While admittedly not Tom's best-ever structure, that project is miles ahead of this one. U of T's track record on modern student residences is indeed mixed, from the very excellent Woodsworth College Residence to the hum-drum-battleship Morrison Hall (Zeidler). New College's semi-recent addition at Spadina and Willcox is somewhere in the middle IMO.

This, however, is next-level terrible.
 
ProjectEnd said:
While admittedly not Tom's best-ever structure, that project is miles ahead of this one. U of T's track record on modern student residences is indeed mixed, from the very excellent Woodsworth College Residence to the hum-drum-battleship Morrison Hall (Zeidler). New College's semi-recent addition at Spadina and Willcox is somewhere in the middle IMO.

This, however, is next-level terrible.
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Morrison Hall would be a fine building if the materials were more analogous with its surroundings. The blue/grey panels seem cheap and out of place. I like the setbacks and proportions, which allow a relatively tall building to fit into its historic low-rise surroundings seamlessly.
 
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Wow, I had to come on here just to see what people were saying about this atrocity!!

The first time I drove by it I almost fainted at how ugly this vertical factory/prison is.

How? How in the world did they decide on aluminum/steel siding for the exterior?

It looks like a futuristic factory with some lame attempt at brickwork for the podium.

Jesus Christ what a disaster. I can't believe the person who designed this is a working architect.
 
ProjectEnd said:
It's not a U of T project. It's a Knightstone rental, targeted at and marketed to students.
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Exactly. This isn't a UofT residence. It's a 100% private development. They probably have a licensing agreement to use UofT in the advertisement. It's actually an above average design for new, ground up, privately built dormitories. I'd probably take this despite its oppressive massing over the orange stucco garbage that is Campus Common.
 
maestro said:
Exactly. This isn't a UofT residence. It's a 100% private development. They probably have a licensing agreement to use UofT in the advertisement. It's actually an above average design for new, ground up, privately built dormitories. I'd probably take this despite its oppressive massing over the orange stucco garbage that is Campus Common.
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Where do you find anything "above average" about this building, other than maybe the rent?

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I understand it's difficult to see this as above average but, I think my post covered it fairly well. I even gave an example in Toronto. Take a look at Lester Street in Waterloo. Don't expect better if more private'y built residences get built from the ground up. The new Ryerson residence on Jarvis isn't the same situation. Ryerson is directly involved. This one built for Ryerson students is ...

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.6598293,-79.3784079,3a,75y,295.42h,101.4t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1siFCzuR--mM9EYGU8_LON5g!2e0!6s//geo0.ggpht.com/cbk?panoid=iFCzuR--mM9EYGU8_LON5g&output=thumbnail&cb_client=maps_sv.tactile.gps&thumb=2&w=203&h=100&yaw=313.7941&pitch=0&thumbfov=100!7i13312!8i6656
 
The building looks awful with its oppressive massing, banal materials, and small windows. The way they get away with it is that the tenants, who are university students, don't choose the place as a long-term home. It might be more enticing than a rundown Victorian rooming house. No one would want to spend a lot of money on condos or even rental apartments in a building that looks like this one.
 
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The real shame is that Canada's modern history is full of examples of great student housing - in fact, in past decades, you could argue that student housing put Canadian architecture on the map. I am thinking about Ron Thom's work, especially.

Other than New College Residence, Woodsworth, and perhaps Pond Road, Toronto doesn't have any architecturally notable recent examples that I can think of, and we certainly don't have anything on the scale of the amazing output from the era of megastructure and brutalism.

Housing, even student housing, has become nothing more than a commodity or a thing for investors in Canada. It's an incredible shame.
 
All is not lost. Universities should continue to build.

This is not just a Canadian thing. Giants like American Campus Communities with hundreds of thousands of beds in the US expanded to Toronto (Canadian Campus Communities) and is advising Knightstone and how to build these pieces of shit.
 
Surprising to see a brand new building defaced, thought there was some unwritten code of honour against it?
 
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