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I wouldn't want FCP changed that much...I'm fond of it's ugliness since it's so unashamedly ugly.

Wasn't Hydrogen Bizorky back on ezboard? That's what I assumed. If not, my mistake.
 
maybe there's another FCP underneath FCP. maybe it's outgrowing its cladding!
 
Are you suggesting it's moulting?

that's the word i was looking for. :D yup! that's how they add floors to skyscrapers. by the time it's done, there should be another 10 floors. ;)
 
Crumbling skyscrapers a rare event: expert
Canadian Press

May 16, 2007 at 6:08 PM EDT

Toronto — Canada's tallest office building is more than 30 years old and just shed a large chunk of siding, but an architecture expert who found himself stuck in the traffic jam created by the mishap said Wednesday that there's no reason to worry.

As he slowly negotiated his car around the cordoned off First Canadian Place in an attempt to get to his office just blocks away, University of Toronto architecture professor David Bowick cautioned from his cell phone that such incidents are rare — given that building technology has improved drastically over the years.

“I don't think that there's any reason I wouldn't walk down the corner of King and Bay [streets] tomorrow,†Mr. Bowick said, referring to the intersection that's considered the heart of the country's financial community.

“I wouldn't worry that because this happened once that it's about to happen again.â€

Videos

Chunk falls off downtown Toronto office tower

Roads still closed after marble piece breaks off First Canadian Place

The City of Toronto issued a work order against First Canadian Place after a slab of marble tumbled from the building's 54th floor onto the third floor mezzanine around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The incident prompted officials to close down surrounding roads, causing traffic jams and lengthy commuter delays in the city's downtown core.

Engineers are looking into what happened and noted the inspection will likely last several more days, said Brookfield Properties spokeswoman Melissa Coley.

“We're working closely with everyone to remedy the situation and get the building fully operational and back in action as soon as possible,†she said, adding business inside the building was not affected. “The safety of the public is our No. 1 priority.â€

A tile replacement program was ongoing when the company bought the building 18 months ago and tiles are inspected every six months and replaced as required, she said.

The incident was reminiscent of a situation in March during which the CN Tower began shedding shards of ice following a storm. A major downtown highway was closed for 24 hours as a result.

While First Canadian Place, which was constructed in 1975, is considered to have a very modern outer “envelope,†Mr. Bowick said buildings that have undergone retrofitting could experience problems.

Older buildings, for instance, often weren't insulated, he said, noting that doing so years later could lead to things like frost buildup and deterioration of brick.

On the other hand, Mr. Bowick said some older design models are much more robust than today's buildings.

“These new building techniques are much better than the old ones in some respects, but there's always a loss with the gain,†he said.

“As we change systems, we introduce things to solve one problem and abandon a system, and in doing so, sometimes we create a new problem that we didn't anticipate.â€

In this case, Mr. Bowick speculated that a corroded anchor or a faulty stone could be to blame as corrosion is common on older anchors that aren't made of stainless steel, while natural materials like marble have inherent flaws.
 
So if it does not match your subjective fashion sense (and it is just a fashion opinion and nothing more), it is considered banal and the thinking of "pinheads?"

Why should such an idea illicit such an extreme comment?

Well, if more SSC dipsticks stood in awe of Ada Louise Huxtable the way that film buffs stand in awe of Pauline Kael, maybe the context of such "extreme comments" might be understood as more than mere "subjective fashion sense". Know thy history IOW.

Essentially, in the context of the 60s/70s, contemporary megascrapers w/vertical pinstriping had this funny tendency to be *loathed* by architectural critics, i.e. as simplistic, scaleless schmaltz schlock kitsch cartoon travesties of whatever urban skyscraper-city enlightenment Rockefeller Center once might have represented. Think of Rock Center W; think of Standard/Amoco/Aon in Chicago, and a lot else that Ed Stone did (eg. GM in NYC); think, of course, of WTC. Hated. Hated. Hated, over and over again.

Yes, time heals. But not enough to make "verticalizing" FCP a desirable option, esp. given the costs and logistics involved. In fact, the fact that FCP's got punched-out horizontal slits rather than vertical stripes might itself be a sober reaction to the bad rep such verticalizing got by the mid-70s; in an age of Citicorp-style high tech, it could at least halfway pass as au courant. (Though for some reason, the Exchange Tower returned to verticals--and perhaps because the quarry and economic reasoning ran out, substituted granite for marble; the result being probably the dullest, dreariest tower of all in the financial core. But hey; best to keep all facade patterns, if not facing materials, as documents of their time...)
 
When it was built, the notched corners of the FCP tower matched the bank's angular blue logo. When they changed the logo to that silly "Beemo" thing a couple of years ago I knew it would end in tears. Sure enough, the building is taking a cruel revenge.
 
FCP even has its own theme song
barbarians-a.jpg
 
Otherwise, a couple of other observations: (1) this incident certainly demonstrates a fringe benefit of the PATH system (i.e. FCP remaining useable even when the streets around it are closed off), and (2) we got ourselves an impromptu preview of the proposed King Street closure...
 
Queen Street was a complete mess today. With the weather, the more than double the usual number of streetcars, Dundas also closed, I guess Adelaide was also closed?

And King Street will be closed for quite a while yet. Maybe the building inspectors will condemn FCP! (We can hope)
 
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