Toronto Women's College Hospital | 70.1m | 10s | P.E.B.

terrific. i like the sound of all the ideas put forth in the article especially the garden rooftop. (in a recent christopher hume article, he suggests a great way to create a new identity for toronto and attract tourists would be to create several eco-friendly, garden rooftops, or parks, 30, 40, or even 50 stories up! sounds like a plan to me)

more importantly though, i'm glad that this hospital is getting upgraded. i was born here, as i'm sure many other members of this forum were as well. anything to improve our new 'discovery district' is fine in my books.
 
wow, there's a huge amount of space involved.

957,996 Square feet!

In just 14 stories? How did they manage to fit all that in there?

I mean the BA tower is what, 1.2 Million?
 
I'm not surprised by the amount of space. Take a look at the site as it exists in the document. I'm going to have to doublecheck all the building numbers next time I walk through the area, but it appears this includes the entire demolition of the site behind Burano in phases (so hospital operations may continue). This would include an old apartment building and that parking garage many were hoping to use for photos as Burano rises. Those would likely be part of the first phase.

I think that it will be nice to clean this site up, with its proximity to Queen's Park.
 
This is the building they want to demolish. It's just west of Bay St. I've always liked this building and have photographed it a number of times over the years. I'd hate to see it go.

ken2.jpg

ken1.jpg
 
that's a bloody shame. i didn't realize such a gem was hidden back there. some of you may think that the back of the building is ugly but i thought, "wow, that's great that they didn't tear down THOSE buildings too"...

their craftsmanship and style remind me of new york.

i guess toronto's becoming a "box" community but there's something to be said of our buildings pre-1960. too bad.
 
Well, it's the utilitarian back of the building; it's not meant for show. As barrytron (inadvertently?) alludes to, even a lot of nice-looking NYC buildings look like this in the back. And at least it has its original sash. Kind of reminds me of a somewhat starker version of the late St. George Grad Residence (where the Woodsworth residence is now).
 
Well, we all know Toronto has an oversupply of pre-war NYC-style apartment buildings. We can afford to chuck a few.
 
Well, thanks to redevelopment, by default it isn't exactly *un*rare, either--but if anyone wants to offer any "New York wouldn't do anything like this" protest, I hate to tell you, but it would probably be no less expendable in New York than here.

Doesn't mean it isn't worth appreciating, while it lasts. (Sort of like my argument on behalf of the "functionalist" former backsides to Addison On Bay across the alleyway.)
 
I agree that the utalitarian "not meant for show" back is slightly less satisfying than the rather creepy "meant for show" front ... but not by much.
 
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Well, this debate about what is expendable and what isn't will rage for decades to come, unless we can all finally agree that facadism history is not history at all. If we continue to replace everything with new structures and back that argument up with things like "we need to build the history of the future today," or "we can't afford to retrofit this building, it doesn't conform to our needs," we really won't have any history at all - good or bad. And to be honest, I will take the bad any day over nothing. We are quick to toss almost everything away with little or no regard, pretty much like our cell-phones after 6 months and our clothes after 3 months.

Nonetheless, we will be losing another building which is part of the city's heritage, beautiful or not.

p5
 
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I'm not sure where barrytron sees "craftsmanship" in the Kenson, or what makes it a "gem". Was any of it lovingly hand-carved by highly skilled artisans? There's nothing exceptional about the design. Ever since the pioneers tore down their wood shanties after a few years and replaced them with squared log houses we've been improving the city like this.
 
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