Toronto The Selby | 165.5m | 50s | Tricon | bKL Architecture

Today.
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Landscaping south side..

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...and north side:

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Gorgeous detailing...

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Not visible in this photo, but there are two outside lights in each of those black darkened areas of the podium. Also, tons of lights in podium / lobby area.

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...through the dirty windows...marble-drenched lobby it appears.

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This building is so well done. Everything about it is good. It's ambitious and refined architecturally, the materials are great, the details are finished with care, it provides colour amid the greyblue city and it augments its historical context in a respectful and interesting way. It's thrilling to see something of such quality built.
 
If only it was located at a more prominent location. I think it would have behaved well at Yonge and College as a counterbalance to Karma condos, would have spared us the YC condo monstrosity and would have worked well with Oddfellows hall. 3 birds, one Selby!
 
I like this building a lot. It's solid. I don't find it particularly ambitious or refined and the details include spandrel glass panels in place of vision glass on a "brick" building. The missing corner comes across as engineering around minimum tower distances than a creative design element. The tower is something different but, this is Toronto. How long does something stay different?
 
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I like this building a lot. It's solid. I don't find it particularly ambitious or refined and the details include spandrel glass panels in place of vision glass on a "brick" building. The missing corner comes across as engineering around minimum tower distances than a creative design element. The tower is something different but, this is Toronto. How long does something stay different?

That's exactly where I'm at; I simultaneously find the building to be a refreshing departure from much of what's gone up in the condo boom, and I especially appreciate the careful treatment of the heritage component, but I find the details to be lacking, and it makes the building solid but certainly unspectacular, to me.

My main trifle isn't with the massing (I actually quite like the notch, regardless of intent, and I appreciate that it isn't the city's now-standard blocky podium-and-point typology that I actually rather dislike), it's with the detail and the materiality. The spandrel panels are badly placed and distracting, and I think they chose the wrong colour if they were going to use them at all, and I also find the black material at the base of the podium to be incongruous with the rest of the materials.

All in all: a quite welcome addition, close to being quite good, but ultimately failing to break through for some of the finer details.
 

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