Toronto Ontario Place | ?m | ?s | Infrastructure ON

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I can't see how dismantling the pods and Cinesphere will do anything other than clear some in water areas. Unlss they plan on filling the space with landfill, what can be accomplished.

The Sphere and pods should be preserved. If they can save, restore or move any other parts, that would be in keeping with conservation goals which should be an element of a project such as this.
 
Okay, looking at that view, I'll revise my proposal: East Island: 100% condo+retail. (And perhaps fill in Brigantine Cove.) West Island: Keep it as parkland. Pods? Cafes and restaurants. Dome? Ditto. Molson Ampitheatre? Bulldoze it for condos. Parking lot along Lake Shore? Condos+retail.
 
urbandreamer said:
Okay, looking at that view, I'll revise my proposal: East Island: 100% condo+retail. (And perhaps fill in Brigantine Cove.) West Island: Keep it as parkland. Pods? Cafes and restaurants. Dome? Ditto. Molson Ampitheatre? Bulldoze it for condos. Parking lot along Lake Shore? Condos+retail.
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What the f... dont forget to throw in a couple of casinos and a red light zone...lol
 
Funny thing with the "demolition" biz: I can't help thinking of half a decade ago when Councillor Milczyn was actively proposing NPS's extreme makeover, including walkway demolition, etc--but then the architectural and preservation community stepped in on behalf of respect and restraint--can't help thinking that something similar is in the offing here.

One very important glitch, though: from what I can tell, unlike City Hall and NPS, Ontario Place is not on the Inventory of Heritage Properties, much less designated; therefore as of now there's no obligation to conduct a heritage survey . Though I wouldn't be surprised if some fast-tracking solution is in the works...
 
http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/07/17/comment-keep-ontario-place-beautiful/

Comment: Keep Ontario Place beautiful
Special to the National Post July 17, 2010 – 10:00 am

By John Martins-Mantiega

There is perhaps no better example that still remains in Canada of a fiercely modern architectural master work than Ontario Place. It is architect Eberhard Zeidler’s masterpiece.

With his Eaton Centre and MacMaster Health Centre projects, Ontario Place completes the trio in a series of his works that are staggering in design and scope that are both unique and specific to a time in Canadian architectural history. For me, Ontario Place is a monumental work of architecture and engineering that is complete cohesive and intact. It is a project we should all know and respect.

Conceived under Premier Bill Davis to showcase the Province of Ontario as a creative and economic powerhouse, Ontario Place opened to great acclaim in 1971. This was a period of visionary politicians with a civil service that was sophisticated and articulate. It was a period of great public-works projects, with politicians such as Jean Drapeau and Bill Davis at the forefront.
Ontario Place is like a space station on the water. For it Zeidler created three artificial islands on Lake Ontario just off the Canadian National Exhibition grounds, with five modular pods, rising above the water on four massive steel piers and then interconnected the pods by bridges and walkways. In the centre is a theatre contained in a Buckminster Fuller dome called the Cinesphere. This is Zeidler’s play of geometric volumes of squares and circles, best seen from up above.

Ontario Place’s problem is the programming and the people currently running the joint. Fix it, because it is currently cut off from public transit. So connect Ontario Place to the LRT line. Ontario Place is ours, we own it, so make it a public park. Get rid of entry fees. Connect Liberty Village to Ontario Place. Open up cafés and pubs on its grounds. Let the public in to bask in its sunshine and scenery.

Ontario Place is not tired as the media keeps pounding into our heads. It’s the current management that is tired. To hear that they want to wipe the slate clean, that the Cinesphere is on the demolition list? Rip my heart out, why don’t you? The Cinesphere is iconic not only because of design: It houses the world’s first IMAX movie system, invented in Ontario. It was here that Graeme Ferguson premiered North of Superior and opened up the north to Ontarians, it made us proud and it excited us.

This is all part of our rich heritage. If they want to eviscerate and cannibalize it, we have really lost our way. We take some perverse kick out of destroying anything that is worthwhile, beautiful or poetic.

Ontario Place is right there on the Lake waiting for us. A perfect, white shining example of what makes us us. Let’s keep it, let’s restore it and savour it.

