Toronto Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto | Perkins&Will

As you move east, and leave Osgoode behind you, a clear view of the council chamber is still blocked - by the trees in the Square! Paradoxically, if the Revell walkways had been built as tall as he wanted, and if there were no trees in the Square, that view might possibly have been interrupted by the walkways.
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Counteracted--maybe--by Revell's original concept of building the walkways right along Queen.

Not that that should be done or anything (though there's clearly a current contingent/POV that's open to such a possibility)
 
I was thinking more of Old City Hall. I could see the top third of it over the walkway, and it just struck me that due to the walkway there are to west views of Old City Hall. In my experience, the best visual attraction of a plaza is usually the architecture bordering it. Barring the south side NPS actually has decent surroundings, and it's a shame that they're blocked.
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It depends on how much one wants to fetishize "borders" and "blockages", I guess. And there's still an impressive lot of Old City Hall visible, to the point where quibbling about the walkways is just that--quibbling.

Besides the fact that its future was still somewhat in question when NPS was built, keep in mind, too, that the bigger "barrier/blockage" viz. Old City Hall isn't the walkways: it's Bay Street itself. And it isn't just a NPS parking ramp/no sidewalk issue; it's because of the widening/jog elimination which connected Bay to Teraulay 80-90 years ago and gave OCH its present stilted, hostile stance. Even without those darned NPS walkways and parking ramps, this is by far OCH's "worst side", from a street-level urbanism standpoint--and short of depressing and decking over this block of Bay (as if that's possible or advisable), there isn't much you can do to make it properly "relate" to a public space such as NPS. Perhaps even, in this case, the walkway's a benefit in that it shields this particular prehistoric case of defective urbanism--by cutting off the haphazard WWI-traffic-engineered bottom conditions, it "humanizes" OCH.

And re that other bit of "decent surroundings", Osgoode Hall: keep in mind that it only presents a lesser face--the dullish stripped-30s/50s-Georgian-Classical Law Society front--to NPS; so it's nothing that absolutely begs highlighting or loses from "blockage". And besides that, the magic of Osgoode has always been in its virtuous elite-law-compound seclusion; so it may arguably gain from being "blocked off", urbanistically speaking...
 
Old City Hall bagged one of the best full-frontal sites in the city when it decided to get itself built at the top of Bay Street. I don't think any view of it from NPS could trump that.
 
Nathan Phillips Square Revitalization (PLANT Architect/Shore Tilbe Perkins + Will)

Hoe they don't mess with it too much.

Media Advisory - Nathan Phillips Square Design Competition announced
TORONTO, Sept. 29 /CNW/ - Mayor David Miller will make an important
announcement about the Nathan Phillips Square Design Competition. The Mayor
will be accompanied by Peter Ortved of CS&P Architecture, professional advisor
for the design competition.

<<
Date: Tuesday, October 3

Time: 11 a.m.

Where: Nathan Phillips Square (adjacent to The Archer),
Toronto City Hall, 100 Queen St. W.
 
Looking forward to seeing the options. Whatever is decided, whether it's a massive redevelopment or a minor clean-up job, the status quo is not acceptable.
 
Is October 3rd the kickoff to requesting proposals or the announcement of the contenders and their already drafted proposals?
 
The bigger question - where does the square stand functionally vis-a-vis Dundas Square.

Dundas Square will be used for crass commercialism (as it should - Beyonce... etc...)

Where does Nathan Phillips Square fit in?
 
It doesn't have to be pigeonholed into a specific role. European cities have dozens of squares - they're not all assigned a role.
 
I hope there's not going to be the commercialisation of Dundas Square in it.
 
^^ I doubt it. I think the same kind of events that are now held there will be the kind we see in the future. The square will just be better designed for them.

There should be a permanent stage. Maybe a platform at the entrance of the building, dead centre but that can be lowered or somehow function as something else (a pond for example) when not in use as a performance venue.

Also, there is such a mess in the square right now... there needs to be some sort of order. The symmetry obsessed in me cringes when I walk into the square.
 
Proposal: Why don't our AutoCad minded friends here come up with their graphic vision of the square?

Maybe we could use the new Google Earth tool....
 
Also, there is such a mess in the square right now... there needs to be some sort of order. The symmetry obsessed in me cringes when I walk into the square.
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There is order. There just isn't symmetry. The two are not synonymous.
 
Whatever they do, I hope they don't mess with the walkway or the arches/fountain.
 
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