the Sydney Opera House, for instance, which is merely a faux Edifice Complex since folks can get into it but not enjoy acoustics that are particularly good once they're there - don't have. Naturally, not all high-fashion novelty shapes fall into even this category - some, like the ROM, actually work very well as design solutions and don't make the Edifice Complex cut.
Exactly! Why circumscribe the baseline options here to the false binary opposites of Sydney Opera House Spectacle vs Diamond Business Park minimalism? Both buildings fail: Sydney for its lack of functionality and Diamond for its underwhelming aesthetic. In this context it would be far more appropriate to be considering Sydney Opera House 'hollow' spectacle vs the ROM brand of 'meaningful' spectacle that you yourself concede manages to be functional as well.
If Toronto is defined as a city by a lake, then the place where the city meets the lake is a defining point. There's no more appropriate place to showcase the modestly contextual architectural style that defines us than there. So Diamond is a perfect match. With a Clewes condo complex nearbye, and a new college building that's likely to be similarly polite, the context for our lovely new waterfront is being set rather nicely I think.
I do not entirely disagree with you US in that the building by Clewes is beautiful. Besides, wouldn't it be completely silly to have a wall of 'starchitecture' lining the waterfront where if every building is spectacle then none is, and we end up looking like Dubai. That said, however, I do feel that people have an expectation here that there be at least 'one' signature landmark added to the mix, such that if we had our 'monument', so to speak, we would likely be delighted with, rather than frustrated by the 'polite' and tasteful design vocabulary being adopted along the waterfront...
In my opinion the whole Waterfront project has been handled wrong. The public's hungar for waterfront rejuvenation, a symbol of the city's unrealized potential, mirrors the City's aspirations of throwing off the 'Hogtown' image and emerging as an important modern North American urban centre. A grand gesture was needed to sate the public's appetite for this, the optics of which would then have cleared the way for condos and office buildings and other more prosaic yet 'tasteful' buildings along the waterfront, and people would no doubt then have been fairly pleased with the standard set for such buildings by Clewes et al. Instead, the process that has unfolded has only served to frustrate the public's aspirations, raising doubt about the emerging vision and suspicion of the process. This could have been avoided. The foot of Yonge at the Waterfront should have been set aside for a grand gesture that would have satisfied the public's hungar for spectacle, and satisfied the public's concerns that Waterfront rejuvenation would live up its expectations.
Is there really anything wrong with monuments or spectacle in small doses? As US says the waterfront is a 'defining' location in the city. It is a place that symbolizes what Toronto is and can be, and the possibilities afforded here are limitless. I imagine a grand waterfront plaza with spectacular fountains spilling into the lake and floodlit at night, along with a starchitect 'du jour'-designed public institution such as a Museum of Toronto, forming the backdrop for a monumental off-shore Harbour beacon around which boats could gather, allowing views all around to the city skyline and the Toronto islands. Oh well, I can dream...
