There are renderings in the front page story that show how the tallest tower hits Queen.
42
My bad i42, thanks. Anyway, this is a good design for P+S, but IMHO its still not good enough for a project of this scale. What are my concerns?
The cover story generously refers to the south tower as an homage to 56 Leonard. While I definitely see this, the motif at the top of the tower resolves abruptly into a rather ordinary looking Toronto condominium. The two parts of the tower don’t seem to be very interested in each other.
Also, I’m generally pro-height, but 58 storeys fronting onto Queen East seems pretty heavily scaled for the neighbourhood. Whether or not this is too tall, there is nothing near as tall in the vicinity. As such, the south tower will have significant visibility from all directions. I don’t think this design deserves that level of attention. The saving grace of Aura is that there are now much nicer designs which soon could largely cover it from the east and south. If this building turns out to be an eyesore, it’ll be an eyesore from 360 degrees.
The stacked box podium adds some visual interest, but the inset base has the potential to create a shadowy and uninviting retail space.
More fundamentally, the project as a whole seems to lack the coherence of Toronto’s best modernist megaprojects. The north and south towers seem to speak something of the same design language. As do the podia of the south and middle tower. However, the north podium and the middle tower do not seem to relate to the rest of the project at all.
On the other hand, the project’s phases are not varied and diverse enough to create the kind of micro-sensitive street level experience intended, for example, at Henrique’s Bloor and Bathurst. This is definitely a blockbusting, megaproject. Just a poorly rationalized one.
