, though, and the density is positive. As well, I think the black glass areas actually look quite nice on this project. No doubt though that Minto is one of the worst for over-selling and under-delivering.
 
I still think they should have kept the old factory building on the corner of Niagara and Bathurst. It had some interesting brickwork and could have been decently attractive if cleaned up.

On top of that, it would have provided some additional materiality and prevented the development from looking like a superblock, which is what unfortunately is happening right now.
 
Looking at the rendering, there’s a fair bit of uneven balconies sticking outwards with white finishes. I think Mintos compromises that aspects to simply go for faster and cheaper constructions. I was expecting closer to Tridel Sq condos
https://goo.gl/images/k4aF2D
 
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