[golodhendil]

Though speaking of Boston, I was reflecting on this post, and thinking of how, even if it comes natural to Bostonians, there's something strangely simplistic about that way of "viewing" architecture from a Torontonian standpoint. Like, if there's an inherent and underexplored "Toronto style", it may be less in our way of building anew, than in our way of adapting to and discussing and creatively beholding that which already exists.

For instance, as I see it, if Boston were like Toronto, Boston City Hall's rep wouldn't have slid to this level of universal mob-rule loathing with a few pointy-headed academics, architects, and Docomomo-fringe masochists as the mere pathetic exception. Instead, it'd be "adapted to" over time, and even rediscovered, embraced and celebrated by younger generations, by a Bostonian version of a certain Spacing or Concrete Toronto spirit appreciative of the bold form and 60s optimism. And the "mere pathetic exception" wouldn't seem so mere, so pathetic, so marginalized...they'd seem rather, well, sagely.

It's not that the more general too-otherwise-preoccupied-to-be-"informed" public would have shared such love. But at worst, BCH's rep might have been more Robarts-like, I suspect: lovably "loathesome".

If Boston were like Toronto, 2008 would have seen disarmingly enlightening 40th anniversary celebrations, exhibitions, and public symposia on Boston City Hall. Instead, there was...nothing. I tried Googling up variations on "Boston City Hall" and "40th anniversary", and from a casual-enough observation there was...zilch.

That's sad. And shocking, in an academically-tinged metropolis that once helped midwife (through Gropius et al at the Harvard GSD, and beyond) International Modernism in North America. From a Torontonian urban-dialogue/discussion standpoint, that's tank-town level.

With that under consideration: maybe we, in Toronto, have it made, more than we realize. And it must perplex outsiders that the adopted home of Jane Jacobs is too nuanced and paradoxical and lively in its urban self-reflection to simply follow paint-by-numbers William H. Whyte formulae or Kunstlerian agitprop...it's like we say yes, thank you, and go our own way. We're so infused with Jane Jacobs compatibility, we know how to fold it against itself. And create some pretty fascinating urban origami sculptures, ever-changing under the evolving urban light.

Boston does, in fact, have a clique of archi-geeks, which can be found on here (incidentally, about a year or two ago they've also had a discussion about what was/is/will be the "Boston style"). Most of them have come to a similar conclusion as I posted in the One Congress Street thread, that City Hall itself is not the problem but the empty brick plaza around it. As for 40th anniversary, there was nothing in particular that happened (even though I'd think 40 is not usually something celebrated very extravagantly anyway); I do recall reading something on the Boston Globe about various ideas/plans to redesign City Hall and/or the plaza, mainly by putting various additions/structures on top of it, but I couldn't seem to find the links anymore.

Even though Boston is a very academic city (I wouldn't exactly call it a metropolis), in many ways the resident population is still very conservative / "provincial", unlike the much more transient population of students and young professionals who might be more creative/innovative on these things. There certainly is nothing similar to Spacing around here. The planning and development process in Boston is horrendously slow and controlled by NIMBYs whose chief complaints are "It's too tall", "It's out of context" and "It casts shadows", and this is also the place that could produce a bill in the state legislature that tries to block all future development that would cast any shadow anytime on several of the city's parks so that people "will get as much sunlight as they get now into the future . . . until we tear some buildings down, and then we'll get some more." (exact quotation from the legislator)

The Boston area does have several fairly daring modern architectural pieces (especially those on the various university campuses, such as MIT's Stata Center), but the majority of what's being built now are all quite contextual and fit in the their surrounding buildings, such as these two recently finished ones:
Two Financial Center

New academic centre for Massachusetts College of Pharmacy

which is not necessarily a bad thing, if they are done well.

A good example of the difference in the way Boston and Toronto do things could be in how they approached their respective museum expansion. Comparing to our ROM, this is what the final, completed expansion of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts would look like:

with the new additions being the axis of boxes along the middle.

