- Thread starter Observer Walt
- Start date
NBGtect
Active Member
Amazing photos. Amazing building. Amazing Architect. We need many more of these. I'm surprised that this only gets 107 posts, but Aura gets thousands of redundant comments.
The number of posts in a thread on UT seems to rise geometrically with the height of the project. There's also a location factor at work, with the proximity of the project to the core being another attractor, but more so height: the shorter buildings simply never engender the same degree of adulation nor scorn. There's certainly near universal admiration on UT for B.streets, but without it having a mark on the skyline, it and its mid-rise kin just don't attract the same amount of attention.
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Miscreant
Senior Member
This is a welcome addition to a street that in many places is sorely lacking in grace or beauty. Mid-rises like this clean it up considerably.
NBGtect
Active Member
The Bathurst Street Study should be coming up very soon, so the public should get an idea shortly of the direction that the City has in mind.
TrickyRicky
Senior Member
"This is a welcome addition to a street that in many places is sorely lacking in grace or beauty. Mid-rises like this clean it up considerably."
I'm for this project and am very aware of the original streetscape it replaces; however, I am a bit concerned about this "cleaning up". One of my original concerns about this and some other of our new mid-rises is that they have too long street frontages and that the street retail is poorly addressed. It remains to be seen how this particular projects will work out. A perfect example of this concern of mine is on Queen West at Gladstone. If you find yourself there look at the new complex to the south and compare it to the existing streetscape on the north side. The cleaned up mid-rise is unfortunate at street level. It is actually worse than dumpy examples of our worst commercial street fronts. I'm not saying this out of some kind of sense of nostalgia or anti-corporate agenda. Even pizza pizza and dry-cleaners look and feel and seem to prosper better in dumpy old poorly maintained buildings then they do in our contemporary buildings. Why? I can't say.
P.S. I otherwise really like this project both in form and design.
I'm for this project and am very aware of the original streetscape it replaces; however, I am a bit concerned about this "cleaning up". One of my original concerns about this and some other of our new mid-rises is that they have too long street frontages and that the street retail is poorly addressed. It remains to be seen how this particular projects will work out. A perfect example of this concern of mine is on Queen West at Gladstone. If you find yourself there look at the new complex to the south and compare it to the existing streetscape on the north side. The cleaned up mid-rise is unfortunate at street level. It is actually worse than dumpy examples of our worst commercial street fronts. I'm not saying this out of some kind of sense of nostalgia or anti-corporate agenda. Even pizza pizza and dry-cleaners look and feel and seem to prosper better in dumpy old poorly maintained buildings then they do in our contemporary buildings. Why? I can't say.
P.S. I otherwise really like this project both in form and design.
Miscreant
Senior Member
Yeah, no argument here. Street-level retail is really important. My comment was really more general: if you take a wide-eyed I-don't-live-in-Toronto-and-am-seeing-it-for-the-first-time approach to Bathurst St., it's pretty grim in places.
junctionist
Senior Member
The problem is that most new development is out of scale with the city's traditional urban fabric in terms of street frontage. One minimalist condo facade is as wide as 5 old commercial buildings. As a result, the streetscape becomes more monotonous. Streetscapes benefit from having a variety of facades.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
many aren't too wide, this is much wider than a typical midrise.
you can't expect a modern building to be only 1 storefront wide, it simply isn't realistic, modern buildings simply aren't built like that.
you can't expect a modern building to be only 1 storefront wide, it simply isn't realistic, modern buildings simply aren't built like that.
junctionist
Senior Member
There will be modern buildings 1 storefront wide--simple two storey infill. Most will be wider and taller, but if they're as wide as this project, our streets will become more monotonous.
Parkdalian
Senior Member
Monotony is not a sign of bad design. Paris's streets were designed to be intentionally monotonous, for instance. And there's plenty of great streets that are lined with wide buildings that do not vary much over the course of their faces.
TrickyRicky
Senior Member
^Parkdalian, I was going to use London as a great example of this. I love London but I find some of their mid-rise districts have blocks (built to an architectural standard much higher than anything here) that also have this deadening impact. Now in a city as dense as London or Paris local residents probably look on this deadening as a positive thing, a genuine positive impact on the quality of life. However, in Toronto we are not putting these mid-rises on quiet residential streets, we are building them to replace what already exists on our "High Streets" or commercial avenues. That is my concern because we already have hundreds of quiet side-streets but they are essentially un-develop-able.
At any rate, my point is that even though I like the design of this building it remains to be seen how "good" it actually is. I feel you need to give a building at least 5 years after construction to begin to understand how good the design and concept actually are.
At any rate, my point is that even though I like the design of this building it remains to be seen how "good" it actually is. I feel you need to give a building at least 5 years after construction to begin to understand how good the design and concept actually are.
junctionist
Senior Member
Many Parisian streets have some architectural vista. The buildings that line the streets are more subdued to provide a harmonizing backdrop for the vistas. Without the vistas, the Haussmann blocks would be boring.
The latest on B.streets is up on the front page.
urbandreamer
recession proof
10 May 2014
