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Since they're faux buildings in an age when we aren't channeling the Golden Age of Greece or the Middle Ages stylistically they aren't of any design significance anyway so it doesn't matter what their architects claim they're doing.
 
Good thing we're all so astonishingly smart on here, so much more than those who dream of, conceive of, design and build these structures, so that we can see through the ersatz illusions they keep trying to set before our eyes.
Hail. monomania!
 
I can't wait to see US' "fantasy" skyline for Toronto 25 years from now. Wall-to-wall Clewes and Diamond boxes from Roncesvalles to Woodbine, including the middle of Fort York, with the only variation in height, and shade of glass curtain.

Because that is what Toronto was, is and ever shall be - boxes stripped of all "pippy-poos" and "doo-dads".

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Now that said (with more than a hint of satirical sarcasm) I like good modernism, and I think it suits Toronto well. TD Centre is certainly one of the city's defining landmarks, as is City Hall. X Condo is great, as 18 Yorkville. Spire is fine. But I just don't think we need modernism, and only, modernism, everywhere. Bad faux (Cheddington, French Quarter) is a greater crime than too much okay modernist towers. But we need good foils, which is where 1 St. Thomas does a very good job in showing that what some call "faux" can be good.

And even good modernism isn't good enough for the Distillery, which deserves more protection than it has.
 
SeanTrans said:
with the only variation in height, and shade of glass curtain.
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No chance - only the most neutral of those gorgeous, pristine neutral greys allowed.

Possible new nickname for Shocker:

BoxyBrown.jpg


Boxy Grey.
.
 
You can grab styles from the past and do something interesting with them - as buildings as disparate as Ron Thom's Massey College ( Gothic ), Hariri Pontarini's McKinsey building ( Prairie ), and the TD Canada Trust tower at BCE Place ( Skyscraper Deco ) prove - you don't have to resort to copying. Alsop, Libeskind and Gehry are giving us interesting buildings of various shapes and sizes around town that eschew right angles. Yansong Ma has designed a couple of fun curvy condo towers for Mississauga. aA are putting kinks or bulges in their Distillery District Toronto towers, are floating a tabletop inspired by shipping containers above their waterfront Pier 27, and have designed a curvy tower for Holland. There are all kinds of possibilities for what can work for us, and already do work, locally. I would imagine that most of our fantasy skylines would include such buildings since they can make us look, and think, and they contribute originality, or innovation, or beauty even to our skylines and streetscapes. I think what we've been doing in these various threads lately is to situate "faux" within the context of a design culture that produces these other types of buildings as an expression of our values.
 
Yes ... I think I agree with you, especially the part about "you don't have to resort to copying".
 
Urban Shocker said:
Ron Thom's Massey College ( Gothic )
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love this building - until I started walking by Massey College to and from work, I never really batted an eyelash. Although it may shun the street (then again, quite appropriately for harbouring a veritable "secret society" of sorts), it's a delightfully complex structure that incorporates various styles (gothic, art deco, modernism) playfully and still manages to remain exquisitely cohesive.
 
If Massey College shuns the street, it does so with some of the best masonry and other assorted wall features in the city. If only the new Opera House similarly shunned the street...

And the difference between doing something interesting with the past and copying it is completely subjective.
 
Urban Shocker said:
Won't it make the most darlin' boutique hotel once we've evicted all those dry academics?
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Do you mean such dry academics as Professor Kim Vicente, I could name quite a few jocular academics in mechanical engineering there. Vicente just happens to be on this website.
 
The difference between doing something interesting with the past and copying it isn't subjective to the visually literate.
 
US criticizes other buildings for being too literal with their inspiration and not being innovative enough, yet another building is even more literal and gets okayed as an homage.

There's a sliding scale with many shades of grey that we can use to label buildings - faux, neo, modern, interesting, copy, homage, etc. The subjectivities inherent in art free us to place pretty much any label on any building, but people like you and US, people who claim a stranglehold on what can be called 'well-designed,' effectively exclude everyone other than architects and academics and archisnobs from weighing in on defining contemporary labels. Which is fine...I mean, as long as this effort doesn't bleed into the realm of trying to define 'attractive' and 'appropriate' for the masses...which you're doing.
 
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