Toronto The Uptown Residences | ?m | 48s | Pemberton | Burka

drum118 said:
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Couldn't help but laugh at this shot. Was the irony intentional?
 
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I'm sure the answer will be obvious once it's explained to me... but here goes.

Why is it that all new condos have such small floor plates compared to buildings of earlier eras?

Just look at Crystal Blue compared to the early 60's apartment to it's south. I know in this case the land available was limited, so maybe a bad example.

But Maple Leaf Square for example could have been one massive building rising the size of it's podium all the way to 60 floors, therefore cramming in way more suites and making tons more money.

I don't want to hear the density answer either, because that can be overcome, (Pay some city hall guy and voila! you have more density) City councilors were designed to be bribed...

Condos like Tridel built in the 80's, were long rectangular buildings not square towers. (Not to mention they had actual dining rooms and REAL kitchens!) Now there are all these loft/garden suites as podia holding up the tower. Why not just use the land to the fullest and build massive?
 
firstly I think you are over-generalizing. Sure we have a few examples of quite thin buildings but I dont find that things going up now are consistently smaller than anything from 30-40 years ago. In any case, Uptown has got to be 2-3 times the floorplate size of Blu. Property size is the main factor in this case.

Secondly, the problem with building a massive block as you have suggested is that people would have very little daylight inside their units. There's no point in building more than 2 units deep (plus hallways and elevator core of course). And in a way thats probably the answer to the question as well. People want lots of glass and lots of light inside their units....

I'm sure someone else might offer a financial angle on this... perhaps the fact of higher property prices combined with higher floor units demanding a premium price, thus making some projects taller compared to their floorplate merely to make them profitable.

In any case, I think thin is sexy so I'm not complaining
 
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Redroom Studios said:
Secondly, the problem with building a massive block as you have suggested is that people would have very little daylight inside their units. There's no point in building more than 2 units deep (plus hallways and elevator core of course).
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HUH?????

I wasn't suggesting inside staterooms ala a cruise ship... I think you missed my point.

I meant, as my quick illustration shows... One long building would offer half again as many suites per floor.... And ALL suites would have balconies or glass or whatever. Look at 100 Wellesley or 40 Homewood avenue. They are rectangles.
 

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well, "slabs" as they tend to be called arent as attractive. The two point towers as youve shown in your drawing offers twice as many corner units as a sinlge large slab. Again, its about maximizing glass and views.

In the picture above, I'd much rather live in the taller slimmer Crystal Blu than that ugly old apartment block....
 
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Redroom Studios said:
well, "slabs" as they tend to be called arent as attractive. The two point towers as youve shown in your drawing offers twice as many corner units as a sinlge large slab. Again, its about maximizing glass and views.
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Agreed... If we were building the Condos... But there has to be a financial gain because as the placement of X2 clearly shows... Creating or Preserving Views are the last things on a developers mind.

A Slab seems to offer more suites and therefore more money for the developer... So there must be a financial advantage that I am not aware of.
 
one further point from a zoning / density point of view is that there are guidelines or limits to the gross (total) floor area of a project vs the square footage of the property. Building a slab as you say with its larger floor plate eats up that amount much quicker and results in a shorter building thus losing the premiums that could be charged for higher floor units.

In any case, buildings such as Blu or 1KW are purely restricted by the size of the properties they are built on....
 
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Regarding the slab vs point tower debate....

I think point towers are favoured because they have less of an impact on the street environment. Slabs lined up along the street shoulder to shoulder, as they are on Carlton between Yonge and Church, make for a long dark canyon. A point tower on a podium maintains the street wall, while the breaks between the skinny towers let some light in. Also, when viewed from a distance they don't obscure the view the way a row of slabs do.
 
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