 

[alklay]

In summary, someone mentioned that Toronto doesn’t so much have a style as it does a sensibility. That sensibility is largely one of deference to context and existing historical styles.

If anything, this thread has certainly shown the hollowness of the concept of "the Toronto Style". If defined as neo-modernism that has a 'deference to context', that can and does describe what is going on in almost every North American (and most international) cities. And the fact that one can easily find buildings that look like (and could very well be) "Toronto" buildings anywhere and everywhere, demonstrates the lack of a distinct concrete style.

 

[adma]

Of course there have always been efforts to define a Toronto-centric local practice, stretching back decades. Ironically the most persuasive earlier iteration (at the time anyway) sought to define Toronto primarily through the lens of postmodernism.

Through the mid-late 1980’s there was a sense that the ironies and appropriations of postmodernist aesthetics were a perfect fit for Toronto, mainly because it allowed architects to explore the interest in regionalism that marked much artistic practice here.

These were years when Fredric Jameson famously cited the Eaton Centre as an important example of contemporary architecture in his essay entitled "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalismâ€, and Mississauga City Hall was amongst the most famous examples of postmodernist architecture in the world.

Although that was also a time when definitions of "postmodern" were (perhaps vestigially--remember that the original cover image for Jencks' "The Language Of Postmodern Architecture" was of Kurokawa's nakogin Capsule Tower; and Gehry was among the practitioners featured in the 1979 Time cover feature) a lot more fluid, and maybe a lot more interesting--indeed, it may be argued that neo-modernism was more an extension than rejection of this sensibility. And of course, scarcely anyone today would view the Eaton Centre (other than its reworked Yonge elevation) in terms of Postmodernism.

As important as Mississauga City Hall was, it didn't lead to "High Postmodernism" defining the GTA any more than Toronto City Hall led to Neo-Expressionism defining the GTA (unless Uno Prii counts).

In fact, I'd date the moment of "most persuasive earlier iteration" a decade earlier: that is, with the Diamond/Myers-spurred neo-vernacular aesthetic that came to characterize and be symbiotic with the Crombie-era "City That Works" (and, indeed, was prototypically postmodern in its approach). The 80s was but an afterlude to all that...

 

[Ladies Mile]

While the two "contextual" buildings in Boston are ugly as sin, the addition to the museum (judging from this image) seems unobjectionable and perhaps a more useful addition to what seems a typically uninspired Neo-Classical tomb.

Not sure the ROM addition is the superior.

And I think you are being a bit obtuse about Boston's architectural relevance. Those parks they don't want shadows over are hundred of years old in some cases: Boston's architecture includes Richardson and his followers as well as Bulfinch and continues to draw upon the MIT style for its best buildings. Arguement about a Boston style? Arguably there have been no less than four of them already!

 

[kool maudit]

this is something other than what it purports to be. by no reasonable metric can toronto be considered the greatest urban ensemble in north america, and that it was why nobody says that it is (save ladies mile).

(it is, however, an incredibly vibrant and unique city, so let's not let the shortcomings of LM's claim turn into an excuse to diminish toronto's very real qualities.)

in my opinion? it's a counter-provincial stance, made in recognition of the fact that some people, often from more prominent centres, fail to recognize the magnitude and the quality of what toronto has come to possess. in defiance of these claims, our secretly-boosterish (if far to cultured to admit it) LM has made a pre-emptive strike against toronto's supposed betters -- the new yorks and the parises -- and is claiming that is is they who actually possess the landscape of mediocrities, and toronto that possesses the jewels.

it is audacious, but ultimately evocative of nothing more than its time and place: a second-tier global city in a period of immense wealth and startling activity, whose cultured citizens are beginning to chafe against the restrictions of their locale's present status.

 

[Ladies Mile]

My challenge:

Name a building with New York with a Toronto equivalent* and I will be happy to state my opinion of their relative merits. You can then decide for yourself if my argument holds water on a case by case basis.

I think it does.

*obviously the leaves out the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge.

