Toronto The One | 308.6m | 85s | Tridel | Foster + Partners

[Automation Gallery]

Mirhazi was strongly emphasizing how important heritage preservation was to him, so I asked him to explain the descrpancy with his earlier comments to the star:

“We don’t feel there is any heritage value to it and neither did anyone else for the last 100 years,”

Unsurprsingly, he skated around the question. Didn't say anything of significance. I have a recording that I can quote from when I get home.

I also asked him if the timing of the demolition had anything to do with Wong Tam's push to get heritage preservation. He denied any connection, and said that the demolition had been planned for months in advance to get soil samples (or something like that). I didn't buy his response.

Anyways, when you have a city demolition permit in your hand, you dont really have to explain anything

 

[gweed123]

I do think Hancock when looking at this tower but I see a cheaper, less daring version. A tapered design would have won me over. Perhaps dual spires added to the top could save it. Right now, it just looks a one dimensional box from the skyline view.

Honestly, when I first saw the rendering my mind instantly jumped to 3 World Trade Center:

I agree that dual spires would really top it off.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Are they going to be able to sell these expensive units???

Anyways, when you have a city demolition permit in your hand, you dont really have to explain anything

I mostly asked him because he was going on for about 15 minutes (the meeting was schedule to last 30 minutes) about how important heritage was to him and how passionate he was about it. Knowing that his comments to the Star a few weeks ago were completely dismissive of heritage, I thought I should call him out on the discrepancy to see what he said. Obviously he didn't answer the question.

Personally, I do agree completely with the demolition

 

[buildup]

There were a couple of petulant or sullen holdout questions about wind effects and those silly Stollery stones. Audience was silent. Anytime someone praised the project (and many did) the audience was sustained applause. Im proud of this city.

 

[Mongo]

Apparently, they are considering rental with this building. Mizrahi even said they are looking at making the full building rental.

I know it won't happen, but it's good to see they are considering it.

Now that's interesting. Let's say that the total building cost for The One is $850 million (that's the only hard number I am aware of, the $1 billion estimate appears to be a rounded-up version), and 20% of that is allocated to the retail portion. So 560 units must share $680 million in building costs, or an average of $1.214 million each. At a rental rate of $1,000/month per $100,000 building cost, that's an average monthly rental of about $12,000 per month. That's way more than I would pay, but these are intended to be luxury units at perhaps the best location in Toronto. My estimate for the unit size is based on 9 units per floor (560 units in 62 floors), and a unit size of maybe one-twelfth of the total floor plate (the rest going to common areas, etc.). Judging by the size of the people in the images, I would guesstimate a floor plate of around 13,000 square feet,so a typical unit size might be about 1080 square feet (at $12,000 per month).

 

[ChristopherC]

Oxford place proposal is taller and better looking imo. However, I actually like this a lot too. I kinda expected an "unflat" top but it still looks better than majority of the proposals we have gotten. Imo it is better than both 1 bloor east and aura

 

[TheTigerMaster]

There were a couple of petulant or sullen holdout questions about wind effects and those silly Stollery stones. Audience was silent. Anytime someone praised the project (and many did) the audience was sustained applause. Im proud of this city.

Heh... one of them even proposed making it taller, to the applause of the audience. Never thought I'd see the day where taller is something that the community would want.

 

[Adjei]

Think an Apple store will go into either this building or 1 Bloor East.

 

[renvel]

Public realm

I'm excited for Toronto! We are getting better designs for the new proposals coming out and we have a more renewed focus on transit that I've ever seen before. Now if we could focus more on our public realm.

That's right!
Public realm in Toronto should be drastically improved in order to bring this town into the 21 Century...

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Apparently, they are considering rental with this building. Mizrahi even said they are looking at making the full building rental.

I know it won't happen, but it's good to see they are considering it.

I wouldn't read to much into it. I was under the impression that Mizrahi was simply trying to answer the question in a way without actually confirming anything.

 

[Tulse]

This looks great to me. Despite some complaints about it being "just a box", the use of actual structural elements on the outside of the building is pretty darned rare in Toronto -- in many ways, this is far more of a radical departure from standard boxes than something like One Bloor East, where all the action is in the balconies -- hive off those and OBE is "just a box", whereas here the diagonal skeleton is actually integral to the building structure. (And I really like OBE.)

And speaking of One Bloor East, I think this will look even more fantastic across from its eastern neighbour -- as someone else has already said, the contrast of The One's strong rectilinear design with the fluid waves of OBE will be delicious.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Overall I was very impressed with the proposal.

A few things I learned talking to the architects:
- The exoskeleton is actually structural (not decorative). The interior of the building has no structural supports
- In the image below, take note of the grey box to the bottom right and the bridge connecting to it. That box houses the elevators. Residents will need to take those elevators eight stories up, cross the bridge and then take another elevator to their floor. This is so they could maintain the column free design in the retail space.

 

[Adjei]

That's right!
Public realm in Toronto should be drastically improved in order to bring this town into the 21 Century...

Yes I don't know why city is so indifferent. It's like the politicians and officials don't even care. We try to do everything so cheap and it ends up not looking good. I hope we can see that changing in the future. We also need to go look at how other cities actually design bicycle lanes.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

This looks great to me. Despite some complaints about it being "just a box", the use of actual structural elements on the outside of the building is pretty darned rare in Toronto -- in many ways, this is far more of a radical departure from standard boxes than something like One Bloor East, where all the action is in the balconies -- hive off those and OBE is "just a box", whereas here the diagonal skeleton is actually integral to the building structure. (And I really like OBE.)

And speaking of One Bloor East, I think this will look even more fantastic across from its eastern neighbour -- as someone else has already said, the contrast of The One's strong rectilinear design with the fluid waves of OBE will be delicious.

I'm definitely liking this proposal more than One Bloor East. Mainly because of the exoskeleton and the obvious care they put into designing how it interacts with the public realm.

Actually, this is probably my second favourite high rise proposal, just behind M + G.

And to those of you who are complaining about Strollery: do realize that the street level connection (including wide sidewalks) would not be possible with that thing in place. Would you rather have a decrepit old building, or one that interacts nice with the public realm. I hope that most of us would have the sense to pick the latter.

 

[LNahid2000]

Its always funny sitting beside one of those in the meetings, the other day I was in a meeting with a guy who made a comment about how the people who supported the project must have been hired by the developer..

Haha after getting home I did some Googling and it looks like I was sitting next to Gee Chung, President of the Greater Yorkville Residents Association. I heard sneers and saw eye-rolling whenever people made positive comments. Makes sense since she has written letters like this:

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2015/mm/comm/communicationfile-51071.pdf