You mean this building?
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Yes. You're right it could be found anywhere, but imo it's not a pair of ugly, boring boxes joined at the hip. The More London project is a good master plan, better than the buildings themselves, and that is what I think is more important here. A plan that allows for future waterfront projects to integrate with this. The design of the building is important but if it is not a 'showcase' or 'iconic' piece that is fine, as long as it's not dull and uninspiring. I believe the ultimate goal is to showcase the entire waterfront, whether that actually happens is a different story altogether.
 
I'm thinking CTV Globemedia has a tad more class than these renderings afford. My bets are back on CanWest Mediaworks.
 
Context is key. Most of the critiques would be moot if this indeed was being built in Markham, as opposed to a site which planners have deemed to be significant, both physically and psychologically.
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I've glanced through just about every east bayfront document and have yet to find any reference to this particular site being set aside for something landmark - in fact most landmark references refer to the cohesive masterplan which this proposal does abide to

eastbayfront.jpg

(recycled - ignore the red box)


P.S. FM is definitely enjoying himself too much
 
Maybe I'm jaded, but I, too, honestly can't see what's to super-hail about More London as opposed to Project Symphony. Unless it's something about the former being more glass-and-steel "contemporary", hence "true to our time", that kind of rhetoric. But otherwise, you'd be better off choosing something more Alsop-like than this as a what-coulda-been foil to Project Symphony's "banality".

There's something about this Project Symphony pile-on that's as hyperbolic as attacking the Crombie mayoralty as a disaster for Toronto architecture, because it led to 45-foot height limits, dreary midrise brick zones like the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood, meddlesome old biddies like Jane Jacobs guiding urban policy etc...
 
The rendering reminds me very loosely of the Queens Quay Terminal building which IMO is one of the building's on the Toronto waterfront that works well with its surroundings.

-It has a mall on the bottom floor (which project symphony will have a large commercial portion to it)

-It has several restaurants which during the summer have fabulous patios (which hopefully *crosses fingers* project symphony will also incoorporate)

If project symphony turns into another Queens Quay Terminal building I can live with that. It will bring a bit of life to the area. It isn't an iconic building and the name project symphony is a bit pretentious but the most important thing is what they put in it rather than the architecture on the outside.

I hope I don't get banned from UT for defending this. :eek:
 
Mark S - the site is not the one you marked in red, but the one marked "special use site" on the plan. Look again at the rendering - it has a lighthouse, and you can see both the reflection of the building in the lake and the dockwall of the slip on the left side.
 
Put me on the list of people unoffended by this rendering. It there's gotta be an office building there (and looking at that site plan, it seems there will be lots of green and public space in the area, so why not an office building) there's nothing wrong with this one, other than some people think every building should be a pastiche of Alonzo Hawk's Hawk Plaza.
 
I agree that it isn't that bad for a mixed use office/retail.
 
I think it's CanWest. I've heard that they never stopped grousing when the City refused to subsidize their relocation to the waterfront.
 
I question the need for a "landmark ornamental structure" anywhere on the waterfront.

A giant pippypoo or doodad of that kind would be nothing more than the first step in creating the Edifice Complex I posited here some time ago: showy structures for people who like to stand outside and look. I'm surprised Jack Diamond has gone along with the idea and plunked one down beside this nice Toronto Style building.
 
ap: the City's angled site plan is being ignored by TEDCO for this project. There will be greenspace beside the slip, and to the south, but not so interestingly angled. The potentially eye-catching diagonal street wall crossing Queens Quay is being scuttled in drydock.

Diamond's thing's a dud I tells yah! It's not that it's a terrible building, just a terribly boring one.

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bb: we don't need a nice Toronto style building here, we need a really cool Toronto style building here, like KPMB's Gardiner, or Quad's N-Blox.

We need to leverage the highly visible location of this project. Prominent buildings that look boring will only encourage more boring buildings everywhere else. Build something here that unleashes a little architectural creativity, and that will promoted elsewhere in the city.

bb: you championed the Office of Metropolitan Architecture's wacky (but clean-lined) Museum Plaza skyscraper complex for Louisville, Kentucky (sitting on their waterfront). Why be so content with this plan?

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we need a really cool Toronto style building here, like KPMB's Gardiner, or Quad's N-Blox.
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Why? It's going to be used for the most mundane of purposes - it will house computers and faxes 24 hours a day, and for 7 and half, people will work on them. Nothing exciting will happen in this building - why tart it up to pretend otherwise?
 
Maybe I'm jaded, but I, too, honestly can't see what's to super-hail about More London as opposed to Project Symphony.
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I agree. Seems like an example (this was discussed in another thread) of a European project given more credit than it deserves.
 
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