 

[kool maudit]

i am more interested in the anwer to the following:

"the other question is, of course, this: if we are to take everything you say as true and accept that pre-war toronto is just head-and-shoulders above its supposed peers -- even those, like new york, that were world capitals at the time, or those - like philadelphia - that were significantly larger and wealthier than toronto -- then how did this happen? are the citizens of toronto just uniquely enlightened? were the local architects just so good that their work stands head-and-shoulders above the genre-forming works of their better-known peers and predecessors? explain the genesis of this secret and underrecognized greatness."

 

[Ladies Mile]

A fair question.

I think we were probably no smarter during our formative years than anywhere else. If Grand Centrals and Paris Operas and Reichstags had been there for the taking we would have grabbed them for ourselves. However, given the way the city developed (and perhaps a not always admirable conservative streak) we were always more a make-do kind of town. When modernism came, it brought its trio of glamorous American-style giants and its curving Scandinavian fashion model city hall--but our response was something immediately useful, almost tentative, a reevaluation that was not grounded in willful iconoclasm or the petty abuse of rich swingers bored with their new toy, but in a frank assessment of what we could do about what need to be done.

Toronto is a city built from the inside outwards--and this explains its persistent humanism, its resilience, its gritty, half-finished but always living quality and something of its unexpected elegance--the elegance of a Japanese sleeping mat or handmade quilt--a weaving together as opposed to a conjuring up.

 

[Tewder]

it is audacious, but ultimately evocative of nothing more than its time and place: a second-tier global city in a period of immense wealth and startling activity, whose cultured citizens are beginning to chafe against the restrictions of their locale's present status.

Good point. Hey, a little hubris goes a long way in city building and even top tier first-rate cities must have needed some at one point.

 

[alklay]

My challenge:

Name a building with New York with a Toronto equivalent* and I will be happy to state my opinion of their relative merits. You can then decide for yourself if my argument holds water on a case by case basis.

I think it does.

*obviously the leaves out the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge.

How about Richard Meier's apartments at 173-176 Perry St. at West Street, compared to, lets say Munaro. Or the new MOMA compared to any of our new cultural institutions? (and there can be a 1000 even smaller examples. New York is just so rich in decent architecture)

With respect, this is ultimately a useless exercise, as New York is so much bigger and has access to so much more money.

 

[Urban Shocker]

*obviously the leaves out the Statue of Liberty QUOTE]

Why? For tens of thousands of American immigrants, from the days of the Underground Railroad through to Vietnam and the Reagan/Bush era, Toronto itself offers the freedom from oppression the statue represents:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tosset to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

 

[Ladies Mile]

We have yet to commemorate this with a 20-story tall green French lady, however.

 

[kool maudit]

oh please.

ladies mile's statement was direct and precise, and thank you for it, LM.

the above is the worst sort of canadian anti-american posturing.

that statue stood when the lower east side, for example, had more jewish inhabitants than anywhere else in the world, and at a time when mackenzie king was saying "none is too many" for canada.

we pat ourselves on the back too much. spare me the cancon militance.

 

[ProjectEnd]

My challenge:

Name a building with New York with a Toronto equivalent* and I will be happy to state my opinion of their relative merits. You can then decide for yourself if my argument holds water on a case by case basis.

I think it does.

*obviously the leaves out the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge.

We already have, to some degree. Though the images and text in question don't attempt direct comparisons between buildings, the suggestions which Archivist and I made were met with no response from you or your pretentious, pink partner.

Precisely. I'd enjoy Shocker or the Smilin' Lady's explanation of how Harvard's recently completed NW Science building by SOM is much different than recently completed academic structures by Diamond or, more accurately, KPMB.

http://www.som.com/content.cfm/harvard_university_northwest_science_building

ProjectEnd, precisely. I was quite struck by this little tower, which strikes me as extremely similar to several handsome buildings that have been built recently in our fair city. Just as with the example you showed, this one strikes me as not substantially distinguishable from multiple projects in our city.

Spin away Lady Smile, spin away.

 

[Urban Shocker]

kool maudit: It is perfectly accurate. And we abolished slavery sixty years before they did.