Toronto One Bloor East | 257.24m | 76s | Great Gulf | Hariri Pontarini
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urbandreamer
recession proof
Anyone ever cleaned one of those event tents? Everytime I see one of these, I see the worst job I've ever had: cleaning, on my hands and knees, such event tents for $7/hour in suburban Burnaby ten years ago. The bosses force the "peasants" on their hands and knees, treating you like an animal. I couldn't walk for weeks after that gig. So any sales centre using a tent, I refuse to endorse.
E.B.
Active Member
One Bloor: Stellar, but is it special enough?
The Bloor and Yonge location demands a big architectural statement. One Bloor raises the bar, but the details have to be right
Article Comments
John Bentley Mays
Toronto — From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published on Wednesday, Apr. 07, 2010 7:33PM EDT
Last updated on Wednesday, Apr. 07, 2010 7:37PM EDT
The art of skyscraper design came of age and matured in the first half of the 20th century, roughly the period between Louis Sullivan’s Gilded Age masterpieces in Chicago, St. Louis and Buffalo, and the completion, in 1958, of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building in New York. Except on the computer screens and in the imaginations of some contemporary architectural dreamers, it has languished ever since.
The reasons for this fall-off in design creativity are not hard to figure out.
Tall buildings have become very expensive propositions. If investors are to receive substantial profit from a tower venture these days, every aspect of the building’s realization, from engineering and construction to outfitting and marketing, must be streamlined and rationalized as much as possible. Mass-market popularity, not artistic ingenuity, therefore becomes the most urgent assignment of architects who work for mainline developers. These business folk reason that nobody will pay for top-flight design, so why bother? The results of this dismal realpolitik are familiar to all Torontonians: soulless condominium stacks heaped up on streets across the city in the last 20 years, so many mediocre boxes and cylinders devoid of flair or delight or thoughtful urbanism.
But a city gets the architecture it deserves. Gradually over the past few decades, though with gathering speed since around 2000, Toronto has acquired a sizable population of affluent homebuyers who know the difference between a well-designed tall building and a poor one, and who are prepared to put down money for the privilege of living in a tower with style, sophistication and excellent location. Some suppliers of Toronto housing have responded eagerly to this new, smart market – no surprise there – and a few local architectural offices have shown that they are up to the job of creating attractive dwellings for it.
Among these offices, Hariri Pontarini Architects is a relative newcomer to making tall buildings: The firm has been best known, until now, for its distinguished single-family luxury homes and handsomely crafted institutional projects. With the recent unveiling of its inventive tower scheme for the southeast corner of Bloor and Yonge streets, however, Hariri Pontarini has joined the select league of advanced Toronto designers who are now defining the city’s 21st-century skyline.
Called One Bloor by its developer, Great Gulf Group of Companies, this building is slated to soar 65 storeys over the historic intersection in the heart of Toronto. Nearly 700 suites are for sale, ranging in area from 530 square feet to 1,727 square feet, and in price from $390,000 to $1.5-million and up. The interior appointments will be done by the Toronto-based office of Cecconi Simone, and landscaping will be in the hands of Janet Rosenberg + Associates. The designer of the tower is David Pontarini, founding partner and principal in Hariri Pontarini.
Mr. Pontarini’s plan calls for a tall shaft rising from a six-storey podium containing two levels of retail outlets at the bottom. While Toronto has seen many tower-podium arrangements, we have never had a tall building with One Bloor’s kind of strong architectural romanticism.
The basic form of the building is a steel-framed box – no fancy structural shimmies or wiggles here. The facades, however, sweep toward the sky in broad, flat curves sculpted from undulating balconies and expanses of sheer glass. If renderings are anything to go on, this treatment of One Bloor’s tower surfaces should produce a moment of high and urbane visual drama in its otherwise dowdy neighbourhood and raise the artistic bar for the future high-rise development of mid-town.
That said, I do have one hesitation about the project. It’s about what happens at the base.
An earlier proposal for the site, done for another developer by another architect, featured four levels of retail above ground (including a large cinema complex), as opposed to Mr. Pontarini’s two (with no theatres). Four sounds right to me; two seems skimpy – though I suppose it could be argued that one- or two-storey shopping is what’s ordinary along the nearby Bloor Street corridor. But the intersection of Bloor and Yonge is not ordinary. Whatever is built there should be extraordinary in every sense, at grade as well as in elevation – a magnet for tourists and citizens alike, an unusual place full of urban excitement. Mr. Pontarini’s podium could be put anywhere in the downtown core. It’s just not special enough.
