[outoftheice]

Just brutal. The West side is a half-assed attempt at activating the street... No articulation to create interesting definition on a wall that spans an entire block and no large scale garage door style walls to help the insides of these places spill out onto the street. At least it's glass so that's something I suppose. Also no effort to provide an interesting streetscape beyond some trees and benches.

The north side is essentially a big blank wall with two entrances. It doesn't appear to have any street facing retail or restaurants. Essentially nothing that will draw people further east along 12th Ave to discover the Rundle Ruins, the Calgary Stampede Youth Campus or the Elbow River Park. These areas already feel completely disconnected from the rest of the neighbourhood so in my mind the fact the design of the northern facade doesn't make an effort to tie these places into the neighbourhood is a mortal sin.

The east side just gives up completely and the whole building turns its back on the youth campus and the handful of old buildings that remain in that area and could serve as some pretty cool pubs. It's almost as if the building was designed by people who never bothered to do a proper site visit and could dream about what the area had the potential to become. Given COVID, I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't the actual case.

On top of how the building interacts with the streets and the neighbourhood the design itself is extremely bland so I can't even excuse the lazy urban integration with an "at least the design is iconic". All I can picture for the north side mesh screen is the same bait and switch we got with the Platform Parkade.

Gah. The fact this is going to sail through Council and some hard core urbanists on Council are singing its praises drives me bonkers. What a disappointment.

 

[darwink]

These are the potential all day every day activation spaces. I think they could do better. Restaurants facing the convention centre, which is nice. I think they could have easily added more of a retail screen, with some not very deep CRUs rented for bloody cheap. Or at the least a front more like the west side, on the north side.

 

[googspecial]

I think I like the limestone - it's suffering from poor scale factor for the texture in the 3D model though. Overall there could be more of it, I was honestly hoping they'd use some stone. I think the gold/yellow and amber/red colour accents are a good touch that very much say "Flames" to me, at least subtly. A lighting feature (or actual flames lol) would help that out too. What I don't I don't like is how much dark materials are used. I make out "Metal Panel - Charcoal" on those drawings and there's way too much of it. Also not nearly enough transparent glass at the ground level on some elevations. These both allow the huge white wrap around pieces to really stand out IMO. Amount of materials is ok, just the proportions are off.

Olympic Way side isn't so bad, but I wish 12 Ave looked more like it at the ground level. There's too much nothing wall, more articulation would be nice.

All in all I wanna say (generously) 6/10. Less dark materials, some more transparency, and breaking up the massing better might push it to a 7 lol. I guess I don't hate it and there was always the suspicion this would be a big ugly box in some way or another. There is a chance it might turn out better than renderings too.


Edit: It looks like they're going to try and keep the existing street trees on the north and west sides. These trees have a good head start into maturity already and will help out the street level imo.

 

[Duck Lightning]

From what I've seen of the new renders the "White" surfaces that people are complaining of are actually polished metal (think dominion)

 

[Duck Lightning]

Still I think that north wall could definitely use something like LED signage and the structure would be better off with a copper rather than polished metal (I'm assuming aluminum) exterior to better match with the new BMO Centre expansion.

 

[Beazley66]

The white surfaces are actually listed as a perforated metal panel - silver. It appears that it's a parametric driven design, not unlike the parametric design used for the Glenbow façade, but smaller apertures more based on a mini diagrid.

 

[Duck Lightning]

1. Too many blank flat surfaces
2. bad colouration for the area and building use
3. Not enough windows on the arena section (the upper concourse is going to be rather cavernous.)
Did I miss anything?

 

[Beazley66]

1. Too many blank flat surfaces
2. bad colouration for the area and building use
3. Not enough windows on the arena section (the upper concourse is going to be rather cavernous.)
Did I miss anything?

I think you may have covered it. I worked on a few sports venues, one smaller hockey arena which was never built. It was a joint venture with Populous. What I learned from them was the at that time new found importance of bringing in natural light along concourse levels and the bowl. I don't know if that is possible with this design. If the white skin is perforated, I'm not sure it is consistently perforated to have that much of an impact. There is so little to go on. Frankly the renderings of the public realm are so, so underwhelming. Where is the energy, and the vibrancy? I didn't see that well marketed.

 

[Duck Lightning]

Looks like the boxy structure on the SE corner is an attached 3 level parkade

 

[ShotArch]

UBS looks like a train statio

Very certain the train station-y look of UBS arena was inspired by the American Airlines center (Dallas) and Nationwide Arena (Columbus). Boxy, stately brick and glass, the resemblance is uncanny.

Heck, they even took the corner "lighthouses" right off the Bluejacket's building

 

[The Familia]

I think I like the limestone - it's suffering from poor scale factor for the texture in the 3D model though. Overall there could be more of it, I was honestly hoping they'd use some stone. I think the gold/yellow and amber/red colour accents are a good touch that very much say "Flames" to me, at least subtly. A lighting feature (or actual flames lol) would help that out too. What I don't I don't like is how much dark materials are used. I make out "Metal Panel - Charcoal" on those drawings and there's way too much of it. Also not nearly enough transparent glass at the ground level on some elevations. These both allow the huge white wrap around pieces to really stand out IMO. Amount of materials is ok, just the proportions are off.

Olympic Way side isn't so bad, but I wish 12 Ave looked more like it at the ground level. There's too much nothing wall, more articulation would be nice.

All in all I wanna say (generously) 6/10. Less dark materials, some more transparency, and breaking up the massing better might push it to a 7 lol. I guess I don't hate it and there was always the suspicion this would be a big ugly box in some way or another. There is a chance it might turn out better than renderings too.


Edit: It looks like they're going to try and keep the existing street trees on the north and west sides. These trees have a good head start into maturity already and will help out the street level imo.

You need to post this on Calgary Puck. The Flames lemmings are loving what they see so far.

 

[Meikkhaell]

Excuse the 2 minute photoshop job but look at how much nicer this building would be if they used a copper facade rather than that weird dark grey. It actually enhances the look of the white/polished metal elements, rather than making them stick out like a sore thumb. And as others have said, it would just be LOGICAL to have a copper facade, as it would tie in with other buildings in the area. This change alone brings this from a 5/10 to a 7.5/10 for me.

 

[kev_427]

If they changed the colour scheme and got rid of the dark strip around the top edge I would be fine with it. It would still pale in comparison to the new Vegas arena or the Golden State arena, but I guess that would cost significantly more.

 

[Duck Lightning]

So far Flames fans are liking it

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Oh… my god. That is absolutely hideous.