Toronto Union Park | 303.26m | 58s | Oxford Properties | Pelli Clarke Pelli

Someone once said Toronto is an upside down San Francisco. Instead of hills, we have ravines.

Nah, I don't see it - the thing is downtown Toronto is fairly devoid of ravines whereas in San Francisco there are hills everywhere downtown.
 
The podium is not just going to be an office lobby. There will almost certainly be a lot more in the way of indoor retail within so it's not like it'll be sterile. The development itself describes having 200,000 sqft of retail space. My guess is that the winter garden will almost be treated as an extension of the public space, sort of acting like a small indoor mall. Think like the GM Renaissance Center Wintergarden in Detroit (except executed much better), or Complexe Desjardins in Montreal. I can also see what looks to be some sort of greater "street level" activation along the park side of the development. This makes sense though, because I'd imagine that they want to get as many people using the park side as possible.

The plans (not the render...) do show some pretty substantial retail in the winter garden. I took the plans and crappily colorized the retail at-grade in orange and the retail above the winter garden in blue. On your second comment, the entire second and third floor off the park is retail.

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'American CBD take on an urban podium'? Podiums can be American, Canadian, Namibian, Burmese, Jordanian, Italian, etc. in your world? I suppose the goal was to insult another country though. Whether the statement made any sense was beside the point.
 
'American CBD take on an urban podium'? Podiums can be American, Canadian, Namibian, Burmese, Jordanian, Italian, etc. in your world? I suppose the goal was to insult another country though. Whether the statement made any sense was beside the point.
American-CBD style podium, not an American-style CBD podium. The point is that a lot of American CBDs are clusters of single-use buildings in an otherwise hollowed-out core, i.e., a place only for office workers, that does not prioritize street life or the needs of anyone other than people commuting in from the suburbs for their 9-5. I think that's a totally valid criticism of the way this building meets the street right now.
 
American-CBD style podium, not an American-style CBD podium. The point is that a lot of American CBDs are clusters of single-use buildings in an otherwise hollowed-out core, i.e., a place only for office workers, that does not prioritize street life or the needs of anyone other than people commuting in from the suburbs for their 9-5. I think that's a totally valid criticism of the way this building meets the street right now.

So, acknowledging that one needs to provide access to the 18,000 or so office workers and, at points, provide a usable passage for a massive crowd from Roger's, how else could one design this?
 
It's a purposely empty hall to lease out for private and public events. It's a boring space when these functions aren't taking place. You wouldn't have to change the structure to make it more inviting and interesting.
 
I quite like the podium. It's actually similar to Bay Adelaide Centre, except the space in the middle is an outdoor park whereas here it's an indoor park (which is probably good for such a dense space - it'll get lots of use in the winter). I think it'll look quite impressive in person, almost like when you walk into Terminal 1 at Pearson Airport, the high ceilings and wide open space give an interesting sense of scale.
 
It's a purposely empty hall to lease out for private and public events. It's a boring space when these functions aren't taking place. You wouldn't have to change the structure to make it more inviting and interesting.
Perhaps the answer then is not a redesign but ensuring that the space is always programmed?

This is the touristy epicentre of the downtown after all.
 

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