ushahid
Senior Member
first of all its not a box and second thing it has different kind of façade on different sides that's why it is an awesome design.
cruzin4u
Senior Member
It goes beyond what the tower looks like. You have to look at MOD's restoration of 197 Yonge, the challenges of working with such a small site, what the project will do for Yonge Street in general, the land donation by MOD to make the Massey Hall revitalization possible. And the tower looks great as well, which of course is a bonus.
verticalvillage
Active Member
I'm not saying I don't like it. I think the way that this tower meets the ground is superb, and if you are going to simply extrude the site 60 stories, the Massey Tower does it better than most.
ushahid
Senior Member
it is awesome because it is better than many boxes in Toronto.
marcus_a_j
Senior Member
^ and buildings too!
Big Daddy
Senior Member
It looks good on two of the four sides - just another building on the other two. Oh, and did I mention the awful floor plans?
Ramako
Moderator
It looks the same on three of four sides (east, west and south), so I'm not quite sure which sides you're referring to.
SP!RE
°°°°°°
Unfortunately, most people here are a lot more concerned with how a building looks than it functions.
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Big Daddy
Senior Member
Yes, that is unfortunate.
Don't like the floor plan? Don't buy the unit.
…but don't let that stop you from condescending to let us know that the rest of us are fools.
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…but don't let that stop you from condescending to let us know that the rest of us are fools.
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LowPolygon
Senior Member
What a completely ridiculous thing to say. By your reasoning, any building with a facade is "just another building" on three of its sides. Stellar logic there...
Anyway, your point is?
CN Tower
Banned
I'd rather see an office tower or office space here. This jazzy box sets a crappy precedent if approved. MOD would be getting away with highway robbery to get that kind of residential density in this non-residential node.
I hope the OMB sees it that way too.
SP!RE
°°°°°°
The public will buy any unit they can get their hands on, unfortunately. We need to set a higher standard for what is available, no? Isn't that a worthy goal, and isn't residential architecture in our city worthy of critique and a desire for better?
If the standard for architecture we're aiming for is "what the developers are building us" then we've stooped pretty low. Some people love curvy balconies, but ultimately the living space inside is more important day in and day out than architectural flourishes. The two balanced together would ultimately be the best scenario.
Hariri Pontarini does great work, but the floorplans are pretty bleak in this tower. I guess ultimately we've "objectified" architecture to the point where condo buyers are supposed to derive enough pleasure from the look of their building that it outweighs the day-to-day inconveniences of living in a poorly designed unit.
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That question is not what is before the OMB. Anyway, there's a residential tower (a short one) immediately to the north of 205 Yonge. We're putting residential towers all through our downtown now, and have been for years in fact. 1 King West. INDX. Trump. Empire Plaza. There's no precedent being set here in that regard whatsoever.
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No, with a few exceptions, I do not believe it is not our place to tell the market what to buy. There are some restrictions we want to put on some components of our living spaces, yes, but in general, how does one regulate and/or restrict floor plans? Who gets to decide what's appropriate for us to buy? How would that body set down what is acceptable and what's not? What set of criteria would be applied and how much leeway in design would it allow? Would every floor plan have to come up for review in front of a committee? What kind of bureaucracy would we be creating?
I simply do not accept that "the public will buy any unit they can get their hands on". Even if that is true for certain members of the public, why should I care that some of them may have bought "any unit"?
Builders must entice buyers to purchase by offering buyers what those people are looking for, for whatever reason, or no money changes hands. The purchaser may have different concerns than you do for what they want in a unit, but why should that purchaser not have the right to buy a unit which you would not buy yourself?
If purchasers en masse do not snap up a particular floor plan, then those suites get redesigned. It happens all the time. It recently happened at 88 Scott. That building took 45 two-bedroom suites which were too large/too expensive for the market to absorb all of them, and they redesigned them as 90 more modest one-bedroom suites. They were snapped up. Is there anything inherently wrong in that?
If Massey Tower's floor plans had not provided what purchasers were looking for, they would not have sold. They sold. Maybe a few suites are left.
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BTW, Cecconi Simone would be mostly responsible for the suite layout here, not HPA.