voxpopulicosmicum
Senior Member
I heard a rumour that the developer is now considering an office building for this site. I love rumours.
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- Thread starter LUMBER GUY
- Start date
grey
Senior Member
Possible candidates:
- Manulife 1000 footer
- W Hotel
- Comedy third option
- Manulife 1000 footer
- W Hotel
- Comedy third option
Oh, I doubt that in today's climate we're going to get an announcement of a W: cutbacks mean it will only be a V (or a U, if you're more aural than visual).
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BMyers
Active Member
Globe Article
THE PERFECT HOUSE: ARCHITECTURE
Simple designs to heal a city's wounded heart
Low-rise buildings proposed for downtown sites follow a modest recipe
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
jmays@globeandmail.com
January 16, 2009
Of all the arts, architecture is the most public, and the one that exerts the most subtle, pervasive influence on the way we live our lives. It's an art that occasionally brings forth masterpieces. But making standout gems is not what architecture is finally about.
Rather, it's about creating livable cities, doing infill and repair, fashioning good urban textures and attractive streets - the everyday contexts that sustain the multifarious business of living.
Toronto needs a lot of new architecture, in both of the senses I am giving the word here. The city could use more important monuments, especially more tall, graceful and daring skyscrapers. And heaven knows, there are superb contemporary architects, here and abroad, who can give them to us. But our greatest need now is for solid, ordinary buildings in ordinary places, ones that serve to heal the injuries (such as the flight of blue-collar jobs and shops) in Toronto's past.
Last week, I studied plans for three residential structures of this ordinary kind, all proposed for the old industrial district bisected by Wellington Street, on the lower west side of Toronto's inner city.
Designed by architect Dermot Sweeny, principal in the firm of Sweeny Sterling Finlayson & Co., these buildings are modestly modern gestures destined for an area that does not want or need flamboyant architectural avant-gardism.
The streetscapes are defined by stolid brick mid-rise warehouses and factories put up a hundred years ago, and, so far, the architects who have been supplying condominium blocks for this newly-stylish downtown neighbourhood have kept their contributions true to the machine age aesthetics of the place. Mr. Sweeny, for his part, has pursued a similar design strategy: simple, concise, reparative.
The project slated for 456 Wellington St. West is a good example of what Mr. Sweeny does in all three of these buildings. The composition is a boxy affair of glass and masonry stacked up eight storeys on the street and nine storeys at the rear, the two parts separated by a communal green space, and all stretched out on a long and narrow lot. (The municipal tax code of yesteryear, Mr. Sweeny told me, made assessments on the basis of a factory's street frontage, which encouraged the long, skinny industrial lots in the Wellington Street area.)
There is nothing at all fancy, eccentric or revolutionary about the exterior styling. It does the job of announcing the building's role as urban infill, and makes no further fuss about itself.
The size of the basic unit at 456 Wellington is 1,250 square feet. But there is nothing in the architecture to stop a buyer from making a neat, clean linkage of one unit with another, either above or adjacent: permanent walls are absent throughout the interior of the building.
Customizing the space in each suite is also a cinch, since the entire mechanical, electrical and electronic outfitting of every suite - heating and air conditioning, cables and conduits and so on - is self-contained in the hollow floor of the unit. While these moves are not unheard of in residential construction, they are rare, and it's good to know they're being put to work in downtown Toronto buildings.
Like 456 Wellington, the edifice scheduled for nearby 620 King St. West sits exactly on a pre-existing lot, 50 by 100 feet; Mr. Sweeny says he does not assemble properties. But unlike 456 Wellington, which is situated on a quiet thoroughfare lined mostly by offices and some residences, the King Street design actively responds to its location on a busy commercial avenue by incorporating retail at grade.
That said, it's still just another glass and masonry box, though boosted up from the sidewalk by a red brick podium.
The basic unit size, 2,200 square feet, is larger than 456 Wellington, but its fundamental inspiration - to provide maximum flexibility of the interior space, to insure openness in the construction for various recombinations and connections - is the same.
The third of Mr. Sweeny's buildings, at 504 Wellington St. West, is the most deluxe, at least in terms of price: $1,000 a square foot. At about 2,400 square feet (including a spacious terrace), the unit size is largest of the three. But in the matter of exterior design, this pile of glass slabs is ordinary indeed, except for one feature: the tall, dramatic screen of translucent glass and marble intended to mark the ground-floor entrance, a touch that just might bring a welcome dab of ritz to dowdy old Wellington.
But the most important point to be made about all three buildings has to do with their large size and their interior appointments, which give minimal obstruction to change.
If downtown Toronto is ever to see downtown condominium dwellings suitable for all stages of life, from coupledom through the child-rearing years to empty-nesthood, such spaciousness and freedom from structural constraint must become much more common than it is at the present time.
While Mr. Sweeny's structures lack flair, they offer ample opportunities for the kind of multigenerational living we want to see in our inner city.
THE PERFECT HOUSE: ARCHITECTURE
Simple designs to heal a city's wounded heart
Low-rise buildings proposed for downtown sites follow a modest recipe
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
jmays@globeandmail.com
January 16, 2009
Of all the arts, architecture is the most public, and the one that exerts the most subtle, pervasive influence on the way we live our lives. It's an art that occasionally brings forth masterpieces. But making standout gems is not what architecture is finally about.
Rather, it's about creating livable cities, doing infill and repair, fashioning good urban textures and attractive streets - the everyday contexts that sustain the multifarious business of living.
