stjames2queenwest
Senior Member
I'm not against PATH expanding. I just don't enjoy it.
Damn, I totally forgot about 217 Adelaide.
That is going to be a very dense block soon enough. 57 storeys, 59 storeys and 57 storeys.
I agree with that thought. The PATH is great I suppose right in the core but what are we....gophers?
Stuff like keeping the Heritage intact and injecting a modern design overtop to give those old boys some life, .....what's there not to like?
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100% agreed. PATH is over rated.
PATH could never be any less antiseptic than any standard mall, but buildings designed with PATH in mind typically have less dreary actions than ones where it has been shoehorned in later. (Mostly, not always.)Bang on. Useful in a snowstorm, maybe. But a pleasurable experience? Not really. I do see its utility but in my experience it tends to feel drearily subterranean and antiseptic.
This is a big point often overlooked.What hasn't been particularly successful yet is where PATH type commercial passages have been built through strictly residential developments. Any PATH through this area would need at least one major office tower amongst all the condos to be lively throughout the day, but throw a bigger supermarket into the PATh system through of one of these buildings, and they could make it work on this block. Those Mirvish+Gehry types aren't going to want to go all the way over to The Well for their groceries.
I like it.
It's "jumbled" because the forms / volumes that are above are being kept "small" so that they don't dominate the size of the heritage facades.
If you put a "uniform, clean, modern" façade on the lower half of the tower, the heritage building would shrink into obscurity.
As designed, the larger volumes start well above (twice the height of) the heritage buildings.
The Well
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What is the Well?
Besides, if I maybe blunt, the proposal just plopped a 50s tower atop a heritage building - pretending to be not "dominating" at this point is like someone XXL trying to fit into a size 0 skirt.
AoD