Toronto Sun Life Financial Tower & Harbour Plaza Residences | 236.51m | 67s | Menkes | Sweeny &Co

88drums said:
Agreed. Love the tower, but the podium? This stretch of Harbour is finally getting an opportunity to open up and attract some pedestrian engagement with the off-ramp coming down (and hopefully a cool park in its place). The podium doesn't respond to that at all. Looks more like a bomb shelter...
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Have you seen photos of the Flakturm of WW2 Berlin? Similar design to this podium. (Only a slight exaggeration.)
 
Honestly I'd even be fine with plastering that monolithic wall with giant tv screens and advertising to cover up the bland a la 10 Dundas. Anything but that wall... I do have to agree that the office tower is looking sharp! Hopefully the condos follow suit.
 
mjl08 said:
Yeesh, how did that podium make it by city planning?
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I hear ya. I look out onto this featureless slab every day. It's a little soul-destroying. I thought aA might be done with "neo-bunker" architecture after the Four Seasons podium, but apparently not.
 
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The three towers, fantastic!, the podium?.....reminds me of the monolith from the movie 2001, it absorbs all the beauty around it, leaving a dark, flat, depressing puke grey facade that absorbs all the light and happiness around it aka it's a dark, swirling eddy of misery and despair (a tad over the top?), now, 100 years from now, when we have dozens of mega tall buildings that will block out the sun, leaving a thick ground fog a la "the fifth element", we won't even have to see it, but until then, either they cover that hideous portal to hell with huge, but tasteful, video screens, or I'm avoiding that area until it's torn down! (Kidding of course, everyone will hate it so much, eventually, and angry mob with ladders and sledge hammers will fix it), now, who says I'm a drama queen??:eek:
 
Too bad the whole podium wasn't treated like that one square on the south side that's banded with red, could have looked a bit like the new data centre if they had made that bigger
 
Ryan_T said:
Maybe they assume there won't be much foot traffic there, and it's not such a big deal to have a blank wall.


Ironically, they did put a lot of pedestrians in their renderings.
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There won't be any problem for the foot traffic; at ground level, it's not a stone wall like up above… so I don't get your point.

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I meant to say, the area is still a car-heavy zone. So there's little point making an interesting facade all the way up the podium for cars that zoom pass too quickly to notice anything but what's immediately important (street level, in front of their cars). The pedestrian corridor tend to be North-South in the area on the main roads (ie. York, Bay, Jarvis, Spadina, etc) until they get to Queen's Quay/Harbourfront, then they walk East-West.
 
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I see a very promising future as a park/plaza where that offramp is now (which I think is the plan). We need more cool urban squares in the city
 
Thats some refection (from the new glass) on the would be park. plants would do very well, or burn there. "warning: must wear your shades and sunblock wile in this park between these hours...."
 
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