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From the Globe:
THE PERFECT HOUSE: ARCHITECTURE
Towers of Regent Park South should be saved
But it's very possible that none of the five modernist structures by Peter Dickinson will survive the planned redevelopment
By JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
Friday, May 27, 2005 Page G4
With the launch this month of an architectural contest for the first new residential building in Toronto's Regent Park since the 1950s, the $1-billion makeover of the 70-acre social housing project began in earnest.
When the redevelopment wraps up, some 15 years from now, the drab reputation for deep poverty and crime, and its physical isolation from the urban heartbeat, will be no more. A mixed neighbourhood of people living in market-rate condominiums and rentals, subsidized housing and co-ops -- families and singles in a wide range of income brackets -- will take up residence in the new tall and low buildings planned for the site. Or such, in any case, is the hope of city-owned Toronto Community Housing Corp. (TCHC), which is co-ordinating the massive renovation.
To make this hope come true, TCHC intends to sweep away almost the whole of Regent Park's frayed, dingy architectural fabric. The sole structure now slated for salvation -- mostly to pacify historical preservationists and the modernist aficionados among us -- is one of five identical 14-storey residential towers in Regent Park South, designed by the gifted Toronto architect Peter Dickinson and completed in 1958.
I have long believed that all five of these tall buildings should be spared. While not conventionally beautiful, the towers are inventive, humane social housing designs from Toronto's mid-20th century, and from the hand of a sophisticated architect whose artistry deserves our respect.
In addition to their architectural merits, the buildings offer an excellent occasion for creative reuse, at a time when much thought and energy are going into updating old structures. Nothing I saw last week, when I visited a vacant apartment in one of the towers, inclines me to change my mind about the good reuse potential of Mr. Dickinson's towers.
Every one of the five high-rises is a stack of 97 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, each disposed, like a small townhouse, on two floors. (I saw a three-bedroom version.)
By eliminating corridors on every second floor -- the elevator skips the floors without hallways -- Dickinson was able to open out the common area in each apartment to the width of the whole slab.
The results: a sense of spaciousness, light coming from two directions, good cross-ventilation and views of Lake Ontario for almost every resident of the towers, including whomever decides to move into the suite I visited.
The kitchen in this typical apartment was small, but not impossible. The washroom was comparable in size to what you might find in many other Toronto apartment buildings, old and new. While architecture cannot cure poverty or eliminate the distractions and miseries that come with living on the edge, Mr. Dickinson's Regent Park designs respond sensitively and successfully to the common need for bright, healthy and well-made dwelling places. They should be saved.
After a conversation last week with Albert Koke, property manager of Regent Park, and Mark Guslits, TCHC czar in charge of the huge redevelopment scheme, I am now convinced that none of the Dickinson buildings will survive -- not even the one, at 14 Blevins Pl., currently scheduled to be saved for admirers of 20th-century modernist architecture. In the view of Mr. Koke and Mr. Guslits, all five are indelibly cursed with the reputation of grinding poverty, vice and violence.
"The buildings cannot change use, because they have gotten stigmatized," Mr. Guslits said. "We would never get a developer interested in these projects."
I think we Dickinson fans should prepare ourselves for the day, sooner or later, when TCHC sends out a press release, conspicuously damp with tears of regret, saying that even 14 Blevins must be demolished.
In fairness to the TCHC staff's current thinking, some architectural criticisms levelled by Mr. Koke and Mr. Guslits against the buildings surely deserve to be taken seriously.
The apartments, which all parties agree are good, are indeed linked to the outside world by bad, mean lobbies and inadequate entrances and exits. The whole cluster of towers was cut off from the city by bad street closings a half-century ago.
Some of the Dickinson buildings are angled in a way that prevents the creation of new streets to reconnect Regent Park to the larger urban grid -- a praiseworthy TCHC priority.
That said, I am still not convinced that such criticisms necessarily doom the towers to destruction.
Tight, ugly lobbies can be refashioned and expanded. The first tier of apartments can be converted to non-residential uses -- retail shops, cafés, whatever -- to help revive the currently dead territory around the buildings' bottoms. Not every street in Regent Park needs to be laid out on a strict right-angle grid, meaning the existing towers could be accommodated in the new transportation scheme.
Though the towers certainly pose problems to the overall redesign of Regent Park, TCHC should persuade Torontonians -- more decisively than they've done so far -- that the buildings absolutely must go before the corporation sends the bulldozers into South Regent Park.
jmays@globeandmail.ca
____________________________________________________
That would be rather unfortunate. Saving one tower wouldn't do much damage to the plan whatsoever, and it seems the TCHC is closing the door on preservation way too soon.
