Rascacielo said:
The buildings you mentioned are all luxury or near-luxury developments, but I agree that quality materials and aesthetically pleasing designs don't have to be equal to a luxury project. Take 411 Church - it wasn't marketed as a luxury project, and yet it looks pleasant, with a somewhat unique honeycomb design and notable absence of gray spandrels. I'm sure it cost about the same to build as a regular City Place tower. Even the TCHC building across from Canoe Landing looks better than most City Place towers. So, yes, with some imagination, you can build better-than-average and non-depressing-looking buildings at reasonable costs. But why bother if units in towers churned out from standard templates using the cheapest materials sell out anyway? The problem lies with buyers and investors who don't care about aesthetics and thus enabling developers to put up garbage buildings.
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That fact that better looking buildings sell for a higher price means that people care for design. People buy less attractive building only because they could not afford better.
 
Deadpool X said:
That fact that better looking buildings sell for a higher price means that people care for design. People buy less attractive building only because they could not afford better.
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Plausible and valid points, but I think the bigger issue comes down to cultural sophistication. I find that Torontonians/most Canadians--in marked contrast with peoples with richer histories and/or a more firmly developed sense of identity/pride--remain generally unappreciative of aesthetic/design finesse or even the need to invest in such (not a criticism, just an observation!).

Cheap spandrel condos continue to go up precisely because there remains sufficient demand for these buildings of lacklustre aesthetic quality. They would not continue to go up if a critical mass of us didn't continue buying units in them (conceivably the case in places such as Italy or Denmark).
 
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telefann said:
Cheap spandrel condos continue to go up precisely because there remains sufficient demand for these buildings of lacklustre aesthetic quality. They would not continue to go up if we didn't continue buying units in them.
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Housing crisis is responsible for that. Housing is a basic need. If buying a good looking building costs you all your savings plus more, then people will have to settle for something less attractive. If it were a buyer's market, things would have been different.
 
You're both right, but in different contexts.

It's been a "beggars can't be choosers" housing market for a while now.

But it's also true the culture here is quite blinkered in some ways. To this point, a Romanian colleague recently told me she found Toronto shabby "even after Romania" (her words).
 
Undead said:
You're both right, but in different contexts.

It's been a "beggars can't be choosers" housing market for a while now.

But it's also true the culture here is quite blinkered in some ways. To this point, a Romanian colleague recently told me she found Toronto shabby "even after Romania" (her words).
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oh please. Aside from the old city in Bucharest the entire country of Romania is a dump compared to Toronto.

with that said, the upkeep of parks and public spaces like roads are usually much better in Europe. Also the electrical wires hanging everywhere gives off a shabby look
 
Niklas said:
oh please. Aside from the old city in Bucharest the entire country of Romania is a dump compared to Toronto.

with that said, the upkeep of parks and public spaces like roads are usually much better in Europe. Also the electrical wires hanging everywhere gives off a shabby look
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You'll have to take that up with her lol.
 
telefann said:
I'm far from an expert on the economics of condo development, but a return to solid exterior walls/cladding materials (brick, stucco, etc.) and non-grey/bland colour choices (e.g., warm natural reddish tones, bright aqua/white, to name only a few examples) would be a great place to start. They lend at least a sense of solidity/permanence/dignity to buildings meant to be background/filler and aimed for "the masses".

Scores of cities around the world seem able to avoid the Torontonian scourge of cheap-looking back-painted charcoal grey window wall/spandrel/mullions without breaking the bank, apparently. Perhaps it's our still-ever-present cultural inheritance of industrial blue-collarism + Anglo-Scottish Protestantism/Presbyterianism + subordinate colonialism to blame, resulting in a deep-seated aversion to anything that transcends aesthetic/creative mediocrity and stingy/penny-pinching parsimony (@isaidso)? Just speculating.
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Undead said:
You'll have to take that up with her lol.
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Is there a UT thread that deals specifically with architectural design and built form in this city , without impoverishing the Buildings thread of commentary ?
 
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Jan 29, 2023

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