I just got back from a trip through Oslo - Stockholm - and Copenhagen.
It's really depressing to drive past this mess on our waterfront after seeing how other cities handle architecture. Why we allow this to happen to our city is beyond me.

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I find it hard to reconcile that River City/Canary District exist in the same sphere as this. What happened to standards?
 
I just got back from a trip through Oslo - Stockholm - and Copenhagen.
It's really depressing to drive past this mess on our waterfront after seeing how other cities handle architecture. Why we allow this to happen to our city is beyond me.
Heck you dont even have to travel that far to see a better waterfront district. Vancouver, San Francisco, and a whole bunch of other North American cities handle their waterfronts with much more aptitude than Toronto does. Waterfront Toronto was created in part to avoid the mistakes that were done on Queens Quay West, but yet their allowing for even more clunkers to come online.

I've said it before and i'll say it again, our waterfront is a joke.
 
Heck, Windsor arguably did a better job with its riverfront. It bought private land to build together 5 continuous kilometres of parkland in the central part of the city, with numerous works of public art, formal gardens, a large space for festivals, and other attractions.
 
It seems no more balcony glass has been added in a long time...is there any chance that Daniels saw how horrible it looked and decided to change it?

I imagine balcony glass isn't prohibitively expensive (given the cost of the whole building) and imagine they could resell the cladding they ordered to someone, somewhere.
 
It seems no more balcony glass has been added in a long time...is there any chance that Daniels saw how horrible it looked and decided to change it?

I imagine balcony glass isn't prohibitively expensive (given the cost of the whole building) and imagine they could resell the cladding they ordered to someone, somewhere.
I don't think the balcony glass looks horrible. It's the highlight of the building.
 
I don't think the balcony glass looks horrible. It's the highlight of the building.
Exactly, it's the window wall that's incomprehensibly horrible. Comparatively, the balcony glass is like walking on sunshine, whoa, and don't it feel good.

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I just got back from a trip through Oslo - Stockholm - and Copenhagen.
It's really depressing to drive past this mess on our waterfront after seeing how other cities handle architecture. Why we allow this to happen to our city is beyond me.

A lot of it has to do with the culture. People forget that for most of Toronto's history this was a blue collar industrial city. This is a city where tons of people view ramshackle buildings, a jumbled mess of overhead wires, and run down as character and/or endearing. Some will even argue that it's what gives a city vibrancy. Cities like Toronto are pragmatic to a fault and view design as frivolous, HSR as an absurd extravagance, and ugly buildings as fine as they're just filler.

Toronto has obviously transformed into a white collar global city but a culture takes many many generations to catch up. We're slowly turning our attention to things like beauty, the public realm, and architecture but it's still the exception rather than the minimum standard acceptable. We can blame developers all we want but it's really just a reflection on Torontonians. Developers wouldn't design this crap if we refused to buy units in them.

We will end up with a gorgeous city but it will take another 2-3 generations before the culture completely changes. 2060? Then another 40-50 years to fix the mistakes made in the past. It's best to think of these Daniels towers as temporary structures we're building till the city is ready for something nice.
 
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The east tower appears to have topped out - it looks like they are finishing off the top of the elevator shaft.


UPDATE 22 August. Yes, they are clearly working on the mechanical penthouse of east tower.
 
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It's actually embarrassing what the waterfront looks like at this point. Aside from Monde and Pier 21, everything is bland crap. This is what I feared.

Can you think of any major city "new" waterfront that looks like this?

I don't want to see anything from Tridel or Daniels along the waterfront. I get that they're big boys and self financed but they are bland and unimaginative as can be.

I want to see Freed, Mod, Urban Capital, I'll even take CityzenFernbrook (not the greatest builder but they at least have balls to build something different), Great Gulf, Lanterra, Cresford, etc. You know, builders who actually have some pride and have a track record of building well designed buildings.

Yes, I'm simplifying things here but this is inexcusable.
It's actually embarrassing what the waterfront looks like at this point. Aside from Monde and Pier 21, everything is bland crap. This is what I feared.

Can you think of any major city "new" waterfront that looks like this?

I don't want to see anything from Tridel or Daniels along the waterfront. I get that they're big boys and self financed but they are bland and unimaginative as can be.

I want to see Freed, Mod, Urban Capital, I'll even take CityzenFernbrook (not the greatest builder but they at least have balls to build something different), Great Gulf, Lanterra, Cresford, etc. You know, builders who actually have some pride and have a track record of building well designed buildings.

Yes, I'm simplifying things here but this is inexcusable.
You think it's bad now wait 30+ years when the newness and shine has worn off. We'll be left with towers with rust stains, grit and aged concrete. Think 1960s apartment towers that are 50 stories tall, below. Hopefully I'm wrong.
 
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From the ferry on my cell Sunday

IMG_20190818_103801.jpg
 
Okay. I'll concede that the east tower is pretty awful. There's some warmth in the window-wall spandrel panels, which ties in somewhat with the brick of the commercial building, but it hasn't been picked up in the balcony railings at all. Sad.
 

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