But this flaw isn’t large enough to detract from what’s genuinely interesting and promising about David Pontarini’s One Bloor: its recovery of architecture’s admirable early 20th-century ambition to make skyscrapers, not only efficient, but beautiful and inspiring as well. That’s good news for Toronto, as our architects and developers continue to reach for the sky.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real...llar-but-is-it-special-enough/article1526859/
The Bloor and Yonge location demands a big architectural statement. One Bloor raises the bar, but the details have to be right
Article Comments
John Bentley Mays
Toronto — From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published on Wednesday, Apr. 07, 2010 7:33PM EDT
Last updated on Wednesday, Apr. 07, 2010 7:37PM EDT
The art of skyscraper design came of age and matured in the first half of the 20th century, roughly the period between Louis Sullivan’s Gilded Age masterpieces in Chicago, St. Louis and Buffalo, and the completion, in 1958, of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building in New York. Except on the computer screens and in the imaginations of some contemporary architectural dreamers, it has languished ever since.
The reasons for this fall-off in design creativity are not hard to figure out.
Tall buildings have become very expensive propositions. If investors are to receive substantial profit from a tower venture these days, every aspect of the building’s realization, from engineering and construction to outfitting and marketing, must be streamlined and rationalized as much as possible. Mass-market popularity, not artistic ingenuity, therefore becomes the most urgent assignment of architects who work for mainline developers. These business folk reason that nobody will pay for top-flight design, so why bother? The results of this dismal realpolitik are familiar to all Torontonians: soulless condominium stacks heaped up on streets across the city in the last 20 years, so many mediocre boxes and cylinders devoid of flair or delight or thoughtful urbanism.
But a city gets the architecture it deserves. Gradually over the past few decades, though with gathering speed since around 2000, Toronto has acquired a sizable population of affluent homebuyers who know the difference between a well-designed tall building and a poor one, and who are prepared to put down money for the privilege of living in a tower with style, sophistication and excellent location. Some suppliers of Toronto housing have responded eagerly to this new, smart market – no surprise there – and a few local architectural offices have shown that they are up to the job of creating attractive dwellings for it.
Among these offices, Hariri Pontarini Architects is a relative newcomer to making tall buildings: The firm has been best known, until now, for its distinguished single-family luxury homes and handsomely crafted institutional projects. With the recent unveiling of its inventive tower scheme for the southeast corner of Bloor and Yonge streets, however, Hariri Pontarini has joined the select league of advanced Toronto designers who are now defining the city’s 21st-century skyline.
Called One Bloor by its developer, Great Gulf Group of Companies, this building is slated to soar 65 storeys over the historic intersection in the heart of Toronto. Nearly 700 suites are for sale, ranging in area from 530 square feet to 1,727 square feet, and in price from $390,000 to $1.5-million and up. The interior appointments will be done by the Toronto-based office of Cecconi Simone, and landscaping will be in the hands of Janet Rosenberg + Associates. The designer of the tower is David Pontarini, founding partner and principal in Hariri Pontarini.
Mr. Pontarini’s plan calls for a tall shaft rising from a six-storey podium containing two levels of retail outlets at the bottom. While Toronto has seen many tower-podium arrangements, we have never had a tall building with One Bloor’s kind of strong architectural romanticism.
The basic form of the building is a steel-framed box – no fancy structural shimmies or wiggles here. The facades, however, sweep toward the sky in broad, flat curves sculpted from undulating balconies and expanses of sheer glass. If renderings are anything to go on, this treatment of One Bloor’s tower surfaces should produce a moment of high and urbane visual drama in its otherwise dowdy neighbourhood and raise the artistic bar for the future high-rise development of mid-town.
That said, I do have one hesitation about the project. It’s about what happens at the base.
An earlier proposal for the site, done for another developer by another architect, featured four levels of retail above ground (including a large cinema complex), as opposed to Mr. Pontarini’s two (with no theatres). Four sounds right to me; two seems skimpy – though I suppose it could be argued that one- or two-storey shopping is what’s ordinary along the nearby Bloor Street corridor. But the intersection of Bloor and Yonge is not ordinary. Whatever is built there should be extraordinary in every sense, at grade as well as in elevation – a magnet for tourists and citizens alike, an unusual place full of urban excitement. Mr. Pontarini’s podium could be put anywhere in the downtown core. It’s just not special enough.
