Toronto Paintbox | ?m | 26s | Daniels | Diamond Schmitt

Mike in TO said:
Most recent phase of the Regent Park revitilization is under construction. It is located on top of the new Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre.

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www.paintboxcondos.ca
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Where do you see it on top of the arts centre? It's clearly beside it, (to the west) not on top of it.
 
adma said:
Yet, in both cases, my "what if" pertains--just like we should imagine the Dickinson blocks w/a more affluent demo, we should imagine the "gigantic slum" if it somehow lasted long enough to be gentrified or else Trefann'd in the 1970s...
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How true.
 
Those Dickenson buildings were horrendous but at the same time interesting to look at. They seemed to look like commie blocks an would fit in more with soviet russia than toronto!
 
I always liked those Dickinson buildings. There was just something...different about them. Good bones, interesting arrangements on the facades. Funny - with a proper renovation, I bet their Modernist 50's staid-yet-perky stylings would have found a league of new admirers. It seems to me that their floorplans have more room to them than most rentals or condos going on the market today do.
I think it would have been better to bring the services to them by inventing a coherent but charmingly irregular through streetplan for the base, and redeem the buildings by making them fresh again.

Instead, we're losing them, and going through all the old arguments you hear in Toronto when these sorts of things are lost. Lost, and gone for good.

It I think that one of the main lessons of modernist history is that it's not a good idea to go all tabula rasa on a broad area, no matter how good the intentions. I'm surprised we're repeating this problematic solution again at Regents Park.
I think at least two of each like building types from the area should have been kept and adaptively rehabilitated. It would have kept some true architectural and chronological differentiation alive in the area - plus surprise.

Toronto's perfectly rational and commonsense prejudice against its past almost has the air of a phobia to it. It's like dealing with a compulsive handwasher.
 
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TCW said:
The website says "just steps to the trendiest areas in the city" What areas are they referring to?
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Cabbagetown (true hidden gem of a hood; 8 min walk)
King East -Corktown (getting pretty trendy; 10 min walk)
Distillery Disctrict (overy-trendy; 13 min walk)
PanAm Village (when complete; 16 min walk)
St Lawrence Market District (20 min walk)
Church-Wellesly Village (21 min walk)

Not to mention by streetcar:
Dundas Square/Eaton Ctr/Yonge St (6 mins)
Chinatown (11 mins)
 
Though given that we're talking about "public housing blocks", I'm not so sure that they'd be any less endangered/doomed anywhere else; so don't lean too far on the "there goes heritage-unfriendly Toronto again" alibi...
 
CanadianNational said:
I always liked those Dickinson buildings. There was just something...different about them. Good bones, interesting arrangements on the facades. Funny - with a proper renovation, I bet their Modernist 50's staid-yet-perky stylings would have found a league of new admirers. It seems to me that their floorplans have more room to them than most rentals or condos going on the market today do.
I think it would have been better to bring the services to them by inventing a coherent but charmingly irregular through streetplan for the base, and redeem the buildings by making them fresh again.

Instead, we're losing them, and going through all the old arguments you hear in Toronto when these sorts of things are lost. Lost, and gone for good.

It I think that one of the main lessons of modernist history is that it's not a good idea to go all tabula rasa on a broad area, no matter how good the intentions. I'm surprised we're repeating this problematic solution again at Regents Park.
I think at least two of each like building types from the area should have been kept and adaptively rehabilitated. It would have kept some true architectural and chronological differentiation alive in the area - plus surprise.

Toronto's perfectly rational and commonsense prejudice against its past almost has the air of a phobia to it. It's like dealing with a compulsive handwasher.
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I always liked them too. Did you know that the apartments had two floors with the bedrooms on the upper level, and had exposures on both sides? There were elevator floors only on every other floor. You have summed up Toronto in a perfect nutshell.
 
^ Well, that's a good point, adma. Public housing blocks are hardly the fancy of the preservation set anywhere.

I think though, it would be good to see architectural innovations not just in new technology or construction, but also in evolution regarding how we view our past, with more innovative reasons for adaptive restoration. This would have to take into accounts some social and economic rethinking, with a generous dollop of creativity. I really don't know how that would come about. But it would be pretty fantastic to see a place that had the kind of creative thinking that could turn even former public housing blocks into something viewed as fresh and vital.

It's not just Toronto where preservation laws and impulses are behind the eight ball. I just live here, so I'm hard on the place. (grin). Instead of a reactive stance, though - where buildings are generally guilty before perhaps being found innocent - I'd like to see our ideas that determine worth and building husbandry become more generous and progressive.
 
Silence&Motion said:
What got to me yesterday was that this spot was completely gone:
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I feel much the same way about the charming, winding lanes and odd little spaces that form Alexandra Park, and I'm concerned about what a large scale redevelopment there can do. Regardless of the ups and downs that waves of socio-economic change bring to such neighbourhoods, the spatial arrangements of the buildings and landscaping and the aesthetic experience of walking through these places ought not to be the baby that gets thrown out with the "improvement" bathwater.
 
I think a big part of that problem is that, in North America, that kind of generous modernist planning has become so bound-up with the idea of "the projects" in the public mind over the decades, that changing that cultural stereotype might be more difficult than simply giving up on the (quite good) architecture. Even if the planners understand that it's not the architecture, but the socio-economic homogeneity that causes the sort of problem we associate with large social housing projects, they would find it hard to convince the public that gardens, open green plazas and public basketball courts are not inherently "ghetto".
 
DC83 said:
Cabbagetown (true hidden gem of a hood; 8 min walk)
King East -Corktown (getting pretty trendy; 10 min walk)
Distillery Disctrict (overy-trendy; 13 min walk)
PanAm Village (when complete; 16 min walk)
St Lawrence Market District (20 min walk)
Church-Wellesly Village (21 min walk)

Not to mention by streetcar:
Dundas Square/Eaton Ctr/Yonge St (6 mins)
Chinatown (11 mins)
Click to expand...

If they do this right, the location is amazing geographically. This could be the buy of the decade. Thats if....but I think it has a great chance of being a success.
 
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