Toronto needs a lot of new architecture, in both of the senses I am giving the word here. The city could use more important monuments, especially more tall, graceful and daring skyscrapers. And heaven knows, there are superb contemporary architects, here and abroad, who can give them to us. But our greatest need now is for solid, ordinary buildings in ordinary places, ones that serve to heal the injuries (such as the flight of blue-collar jobs and shops) in Toronto's past.
Last week, I studied plans for three residential structures of this ordinary kind, all proposed for the old industrial district bisected by Wellington Street, on the lower west side of Toronto's inner city.
Designed by architect Dermot Sweeny, principal in the firm of Sweeny Sterling Finlayson & Co., these buildings are modestly modern gestures destined for an area that does not want or need flamboyant architectural avant-gardism.
The streetscapes are defined by stolid brick mid-rise warehouses and factories put up a hundred years ago, and, so far, the architects who have been supplying condominium blocks for this newly-stylish downtown neighbourhood have kept their contributions true to the machine age aesthetics of the place. Mr. Sweeny, for his part, has pursued a similar design strategy: simple, concise, reparative.
The project slated for 456 Wellington St. West is a good example of what Mr. Sweeny does in all three of these buildings. The composition is a boxy affair of glass and masonry stacked up eight storeys on the street and nine storeys at the rear, the two parts separated by a communal green space, and all stretched out on a long and narrow lot. (The municipal tax code of yesteryear, Mr. Sweeny told me, made assessments on the basis of a factory's street frontage, which encouraged the long, skinny industrial lots in the Wellington Street area.)
There is nothing at all fancy, eccentric or revolutionary about the exterior styling. It does the job of announcing the building's role as urban infill, and makes no further fuss about itself.
The size of the basic unit at 456 Wellington is 1,250 square feet. But there is nothing in the architecture to stop a buyer from making a neat, clean linkage of one unit with another, either above or adjacent: permanent walls are absent throughout the interior of the building.
Customizing the space in each suite is also a cinch, since the entire mechanical, electrical and electronic outfitting of every suite - heating and air conditioning, cables and conduits and so on - is self-contained in the hollow floor of the unit. While these moves are not unheard of in residential construction, they are rare, and it's good to know they're being put to work in downtown Toronto buildings.
Like 456 Wellington, the edifice scheduled for nearby 620 King St. West sits exactly on a pre-existing lot, 50 by 100 feet; Mr. Sweeny says he does not assemble properties. But unlike 456 Wellington, which is situated on a quiet thoroughfare lined mostly by offices and some residences, the King Street design actively responds to its location on a busy commercial avenue by incorporating retail at grade.
That said, it's still just another glass and masonry box, though boosted up from the sidewalk by a red brick podium.
The basic unit size, 2,200 square feet, is larger than 456 Wellington, but its fundamental inspiration - to provide maximum flexibility of the interior space, to insure openness in the construction for various recombinations and connections - is the same.
The third of Mr. Sweeny's buildings, at 504 Wellington St. West, is the most deluxe, at least in terms of price: $1,000 a square foot. At about 2,400 square feet (including a spacious terrace), the unit size is largest of the three. But in the matter of exterior design, this pile of glass slabs is ordinary indeed, except for one feature: the tall, dramatic screen of translucent glass and marble intended to mark the ground-floor entrance, a touch that just might bring a welcome dab of ritz to dowdy old Wellington.
But the most important point to be made about all three buildings has to do with their large size and their interior appointments, which give minimal obstruction to change.
If downtown Toronto is ever to see downtown condominium dwellings suitable for all stages of life, from coupledom through the child-rearing years to empty-nesthood, such spaciousness and freedom from structural constraint must become much more common than it is at the present time.
While Mr. Sweeny's structures lack flair, they offer ample opportunities for the kind of multigenerational living we want to see in our inner city.
TKTKTK
Senior Member
Isn't this a bit like saying we need more Rosedales because those houses are large enough to raise a family in?
Is no consideration given to affordable family living? Or is that concept beyond the scope of JBM?
Praising $1,000/sqft vertical mansions as being the vanguard of urban family living seems a bit rich
Interesting new info: two threads, this one included, now have more complete titles now. We don't have a thread for 504 Wellington West however; that's new.
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H
Hydrogen
Guest
I love rumours, too. I heard that it was originally supposed to be an office building, and then there was a crafty swithcheroo to a condo building.
smuncky
Senior Member
i found out a couple of days ago that this development will have a stacked parking system.
So… the project imagined for this site as per the Globe article above never came to pass. Allied REIT eventually bought the property—currently housing the Addisons Residence night club—in 2016. It's going to become a new park connecting mid-block from The Well site across Wellington to the Allied/Westbank King St. West project to the north. Allied bought it to fulfill park dedication requirements for The Well.
Nothing new right now—for the moment we await a submission to the City to pave the way for this. Claude Cormier is designing, and it'll be focused on cats—I just wanted to bring this thread up-to-date and get it back on the radar.
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Nothing new right now—for the moment we await a submission to the City to pave the way for this. Claude Cormier is designing, and it'll be focused on cats—I just wanted to bring this thread up-to-date and get it back on the radar.
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junctionist
Senior Member
I can't wait for Cormier's hedgehog park.
Kenojuak
Active Member
Allied did not buy it. The partnership behind The Well, RAD (Front-Wellington) Nominee Inc., bought it.
The Well partnership is not building the park. They paid $2M to the City and now the City will design and build the park. It will go through normal procurement channels. Claude Cormier may or may not be hired for it.
The structure on site is coming down now.
condovo
Senior Member
Was this the site of the planned cat park?
Kenojuak
Active Member
Yes
condovo
Senior Member
Bummer
Red Mars
Senior Member
Pics from May 13, 2019
