MichaelZ said:
Don’t see what everyone is up in arms about. Looks like a fine minimalist base. Not much better than a hudson’s bay store in the suburbs granted but still far from the worst in Toronto.
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It was all minimalist before...but that's not really important here...

Imagine instead if you where at a retirement facility where they made you wear a clown suit everyday to spice up your waning life up. Not a very dignified way to go. That's what CF did with this building. /sigh
 
MichaelZ said:
Don’t see what everyone is up in arms about. Looks like a fine minimalist base. Not much better than a hudson’s bay store in the suburbs granted but still far from the worst in Toronto.
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It's not even a good example of minimalism, it's an ugly mess of white panels pretending to be minimalism. So many panel lines, mullions, etc. There's zero attention to detail, (just look at the awkward way the lower 2 floors have shallower columns than the floors above, that could have been transitioned nicely, but nope, they took the ugliest most utilitarian approach). Plus, shouldn't we aspire to more than "this looks like a suburban Bay store" for something across from City Hall? And tbh, I'd argue most HBC stores are better looking than this mess.
 
Well, I said it before: it looks like a skyscraper-forum fanboy's fantasy rendering for "freshening up" a "tired" building come to life.
 
adma said:
Well, I said it before: it looks like a skyscraper-forum fanboy's fantasy rendering for "freshening up" a "tired" building come to life.
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Not too many of those "fanboys" here today though, lol...
 
I think there’s much lower hanging fruit to go after, like how most residential condo projects, other than the super lux, uses way cheaper windows than even this, and much worse than what they show in marketing images.
 
MichaelZ said:
I think there’s much lower hanging fruit to go after, like how most residential condo projects, other than the super lux, uses way cheaper windows than even this, and much worse than what they show in marketing images.
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I think you have to remember that one critical reason why this is, indeed, such low hanging fruit is (a) it's not a new build, but a mutilating alteration of a building that didn't merit this kind of treatment, and (b) location, location, location (y'know, City Hall precinct and everything).

Though coming across the Meighen Building transformation on St. Clair E today, I was thinking of how we got to this point where we'd be so utterly *boneheaded* in handling preexisting architecture--is this some computer-age thing, where everything's in a constant state of "upgrade" and "update" and clinging to the old is seen as being like clinging to earlier versions of Windows? (Which probably explains why single-family teardowns are such a thing; that is, leaving well enough alone is like clinging to dead people's stuff, better to make it a fresh start, etc.)

And not just *handling* preexisting architecture, but even *beholding* it--like, I feel there's a cohort these days which simply does *not* relate to the urban fabric in dynamic historical-space-and-time terms *at all*. It's like, there's "new", and then there's "dated". They do not relate to Old City Hall or the original Simpson's store as a creation of the 1890s; they do not relate to the Bay St Simpson's addition as a creation of the 1920s, they do not relate to New City Hall in terms of 1965, or the Simpson Tower in terms of late 60s, or the Thomson and Sheraton complexes of the early 70s, or the Eaton Centre of the late 70s going into the 80s, or the designers or styles or influences or cultural contexts thereof, and they don't relate to any of that in any particular developed sense of informed "urban symbiosis". It's like it's all flattened out; they relate to it they way they relate to the "illustrative urbanism" of gaming et al, where everything exists in entropically dateless immediacy, and one can alter details at one's own free will...
 
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In normal times I would consider this highly indecent result to be quite shocking and worthy of outcry. But these are abnormal times--as nearly everything in society is undergoing some form of disruption, including, it would seem, any sort of remedial architectural standards and civic pride.
 
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Though I have taken photos of this building in the very recent past, it has so much negative reception that I often skip this building when taking photos (and I take photos of other nearby buildings such as the Ontario Court of Justice and the Scotiabank North Tower instead).
 
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