GB
THE PERFECT HOUSE: ARCHITECTURE
Towers of Regent Park South should be saved
But it's very possible that none of the five modernist structures by Peter Dickinson will survive the planned redevelopment
By JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
Friday, May 27, 2005 Page G4
With the launch this month of an architectural contest for the first new residential building in Toronto's Regent Park since the 1950s, the $1-billion makeover of the 70-acre social housing project began in earnest.
When the redevelopment wraps up, some 15 years from now, the drab reputation for deep poverty and crime, and its physical isolation from the urban heartbeat, will be no more. A mixed neighbourhood of people living in market-rate condominiums and rentals, subsidized housing and co-ops -- families and singles in a wide range of income brackets -- will take up residence in the new tall and low buildings planned for the site. Or such, in any case, is the hope of city-owned Toronto Community Housing Corp. (TCHC), which is co-ordinating the massive renovation.
To make this hope come true, TCHC intends to sweep away almost the whole of Regent Park's frayed, dingy architectural fabric. The sole structure now slated for salvation -- mostly to pacify historical preservationists and the modernist aficionados among us -- is one of five identical 14-storey residential towers in Regent Park South, designed by the gifted Toronto architect Peter Dickinson and completed in 1958.
I have long believed that all five of these tall buildings should be spared. While not conventionally beautiful, the towers are inventive, humane social housing designs from Toronto's mid-20th century, and from the hand of a sophisticated architect whose artistry deserves our respect.
In addition to their architectural merits, the buildings offer an excellent occasion for creative reuse, at a time when much thought and energy are going into updating old structures. Nothing I saw last week, when I visited a vacant apartment in one of the towers, inclines me to change my mind about the good reuse potential of Mr. Dickinson's towers.
Every one of the five high-rises is a stack of 97 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, each disposed, like a small townhouse, on two floors. (I saw a three-bedroom version.)
By eliminating corridors on every second floor -- the elevator skips the floors without hallways -- Dickinson was able to open out the common area in each apartment to the width of the whole slab.
The results: a sense of spaciousness, light coming from two directions, good cross-ventilation and views of Lake Ontario for almost every resident of the towers, including whomever decides to move into the suite I visited.
The kitchen in this typical apartment was small, but not impossible. The washroom was comparable in size to what you might find in many other Toronto apartment buildings, old and new. While architecture cannot cure poverty or eliminate the distractions and miseries that come with living on the edge, Mr. Dickinson's Regent Park designs respond sensitively and successfully to the common need for bright, healthy and well-made dwelling places. They should be saved.
After a conversation last week with Albert Koke, property manager of Regent Park, and Mark Guslits, TCHC czar in charge of the huge redevelopment scheme, I am now convinced that none of the Dickinson buildings will survive -- not even the one, at 14 Blevins Pl., currently scheduled to be saved for admirers of 20th-century modernist architecture. In the view of Mr. Koke and Mr. Guslits, all five are indelibly cursed with the reputation of grinding poverty, vice and violence.
"The buildings cannot change use, because they have gotten stigmatized," Mr. Guslits said. "We would never get a developer interested in these projects."
I think we Dickinson fans should prepare ourselves for the day, sooner or later, when TCHC sends out a press release, conspicuously damp with tears of regret, saying that even 14 Blevins must be demolished.
In fairness to the TCHC staff's current thinking, some architectural criticisms levelled by Mr. Koke and Mr. Guslits against the buildings surely deserve to be taken seriously.
The apartments, which all parties agree are good, are indeed linked to the outside world by bad, mean lobbies and inadequate entrances and exits. The whole cluster of towers was cut off from the city by bad street closings a half-century ago.
Some of the Dickinson buildings are angled in a way that prevents the creation of new streets to reconnect Regent Park to the larger urban grid -- a praiseworthy TCHC priority.
That said, I am still not convinced that such criticisms necessarily doom the towers to destruction.
Tight, ugly lobbies can be refashioned and expanded. The first tier of apartments can be converted to non-residential uses -- retail shops, cafés, whatever -- to help revive the currently dead territory around the buildings' bottoms. Not every street in Regent Park needs to be laid out on a strict right-angle grid, meaning the existing towers could be accommodated in the new transportation scheme.
Though the towers certainly pose problems to the overall redesign of Regent Park, TCHC should persuade Torontonians -- more decisively than they've done so far -- that the buildings absolutely must go before the corporation sends the bulldozers into South Regent Park.
jmays@globeandmail.ca
____________________________________________________
That would be rather unfortunate. Saving one tower wouldn't do much damage to the plan whatsoever, and it seems the TCHC is closing the door on preservation way too soon.
GB