[kool maudit]

this smugness must be a lingering family compact relic. i am proud of canada's achievements in the areas you mention, but the united states is a large, vast, unruly country. it is a different thing than canada is, and should be both criticized and appreciated for this central quality.

 

[Urban Shocker]

PeeEnd: someone who never met a thread about Toronto he didn't spam with pictures of somewhere elso to prove ... er ... whatever it is he's trying to prove. That we're supposed to stop everything because SOM designed a building for somewhere that isn't Toronto, maybe?

 

[ProjectEnd]

Yet was designed and built in a style which you claim as our own...

I KNOW, OBAMA STOLE IT...crafty fellow!

 

[Urban Shocker]

There's no reason to assume that any local firm would have designed the building to look like that. There are any number of academic buildings designed by Toronto firms that don't.

 

[ProjectEnd]

There's no reason to assume that any local firm would have designed the building to look like that. There are any number of academic buildings designed by Toronto firms that don't.

Exactly. Local firms design buildings which look like that, local firms design buildings which don't look like that. Foreign firms design buildings which look like that, foreign firms design buildings which don't look like that. As such, to say that any particular building or style or approach is distinctly 'Torontonian is absurd.

 

[golodhendil]

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!

While I'm no expert in architecture, I would hardly consider either of those buildings "ugly". Boring, perhaps (esp for 2FC), but not ugly.

There are of course existing bylaws and regulations about casting shadows on parks, just as any other cities, and no one really is against that. The shadow law I mentioned was proposed in the state legislature without consultation with the city and would systematically prohibit any midday shadow on any part of those parks on any day of the year. The major impetuses for the shadow law was a building (along what had been designated as the city's "High Spine") that would have swept a thin shadow across one of the squares during the winter months, and new developments proposed along the linear park formed from the scar left by the Central Artery buried by Big Dig. Since the series of parks covered by the legislation basically cuts through the entire city, the legislation would effectively prohibit any future development in the core, and so far the bill has gone nowhere.

As for discussion about the Boston style in the forum I linked to, it was less about what obviously existed and was prevalent 1-2 centuries ago, but what direction it is going, spurred largely by their observation of the prevalence in recent years of either "boring" "contextual" buildings, on one hand, and "office park" type buildings being dropped onto prime locations in the city (not that I necessarily agree with all of their complaints; I'm merely paraphrasing). But that would be discussion for another thread here.

 

[adma]

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.

Except that it pays more respect to said "uninspired Neo-Classical tomb" than you do--and generally, really, I find your Tyler-Brule-gone-berzerk judgment on circa 1750-1950 non-modernism to be nothing more than the cramped, depressing opposite number to Prince-Charles-gone-berzerk judgments on Boston City Hall.

And the inherent magic of Toronto is that it's beyond all that. Tombs are cool, whether they're Neo-Classical or Brutalist. But so's regular Jane Jacobs urbanism, and whatever else. All in delightful counterpoint.

And as for those two "contextual" Boston buildings; hey, whatever. But even as a Bostonian, I wouldn't cast them in stone either as an embodiment or as a model--I'm too Torontonian to be that kind of Bostonian. Maybe to even over-dwell upon a "Toronto Style" isn't terribly Torontonian, for that matter...

 

[Tewder]

I do believe there is some value in the discussion though Adma. In another thread, discussing the alarming trend of faux-chateau design in new McMansions along Lakeshore west of Toronto, I can't help but feel it is just such a lack of a discussion that leads to such irrelevant design. I understand that a folly or two in design is charming but the fact that this mock castle form now asserts itself so boldly and prevalently simply feels wrong and at odds with stronger design philosophy that calls for some grounding and some connection to 'roots'. Bad taste and ostentation will always exist, I get that, but a wider dialogue brings more into the fold, assuming that good/better design will ultimately prevail.

 

[Ladies Mile]

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.

I think that's a decent opening salvo.

Meier is one of those architects that I always felt that I should like--but didn't. I think my problem with him lies in the fact that his style is more a shtick than anything else--nyah-nyah clowning in the face of Michael Graves PoMo. Some of his smaller buildings approach the ocean liner moderne he ostensibly takes his cues from, but the High Museum in Atlanta is a disappointment in the flesh, and the Getty is actually gross--opulent minimalism, a contradiction in terms. His New York buildings don't fail on that level. They don't exist on any level at all. They're just hackwork in his house style. The Murano has an embarrassing ad campaign (the real bane of our current architecture) but provides the simplicity and transparency of form lacking in Meier's recent buildings, domestic and otherwise.

