[adma]

I think his newer work looks kinda dated, certainly the 4SC looks dated. But I also think you're also taking a somewhat light-hearted eye-poking exchange a little too seriously.

Uh, how does it look "dated", exactly? I tend to see it disparaged more for parsimony than for so-called datedness--and I'd probably tend to agree with US that Corus is less likely to "date" than a whole lot of the QueensQuayCityPlace condo towers to the west...

 

[Whoaccio]

I'm more opposed to the notion being thrown around that the global financiapocalypse will mark the dawn of a new Diamondonian utopia. If you replace "starchitecure" with "bourgeoisie," these pronouncements about the telelogical progress of austere modernism* read like a pamphlet to some second rate college Leninist group. It is just far too naive and revolutionary to be taken seriously. In case people haven't noticed, homo economicus is greedy and because of it we wipe our asses with toilet paper instead of leaves and have computers to issue these juvenile denunciations against whatever the cultural pariah du jour is. Apparently bankers and their retinue nowadays. How dare they try to live in something designed with more than 6 planes!

*I find the idea of austere modernism somewhat puzzling. How much is an Eames Chair nowadays? How much does it cost to go down to some chic modern furniture shop and spend through the nose on minimalism? I don't say this to discredit that, but denouncing one example of blatant conspicuous consumption in favor of the previous is ridiculous. If modesty were at all an issue we would all live in suburban McMansions stocked with Leon's furniture, shop in a Smart Center with some ridiculous facade and work in nondescript office park. Even holding the 4SC up as some wonderful example of modernist populism strikes me as ridiculous. It is a 200m publicly funded complex designed to house an activity that hasn't been popular with mainstream pop culture for decades. At the very least we could drop with the pretense that it is somehow akin to a soup kitchen.

 

[TKTKTK]

Uh, how does it look "dated", exactly? I tend to see it disparaged more for parsimony than for so-called datedness--and I'd probably tend to agree with US that Corus is less likely to "date" than a whole lot of the QueensQuayCityPlace condo towers to the west...

How does 4SC look dated? Its awnings, its glass, its materials, its massing...I think you're being obtuse by pretending not to have noticed.

And maybe you're right; Corus might not look dated, but it also doesn't look like much of anything at all. A big glass box that could have been built at any time, in any business park.

 

[Tewder]

This notion of a hate-on for Diamond is also irksome. Diamond does solid work, and the spareness of his designs can be beautiful and effective in certain contexts. Does anybody really question this? The issue is with a rote dogmatic approach being applied regardless of context, and with context I also mean 'mandate'. Diamond's approach to the Mariinsky may be completely appropriate to its context in a way that his Corus for the waterfront isn't. The Bilbao effect isn't just about drawing 'tourists'. If we take a clue from Archivist who defines it as, "the perfect building in the perfect place for the perfect purpose. " then we understand why Corus disappoints.

 

[Urban Shocker]

It's interesting, in light of how we see things here, that the writer of that rather reactionary opinion piece that TKTKTK posted and Terry Smith ( who wrote the first of the two items I linked to ) both see starchitecture as late-modernism.

Smith's piece also touches the nerve that sets off so many hereabouts whenever it's mentioned - Debord's identification of a society based on spectacle, images of unfulfilled desire, and the sort of commodity fetishism that includes architecture. Hardly a new critique, but one that still brings howls of outrage from the fanboys who dismiss the less high-fashion approach to design that people like Diamond take, whenever it's quoted.

 

[Archivist]

Tewder, that's a good post. Too often, people seem to entrench themselves into camps and then overstate their case. I pass by Diamond's YMCA every day, and used the facility for many years (from the condition I'm in now you can tell I no longer do, but that's another issue...). It never fails to thrill me, and never fails to convince me that it's a fantastic building that has held up well. The central stairway provides the physical manifestation of the metaphor of the struggle for fitness, as well as acting as a main street for the complex, and I can't count the times when I lingered, watching people play basketball or whatever. Just a fabulous building to use and to walk by, that was also recognized with Canada's highest architectural award. People who constantly bash Diamond need to consider his body of work and contribution to the city more closely.

Re: Corus. I will wait and see. For me, I find that renderings are a really poor substitute for what the building will be, and I need to be present in and around a building multiple times before making an assessment. The Four Seasons is a mixed bag, as the architectural elites of our city have pointed out in several places at several times.

