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

Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

You see, it takes a bit of overall socio-political-cultural-media literacy (however much from the armchair) to realize the inherent "fallacy" of our arguments, in and of themselves. That so-called attacks on pro-walkway design snobs etc might, in effect, be a pot calling the kettle black?
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Might be -- but the complete disuse of the walkway (when open), the paucity of expressed love for NPS, and the often-expressed hatred of the walkway, suggest otherwise. Even among design snobs, I've heard the design of the square referred to as "significant", not beautiful or functional or otherwise good. Its main value is historical.


It ain't "the truth", it's the way that you spin it; or the way it fortuitously overlaps with/affects our collective perspective on "reality". Which is why certain of the so-called "un-popular" or "minority" or "marginal" carries power, and the rest does not to the same extent. Yeah, a touch of Animal Farm some-more-equal-than-others, but I'm philosophical about it.

So that's how your kind of "giving the people what they want" is readily spun into something fatally philistine--and why the elites win over the philistines time and again.
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I'd put elites (of the intelligent/knowledgeable type) down near the bottom of the influence list -- certainly after
1) Money
2) Loudest voice
3) Status quo
(which, in this case, are largely aligned against walkway removal)
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

And I'm not saying the walkway is anywhere near as offensive as Boston's city hall -- a builing so vile that it continues to singlehandedly ruin my appreciation of all of Boston's finer points (beacon hill, little italy, back bay... nope, I still see Boston city hall! It's the UW Math and Computers building's older, uglier sister).

The walkway is more like a piece of sand in the eye, like the Sheraton across Queen, or Mount Sinai hospital. It isn't immediately dangerous, but if you leave it there it will eventually scratch your retina. Or maybe, because I'm not happy with that simile, it's more like a minute quantity of poison. ehh... you get the picture.
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

I have a feeling a lot of people don't actually like Toronto city hall, but are afraid to admit it. I personally think NPS is atrocious, but the square and buildings have a lot to do, especially, if you were coming of age when the place was built, with creating a civic identity, and putting Toronto on the international map. Nostalgia, doesn't make art in my opinion.
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

The walkway has to go. All it is now is a poorly built homeless shelter that cuts the street off from the square. Anybody driving by, or traveling on a streetcar can't see the Fountain(skating rink, or the city hall dome thanks to the ugly walkway.
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

adma:

Not to diss the curators, but I'd be curious to know how often the formentioned actually uses the NPS, other than as an object of worship.

Let's face it, no matter how unloved the walkways are, in all likelihood it won't be torn down due to hertiage considerations (Milczyn's view notwithstanding), especially when taking into account the competition process.

In fact, I'd be surprised if any of the final schemes chosen isn't of the modernist vocabulary and limits the interventions to the level one would consider as "chaste".

GB
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

Not to diss the curators, but I'd be curious to know how often the formentioned actually uses the NPS, other than as an object of worship.
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It all depends on how one defines "using" the square--perhaps "actually uses" is a hair-splitting question? (But I know what you mean. While their heart's in the right place, the fine folk of Dominion Modern do get a bit hagiographic-hyperbolic at times.)

Yet I reiterate: how many "users" really feel passionately there's a problem--that is, in its being non-functional/ill-functioning to the degree that it really, really, really needs to be "fixed"? Sure, NPS is "deficient" in some regards--but what public space isn't? One might as well dismiss a c19 Cabbagetown semi because it can't be equipped w/the same kind of bells and whistles as a contemporary monster in Richmond Hill. I repeat: the truer "status quo" is indifferent. Indifferent enough to not be bothered posting in and reading forums like this. But an inherently "accepting" kind of indifferent--NPS "is what it is". And it takes a diversity of public spaces--some planned, some accidental--to make a city.

Of course, re the kind of tyrrany-of-the-majority "status quo" the previous posters claim to represent, if we turn the wayback machine to 1966, it would have been opposed to Henry Moore's Archer. Get the hint?

And likewise, if said hack definition of "status quo" ruled the day in the 2002 WTC competition, among the finalists, Peterson Littenberg would have won in a landslide.

info-wtcB02-peter3.gif


Notwithstanding subsequent antics re Libeskind/Childs/AmeriKKKa, one must understand the context in which a scheme like that was very commonly cubbyholed as a token sop to the reactionary/traditionalist crowd--thus sealing its doom.

