I guess we'll have to wait and see.... at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they cheap out and forget the roof element all together.

You could replace the Swiss cheese roofs with two, giant, fifty-foot Penis Sculptures and those too, would give them identity, not to mention a memorable architectural gesture....

I'm not being pugnacious, but which Brutalist buildings exactly have aesthetic value? I'm interested to know what you think, because I hate them all....
 
4grand said:
These cheap, tawdry, glass clones will have as much worth and aesthetic value in thirty years as the Brutalist buildings do today...
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The tawdry is never treasured, regardless of what era produces it - there were many ungainly knock-offs of Mies's glass towers, for instance, but Mies himself is still celebrated for his beautiful buildings. Toronto has some fine examples of Brutalism, too. Some of them are, admittedly, rather unsung ( the St. Lawrence Centre is a favourite of mine, a rather dainty example of the form ), and the aesthetic is only just emerging from the lower reaches of the trough of the fashionable/unfashionable cycle as far as some observers are concerned, but full rehabilitation may be just around the corner - though unfortunately a bit too late to save the Macy DuBois building on Charles Street East.
 
4grand said:
I guess we'll have to wait and see.... at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they cheap out and forget the roof element all together.

You could replace the Swiss cheese roofs with two, giant, fifty-foot Penis Sculptures and those too, would give them identity, not to mention a memorable architectural gesture....

I'm not being pugnacious, but which Brutalist buildings exactly have aesthetic value? I'm interested to know what you think, because I hate them all....
Click to expand...

My faves are 222 Jarvis and Fort Book in Toronto, J Edgar Hoover building, Math and Computers Building at U Waterloo, Habitat 67, Geisel Library and Washington Metro stations..
 
The_Architect said:
My faves are 222 Jarvis and Fort Book in Toronto, J Edgar Hoover building, Math and Computers Building at U Waterloo, Habitat 67, Geisel Library and Washington Metro stations..
Click to expand...

Weldon Library in London, Ontario is my personal favourite.

Edit: Does anyone have a recent (official) statement on the fate of the office component?
 
ahmad.m.atiya said:
Weldon Library in London, Ontario is my personal favourite.
Click to expand...

hah, my friends from UWO call that one the Fortress of Knowledge

Picture omaha beach but they are firing books instead of bullets
 
I just found this old photo from when I first moved to Toronto in 2006. What an amazing difference to today!

100_2328.jpg
 
Just about where ICE is going (to the right, there), circa 1991:

cnyard2sm-1.jpg


And from right in front of where it is being built now, from York Street at the Gardiner, circa 1991:

cnyard.jpg
 
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Jeepers, those are from 1991? From their condition, they look more like what I would expect from the 1930s!

I gather that they have been deliberately "antiqued" for some reason.
 
Yeah, I was practicing developing negatives at home, and darkroom experiments. Chemical film - now up there in the great nostalgic afterlife with Victrolas and Radium Health Products.

Looking across York Street just a couple years later:
acc2sm-2.jpg
 
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I have been trying to find a photo of the old postal building for months, glad to finally see it in its former state. Although i think that the Air Canada Centre was done in good taste. In my opinion it was the best use of facade recycling in our cities history.
 
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