Well enough said, ProjectEnd--and given how *I* already made a let's-please-take-this-outside gesture, the most recent posts by urbanvillageboy and Northern Magus were probably the least necessary of all. (And funny how Northern Magus didn't address my ironic invocation of "lone culture war" re Johnson/Mies/Lambert. Does he even know who they are?)
But let's put things into a bigger perspective. Re the Park Plaza addition makeover, it's like what Buildup said: it made sense at the time, and one could be more excused for accepting it *then*, a decade plus ago, and it's now a fait accompli so the argument's moot anyway. However, there's a world of difference between that, and the question of "if you had to do it all over again". Because I'd suppose that had Dickinson's addition survived another ten years, there'd be an absolutely valid argument, today--from high places, even--that its restoration would be, in fact, a classier gesture than an extreme makeover. Remember: it's the post-Wallpaper*, "Mad Men" era, 50s Modernist high style is cool--so, where it cherishably exists, why trash it?
Is Northern Magus even aware of that? Within a 2009 context, to hail the way it was done in 1997 as "classy" is pure parvenu.
And when it comes to the Intercontinental--okay, it's conservative, contextual, "good-mannered" red brick. As I've suggested, in a certain way it's actually a relief from, er, "glitz"; but the way it's being presented here by some, it might as well be as much a blight on the block as anything between One Bedford and the Park Plaza/Hyatt, commercial flotsam and cheap Brutalist skyscrapers alike. It isn't; actually, it would have been conceived quite deliberately as an antidote to all of that. Not that so it's architecturally stellar that I'd absolutely oppose a makeover; but if a makeover is necessary (and perhaps in part for structural reasons, if the brick has that 80s/90s Toronto Pomo way of deteriorating beyond redemption), let it be in the manner of, say, the Hazelton Hotel or even 1 Bedford next door. That way, it'd be an extension rather than a denial of the original's fundamental virtues, such as they were. Otherwise, you could do the opposite and play it bold with something Jean Nouvel-ish (though let the controversy over the Crystal stand as forewarning re too much self-conscious "playing it bold"). But if you're coming from a 2009 "Park Plaza makeover is classy" perspective: honestly, that's the last kind of perspective to be entrusted with such decision-making.
Look: some of you may be pained from being treated like dirt as newbies. But keep in mind the context you're dealing with: when all is said and done, I'm no more "lone culture war" than Urban Shocker or any number of others around here or even in high architectural/design-faculty/urbanist/heritage-organization places. It's a tough universe for unvarnished teenage fanboy savants and well-meaning parvenu amateurs from the 905; face it. (Oops, I did it again with the "nasty behaviour"...)