 

[adma]

How does 4SC look dated? Its awnings, its glass, its materials, its massing...I think you're being obtuse by pretending not to have noticed.

But you're not explaining how that denotes "dated".

"Spartan" might be the kind of word you're looking for, and it comes more to the nub of what the criticism of 4SC has been about.

But as far as "datedness" goes, it's a building that is very plausibly, credibly of its time and place, and of a time and place that's close enough to the present as to still hold a certain credible currency. It's just not a flamboyant oh-wow potboiler a la GehryLibeskindAlsop, nor does it seek to be. Must it?

It doesn't mean that the criticism isn't altogether unmerited; but when it comes to "datedness", it's only "dated" to the kinds of Sunday Painter Urbanists with an excessive degree of GehryLibeskindAlsop or oh-wow-patterned-glass-and-facades envy...

 

[TKTKTK]

But you're not explaining how that denotes "dated".

"Spartan" might be the kind of word you're looking for, and it comes more to the nub of what the criticism of 4SC has been about.

No, Dated. That's the world that I was looking for.

It doesn't mean that the criticism isn't altogether unmerited; but when it comes to "datedness", it's only "dated" to the kinds of Sunday Painter Urbanists with an excessive degree of GehryLibeskindAlsop or oh-wow-patterned-glass-and-facades envy...

 

[adma]

That still doesn't explain the word "dated"--and frankly, you're stooping to the "a child of six can do it" school of architectural criticism...

Maybe to those who still count this as some kind of "bible", it's "dated".

 

[TKTKTK]

That still doesn't explain the word "dated"--and frankly, you're stooping to the "a child of six can do it" school of architectural criticism...

No I'm not. I'm poking fun at how overblown you're trying to make this. "Explain dated"? Explain "that still doesn't explain the word dated". What part are you unsure about? Here let me help

Maybe to those who still count this as some kind of "bible", it's "dated".

Maybe it's people who can't read who think the building's dated.

 

[Tewder]

Too often, people seem to entrench themselves into camps and then overstate their case.

Unfortunately I find myself doing this here all the time. Perhaps it's a knee-jerk reaction to the elitist conceit that Diamond, and his approach, is the *only* solution for Toronto regardless of context, and that anything else is merely so much pablum for the uninformed drooling masses (read: 'starchitecture'). This is an entrenched position too. We should be judging buildings based on their own merit and in their own context.

"Spartan" might be the kind of word you're looking for, and it comes more to the nub of what the criticism of 4SC has been about.

But as far as "datedness" goes, it's a building that is very plausibly, credibly of its time and place, and of a time and place that's close enough to the present as to still hold a certain credible currency. It's just not a flamboyant oh-wow potboiler a la GehryLibeskindAlsop, nor does it seek to be. Must it?

It doesn't mean that the criticism isn't altogether unmerited; but when it comes to "datedness", it's only "dated" to the kinds of Sunday Painter Urbanists with an excessive degree of GehryLibeskindAlsop or oh-wow-patterned-glass-and-facades envy...

Some do find this current round of modern minimalist buildings to be a bit of a fad-ish rehash of a mid-century design aesthetic, and in that sense may perceive these buildings as derivative or 'dated'. This is not to say that these buildings are not 'of our time', they reflect us in the here and now just as the gothic did Torontonians in the late 19th century. In a way I do find the 'starchitect' drama of the likes of Gehry and Libeskind etc. to be a little more unique to our time in their adapting of new computer technologies and materials, and the new possibilites in form and design that we've seen because of it. In the future I imagine that it will be Bilbao and the Crystal etc. that will come to define our time far more so than the work of Diamond or Clewes, no matter how solid or 'of our time' their work is.

As for the 4SC, I like it quite fine to be honest. I'm not in love with some of the details and its 'spartan-ness' ends up feeling cheap rather than intentionally spare. Again, coming back to Archivist's definition of the Bilbao effect I think that the 4SC fails in its context. For a long-awaited Opera House the public expectation was in fact for a flamboyant oh-wow potboiler a la GehryLibeskindAlsop. This doesn't imply that the function of the accoustics and so on are any less important in a 'perfect building in the perfect place for the perfect purpose" kind of way, but that a judging of it, in a non-elitist way, from the perspective of the public mandate here for an iconic 'of our time' piece of starchitecture is in fact a completely fair and valid criticism. I feel that the reaction against Corus stems from the same disconnect between the architect and his context..

