Toronto Opus and Omega on the Park Condos at Concord Park Place | ?m | 36s | Concord Adex | IBI Group

The architecture is extremely bland and uninspired. The towers do recall those apartment buildings from the 1960s with just a plain series of balconies on the facade and no creative design details. The blank wall along the street is terrible as well. It's depressing seeing all those generic apartment towers from the 1960s from the 401 and then seeing Park Place, the new architecture, not being much better. The community looks inelegant and uninspired overall in terms of its architecture. In the landscape of towers whose only architectural statement is a row of balconies repeated from top to bottom, the NY Towers look amazing for actually presenting some bold architectural details, as trite and kitschy as they may be.
 
Awful. It's like they are trying to outdo themselves on each Park Place project-- with how crappy the next phase can be. This promises to contribute no street-life whatsoever. It would have been appropriate and interesting in 1960s Toronto but not so much today.
 
What I learned from last year's Pug Awards was that the worst contemporary architecture in the city is generally from the P+S and IBI Group partnership. It is consistently on the bottom of the quality scale.
 
Sorry, but I think most of the pronouncements so far are way over-the-top apoplectic, mostly histrionics. Yes you're getting some suburban form here, but you haven't seen the full picture yet, and you're also mis-interpreting some of what you see on the previous page. The street, for example, is the laneway that serves the IKEA, so big deal if there's a concrete wall there: no-one will be walking in that spot. It does make me wonder why they chose that aspect for the "hero" rendering though. In any case, there are lot of scale model shots and model suite shots in our front page story, now up here.

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And I think you are being way too apologetic to developers' whims. What we see in all of the images so far is that the project faces onto a laneway on one side and a parking court on the other. The tower itself has no interesting features either, and is clad in, of course, glass. Everything is just so typical. I don't think we're being hard on it at all; Park Place just doesn't inspire much confidence in us and this development doesn't seem to change that, which is disappointing.
 
Not all of the below is directed at you personally SP!RE.

One can see what one wants in a design: if one starts with an automatic prejudice against everything P+S does then of course it will be seen it as being without interesting features, or even better explained, merely "terrible" or "bottom of the quality scale". Yes, the design is pretty simple here—the towers are crimped slabs with full length balconies—but that can be read by others as clean, as plain and simple as that. That's my take and is in no way an apology. Take your arrogant accusation somewhere else.

The context is what it is and dumping on the designers because there's a laneway down one side is ridiculous. You have a sloping site here, and the loading end of a major furniture store immediately to the east. What would you prefer there? On the north side you're half a block south from where Concord will be building their pedestrian street-level amenities: shops are going into the Tango towers.

Why does every linear foot of sidewalk have to have a shop window up against it, no matter where it is in the city? From some members here it's like if a building has vehicular access it has committed an unpardonable crime. A little less dogma and little more understanding of differing milieus within the GTA would go a long way to making these less black-and-white conversations. There are shades of gray in the world. Wow.

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It looks like it does--generic, no addressing of grade changes etc--because they're selling it cheap ($400PSF iirc) to Asian investors. They just want to get it sold asap.

We don't need shops everywhere but we could strive for more interesting streetscapes. Even in Blancouver Concord works harder at creating something unique--art, landscaping, etc. The Ikea won't last forever--I predict it's redeveloped within 20 years. So yes, this blank concrete wall will become an eyesore at some point.
 
interchange42 said:
Not all of the below is directed at you personally SP!RE.

One can see what one wants in a design: if one starts with an automatic prejudice against everything P+S does then of course it will be seen it as being without interesting features, or even better explained, merely "terrible" or "bottom of the quality scale". Yes, the design is pretty simple here—the towers are crimped slabs with full length balconies—but that can be read by others as clean, as plain and simple as that. That's my take and is in no way an apology. Take your arrogant accusation somewhere else.

The context is what it is and dumping on the designers because there's a laneway down one side is ridiculous. You have a sloping site here, and the loading end of a major furniture store immediately to the east. What would you prefer there? On the north side you're half a block south from where Concord will be building their pedestrian street-level amenities: shops are going into the Tango towers.

Why does every linear foot of sidewalk have to have a shop window up against it, no matter where it is in the city? From some members here it's like if a building has vehicular access it has committed an unpardonable crime. A little less dogma and little more understanding of differing milieus within the GTA would go a long way to making these less black-and-white conversations. There are shades of gray in the world. Wow.

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Click to expand...

Give me break ...

Its clear this entire development is a lost opportunity, why defend it. To be clear I'm not commenting on architecture or the interior (i.e. the units and their layouts).
Rather, wasn't there a chance to replicate downtown Markham or Vaughan on a smaller scale at this site ? Why not a mixed use community, introduce some office and more retail (this is directly on a subway line just so you know, this should be where Toronto is encouraging more office growth in the city). Also to be clear, I'm not sure who's to blame, maybe partly Concord, maybe the city.

I've seen the plans, so I know what you are referring too by
... pedestrian street-level amenities: shops are going into the Tango towers.
Click to expand...
This is a far cry from what I was looking for for this site.

You say there shouldn't be retail lining all the streets in the city and I agree, even though I'm be guilty of pushing for this in the past. But lets think of the area in question, its not as if there is any other retail less a couple suburban strip malls and of course, two malls. Maybe that's the problem, they don't think there would be demand to create a walkable mixed use community ... maybe ...

Cityplace downtown has the luxury of being surrounded by walkable areas full of retail, even though if cityplace proper isn't (though I'm finding that's less and less the case as time progresses).

This entire development reminds of of the NY tower development at Bayview ... which btw many like (not on this form) ... its a drivers paradise, I have friends who live there, there is never anyone outside, and why would there be if you consider the built form.
 
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It's a car eccentric neighbourhood, hence why the current retail in Discovery is not being leased. I am sure Concord is attempting to build a cohesive neighbourhood with foot traffic, but it won't happen (I predict), until the entire community is complete (with the park and other outdoor amenities) - so in about 10-15 years? The fact that there is no parking available (only street paid parking) hinders the success of retail in these developments as well. There is no need for Opus to have retail and the entire blank wall issue is not an issue because, as interchange pointed out, the blank wall faces the IKEA loading dock. There will never be any foot traffic there, it's a back road around IKEA.

I, personally, do not believe this entire development is a lost opportunity. We are basing that upon what, the fact that there is no mixed use going into these buildings (as you suggested taal) - yet there's a brand new 5-storey office building almost complete just up the street? Not every development, especially here with very little foot traffic, needs retail. What we really should be complaining about is the fact that areas with foot traffic LACK retail (and we can look to X and Couture as examples of that).
 
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