Toronto Motion On Bay Street | ?m | 29s | Concert | IBI Group

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^^^ 2 of the more uniquely cladding buildings in the city within just a couple blocks of each other, just adds to Bay st. variety.
 
Looking at this, I can sort of figure out some of my issues with spandrel panels. I feel like my problem with many spandrel panels is not that it looks cheap - who said cheapness has to be aesthetically unappealing? - but that it gives designers both too much and too little freedom. They can use whatever colour they want, but they are always stuck with these rectilinear forms that - now that everything has to be mostly glass - cover huge blocks of a building's skin. This usually makes designers go bonkers like above (which may work out - I'm holding my breath), or they just wallpaper everything one colour, like on many a Tridel building. Add to that their lack of texture, and it seems like most designers are designing with crayons when they hit the spandrel panels. There are some quite lovely buildings in the city with spandrel panels (mostly older), but few use them nowadays with any subtlety.
 
I don't think it has anything to do with rectilinearity: bricks are rectilinear, and I don't see anyone complaining about yet another building stuck with rectilinear bricks… or rectilinearity in any other material for that matter. The vast majority of what is being built is still dominated by the 90° angle. Curves and freeform are still the exception.

Colour, texture, and perceived cheapness are more believable causes for the debate on spandrels.

Colour: I do not agree that most designers are going bonkers with spandrels. My experience is that most spandrels being installed are one shade or another of grey or beige, and that colour is still being used timidly for the most part on most projects. There are buildings where spandrels are being painted with more playful patterns now, like here at Motion, and on the east facade of Queen-Portland, and more vividly now, like at the new YWCA, and at the Paintbox, but these are still the exceptions. Whether you like the patterning or the vividness is subjective. Which colour applications appeal visually to you? How colourful do you want buildings to be? These are questions of aesthetic taste and of the value of the dignity or the playfulness or the contextual appropriateness of any design, and they can be argued ad nauseum without all parties arriving at agreement, ever.

Texture: It would be difficult to find anyone, even the most ardent supporter of minimalist modernism, who would argue that a city would benefit from a monotonous application of flat, reflective panels, whether of clear, see-through vision glass, or of translucent glass, or of reflective glass, or of opaque spandrel, on building after building. We want, on the whole, variety. We want the delight of contrast. Whether the contrast needs to occur within or between buildings however is the debate here. Certainly bricks and windows set each other off nicely… but Mies van der Rohe and others taught us that simplicity and the harmony of the whole can be an equal pleasure. When architects (or developers) do not want to offer all-window exteriors, spandrels can be used to reduce the complexity of an exterior if minimalism is what the designer desires. Contrast and variety can still be achieved in a city with minimalist buildings as long as they are not the only buildings going up.

Expense: Spandrels are usually cheaper than most other opaque cladding alternatives, granted, but in fact there is a range of build qualities and prices. An example of a more expensive spandrel system is what's going up at the SickKids Research tower now: the double layer system there has the base colour applied to the inner layer, while the outer layer has a translucent frit baked on it, allowing patterned views directly through to the inner layer. That gives depth, looks great, and no-one is complaining. It's tougher to tell from a quick look how high the build quality is in most cases though, but the complaints come when spandrels look cheap, and then all spandrels get tarred and feathered by the same brush. We should and do hold builders accountable when the cheapest materials are employed, and not doubt we will continue to push for higher quality work and materials when we see problems. Higher quality can be achieved with better spandrels.

Spandrels are not going away any time soon. The City wants condo towers to be more energy efficient. They do not want so many all-window buildings. LEED certification if more easily achieved with a 60-40 opacity-transparency split, so more exterior walls are coming. Some developers will continue to demand spandrels, and some architects will continue to volunteer them. UrbanToronto members will stay vigilant; I just think it's more worthwhile to demand good spandrel than to fight spandrel all-together.

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EDIT: not all of that is aimed at your post directly Parkdalian, that's just my take on the whole spandrel debate.
 
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This is looking so promising, another terrific surprise happening here on Bay Street. I like the brick and that some inspiration has been pulled from the great One City Hall next door.
 
This is spandrel done right. Motion is going to add a lot of energy to this site, which will mean that this rather immoveable building doesn't have such a bad moniker in the end… as opposed to the laughably named Vivid in Etobicoke, which is as pallid they come.
 
I really like the pastel-coloured spandrels framed within the black brick, but I'm not loving the spandrel on the corner. Anyway, along with the Four Seasons, Lumiere, Sick Kids and Burano, Bay Street north of Dundas is really starting to gather some architectural gems.
 
I wonder how long it'll be before we see a proposal for a building wedged in between Motion and One City Hall. This could end up being quite a dense block
 
Interchange - thanks for taking time to put down your thoughts on spandrel. Its very helpful context.
 
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