Automation Gallery said:
Originally it was planned to be, until some heat from the local councillor and city planning chopped it down:mad:..Shame
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Yeah, they applied that idiotic "skyline tapering policy" to the building. The renders of the original design were definitely more elegant than what the City allowed. Here is Mike in TO's old image of the original and revised proposals:

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The original proposal had far better proportions; it was quite predictable that it would get stripped of the one thing that made it interesting. That said, the actual building is even worse than the watered down 2nd proposal. It doesn't look like what was depicted in the rendering.
 
This building is craptastic....

I would have preferred the original design, but only had they gone through with the proper materials, and not done this el-cheapo instead.
 
caltrane74 said:
This building is craptastic....

I would have preferred the original design, but only had they gone through with the proper materials, and not done this el-cheapo instead.
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I hope they cheaped out on purpose in retaliation for having to shave the height to satisfy Adam Vaughn.
 
Automation Gallery said:
You dont know that:confused:
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Sure, anyone can apply the guessing game of theoretical what could have been's. But at the end of the day, it's designed by the same architect and built by the same developer who has a known track record for building spandrel heavy boxes. It's also pointless to have expectations based on such a preliminary and conceptual drawing.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
A developer would change the cladding just for adding (or removing) 5 floors? I find that exceedingly hard to believe.

AoD
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The increased profits from those 5 floors alone could easily make up the cost difference for much higher quality cladding. I'm not saying that would've been the case, but we shouldn't dismiss the possibility.
 
Tridel has defended their use of spandrel as being a high quality material, and of equally high cost. (aka not a cheap-out). Whether or not that is true is entirely up for debate, but Tridel has insisted in one of these threads that spandrel is in no way a cost motivated cladding choice - once again this is debatable and I am reluctant to jump on board with their explanation, however none of us have really proven otherwise with fact - just opinion based on the claddings appearance. I would be interested to see some numbers regarding cladding types and their respective prices
 
It really bothers me how people here interpret spandrel as a building feature that is placed in lieu of vision glass to save money. Spandrel serves a very necessary purpose. The most expensive, grand office and residential towers around the world pretty much ALL make use of spandrel in one way or another. It's designed into the building and not randomly added later on as a cost-saving measure while construction is about to start.

If you are going to judge materials on how they look, that's fair. I love a good discussion on aesthetics. But don't blame spandrel itself. Spandrel is a very necessary feature of any large building project (especially in a climate like our own). It's about HOW it is used, and how the design makes use of spandrel. Is it nicely integrated? Is it used to try and appear like vision glass (as many condos attempt to do and fail)? Would another material have been good in its place?

But seriously, we need to stop making it just about "glass OR spandrel" and "cheap VS. expensive". There are many nuances to the discussion of spandrel, which is not a bad or good thing on a building, but rather a necessary building component.

/end rant.
 
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