Silence&Motion
Senior Member
I've haven't visited or even seen how any of the small campuses u've mentioned look. I think Uofc has come a long way in just the last 10 years, with the new eng building, tfdl, Talyor institute, the EEEL building, and now this redevelopment. Thats a lot of changes in a short time span and the campus is only going to get bigger as Calgary's population grows. I think some of the really old buildings like Social Sciences are holding the campus back from looking top tier visually. Now I'm personally not a big fan of any architecture from post-war to the late 1990's, I think it all looks depressing but it wouldn't be fair for me to generalize all architecture from this time period because some really good stuff has come out and lasted the test of time. But obviously I will have bias against any 1960's design but from my personal opinion I really do think Uofc is in the top 10 easily for best looking campuses right now. This is just an opinion based on the campuses that I've seen in person like UBC UofT, UofA and other main campuses I've seen online. I really do think that after a couple more redevelopments of some older buildings alongside a few more additions I don't see why UofC can't be a contender for top 3 or even top 5 for sure.
I'd say all of the buildings you mentioned are pretty standard fare that you can find on any university campus that has built new buildings in the last 20 years. I like EEEL, but the TFDL is really ho-hum (particularly because libraries are often an architectural highlight on many campuses). When Calgary starts building architecture on the level of, say, the Donnelly Centre, then it might start breaking away from the pack. I agree with Maestro that U of T Mississauga's post-2000 buildings are, taken as a whole, exceptional.
I think of Calgary as being very similar to Waterloo: similar aged, similar sized, both designed around a ring road, both have expanded steadily since they were founded so that they have a mixture of all the different architectural trends (brutalism, pomo, etc.). Waterloo has taken a few more risks architecturally speaking (the Davis Centre, the Quantum-Nano Centre), but it's debatable whether those risks made the campus more beautiful or simply more interesting.
Anyway, hopefully this building turns out like the renderings. It could be a game changer for the campus.