When Buildings Try Too Hard (refs to ROM and 4SC)

[Whoaccio]

Bah, a ferris wheel, how preposterous! We all know the only logical vanity project is for Toronto to build a giant nickel! Either that or a skyscraper made of popsicle sticks.

 

[Urban Shocker]

We're a mature enough city to absorb all kinds of new forms, and the approaches we've taken on our different cultural buildings strike me as quite appropriate. The opera company doesn't need circus barker architecture to make the tour buses screech to a halt, so that thousands of people can be enticed through their doors from morning to night - so they didn't employ it. Large cultural institutions - the AGO and the ROM, for instance - do need to attract the masses, so visually louder forms suit their requirements nicely. The look of the Sharp Centre nicely captures the values that a design school teaches, and the form attracts design students from all over the world to study there.

 

[Archivist]

US, I agree very much with that post.

 

[ShonTron]

So do I!

I can nitpick at the Four Seasons Centre (the Queen Street side), but in essence, it does what it is supposed to.

 

[TKTKTK]

We're a mature enough city to absorb all kinds of new forms, and the approaches we've taken on our different cultural buildings strike me as quite appropriate. The opera company doesn't need circus barker architecture to make the tour buses screech to a halt, so that thousands of people can be enticed through their doors from morning to night - so they didn't employ it. Large cultural institutions - the AGO and the ROM, for instance - do need to attract the masses, so visually louder forms suit their requirements nicely. The look of the Sharp Centre nicely captures the values that a design school teaches, and the form attracts design students from all over the world to study there.

I think there's more reason than 'Architecture-as-roadside-advertisement' to build visually engaging buildings. I think we all know that if 4SC had more than a bare-bones budget it would have had a more expressive and interesting interior and exterior. They did the best they could do with what little they had.

To suggest its modesty is a function of some higher order aesthetic is...ummm...hopeful? But also more than a little transparent


I wont ever buy into the false dichotomy that asking for the 4SC to be more than it is, is asking for circus-barker architecture The building doesn't go far enough for what it is - though it would have been a perfectly lovely public pool.


I love the Sharp Centre, though maybe it partly proves the point about some institutions needing to entice people with their form, because their content is less-than. :S

 

[Pinkie]

I like the idea of a ferris wheel... on the Island

 

[interchange42]

Screw giant ferris wheels. Let's build the worlds largest, glass enclosed roller coaster along the waterfront. Take the same looking pods you'll find on the london eye, attach those to some tracks and have them speed through the downtown skyscrapers. Now there's an attraction!

I don't want some silly glass enclosed roller coaster speeding through downtown skyscrapers as an attraction.

...I want one as transit. Make transit exciting enough, and it'll be an attraction too, but first make it practical.

42

 

[adma]

I wont ever buy into the false dichotomy that asking for the 4SC to be more than it is, is asking for circus-barker architecture The building doesn't go far enough for what it is - though it would have been a perfectly lovely public pool.

Hey, Jack Diamond did the Downtown Y, so don't say he ain't experienced at public-poolish affairs...

 

[adma]

I don't want some silly glass enclosed roller coaster speeding through downtown skyscrapers as an attraction.

Do the Delta Chelsea's waterslide tubes count?

 

[shilly]

Do those actually work? Everytime I go by, a little bit of me wants to go inside them.