Toronto Toronto House | 186.53m | 58s | Westbank | Hariri Pontarini

Haven't been up to this view in a while but it's amazing to see how far it's come!
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There are, in retrospect, some amazingly hilarious responses to the first notices of and looks at the design here, from the third and fourth pages of this thread. Now with the benefit of this being 98% done (or whatever number), for your amusement I present your initial reactions:

I want this to be BIG so bad.

Hariri Pontarini.


What a disappointment

seems odd for Westbank to propose this. Usually they do much better.. Is this not just a preliminary massing?

Well that is one big disappointment if it resembles the actual building. One boring box with balconies.

First time I've been disappointed to hear a project is HPA. So with this and Bloor & Bathurst, is the dream of BIG in Toronto dead now?

Agreed 100% usually I'd be happy to hear HP. I just wanted a bjarke. With all the growth Toronto has seen why can we not use more outside firms?


Yeah, not a fan. Thanks for posting though drum.

I usually don't really share my reactions to new designs but that is just horrid :(, especially from a firm like HP. Especially dislike the ground level; reminiscent of suburban office parks like this one:

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Tower itself is original-WTC-like, narrow slats, no visual interest, (grey), and the random line of balconies looks very out of place. Can't say I like much about this proposal, sadly.

Damn what a dissapointment. So much hope only to be letdown by another local architect. I swear there needs to be some moratorium on architects from this city. It's like they have no imagination. Always the same crap.

Yikes. This is definitely a let down from HP. it seems the design is having an identity conflict. Very 60s modernist vertical cladding panel resolving on the bottom before rising to a contemporary glass box roof over the heritage building and then again returning to some mix of neomodern and modern treatments above. It just doesn't work. If they simplify the design and stuck to one motif and actually got rid of the balconies here or inset them then this might get better. Again HP is taking directions from the developer here and this is rental so they may not want to splurge at all on architectural finesse due to the slower returns on the property but still...

I await the revised design.

Even though we're always right, we're not always right!

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How this looked five and a half years ago, in a photo by @ProjectEnd:

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There are, in retrospect, some amazingly hilarious responses to the first notices of and looks at the design here, from the third and fourth pages of this thread. Now with the benefit of this being 98% done (or whatever number), for your amusement I present your initial reactions:



























Even though we're always right, we're not always right!

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Though I never publicly stated it, I was also pretty underwhelmed when I first saw this proposal. But, it's easily one of the best recent builds. Very happy to be wrong about this one!
It's better to be surprised than disappointed. Hopefully this new feeling of disappointment with 88 Queen is the same and it turns out as great as we all hoped it would.
 

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