scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
All skyline comparisons are personal...even your "quantitative" skyscraper analysis is personal. You chose to exclude the CN Tower but include 12 storey suburban slabs.
|
|
|
Toronto's skyline -- a quantitative approach
- Thread starter Mongo
- Start date
Mongo
Senior Member
Here is a quote from the first post regarding my 'height' metric:
I include non-highrise structures (such as the CN Tower) because they have just as much impact on the city's skyline as an office or residential building. The CN Tower is the most well-known of these, but there are others among the top ten structures in other cities, i.e. Seattle (Space Needle) or Calgary (Calgary Tower).
I cannot include it in the other metrics based on floor count, unless I wanted to accept that half the structures in the skyline would be missing. Every highrise compilation I have seen always includes floor count, but a large number of buildings are always missing their height. Therefore, a metric based on actual height, desirable as it would otherwise be, would be missing those buildings. I prefer to include ALL highrises, at the cost of losing the actual height dimension and replacing it with floors.
I include non-highrise structures (such as the CN Tower) because they have just as much impact on the city's skyline as an office or residential building. The CN Tower is the most well-known of these, but there are others among the top ten structures in other cities, i.e. Seattle (Space Needle) or Calgary (Calgary Tower).
I cannot include it in the other metrics based on floor count, unless I wanted to accept that half the structures in the skyline would be missing. Every highrise compilation I have seen always includes floor count, but a large number of buildings are always missing their height. Therefore, a metric based on actual height, desirable as it would otherwise be, would be missing those buildings. I prefer to include ALL highrises, at the cost of losing the actual height dimension and replacing it with floors.
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
Ah, now it's an SSC thread.
edit - you can pick and choose what buildings to include and what not to in your height and floor calculations but in the end it says nothing about the skyline unless you attach some kind of spatial relationship to the data. Your unimproved data is a starting point only to endless arguments since skylines that are impressive and/or beautiful are so 99% because of building placement. Only if all of Toronto's towers were strung along the waterfront would both numbers and aesthetics compare our skyline favourably with Chicago's.
edit - you can pick and choose what buildings to include and what not to in your height and floor calculations but in the end it says nothing about the skyline unless you attach some kind of spatial relationship to the data. Your unimproved data is a starting point only to endless arguments since skylines that are impressive and/or beautiful are so 99% because of building placement. Only if all of Toronto's towers were strung along the waterfront would both numbers and aesthetics compare our skyline favourably with Chicago's.
Pep'rJack
Active Member
"Ah, now it's an SSC thread."
LOL. How can anyone possibly take any of this 'seriously'?
LOL. How can anyone possibly take any of this 'seriously'?
ganjavih
Senior Member
Sadly, it didn't take long for the new SSC look of the forum to translate to SSC-style content. Hopefully, the mods are on top of this.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Mongo
Senior Member
Wrong. The reason why I went with floor counts was so I would NOT have to 'pick and choose' from among all the highrises, but instead include all of them. Unfortunately it means that I lose the non-highrise towers, but those are still included in the 'height' metric, where all the actual heights I need are available online.
If you had read what I wrote, you would see that there is a lot that can be gleaned from the data I compiled. Total number of highrises, for any floor count starting at 12. Average tower height in floors. Skyline 'height', based on the 10 tallest structures (including towers). Unusual fluctuations in floor counts (i.e. the unusually high number of floor counts that are multiples of ten, in New York). Scale height of a skyline (how rapidly the numbers of highrises diminishes with increasing floor count -- Toronto and New York have similar scale heights, while Chicago had a much higher scale height). Just because this means nothing to YOU, does not mean that others don't find the information useful.
Fine. Let's say that these numbers only comprise 10% of what is needed to judge between skylines. You are saying, 'throw out that 10% of objective facts, I would rather base my opinion stictly on personal, unverifiable, biased opinions'. You do that.
adma
Superstar
Whatever the quality of the components or the ensemble, skylines are banal. Just a buncha mute buildings.
What I'd rather do is go there in person (or virtually thru architectural guide) and know and grasp the buildings and their stories at first hand. Get a lay of the architectural and urban land.
With Chicago, I already have an idea. With Sydney I don't--and it's my fault entirely. I never got the chance to engage to Sydney, because Australia's "way out there".
Screw raw skylines. I'm after the soul...
Mongo
Senior Member
^And not just highrises ... I think that TOBuilt is an absolute treasurehouse of information about Toronto's buildings. I love putting some familiar street in the search box, and simply looking through all the information about buildings that I probably walked past hundreds of times without knowing anything about them.
Too bad that the website's search engine is currently kaput.
Bill
Too bad that the website's search engine is currently kaput.
Bill
Ummagumma66
Active Member
I don't see how comparing skylines to which is better is productive, because its as always a subjective subject...
Yes it's subjective, but we're always making subjective comparisons. Art criticism, whether it's painting or architecture or film or whatever is ultimately subjective despite (hopefully) the consideration of many objective criteria when forming a conclusion about the work.
I think it's interesting to debate the criteria which can or should be applied to the criticism of a skyline.
I don't think it's helpful to call anyone moron or idiot during the debate. Mongo - you will get shut down if you don't cool it. If Scarberian missed something in an early post of yours, you can point that out, but, you know, more nicerer.
42
I think it's interesting to debate the criteria which can or should be applied to the criticism of a skyline.
I don't think it's helpful to call anyone moron or idiot during the debate. Mongo - you will get shut down if you don't cool it. If Scarberian missed something in an early post of yours, you can point that out, but, you know, more nicerer.
42
ganjavih
Senior Member
Nicerer?
Yeah, nicerer for a betterer world.
42er
42er
adma
Superstar
Fed, Federer, Fest
syn
Senior Member
I personally don't care about numbers, etc. They're nice if you want to pick apart who has what, but it doesn't really mean anything aesthetically.
Toronto's skyline IMO is one of the better ones you'll find anywhere. People like to complain, but at night from Centre Island it's about as iconic as any out there...especially with the CN Tower and Skydome. If only they'd light it up more often.
Toronto's skyline IMO is one of the better ones you'll find anywhere. People like to complain, but at night from Centre Island it's about as iconic as any out there...especially with the CN Tower and Skydome. If only they'd light it up more often.