[Tewder]

You miss the point. Ladies Mile states objectively that Toronto has kept the faith because it suits us, whereas others have strayed. That's all.

...or more prosaically that Toronto's skyscraper building booms just happened to coincide with periods of modern minimalism... were it not for the downturn of the late 80s I could only imagine how many pomo towers would be gracing our skyline. I like modern minimalism and we have some great examples here but to confine ourselves evermore to this aesthetic would be, well confining.

Ladies Mile feels that Toronto's scrapers are more innovative and superior to those of New York and Chicago or other US cities. I'm just not sure that I'm convinced.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Our first skyscraper was built in the 1890s - the Temple Building - and we took it from there. Her evaluation of the relative merits of CCN vis-a-vis Union Station and the Tribune Tower, for instance, rings true enough to me - and we'll never know how close we came to getting a few big PoMo 'honkers' because we dodged that bullet, thankfully.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

It's a shame that we don't have more Texas-style shiny glass towers, a forest of corporate pomo blue skyscrapers. Some say Bay-Adelaide is close, but it's not close enough for me. Shangri-La could also be close, but will likely end up too light/ethereal to have any 'oppressive financial monolith' character. Telus should have looked more like LA's Fox Plaza or, thread appropriately, Pelli's Wells Fargo Building.

 

[Ladies Mile]

Urban Shocker gets where I'm going. We established our cred the same decade America did and owe them nothing, really, past the basic type. As for the Art Deco period, if the Empire State Building were built today I imagine most people would think it was ridiculous. And it is.

"A zeppelin dock? You don't say."

Simple, elegant, functional buildings ARE better than wasteful, gaudy, dysfunctional ones. I don't see much wiggle room on that. The "Green architecture" movement may initiate new types in this range, but until then I think we've managed to create the best of what is, south of the border, anyway, a very bad lot.

I mean--the MOMA Tower. A 82-story steak knife. There's an American classic waiting to happen. Bonus points for destroying the last vestiges of zoning near the museum and being designed by the French.

 

[Ladies Mile]

It's a shame that we don't have more Texas-style shiny glass towers, a forest of corporate pomo blue skyscrapers. Some say Bay-Adelaide is close, but it's not close enough for me. Shangri-La could also be close, but will likely end up too light/ethereal to have any 'oppressive financial monolith' character. Telus should have looked more like LA's Fox Plaza or, thread appropriately, Pelli's Wells Fargo Building.

Taste is subjective, but I am unclear why you want oppressive financial anything, let alone Texas-style.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Taste is subjective, but I am unclear why you want oppressive financial anything, let alone Texas-style.

All play and no work makes Toronto something something.

 

[junctionist]

As good a thesis Ladies Mile has, I can't shake the fact that those classical American skyscrapers are usually quite attractive and historically relevant. Buildings like the Chrysler Tower received admirable levels of investment to produce an expression of the time. And if you're going to hate them because of imperial subtexts, wait until you see the architecture of London or Paris. Contradictions like that have to be acknowledged.

 

[Tewder]

Agreed, can you imagine an entirely uniform landscape of mind-numbingly unadorned miesian boxes? I shudder at the thought. Ladies Mile doesn't see any wiggle room here which I find dogmatic. Why such intractable disdain for anything other than strict clear-lined order? Why such fear of the subversive joy and liberation we get from design that breaks such lines and that is in essence the very opposite of elegant, simple and functional? Go to New York, put some Gershwin on your ipod and experience the optimism, creativity and frivolous joy that those heritage skyscrapers represent.

... none of which is to say however that there is anything wrong with minimalism and functionality! All these impulses have their place. They all represent the expression of basic human needs, and they all have their place in the skyline.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Yes, I could imagine a whole landscape - urban, or rural - of buildings designed by Mies. How lovely! I.M. Pei certainly thought so, when he so cleverly lifted the TD Centre's proportions in his design for Commerce Court West, while playing off of the TD's matte black cladding with different materials, and the TD's orientation with a 90 degree north/south twist. Imagine if subsequent architects for the downtown business core had taken up the challenge - rather than losing the thread - we'd have something to cherish, unequalled anywhere, as a collective statement.

What so many places ( Chicago for instance ) got, unfortunately, was a lot of copycat Mies that wasn't designed by him. But PoMo, which was ironic fun for about the first five minutes ( yes, there were some good examples to the south, and Mississauga City Hall hereabouts ... ) devolved rapidly into historicist Cheddingtonista dreck locally and went nowhere. One theory claims that PoMo was an attempt to put a new face on Modernism and "give it legs" but I'd say it was a failed top-down coup.

I don't underestimate the thirst for architectural novelty acts from abroad ( Texas this, New York that ... ) because it stalks this forum daily and has quite a glee club going for it - but look around at what the new generation of local architects are doing. They haven't needed to reinvent the wheel because many of them are from the same Modernist lineage ( recent 'grads' from KPMB, which evolved from Barton Myers, or recent 'grads' from D+S, for instance ... ) that produced similarly legible and practical designs forty or fifty years ago. The process that goes into solving design problems hasn't changed much, and I while agree with Ladies Mile that green issues will present new challenges I think that sensible Modernism is well placed to incorporate these new imperatives. We happen to do this very well here, it is how our design culture works - this elimination of the "wasteful, gaudy, dysfunctional" tendency.

