What is a point tower exactly?

[khris]

I hear the term "point tower" coming up more often now in condo ads, and on here.
What exactly is the definition of a point tower? And what other "types" of towers are there besides point towers?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Point Tower - tall building with a typical Gross Floor Construction Area not exceeding 8,000 SF (743m2).

http://www.toronto.ca/planning/pdf/tallbuildings_udg_aug17_final.pdf (p. 4)

The rest of the document should have the answers you seek.

AoD

 

[CGM]

Great article

 

[khris]

That is a great document, but a bit long, so I'll have to read it later when I have more time.

 

[Mongo]

I cannot say that I like that definition -- there is nothing there about the building's shape, only its area per floor. For example, 1 King West almost qualifies as a point tower (it's about 10% too large to qualify), but if it were a bit thinner, would anybody think it was a point tower?

In my opinion, a point tower should not have any horizontal dimension more than say twice the perpendicular horizontal dimension, so that it looks fairly slender from the ground, from any viewing angle. Something like 1 King West would be called something else, perhaps a "blade tower", even if it has floor areas below 8000 sf.

 

[Redroom Studios]

any tower that is tall and slender enough to illicit stares of awe and make people "point" at them.

 

[adma]

Gee whiz, I thought a point tower was something like the Transamerica Pyramid, or that thingy Harry Stinson's planning for Hamilton; real pointy towers, those

 

[Architecturefan]

one of the criteria, in addition to the size is normally a central corridor

 

[adma]

What do you mean by "central corridor"? My assumption is that the ultimate in point towers wouldn't have much more than a corridor wholly or partially encircling the elevator core. "Central corridor" makes me think more of the end-to-ends you find in slabs, not points...

 

[Architecturefan]

Slabs, at least for condominium buildings, generally have a single loaded corridor with units on one side, when I say a centrally loaded corridor I mean pretty much what you just said, a corridor encircling the elevator shaft

 

[Urban Shocker]

Peter Clewes - the Great Man himself - referred to his three Distillery point towers ( which have central elevator cores ) thusly: "They are wraparound buildings that are sculpted" when interviewed by John Bentley Mays in April.

 

[Jarrek]

A "point tower" is not a "concrete slab", as some would say ...

 

[alklay]

The question is, what is the point of a point tower?

 

[Urban Shocker]

Genesis 11: 1-9.

 

[Urban Shocker]

" Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a lakefront plain in the land of Ontario and settled there.

And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a point tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’

The Devil came up to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.

And the Devil said, ‘Look, they are one people, these Torontonians, and they have all one language - good design; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Come, let us go up, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’

So the Devil scattered NIMBYs abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.

Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Devil confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Devil scattered NIMBYs abroad over the face of all the earth."