Toronto One Bloor East | 257.24m | 76s | Great Gulf | Hariri Pontarini

Rough height estimates:

*floor heights are way off in this first one but picture the roof extending a little bit past the top of the photo:

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I like the materials used, but the emphasis on balconies makes me really dislike 1 BE. I think Five is a much nicer building overall (even though I hate how the podium makes it so far back from Yonge), and that includes cladding.
 
lol who gives a shit? Honestly Shanghai and Dubai can have these giant, anti-urban monstrosities for all I care. We have enough issues as is maintaining and developing Toronto with a preponderance of 150-275m proposals. I mean, can anyone honestly tell me 300-450m+ proposals would do anything other than horrify locals, overtax local infrastructure and look insanely out of place? I personally think Toronto is in no position to be building towers of the scale Asian cities are (nor would those Asian cities if they didn't employ slave labour and had oil wealth/Chinese manufacturing wealth) and considering what enables those Asian cities to build these supertalls, I'm quite happy Toronto can't. No thank you to slave labour, petty dictators and international dickwaving in my city.
 
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Towers at or near 600m are still very rare.
 
And let's not forget we have the CN Tower.... I'd rather see a bunch of 70-90 story towers than one of those oversized monsters built on our skyline!
 
syn said:
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Towers at or near 600m are still very rare.
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Most of these supertalls are in China, which has nearly 1.4 billion people. Comparing skyscrapers in their largest cities to a country with only 34 million people is obviously going to result in a very skewed picture. For a city our size, we're actually doing really well in the height department.
 
I'd choose quality and design over height, any day, though these things are in fairly short supply too. It would be nice have one behemoth though just for bragging rights!
 
Marcanadian said:
Most of these supertalls are in China, which has nearly 1.4 billion people. Comparing skyscrapers in their largest cities to a country with only 34 million people is obviously going to result in a very skewed picture. For a city our size, we're actually doing really well in the height department.
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True in part, though there are also very tall structures in Taiwan, circa 23,000,000 population, Malaysia, 30,000,000, the United Arab Emirates, 9,300,000 with one tenth of that population in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, 2,100,000. Moreover, what is now First Canadian Place was the sixth tallest building in the world when it was built and the CN Tower was, as we all know, the tallest freestanding structure in the world for many years, when Canada had a significantly smaller population than at present. The "my building is taller" contest smacks too much of adolescent boys making other comparisons so I don't worry very much, or at all about it. But the size of the national population explanation you advance is not sufficient in itself as an explanation of the phenomenon of so very many tall Asian buildings. Nor does it really explain why FCP and the CN Tower remain Toronto's tallest since the seventies.
 
67Cup said:
True in part, though there are also very tall structures in Taiwan, circa 23,000,000 population, Malaysia, 30,000,000, the United Arab Emirates, 9,300,000 with one tenth of that population in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, 2,100,000.
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Taiwan, Malaysia, and the UAE are each around the size of southern Ontario...not a fair comparison at all.
 
I've been to Dubai at least 10 times in the past 15 years and can tell you first hand that the majority of those 70-100 story buildings are pure garbage. The Dubai property market is a joke and I would dare to say that a cheap Chinese brothel has better management that RERA ( Dubai Real Estate Authority). Mega tall buildings mean nothing if its lacking in quality, you should see some of the crap they put in units, a $40 range hood in a 500k apartment is the norm... its unbelievable. . I know Toronto towers are not exactly the best in quality but compared to the crap they pump out over in the U.A.E its like comparing a Honda to a Rolls Royce.
 
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67Cup said:
True in part, though there are also very tall structures in Taiwan, circa 23,000,000 population, Malaysia, 30,000,000, the United Arab Emirates, 9,300,000 with one tenth of that population in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, 2,100,000. Moreover, what is now First Canadian Place was the sixth tallest building in the world when it was built and the CN Tower was, as we all know, the tallest freestanding structure in the world for many years, when Canada had a significantly smaller population than at present. The "my building is taller" contest smacks too much of adolescent boys making other comparisons so I don't worry very much, or at all about it. But the size of the national population explanation you advance is not sufficient in itself as an explanation of the phenomenon of so very many tall Asian buildings. Nor does it really explain why FCP and the CN Tower remain Toronto's tallest since the seventies.
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Sure, there are definitely other factors at play. Chinese cities go tall partly out of necessity. You don't typically see huge swaths of parking lots like you do in American and some Canadian cities. Dubai is a whole other beast. I'm not totally familiar with the law over there, but I'd assume planning controls aren't as strict as they are here, especially when most development in Dubai has sprouted up from empty deserts. The old city core of Dubai hasn't seen the same level of development as the previously untouched sections of the city. Dubai is a city that's really had a vision of making a name for themselves, and they've done it very quickly. I think Toronto is in that middle section where we don't need tall buildings to stand out on the world stage, yet land isn't scarce enough to justify building 100+ storey towers.
 
I like the impact of tall buildings but the secret is almost no one needs super tall buildings even in the largest most dynamic world cities. These are statements. Who in Toronto wants to waste the resources to make such a statement? Well some do, but only up to a point. In the developing world there are individuals and businesses willing to waste other peoples money in droves. In Toronto we only seem to want to waste other peoples money up to a certain threshold. In other words, the sky is not the limit.
 
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