MOMA has been interestingly revamped and is in fact one of my favorite spaces in a city not known for its public buildings, but I would have no hesitation in calling the Gardiner superior in light of the fact that it did not erase a significant Modern building and reduce it to a facade; did not sell off its air rights for condos designed by Pelli, that crayon-scribbling psuedo WASP twit; did not install a marble terrace that immediately crumbled into chunks in light of a cold snap; did not reinstall its collections so that they looked like dirty Ace bandages slapped over holes in the wall.

MOMA is a stab at Torontonian accommodation that falls through the holes in places: The Gardiner is the Toronto style as a finished thing, emerging from accommodation into art.

Interesting that you reduce the problem to New York having so much more money...as opposed to talent.

 

[Ladies Mile]

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.





Spin away Lady Smile, spin away.

The Harvard building looks handsome, but what of it? Boston/Cambridge is one of the few places in North America I expect to find quality architecture.

The other building is hard to judge--I don't know where it is and the photo is of poor quality.

I think the point is not that buildings showing the qualities we may call Torontonian do not exist elsewhere--it is that they are not the norm. There may be a model of refined, gracious and useful architecture being finished this minute in Dubai--but I doubt you would point at that city and conclude it was bastion of architectural virtue.

 

[kool maudit]

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.

OK, I think I am beginning to see what you are getting at... and it appears to be a vast appreciation for toronto's sort of informal, lived-in, loose-limbed and cobbled-together quality, which is a thing that it actually does possess, so at long last we begin to enter the same page in at least this regard. unlike you, though, i don't ascribe this to any overarching culture-based humility or unique local spin. i think, rather, that it is just the natural aesthetic circumstance of a city caught between provincial origins and a megalopolitan near-future... toronto is underbuilt, and it has been forced to make some very rapid, on-the-fly accomodations to its new, swollen circumstance.

let's compare toronto to a city that, for all its differences, has a few areas that are reminiscent of toronto in an architectural sense -- pittsburgh, pennsylvania.

pittsburgh, for all its present mediocrity, was larger and wealthier than toronto until at least the mid-1960s, so it's also a good benchmark of toronto's postwar boom. anyway, were pittsburgh to have swollen into a metro of 7 million during that period, one might expect a similarly ramshackle, informal quality to develop along its streets. formerly sedate rows of duplexes and peaked houses would suddenly find themselves loomed over by towering condos. the empty lots that once surrounded downtown would be bulging with fat buildings trying to eke out just a bit more square footage from the site. formerly countrified electrical poles would lean under the weight of added wires, and would be festooned with millions of posters for all of the bands, restaurants and galleries brought to the city by the influx of new residents.

the overall effect would be... well, it would be toronto. one would be presented with the specatacle of a wealthy metropolitan center that for some reason lacked the pomp and decadence of, say new york. it would be humble, slightly shabby but bursting with oddly-placed jewels. if it was lucky, as toronto was, it would have come of age at the peak of a great architectural movement, and would have a few monuments therefrom (such as CCW and TD).

i think the above is a better fit than politico-cultural theories of torontonian humility vs. american pomp and grandeur. it's for this reason that i regard toronto's present form as a pleasant accident and not an architectural triumph.

 

[Archivist]

Ladies, can you comment further on this norm you are proposing? My own sense from many cities is that the norm everywhere is pretty banal. I did find some small individual samples of buildings in Dubai that I thought were lovely, but as you surmise, scattered among grotesqueries pretty much everywhere.

But does your "norm" in Toronto include Pulse, Verve, St. Gabriel Village, Lotus, Regency on Yorkville, 900 Mt. Pleasant, Skyscape, C-Condominiums, One Sherway, Panache, Tapestry, The Met, Star of Downtown, Residences of College Park, Malibu, Rezen, Meridien North, Neo, Platinum XO, Filmport, Nuvo 2, Sixty Loft? I chose a random bunch of buildings completed in 2008 - of buildings completed in that year, I suspect that only the CAMH buildings, Wellesley Central, Pure Spirit and maybe Rezen (which has some of the characteristics proposed of our style) might find themselves included. I suppose there could be some houses out there.

I certainly know that US is of the very strong opinion that a Toronto Style does not attempt to encompass most of the exemplars in the city, but only a select few that define the style. I am not opposed to that either, so long as we ackowledge it, but your comment about Toronto Style buildings being the norm in Toronto is incorrect in any possible meaningful sense of that word.

