The units are tiny but nothing out of the ordinary. I personally do like the bare concrete look, but I like it when it's done well, not the way it's done with a lot of the lofts we see going up. Still, I'd rather this look than the tacky suburban look I've seen in some of these modern condos (ie: Ltower). Walked by this one tonight and the white marble lobby looked quite nice.
 
Yep, great building. Something new for the city for sure.

That picture is also one more premise in an argument for the conclusion: time to bury Hydro.

You don't know the hydro wires are part of Toronto's character..
 
Yep, great building. Something new for the city for sure.

That picture is also one more premise in an argument for the conclusion: time to bury Hydro.

Yes, a thousand times yes.


The Brant Park is the epitome of simple elegance. The precast frame provides a pleasing rhythm that's more difficult to achieve in an all-glass frontage, introducing a disciplined design that remains minimalist and uncluttered. The stepped back glass walls of the top two storeys acknowledge the sky and the angular plane the City is looking for, while the continuation of the frame asserts the fundamental strength of the design by showing how adaptable it is to the required step-back. Neat and sweet.

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I really like this building as well, it's a very confident and elegant scheme applied to what could otherwise have been an unremarkable infill site or something banal with all efforts focused on the west facade alone. In particular it's nice to see the north facade get ample windows despite being on a service lane and destined to have neighbours 6m away in the not-so-distant future.

What I can't understand at all is how they managed to design and build it under current codes with virtually no insulation at all despite the incorporation of solid wall elements. It seems a shame more effort wasn't made to try and create this scheme with a more suitable cladding - even EIFS instead of stucco-on-poured-concrete would've helped. Condo done exclusively in window wall and other uninsulated claddings are straight-up irresponsible in this day and age, knowing what we know. The city needs to be better at enforcing this.
 
I don't understand why we don't talk about the discrepancy between how great this looks from the outside and how terrible the units are from the inside.
 
We don't have to deal with the inside. What's wrong with the units? Looks like a typical soft loft to me.

What do you mean "we"?

They are not remotely close to "soft loft" by any definition of the phrase, other than the hideous unfinished concrete ceilings and walls.
 
If you're an owner and are not too happy with what's been delivered, then the idea is that the Real Estate Forum thread (linked near the top of this page) is where you can all talk as owners.

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Why do the concrete ceilings and (some) walls bother you then? The purchasers know what was on offer here, and if they don't like that aesthetic, they either don't buy, or they cover it.

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The exposed concrete is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of how horribly these units were designed.

I'm sure the Chinese investors who purchased the majority of the units don't care.

There are 24 units available for lease or sale and they are all so invariably crappy.
 
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I'm going to hazard a guess that Brad Lamb doesn't care about the finishes if his investors/buyers don't either. I don't know this to be true, I am just assuming many developers care more about the bottom line than about nice finishes and if the owners keep buying, why would they care. I also think we should put more blame on the developer who makes the decisions, than on the architect in many cases who is simply following budget and timelines imposed on them. As many have mentioned, often in this forum we take our frustrations out purely on the architect of record for whatever reason. I am guilty of this in the past too, being a layperson and not knowing this part of the development process well.

It does look nice from the outside though, and as we all know, that's the only part that matters, since that's all most of the public will ever see.
 
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