 

[TKTKTK]

[...] For a long-awaited Opera House the public expectation was in fact for a flamboyant oh-wow potboiler a la GehryLibeskindAlsop. [...] judging of it, in a non-elitist way, from the perspective of the public mandate here for an iconic 'of our time' piece of starchitecture is in fact a completely fair and valid criticism. I feel that the reaction against Corus stems from the same disconnect between the architect and his context..

I don't think that the public wanted a Libeskind, or a Gehry, or an Alsop. I think they wanted something more than what we ended up getting. Chastising 4SC and Corus for their dullness doesn't mean people are looking for a spotted blue crystal on stilts - just something more than a too-familiar envelope. The point about context is spot-on though. Of the two, I think 4SC fails worse though; it's underwhelming on its site (and more than a bit mean to Queen St and Osgoode Hall), and it's underwhelming for its purpose. It's an opera house made for radio.

Anyway, I can understand defending 4SC it because of the limitations of its budget, but arguing that it's much more than a standard-issue architectural solution seems a bit much.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Regardless of whether on not the public is primed to crave spectacle, what we got is a great opera house that's probably more of its time because it eschews such hollow - and perhaps fading - values than it would have been if it had embraced them. The COC knew what the opera-going public wanted of their new house and made sure we got it.

It uses the site beautifuly, as any memer of the public who has been inside the glowing lantern of the City Room on opera nights, to hear a talk or take part in the ritual of opera-going, can attest. It is contemporary design in the service of function, not merely to draw attention to itself, and the panoramic views on three sides connect us to the context of Queen and University and the street theatre going on there in ways that the spectacularly inward-looking starchitecture of the Galleria Italia can't. The hall has a wonderful sound and is a curvaceous counterpoint to the outer building, and the performers are delighted with their rehearsal rooms, and dressing rooms that have windows for a change. They didn't put a foot wrong when this place was designed, if it is judged on its merit.

The Four Seasons Centre is a successful type that D+S are now exporting - Montrealers, amongst others, will be blessed indeed if they get such a place of their own.

 

[TKTKTK]

Regardless of whether on not the public is primed to crave spectacle, what we got is a great opera house that's probably more of its time because it eschews such hollow - and perhaps fading - values than it would have been if it had embraced them. The COC knew what the opera-going public wanted of their new house and made sure we got it.

Hollow, fading, values like beauty? Versus the enduring legacy of a functional car show room? He's performed admirably then.

My guess: when the COC started this process this building wasn't the one they had in mind. It became the final product because of rounds and rounds of budget concessions. Surely it's obvious now that the opera-going public wanted more than JUST beautiful sound emanating from a nearly invisible black speaker box.

In fact, to get kind of nasty about it, Diamond's most successful role in the building might have been when he wasn't designing it at all: like when he wisely stepped back to allow Essert to call the acoustic shots.

It uses the site beautifuly, as any memer of the public who has been inside the glowing lantern of the City Room on opera nights, to hear a talk or take part in the ritual of opera-going, can attest. It is contemporary design in the service of function, not merely to draw attention to itself, and the panoramic views on three sides connect us to the context of Queen and University and the street theatre going on there in ways that the spectacularly inward-looking starchitecture of the Galleria Italia can't. The hall has a wonderful sound and is a curvaceous counterpoint to the outer building, and the performers are delighted with their rehearsal rooms, and dressing rooms that have windows for a change. They didn't put a foot wrong when this place was designed, if it is judged on its merit.

Buildings are more than interior spaces, their physical presence demands they do more than just offer panoramas to the outside from within - why not just build it underground then, and project streetviews onto wall screens? That the best views of the 4SC are from inside is no surprise, but it reminds be of AbFab when Saffy screams to Edina that she always has the best view at a party because she's the only one who can't see herself. *shrug*

The Four Seasons Centre is a successful type that D+S are now exporting - Montrealers, amongst others, will be blessed indeed if they get such a place of their own.

McDonalds ports the same design all over the world too.

 

[Urban Shocker]

What finer sight can there be than our beautiful opera/ballet house full of people enjoying themselves? None that I can think of. I'm sure it has turned out to be everything the COC hoped it would be, and more.