Developer: Plaza
Architect: BDP Quadrangle
  
Address: 525 Adelaide St W, Toronto
Category: Residential (Condo, Market-Rate Rental)
Status: CompleteCompletion: 2016
Height: 177 ft / 53.95 mStoreys: 17 storeys
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Real Estate Forum 80 posts
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Toronto Musée Condos | 53.95m | 17s | Plaza | BDP Quadrangle

That looks really disgusting.. Especially in that last picture it looks like they built an ashtray for a condo.. Who in their right minds would build a matte black condo?
 
Don't have a problem with black precast. Montreal is full of it. It does need coloured accents. The orange spandrel glass so far is a start. It's the blotchness that makes it look bad. This is still a tower very much under construction. Plaza is known to paint buildings too. Fingers crossed.
 
We are a massive city. ;)
Eh, I dunno. A lot of it depends on how well you know the city, I spsoe. As, if I came here and didn't know my way around it'd feel big. But at the same time, when I come back to Toronto after visiting larger cities, our city still feels like a bit of a shoebox. I think it's something about Toronto in particular. The metrics are clear that this is a 'big city'; but there's something about perhaps its development, zoning, or something like that that doesn't make it feel as dense as other places.
 
Not to state the obvious—actually yes, here goes—but when returning to Toronto from visiting a larger city, Toronto will feel not as large as the larger city.

That said (FX: opening chords of Beethoven's fifth) the more familiar you are with a place, the smaller it feels. It's the unknown that feels larger and unfathomable.

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Very true. My first time in NYC I thought that it was massive and overwhelming, but many visits later and being in many different neighbourhoods, it feels much more intimate and not nearly as large as I once thought. It's all relative. Toronto doesn't feel as large to us locals because we know every corner, but to a newcomer it can seem huge.
 
Not to state the obvious—actually yes, here goes—but when returning to Toronto from visiting a larger city, Toronto will feel not as large as the larger city.

That said (FX: opening chords of Beethoven's fifth) the more familiar you are with a place, the smaller it feels. It's the unknown that feels larger and unfathomable.

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Alright, alright, allow me to nuance, as my initial post can't really be reduced to a triviality. I was trying to suggest that there's something about Toronto, regardless of its relative size, that makes it feel smaller than the metrics say it actually is. I'm not sure if it's the layout of the downtown core with its considerable number of houses, or if it's the near-strict grid pattern that allows for few termini, but I think our city feels smaller than its actual size. Walk around downtown Boston for example. A demonstrably smaller city, but downtown there can feel like you're in a much bigger place than you actually are--bigger than Toronto, in fact.
 
I think I know what you mean, particularly in comparison with American cities. Maybe its because of their City Beautiful (at least when it comes to the older, industrial cities) past that allowed them to gain a sense of grandeur or monumentality that we seem to lack. Than again it may just be perception; met a guy from Slovenia the other day that thought the city was huge.
 
I think Toronto feels smaller than older cities of comparable size because the truly dense urban area is actually less than a million people (see: former city of Toronto), whereas older cities like Chicago grew much more before suburban growth started. Population of Chicago in 1940: 3,396,808. Population of Toronto in 1941: 951,549. The description of Toronto as "Vienna surrounded by Phoenix" is apt.

Also, Toronto was a bit of a backwater until the 70s, and the architecture and built form reflect that. Toronto the Good was modest and pragmatic, and the early buildings reflect that.
 

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