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

It is anthropomorphic, an attempt to humanize a typically abstract and meaningless form. It is obviously a deeply expressive architectural response to some great stimulus. It is only speculation, but perhaps this is the architect's rejoinder to the inhuman brutality that has gripped the Middle East for all the years in recent memory, similar to the relationship between the Expressionists and the first great war. Might I coin the phrase "neo-neo-expressionist"?
 
chume said:
It is anthropomorphic, an attempt to humanize a typically abstract and meaningless form. It is obviously a deeply expressive architectural response to some great stimulus. It is only speculation, but perhaps this is the architect's rejoinder to the inhuman brutality that has gripped the Middle East for all the years in recent memory, similar to the relationship between the Expressionists and the first great war. Might I coin the phrase "neo-neo-expressionist"?
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That hits the nail on the head!
 
chume said:
It is anthropomorphic, an attempt to humanize a typically abstract and meaningless form. It is obviously a deeply expressive architectural response to some great stimulus. It is only speculation, but perhaps this is the architect's rejoinder to the inhuman brutality that has gripped the Middle East for all the years in recent memory, similar to the relationship between the Expressionists and the first great war. Might I coin the phrase "neo-neo-expressionist"?
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chume? I have to assume someone is screwing with us.
 
Personally, I can't wait for Chume and Housemon's second posts. Of course, unless Housemom can find a way to tie Mr. Harry Pontarini to Number One Bloor, and unless Chume can rejoin his brutal neo-speculative-expressionism to 65 floors of concrete and steel, they are outta here.

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Maybe it's just me, but I detect a certain resemblance between Number One Bloor:

4352012584_7cbf885928_o.jpg


and Nautilus@waterview, AKA "The Breast":

nautiluseo5.jpg


Although I admit that #1B is far more polished-looking.
 
Regarding Aqua in Chicago, which many on this board have celebrated and promoted as a template for the 1BE site:

http://edwardlifson.blogspot.com/20...howComment=1250784281103#c7854453038792094432

I find this critique very astute and it wrings of truth. Some of the allegations are rather thought-provoking, such as:

"Jeanne Gang did not design the tower. Loewenberg & ass. did and Studio Gang just tagged some balconies on an ugly box with ugly widow wall with heavy dark frames and heavy dark paint finish. Her job here was more of an Outfit Coordinator than an architect."

The implication that the developer created the overall building form with an Excel spreadsheet and hired an architect, perhaps at the eleventh hour, to decorate the math has some resonance (speaking as one who has worked with developers before in getting projects up and running). Seen in this way, I would argue that Aqua is indeed a triumph for the architect who made 'something out of nothing' by taking a fully-resolved box and by tweaking only a very few elements created something novel. It's a masterful face lift, one which relates specifically to Chicago (the nod and wink with the guardrail design to local icon the Marina Towers, the clever and innovative re-thinking of one of the more problematic elements in a window wall building (the slab edges), the inspiring forms taken from the shale-like rock around the Great Lakes).

As an entire building - as Architecture - I have no idea if the building works even moderately well.

No doubt 1BE is still in the earliest stages of design and what we've seen so far will likely bear little-to-no resemblance to the final building, but it already appears to this viewer as beginning with a spreadsheet - the curved balconies are simply random figuration on a basic economic extrusion. Given this site already had its zoning defined from previous developers' efforts, I would have liked to see more of An Idea at work in even this first first sketch.

Nevertheless it is still early and the designers and developers of this project both have strong pedigrees so there is still plenty of time for hopes to be fulfilled.
 
verlander said:
No doubt 1BE is still in the earliest stages of design and what we've seen so far will likely bear little-to-no resemblance to the final building, but it already appears to this viewer as beginning with a spreadsheet - the curved balconies are simply random figuration on a basic economic extrusion. Given this site already had its zoning defined from previous developers' efforts, I would have liked to see more of An Idea at work in even this first first sketch.

Nevertheless it is still early and the designers and developers of this project both have strong pedigrees so there is still plenty of time for hopes to be fulfilled.
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I'd be surprised if they drifted too far from the design they've shown us so far. It's a fairly distinctive looking building for Toronto and they're using it infull page ads in the papers as well as on the 4 huge signs on site. The sales office looks like it's ready to open any day now, so why mess with design this late in the game.
 
androiduk said:
I'd be surprised if they drifted too far from the design they've shown us so far. It's a fairly distinctive looking building for Toronto and they're using it infull page ads in the papers as well as on the 4 huge signs on site. The sales office looks like it's ready to open any day now, so why mess with design this late in the game.
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Late in the game? GGH has controlled this site for only a few months; this is still early days.

You're right that they're pushing this design hard - given the site's recent history and the tremendous interest still shown by the public like on this forum, they want to capitalize (in every sense) on the hype. But I think they also know that people will invest in this building without certainty in the product they're buying.

This is one of the few cases where people want in on the action even if they do not know what the 'action' is. Sell first, design and refine later: why wouldn't they take advantage of the tens of millions of dollars people have already once lined up to give a developer of this site? Why wouldn't they take advantage of their solid reputations as a legitimate and successful builder?

In my opinion, the previous scheme did not set the design bar very high and yet the clamour of would-be purchasers could reasonably be described as obscene. Why would GGH feel they have anything to lose in going to market with a design far more preliminary than would be typical?
 
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