 

[Whoaccio]

Wait a minute, this is all wrong. The original point of contention was that Toronto's architectural history was, on a "building by building" basis, "far better" than New York's or Chicago's. Without getting into whether or not the box is the end of architectural history, this is untrue. It is silly to judge historical anything by modern standards. No new building should be built with a Zeppelin dock, but a building built when Zeppelins were a legitimate form of travel shouldn't be disqualified because of it. An "anachronism" is something which is chronologically misplaced, Art Deco buildings fit in perfectly with their time in history and so have most architectural styles. I might as well deride the Parthenon because they didn't have the wisdom to build it with curtain glass walls. And how is 19th century Chicago an example of imperialism? The US barely even had a standing army at that point. Simple concrete blocks where the favored architecture of the Warsaw Pact, the 20th Century's largest empire, yet I see no denouncement of the TD Center as "imperial."

I'm also skeptical to the degree that modernism is really all that functional. Compared to what? Maybe compared to turn of the century neo-classical skyscraper with arches and such. Other than that though, the most "functional" buildings are probably the suburban office parks and super-centers that have characterized most construction since the '50s. When the Google wants to build a new server farm, they move to Utah and slap up a warehouse. The only people who can really afford to locate in shiny modernist skyscrappers are hedge funds. Given the rise of various IT solutions (i.e. teleconferencing), you could plausibly argue that skyscrapers themselves are anacrhonisms, which is partially why the only people who can afford to build them (big banks, multi-national companies, governments) treat them like status symbols.

I don't think that means we should stop building skyscrapers, or even that we should move away from modernism, just that this constant harangue about everything needing to be a perfect rectangle for fear of insulting the gods of modernism over, gasp, putting some emphasis on form over function is inane. The very idea of skyscrapers tends to put an emphasis on aesthetics and symbolism over practicality. A movement whose head figure wouldn't let people control their own blinds for fear of ruining a facade shouldn't lecture on how function should come before aesthetics. If you didn't care about how a building looked, you would move to Idaho. It's like the fashion designers who claim their, inevitably impractical, designs are more practical for real life, oblivious to the idea that if people really cared so much about function they would just were Crocs and jogging pants.

 

[junctionist]

And how is 19th century Chicago an example of imperialism? The US barely even had a standing army at that point.

Just to clarify this concern that was stated, the early highly ornamented skyscrapers of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth were built when the US took control of Cuba, Puerto-Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and some Americans attempted to overthrow the governments of various Latin American countries.

 

[Ladies Mile]

Let's not forget the extermination of the Native Americans either or that "manifest destiny" nonsense.

Zepplins were never intended to dock at skyscrapers. That was PR idiocy from the get-go. The Empire State Building's owners were simply nervous that their height record would be stolen from them a la the equally ridiculous Chrysler Building, which slapped on its overrated party hat spire as a last minute gimmick to beat the even more hideous 1929 Bank Tower on Wall Street.

And I state, categorically and without any reserve, that on a building by building basis, pretty much every building in Toronto is better than any given one of its American counterparts.

Why we are determined to think otherwise is astounding and is where the real inferioity lies...

 

[Ladies Mile]

As good a thesis Ladies Mile has, I can't shake the fact that those classical American skyscrapers are usually quite attractive and historically relevant. Buildings like the Chrysler Tower received admirable levels of investment to produce an expression of the time. And if you're going to hate them because of imperial subtexts, wait until you see the architecture of London or Paris. Contradictions like that have to be acknowledged.

1. If you lived in New York you would perhaps see on a daily basis just how badly designed, impractical, shoddily constructed, vulgar, tiresome and wasteful New York's "classic" architecture is.

2. The Chrysler Building (not tower) was a showpiece for a union-busting car company that decked out its headquarters with hood ornaments and hubcaps. This is not the expression of its time any more than a billboard for the car would be.

3. I do hate the architecture of London--dreary ugly fatty Imperialist twaddle. And minus a few churches and gardens, Paris is 95% garbage.

 

[Whoaccio]

The Spanish-American war isn't the best example of imperialism, given that the nominal purpose was for the US to support pro-independence groups against the Spanish Empire, but even accepting that it was imperial, how does that make Chicago architecture "imperialist"? The period which really saw modernism come into its own coincided with a massive expansion of US global intervention, while Art Deco flourished during a period where the US was explicitly isolationist. By this logic, Art Deco is anti-imperial and modernism is Imperial. It doesn't help that most US embassies were built along highly modernist lines, as were most global institutions often felt to facilitate the American Empire (the IMF, WTO, the UN). I just don't see how minor variations in world history can be associated with architectural history so selectively.

Japanese architecture during WWII was mostly traditional -> Therefore traditional Japanese architecture is "imperial"

Just about any piece of architecture associated with Europe -> "imperial"

The 20th century was the most violent in human history -> 20th century architecture is "imperial"

Hopefully these are as self evidently stupid to everyone else. I thought it was obvious that architecture often has nothing to do with foreign policy, but who knows.

 

[Whoaccio]

1. If you lived in New York you would perhaps see on a daily basis just how badly designed, impractical, shoddily constructed, vulgar, tiresome and wasteful New York's "classic" architecture is.

2. The Chrysler Building (not tower) was a showpiece for a union-busting car company that decked out its headquarters with hood ornaments and hubcaps. This is not the expression of its time any more than a billboard for the car would be.

3. I do hate the architecture of London--dreary ugly fatty Imperialist twaddle. And minus a few churches and gardens, Paris is 95% garbage.

Ahh, I get it. This is more about you trying to project your politics onto architecture than architecture per se. So whereas Art Deco was the preserve of fat-cat capitalists, modernism is the architecture of social justice. Whereas New York, Paris and London are the preserve of some kind of global elite, modernism isn't. You could land a 747 in the logical gaps it requires to think modernism was any less the preserve of the society's richest.

Even for someone who finds the endless fawning over cities like Paris or NYC slightly annoying, claiming that 95% of Paris is garbage or wholly discounting NYC just identifies you as some kind of Susan Sontag esque self-hating middle class fairweather anti-capitalist.