That 20's buildings with gargoyles are not the be all and end all. There's plenty of buildings from the 50's-80's that should be held in the same esteem.
 
That 20's buildings with gargoyles are not the be all and end all. There's plenty of buildings from the 50's-80's that should be held in the same esteem.
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Just as there are buildings from the 90s to today that deserve such esteem. In general, I happen to prefer older ones though... perfectly reasonable as far as I can tell. Last time I checked, people are permitted to prefer certain things over other things.

Adma's only argument for preserving NPS is that if you don't like NPS, you're a slack-jawed yokel... a pretty weak and unconvincing argument.
 
Slack-jawed yokel, maybe not. Hack amateur, maybe--at least, relative to the so-called "qualified" tastemakers in charge.

Which is why they seldom openly hang in forums like these--the (to them) raw hack amateurism of a lot of the opinion-mongering makes them shudder, or at least is not worth responding to. (Thus the perils of web-discussion-group democracy...or maybe dueling definitions of "democracy" in general...)
 
Catherine Nasmith says, " The gap between public opinion and professional opinion is striking, and worrying." But there is always a knowledge gap between experts and laymen - you ignore your doctor's advice to get the tumour removed, or your lawyer's advice to follow a certain line of defence, at your peril, and a NOW Magazine poll has nothing to do with excellence and everything to do with lowest common denominator popularity.

The masses can't be expected to intelligently sweat the details of what constitutes good design. And this is, primarily, a design challenge, something quite different from the fickle issues of "taste" or "fashion".

To judge by Nasmith's reporting of the two consultation sessions she attended, it looks as if they're going about things in a reasonably logical way. They've started by defining the essence of the Square and the features that should therefore be preserved. They've also identified some of the problems that the design process should address, though it may be premature to state that an international design competition is required to solve them.
 
Well, they're "idiot-proofing" the process--I just still have this sneaking suspicion, paradoxical as it may sound, that Peter Milczyn's one of the "idiots" they're "proofing" it from. Had the whole NPS 40th-anniversary-renewal notion been spearheaded by, say, Kyle Rae, walkway-removal wouldn't be so conspicuous an option, I'll bet.

As the only councillor who lists his profession as "architect", as well as a member of the Toronto Preservation Board, Milczyn--a right-leaning Liberal--is an enigma. And in a way, I wonder his stance reflects any on the fact that the most conspicuous arts/culture/heritage element in his constituency is the Kingsway. Angliae pars Anglia procul to the point that wears its Betjeman on its sleeve, a constituency that is high-Thatcherite absolute in its conviction that the Modern Movement is, like the welfare state, a discredited failure--and the proof's in the pudding; on a level stylistic/affordability plane, which would most people choose: Don Mills, or Kingsway Park? Duh.

So, if you're serving/ensconsed within that milieu (or the pan-Etobicoke milieu, for that matter), naturally it's gotta rub off somehow. Thus Milczyn serves as a kind of silent conservative-wing emissary within the TPB; and removing the walkways "advances the cause", even as it causes other TPB members as well as preservation staff and other high-placed experts to cringe.

It's sort of a stiff-upper-lip "Etobicoke thing". It's why the embarrassing debacle of the Old Mill Inn was able to plow through with the support of the local heritage establishment; y'know, others may complain, but Etobicoke Knows Best, etc...
 
On a slightly different topic, while they are renovating the square, I would like to see the observation deck at the top of the west? tower reopened; sort of extend the public realm upwards.
 
It's open for Doors Open this weekend, isn't it? (Good initiative-starter...)

Oh yeah, IIRC it might be the east tower...
 
Do Milczyn's pronouncements on the Square represent a subtle, code-language, vote-getting gambit aimed at, and representing the views of, his Etobicroak constituents? Not so sure.

More likely he just sees himself as the arts-and-culture guru on Council. Not a difficult thing to do; in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.

He's also wormed his way onto the Boards of the AGO and the Design Exchange.
 
I've always that that one of the interests of architecture is that, unlike a number of other artistic endeavours, that the hoi polloi is actually entitled to their opinion. We can choose to go to a gallery or an opera or not, but buildings, especially big ones that we must pass by or use every day, cannot be ignored and we are all, excuse the word, stakeholders in this process. This of course has NorthYorkCentreish implications, in terms of what people are willing to buy to live in, so it isn't a good thing, quite often.

But I've always thought that it makes the question "what is a good building" more intriguing or more complicated than "what is a good painting". For the painting you can honestly ignore the people who say "what is it? It's just blotches!" but for a building you ought not ignore the secretary who says "I hate having to go up and down those stairs every day".
 
Well yes of course everyone is entitled to their opinions. Babel gets nostalgic when he remembers being able to walk the walkways, BuildTO loves to paddle in the pool, SD2 questions whether the walkways serve to shut people out of the Square. We are indeed stakeholders in our city, no more so than in our big public spaces, which symbolically say "this is us" to the world. Hence, I guess, the public meetings and call for citizen involvement in the fine old Toronto tradition ( or at least a tradition that goes back to the late 1960's reformists ).

Beyond that, it is up to the architects and designers to "solve" the problems that the secretary - who has to go up and down those stairs every day - has identified. So I suppose there's a bit of artistry involved, the educated eye at work, trying to make visual sense of it all, trying to sort out the inarticulate rage of the knee-jery anti-modernists from the practical concerns of that secretary.
 
More likely he just sees himself as the arts-and-culture guru on Council. Not a difficult thing to do; in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.
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Except that Milczyn's not all alone. OTOH (and this is where the "Etobicroak" may kick in) I can see him silently framing himself as the "anti-Kyle Rae" on that A&C-guru front.

Should David Miller be defeated by a suburban right-winger like, say, ex-Coun. Paul Sutherland, that's the time when Milczyn'll come into his own as said guru...
 
SD2 questions whether the walkways serve to shut people out of the Square
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Well, not shut out of the square...but the walkways themselves. The whole point they're there is to be used...not to be shut off and left as "art". Stripping the walkways of their intentional function reduces their artistic merit - the two are tied together.
 
The walkways are open. I just went up and had a stroll around for the first time in years. Gives another perspective from which to appreciate the Square.

Also, quite a few people were sitting on the benches beneath the walkways, as they often do, relaxing and just enjoying the view, or chatting, or reading. The walkways provide them with welcome shade on hot days like this.
 
Wow, that's great news. I was checking out the square the other day, trying to imagine the possibilities, and just a few simple changes can make a huge difference. Fix the grass, get rid of the bunkers, get rid of the cheap fences, add some more greenery and it may become presentable... even with the controversial walkways.
 
The "Use it or lose it" factor seems to be a real threat to so many things, including our public spaces. Once something falls into disuse, and time passes, and fewer people can remember a time when something was fully enjoyed, it becomes easier to argue that it has no merit, that it no longer applies to our world, and should therefore be removed permanently.
 
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