So, be careful, folks. Good, humane urbanism is good, humane principle, perhaps. But in heavy-handed practice, it can come across instead as something akin to a Common Sense Revolution of architecture and urbanism...
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

Think SOM's refit of Lever House
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And re that, we come full circle to a question I asked earlier--is a major competition necessary for that?!? That's why this whole exercise smells of a sop-to-Milczyn boondoggle...
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

Years from now those anti-skateboarder "warts" may be seen as quaint relics of a byegone age, and valued as period details.

Things evolve constantly, and the walkways that people used to promenade on 20 or 30 years ago, which are off limits now to a whole new generation of Torontonians, are thus easily seen as unnecessary, or as "problems" to be solved. I'm all for restoring the Square as much as possible to its original state, including the relocation of the Peace Garden to somewhere else, and the restoration of the walkways and the ramp.

A few weeks ago I had my new will made by a lawyer who happened to be the grandson of Nathan Phillips. He seened a little concerned that the Square was being re-designed. I hope the process will be based on restoration and sympathetic adaptation in order to recapture the former success of the Square.
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

We also have to keep in mind the spirit and rationale for building the New City Hall and NPS as well - it's about doing things differently and looking at the future. So in a way, having a limited redesign is actually more in keeping with the ideal than simple restore/preserve.

GB
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

i feel the problems with NPS are the same as that of most public space in Toronto in general; lack of attention to detail and a seeming obsession with doing things in the cheapest and least aesthetic way possible. Case in point, take a new sidewalk, jackhammer a hole in it and repair with crappy asphalt patch. Or, look at the pathetic condition of the grounds around old city hall, even before the permanent restoration effort that may never end.
Never mind whether or not the walkways stay or go, how about replacing the ramshackle benches, getting rid of the dozens of pieces of crowd barriers, replacing the cinder block snack bar for the skating rink with something quality. As others have said also, getting rid of the crappy permanently dead grass on queen street and fixing up the queen/bay intersection would do wonders for the area.
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

We also have to keep in mind the spirit and rationale for building the New City Hall and NPS as well - it's about doing things differently and looking at the future. So in a way, having a limited redesign is actually more in keeping with the ideal than simple restore/preserve.
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Though sometimes one wonders whether there's a moment in which it's advisable to suspend such an "in keeping" reflex. Not speaking for NPS, specifically, but one might argue that it's advisable to rebuild St. Peter's because "it's keeping" with the spirit behind its construction...
 
Re: "Please don't pimp our square"

adma:

As a matter of fact, St. Peter's in its' current form is the result of centuries of building and rebuilding...

GB
 
I spent a long time wandering around NPS this afternoon and I pretty much completely agree with Adma - what's all the fuss about? The walkways are quite benign; they enclose the square just fine and don't really even block your view, and I don't consider them eyesores, just a little run-down. I wonder if the people who think the walkways actively irritate them are the same people who think both sides of City Hall's towers should have been glass. I constantly hear people on the street (sometimes I follow tourists around :) )make derogatory comments about City Hall's back side, but I've never heard a word about the walkways, other than that the walkway to the Sheraton is pointless...but if you asked people a focused question about the square like in that Star article posted earlier in the thread, of course you're going to get all kinds of comments and opinions that would never have been brought up without prodding.

Maybe the walkways should be covered in a layer of smother, more attractive concrete or stone, rather than 'mystery aggregate # 3.' I wouldn't mind seeing the sides of them redone with some kind of striation that matches the backs of the towers; they seem plain in an unfinished kind of way, not an uncluttered on purpose kind of way. Not that their look needs to be changed or updated, just morphed into something of a higher quality, perhaps (though I guess anything done to them would be an alteration for better or for worse). I don't know if they can be radically renovated in a way that makes both camps (those that want them removed and those that want them preserved as is) happy.

Now, the "grass" and planters and stuff are abominable. The Peace Garden and the garden at the western side of the Square (whatever its name is) should have gone to the south of the walkway - instead, the space has become chip truck and hot dog cart central. Add the Sheraton and its retardedly placed garage entrance, and you get the feeling that anything you look at while standing along this block of Queen will be viewed with the same disgust. The walkways look totally different from inside the square - NPS isn't best viewed at a distance like a postcard shot.
 
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