Photographs don't really convey how hard this building is on the eyes. It's something you have to see in person. The cheap, blank spread of black metal panels wrapped over everthing manages to somehow strike all the wrong nerves. It's unnerving - as if windows have already been blindly removed, or filled in. It already looks like it's somehow endured a bad retrofit.
Tridel's downtown work has improved a lot as of late - the first example that springs to mind is the Verve building, nearby, which has a lot to recommend it. It basically works really well. It's disappointing to see the JCM tower being handled so horribly, especially because this part of Sherbourne really needs all the love and beauty it can get.
Although I don't like the idea of moving buildings generally - I think it unpleasantly makes something like Monopoly pieces out of them - the fact that Tridel cared enough to save and rehabilitate the mansion seemed to be certainly done with the best intentions, and there were hopes the tower behind it might rise to the occasion. With the intricacies of the mansion sitting before it, the ugliness of the huge tower behind it seems doubly so.
Well, at least we'll still have the mansion, which was really good of Tridel.
I wonder what happened? Tridel seems to be on the up-and-up, and this building is quite an unfortunate setback.
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