 

[Ladies Mile]

An excellent argument. I would posit that Pittsburgh, on a smaller scale, does indeed have the pomp of New York, resulting in a collection of overbearing Beaux Arts buildings, Neo-Gothic weirdness (Cathedral of Learning--um, okay) and one genuine masterpiece, Richardson's courthouse, the basis for our own original City Hall.

I would also say that it is a cultural distinction, albeit not necessarily a fully conscious one. Canadians are apt to view the grand statement with suspicion: we're not very good at hucksterism (which may be why our ad campaigns and names for our new buildings are so cringe-inducingly immature). Pittsburgh is the classic American boom town of social divisions and terra-cotta encrusted vertical canyons--its modernist legacy is pretty much non-existent, but that didn't keep them from springing for some of the most heinous examples of Neo-Rockefeller PoMo in the States.

While is may seem a circular argument, the reason Pittsburgh isn't Toronto is...because it REALLY isn't Toronto. When push came to shove, its super-rich discarded their mansions and museums and moved to Fifth Avenue.

 

[alklay]

I think that's a decent opening salvo.

Meier is one of those architects that I always felt that I should like--but didn't. I think my problem with him lies in the fact that his style is more a shtick than anything else--nyah-nyah clowning in the face of Michael Graves PoMo. Some of his smaller buildings approach the ocean liner moderne he ostensibly takes his cues from, but the High Museum in Atlanta is a disappointment in the flesh, and the Getty is actually gross--opulent minimalism, a contradiction in terms. His New York buildings don't fail on that level. They don't exist on any level at all. They're just hackwork in his house style. The Murano has an embarrassing ad campaign (the real bane of our current architecture) but provides the simplicity and transparency of form lacking in Meier's recent buildings, domestic and otherwise.

MOMA has been interestingly revamped and is in fact one of my favorite spaces in a city not known for its public buildings, but I would have no hesitation in calling the Gardiner superior in light of the fact that it did not erase a significant Modern building and reduce it to a facade; did not sell off its air rights for condos designed by Pelli, that crayon-scribbling psuedo WASP twit; did not install a marble terrace that immediately crumbled into chunks in light of a cold snap; did not reinstall its collections so that they looked like dirty Ace bandages slapped over holes in the wall.

MOMA is a stab at Torontonian accommodation that falls through the holes in places: The Gardiner is the Toronto style as a finished thing, emerging from accommodation into art.

Interesting that you reduce the problem to New York having so much more money...as opposed to talent.

I agree with you on much of Meier's work but you have ignored the building I pointed out (which I think is a beautiful work).

And how does the MOMA 'fall through the holes in places". And what makes the Gardiner "Toronto Style"?

 

[kool maudit]

An excellent argument. I would posit that Pittsburgh, on a smaller scale, does indeed have the pomp of New York, resulting in a collection of overbearing Beaux Arts buildings, Neo-Gothic weirdness (Cathedral of Learning--um, okay) and one genuine masterpiece, Richardson's courthouse, the basis for our own original City Hall.

I would also say that it is a cultural distinction, albeit not necessarily a fully conscious one. Canadians are apt to view the grand statement with suspicion: we're not very good at hucksterism (which may be why our ad campaigns and names for our new buildings are so cringe-inducingly immature). Pittsburgh is the classic American boom town of social divisions and terra-cotta encrusted vertical canyons--its modernist legacy is pretty much non-existent, but that didn't keep them from springing for some of the most heinous examples of Neo-Rockefeller PoMo in the States.

While is may seem a circular argument, the reason Pittsburgh isn't Toronto is...because it REALLY isn't Toronto. When push came to shove, its super-rich discarded their mansions and museums and moved to Fifth Avenue.

Again, I feel this inserts culture in an area where less ephemeral metrics explain the circumstance rather thoroughly: Where Pittsburgh seems excessive is at those points which demonstrate nothing other than the fact that, in, say, 1924, it was wealthy in the manner that Toronto is now -- and Toronto was not. The Cathedral of Learning, in function, is sort of a swollen Whitney block. And are the Gulf Building and Commerce Court North really so different? I mean, enough to claim they embody vast cultural predelictions?

are scene's like this (involving the frick building):

really so different from this (involving the trader's bank):

again - if we see a lesser emphasis on detail in toronto, it's due to toronto's lesser status and wealth. the royal york was very pompous in a sort of john bull/englishmen-building-a-skyscraper kind of way.

i don't think visitors to pittsburgh come away with a sense of having visited a grand city. The social divisions represented by its neighbourhoods are no more severe than those embodied by rosedale vs. cabbagetown.