Toronto Pinnacle on Adelaide | 144.47m | 46s | Pinnacle | Hariri Pontarini

[Urban Shocker]

Yes, what's with HP? For such a good firm, with small projects that are divine, why do they begin to lose the thread when they go big?

 

[Evan]

Might as well be a Cityplace tower.
How dreary and depressing. Is that solid grey spandrel on the windowall?

 

[SP!RE]

I think the podium of this tower is going to be excellent-- pedestrians will have an enjoyable experience. Which is a definite plus of having HP behind this project.

 

[Parkdalian]

Yes, what's with HP? For such a good firm, with small projects that are divine, why do they begin to lose the thread when they go big?

I still think this building has more pluses than minuses. But yeah, sometimes it feels like HP piles on disconnected details to make up for the lack of big unifying ideas.

 

[Doug Convoy]

Interchange, what's going on with the little cut-out area on the ground next to the heritage buildings - you mention it'll be a piazza - any other details? And are they adding light fixtures around the building? And how can balconies be "public art"? Very interesting...

I think the building overall is fine, but HP's designs always seem a bit finnicky rather than stylish.

And those podium units whose balconies face onto the ass end of Cinema? I imagine they'll be hard to sell.

1. The little cut-out area next to the heritage buildings is going to be a piazza whose design and materials will interact with and enhance the emerging John St Cultural Corridor, which is partly funded by Pinnacle Int'l via Section 37. Also, the piazza will build upon the 'film' aspect of the immediate neighbourhood. The details are still being worked out.

2. Not sure whether the light fixtures around the building are actual elements of the building's landscaping/streetscaping scheme or just render/model-porn.

3. The 'public art' balcony railings are going to have some sort of unified design feature in the glazing panels spanning several floors; a grand gesture, so to speak. Again, the exact design is still being worked out.

Cheers, Doug

 

[SP!RE]

Oh boy, watch the art feature on the railings be large-sized "film" (as in a movie) that scrolls down that corner of the podium.

 

[UrbanFervour]

Ha! I seriously hope they can find a way to not f**k this "film piazza" thing up. LOL!! No but seriously, this sounds like more uninspired tokenistic art crap that is starting to take over the city. i'm thinking of the big oversized bath-toy canoe at city place, the testicles-on-a-parkinglot at the foot of yonge, the toy soldiers at bathurst and lake shore, etc, etc...

The park at 18 yorkville is pretty cool though (amngst a few other successful examples in town), so hopefully it will be subtle and thoughtful... thought i'd end on a more positive note.

 

[SP!RE]

I don't understand why every single park has to be themed. I hope this plaza is like the one at 18 Yorkville, and not packed with little info-TV screens and didactic information that all gets junky and falls apart after a few years. Please-- a piazza is all we need.

 

[Urban Shocker]

i'm thinking of the big oversized bath-toy canoe at city place, the testicles-on-a-parkinglot at the foot of yonge, the toy soldiers at bathurst and lake shore, etc, etc...

The Richard Deacon commissioned sculpture on Yonge is Between The Eyes.

Deacon: "The very first commissioned work that I actually made was the result of a competition in Toronto. There was an open competition. In that case the City authority maintained a very close eye on the development and empowered the artist by saying that the development didn't get building permission until there had been an artist commissioned, and the building couldn't be occupied unless the work was installed. So at two stages, as an artist, you had a considerable amount of power. It also meant there were quite complicated relationships and you had to engage with people who were running a building programme. You had to fulfil your deadline, but on the other hand you had some leeway in the sense that if things weren't happening the way that you wanted them to happen or the way that you thought they were going to happen you could say, 'hang on a minute, this isn't what we agreed', which I thought was good although it was a bit scary to begin with, to have the same kind of contract as a subcontractor would have. So commissioning as a process seems to run the whole gamut of those things, and one needs to be clear about whether it's an individual, a publicly funded authority, an institution or the artists themselves that are making an initiative and what commissioning involves."

http://www.axisweb.org/dlFULL.aspx?ESSAYID=55

 

[adma]

Ah, that Richard Deacon. Musta used an egg whisk when microwave cooking

 

[Solaris]

Apparently, Pinnacle on Adelaide is now open to the public ... I dropped by the sales office earlier this week and was quite impressed by the amenities and level of finishing (standard materials were shown) which is typical for Pinnacle

Website: http://pinnacleadelaide.com

While the building doesn't look amazing in the rendeing, I did find myself appreciating the design of the building much more by seeing the scaled model in person ... in particular the podium levels of the building anchors the project very well while intergrating the relocated heritage building on John Street, and the 'forecourt' proposed on John Street will provide an interesting shelter/relief space from the continous massing along John Street ... I like this project a lot ~

 

[condovo]

^^ Yes. Well said and I agree. I think the design has come in for a bit of a bum rap here.

 

[DarkSideDenizen]

The model and the render are 43 floors...+ mechanical.

 

[grey]

The interesting angles have been cheapened away. In particular, the angle on the north west corner at the base that gave the tower a leaning effect (same as the L-Tower).
It's another spandrelfest for the Entertainment District.

Original design posted by Mike in TO:

And from the HP website:

 

[spaced]

Ya, it's a shame about the angles, especially at the base, but it's still put this near the top of new(ish) proposals for its handsome and balanced design. I especially like the care Pontarini's firm has been putting into the street level design recently.