National Post

• John Martins-Manteiga is the director of Dominion Modern museum and author of Peter Dickinson, a biography of Toronto’s starchitect of the 1950s, available at Swipe Books.
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jaycola said:
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I can't see how dismantling the pods and Cinesphere will do anything other than clear some in water areas. Unless they plan on filling the space with landfill, what can be accomplished.

The Sphere and pods should be preserved. If they can save, restore or move any other parts, that would be in keeping with conservation goals which should be an element of a project such as this.
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Look at all those ugly parking lots on the East island. Let's move that off site and redevelop that. Both the East and west islands should be torn down and redeveloped, just save the good stuff in the middle. Yes, it's floating over the water, so it's not in the way. Did McGuinty use the word "ICONIC" to describe what they expect? I hope he means it! I've been begging for some iconic buildings on our waterfront for a long time. (well, besides the floating pods and Cinesphere, which I consider iconic)
 
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I've never heard that expression either, it makes no kinda' sense.
 
Traynor: well said!

maestro said:
Again the usual comments with how Toronto doesn't respect its heritage. Our record isn't great by any means but the dark ages are long over.
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I don't know that that's true. Many more people these days recognize the value of "old" buildings - but not enough people see the value of classic structures that aren't yet "old". The people who are horrified about circa-1910 structures being demolished in the 1960s are blasé about circa-1960 structures being demolished today, even though the time delta is the same.

It's the "trough of no value" problem. If you think of a graph with time on the x-axis and the value assigned to an object on the y-axis, the line will go up as time passes, from the shock of the new, then upwards though novelty and widespread acceptance, then it'll sink after backlash or just being considered old and dusty, and then it's in the trough, eventually to be re-discovered and considered "classic". The trouble is, we tend to knock down our classics before they emerge from the trough.
 
adHominem said:
I don't know that that's true. Many more people these days recognize the value of "old" buildings - but not enough people see the value of classic structures that aren't yet "old". The people who are horrified about circa-1910 structures being demolished in the 1960s are blasé about circa-1960 structures being demolished today, even though the time delta is the same.
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However, I think there's a different sort of problem today which defies the "trough of no value"; that is, a certain modernism-spurred red/blue split in architectural and urbanistic taste.

Nevertheless, if *anything* can be a present-day equivalent to the crusade for Union Station back when Ontario Place was new, it's a crusade for Ontario Place. (Indeed, the analogy w/Union Station runs deeper than one might expect: in both cases, the most architecturally spectacular parts are also presently the most functionally forlorn parts, while the non-original banality--the GO concourse on the one hand; the water park and Molson Amphitheatre on the other--carries most of the energy)
 
Torontovibe said:
Look at all those ugly parking lots on the East island. Let's move that off site and redevelop that. Both the East and west islands should be torn down and redeveloped, just save the good stuff in the middle.
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Seems to me like the East Island devolved into a permanent service area after earlier plans to extend the parkland eastward went bust. As for the West Island, that also developed late (IIRC the Ontario North Now pavilion didn't open until 1979/80); but it *did* develop, maybe the last part to observe some semblance of original specifications. And because it's most "parkland-y" setting presently (and facing outward from the city core, to boot), my feeling is that sentiment would call for it to remain parkland--it also relates better with the stately "Edwardian" end of the CNE grounds, et al (and the architectural counterpoint btw/Ontario North Now and the old Ontario Government Pavilion was surely intentional.)

If you have to do anything, concentrate on the east. The centre is sacrosanct on historical/heritage/sentimental grounds; the west is by and large sacrosanct on "greenspace" grounds...
 
Too bad we haven't really been building subways recently to use to make Ontario Place bigger.
 
Adma for Mayor! All that we need here is a general sprucing up of the grounds, reprogramming or re-purposing of the iconic buildings and reduced or removed entrance fee. Perhaps converting those eastern parking lots into parkland so that OP is more tied into the waterfront park system would help to make it more easily accessible too. I think the majority of voices on here that are so eager to see it all torn down were born after OP was past its prime and so cannot see its potential to return to its former glory.
 
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