But this flaw isn’t large enough to detract from what’s genuinely interesting and promising about David Pontarini’s One Bloor: its recovery of architecture’s admirable early 20th-century ambition to make skyscrapers, not only efficient, but beautiful and inspiring as well. That’s good news for Toronto, as our architects and developers continue to reach for the sky.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real...llar-but-is-it-special-enough/article1526859/
Hypnotoad
Senior Member
... or to summarize: it is not good enough but it is good. So we'll take it. Toronto's seen worse so at least we're over *that* hump.
Thanks for posting the article. I was hoping the writer would call developers out on their Cheapeningtm epidemic. If the tower is to succeed it is not all because the base is 2-storeys or 4-storeys. No. It will succeed or fail based on the finishing touches. The article is not good enough but it is good. So I'll take it.
Thanks for posting the article. I was hoping the writer would call developers out on their Cheapeningtm epidemic. If the tower is to succeed it is not all because the base is 2-storeys or 4-storeys. No. It will succeed or fail based on the finishing touches. The article is not good enough but it is good. So I'll take it.
Traynor
Senior Member
Well, they didn't blast the developers with insults and name calling but this passage does lay blame on the devleopers for not building better:
Especially if you took the word "streamlined" to mean cost-cutting as I did.
Three cheers for a thoughtful critique of the critique.
Regarding Mays' stab at it, despite whom he blames, it's really Great Gulf who he should be going after to up the ante on the podium.
Mays is hinting that he wants a cinema complex back in the plan for that corner. I'd like one too. When it was last proposed in the Kolter design, it was Famous Players that were going to build 10 cinemas there to replace their Towne, Plaza, New Yorker, Backstage and Uptown cinemas all lost near that corner over the last two decades. There is no Famous Players now of course, and successor Cineplex Odeon has expanded their Varsity enough that they would not want anymore screens in the area. Rumours of a Cumberland Cinemas closing come and go, so this could be a new home for them, but I just don't see the Cineplex parent pouring anymore money into their less-favoured Alliance Atlantis chain step-child. AMC is now a couple of km down Yonge with 24 screens too, so they won't be building, and Rainbow never builds, just renovates, so it won't be them either.
There is one other player in the GTA market however: Nova Scotia's Empire chain, which has locations at Square One, Empress Walk, Richmond Hill, Bolton, and farther out. When are they going to make their presence felt downtown? Or maybe they are the stereotypical suburbanites who scarred of the big city? I assume the answer to my last question is no, so it begs my earlier question: when will Empire open downtown? They need to be downtown.
42
Chrisel
New Member
Some of the pictures in the article were posted here before, although these are larger/clearer renderings.
www.worldarchitecturenews.com
Hariri Pontarini Architects craft mixed-use tower
Toronto-based architectural firm Hariri Pontarini Architects in collaboration with Great Gulf Homes unveiled the design for One Bloor—a mixed-use residential condominium tower at the south east corner of Yonge and Bloor streets in Toronto. The site inspired the architects to bring an ‘urbane sculptural quality’ to the design. At a location where two distinct subway lines converge the 100,000-square-foot site is one of Toronto’s most prominent intersections. A development at the northern corner of the site in the early 1970s diminished the importance of the area by locating the retail below grade. The design aims to increase density while enhancing public function such as new connections to mass transit, street-level retail and improved pathways for pedestrians.
Atop the street-level podium with retail and commercial space sits a 65-storey residential tower with sculpted, undulating balconies. Carving into the existing zoning envelope, the six-storey podium steps away from the street with terraces as it stretches northward to reduce the impact of the building mass on the corner site. The balconies add a playful function to the façade that the architect said distinguishes One Bloor apart from the surrounding modernist high-rises.
The interior core maintains a more regular form to avoid compromising the suites, and serves as the backdrop for the emerging curving façade. The fritted glass balconies spin around the building, increasing in size for the corner units. The flowing lines of the facade will carry through to the sloped rooftop above, and stretch out into the podium below, marking the main entry into the building, which will house 690 residential units.
