The abominable building
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Jan 16, 2008 04:30 AM
We don't deserve this
horrorchitecture
Column, Jan. 14
If anyone is to blame for the mess at Toronto Life Square, it is the City of Toronto. City council selected the developer in 1997; it adopted the official plan, the community improvement plan and zoning bylaw amendments in 1997; it approved the site plan approval application; and it approved the limited terms of reference for the Dundas Square design competition of 1998.
No guiding urban-design scheme was ever prepared for the Downtown Yonge St. Regeneration Program, of which the Yonge-Dundas project is the centrepiece. The new official plan lacks detailed physical development rules, and even secondary plans and design guidelines offer equally spotty guidance.
City hall practice continues to favour ad-hoc approval processes where the weak existing regulatory limits are ignored or modified. As a result, any decent architecture gets lost in a cacophony of idiosyncratic designs and a chaotic rush to "intensification." Any sense of the city – where unlike elements are placed side by side or superimposed in unexpected but enriching and controlled ways – gets lost in such a policy vacuum.
Matthias Schlaepfer, Toronto
I couldn't agree more with Christopher Hume's assessment of the abomination that has risen at the northeast corner of Yonge and Dundas Sts. Toronto Life Square demonstrates once again that the developer has no business (or vision) for buildings woven into the fabric of a thriving city centre.
However, there's one building detail that must be added to Hume's list of offences. Future Shop, which occupies the second floor, has positioned its staff room – with its bland, grey lockers and fold-out lunch table – overlooking the square. Beside the staff room is a long, bleak, white hallway stretching to the store itself. These details are the guts of a building. They're not supposed to be on display.
This contradicts the developer's assertion that other corporations should spend major dollars to advertise on this building because of its prime exposure to the square. If I was a corporation, I'd see no value in advertising on this building. And they're right. This building is of no value. What a lost opportunity.
Michael Sparaga, Toronto
Christopher Hume argues that the ugly new Toronto Life Square sins chiefly by being sited out of context, inappropriately abutting what he calls the "genuine civic space" of Yonge-Dundas Square. Huh?
There is nothing "civic" about the experience – save those rare days when there's something worth viewing on the square itself. The moment you enter the YD Square orbit, your mental environment is hijacked by the shrillest of advertising, which encloses you on all sides and from above. And in that moment, you exist not as a citizen but as a consumer – a passive recipient of commercial messages.
Toronto Life Square is, at least, without any of the excruciating civitas pretension of YD Square; for its honest brutality and championing of commercial function over nightmarish form, I accord it some grudging credit.
Alex MacLean, Toronto
While I agree wholeheartedly that post-apocalyptic military bunkers like Toronto Life Square are inappropriate adornments of public space, I disagree that covering them in video ads is an improvement – much less one guaranteed to create "civic space." When I visit Yonge-Dundas Square, I feel nauseated by the continuous assault of building-sized ads.
As an alternative to corporate advertising, how about covering the building in murals by local artists?
Leslie Jermyn, Toronto