This high-rise residential tower includes more than27,000 sq. ft. of resort-inspired amenities on the sixth and seventh floors designed by Cecconi Simone, plus an additional 19,000 sq. ft. of outdoor space on the seventh floor by Janet Rosenberg + Associates, Landscape Janet Rosenberg + Associates, Landscape Architecture / Urban Design. “At its core, One Bloor is a simple contemporary high-rise building with the aesthetic and purity of modernism. We didn’t want to overwhelm the intersection. So we conceived a transparent envelope at street level. We looked at how the building sits in the skyline,” said David Pontarini, partner at Hariri Pontarini Architects.
www.worldarchitecturenews.com
Hariri Pontarini Architects craft mixed-use tower
Toronto-based architectural firm Hariri Pontarini Architects in collaboration with Great Gulf Homes unveiled the design for One Bloor—a mixed-use residential condominium tower at the south east corner of Yonge and Bloor streets in Toronto. The site inspired the architects to bring an ‘urbane sculptural quality’ to the design. At a location where two distinct subway lines converge the 100,000-square-foot site is one of Toronto’s most prominent intersections. A development at the northern corner of the site in the early 1970s diminished the importance of the area by locating the retail below grade. The design aims to increase density while enhancing public function such as new connections to mass transit, street-level retail and improved pathways for pedestrians.
Atop the street-level podium with retail and commercial space sits a 65-storey residential tower with sculpted, undulating balconies. Carving into the existing zoning envelope, the six-storey podium steps away from the street with terraces as it stretches northward to reduce the impact of the building mass on the corner site. The balconies add a playful function to the façade that the architect said distinguishes One Bloor apart from the surrounding modernist high-rises.
The interior core maintains a more regular form to avoid compromising the suites, and serves as the backdrop for the emerging curving façade. The fritted glass balconies spin around the building, increasing in size for the corner units. The flowing lines of the facade will carry through to the sloped rooftop above, and stretch out into the podium below, marking the main entry into the building, which will house 690 residential units.
This high-rise residential tower includes more than27,000 sq. ft. of resort-inspired amenities on the sixth and seventh floors designed by Cecconi Simone, plus an additional 19,000 sq. ft. of outdoor space on the seventh floor by Janet Rosenberg + Associates, Landscape Janet Rosenberg + Associates, Landscape Architecture / Urban Design. “At its core, One Bloor is a simple contemporary high-rise building with the aesthetic and purity of modernism. We didn’t want to overwhelm the intersection. So we conceived a transparent envelope at street level. We looked at how the building sits in the skyline,” said David Pontarini, partner at Hariri Pontarini Architects.
yyzer
Senior Member
nice post, Chrisel, thanks!
Therion
Senior Member
I still like it. The design is interesting enough for me; the execution (especially in materials) will decide the final outcome. HP and GG just needs to look across the street at Blu to see what happens when your renders are selling something that has no basis in reality. I'm referring to the quality and colour of the glass.
egotrippin
Senior Member
I'm curious to see how the roof is finished, as the renders make it appear to be one large expanse of glass. I'm sure no piece that large could be fabricated, so hopefully they have a good plan for it to appear as seamless as the renders suggest. I love this tower though, really looking forward to seeing it built.
MetroMan
Senior Member
Good observation. The glass roof will literally be the crown jewel on this tower so hopefully it takes that title for the right reasons.
junctionist
Senior Member
If the end product resembles the rendering, then this will probably one of the best residential high-rises to be built in Canada in this era, along with Absolute and L Tower.
taal
Senior Member
Not to bring up the whole debate again.
But after seeing the larger / high res renderings and comparing it with Aqua in Chicago ... this seems to have a lot more potential ... they're not quite the same beats but I find Aqua a little messy so to speak.
But after seeing the larger / high res renderings and comparing it with Aqua in Chicago ... this seems to have a lot more potential ... they're not quite the same beats but I find Aqua a little messy so to speak.
riley
Active Member
These pics posted by chrisel make me totally love this building. I think it will look amazing. I want to live here now.
Canuck
Active Member
I should know better than to fall in love with jazzy artist renderings (as... ZOMG! the CHEAPENING!) but I'm really liking this building.
I'm still not sold on the podium, but I'm gaining faith in the look of the tower.
I'm still not sold on the podium, but I'm gaining faith in the look of the tower.