,
bedb.jpg
 
That's awful facade treatment, and it just brings down the value of an otherwise very sensible building.

Can't we just have some "facade" park somewhere? Can we resume shipping that stuff to Guildwood?
 
It looks like they dropped the new building on top of it, and the old building is shouting in pain or despair.

I think anyone who does this sort of facadism should have corpse parts of famous people grafted onto their body.
 
The architects didn't want it but the ratepayers insisted. It looks ridiculous, even more so than Crangle.
 
Frankly, it would have looked better had they built the tower behind all the existing Bloor/Bedford frontages--yeah, I know that would have been a kind of facadism, too, but compared to *this*...
 
If the city had any balls, they would ban facadism as the artistic travesty that it is.....imo......

but here's a nice pic by Jasonzed at SSC....

20100417a052.jpg
 
Oh man, that facadism looks terrible.

Facadism isn't always a failure, there are many good examples in the CBD. But this... this is a joke.
 
They should've either built a giant glass "picture frame" around the facade and suspended it in the courtyard as public art, or played with it--for example, mounting it on the ground to either walk on in the courtyard or as a raised seating area with reflecting pools where the windows were.
 
I don't mind facadism as much as others. I love what they did at BAC, was willing to let RMCI slide (due to high degree of difficulty), and even thought that fleeting glances could help me stomach Crangles, but this is just an outright abomination. It looks like they put no thought into it whatsoever. It's literally leaning against the building like an old piece of cardboard.
 
Just wait until they finish it. They'll put some potted plants on either side of the entranceway...it'll look smashing ;-)
 
Even the use of original material counts-- it's all about having a spiritual connection to the past, regardless of what form that takes. To say it's better to be rid of the materials than to integrate them as facadism is foolish and short-sighted. It's easy to be indoctrinated into the idea of a pure, modern design, but in inoffensive cases like One Bedford's facadism, I will never cease to defend the incorporation of an old facade-- even if reconstructed-- in a new project. We need these connections to the past.
 
It's hard to make a connection to the past with just a facade. One doesn't get a good sense of the size of building or its interior layout (key to deciphering previous uses). It just weakens the new design. Either a building is valuable to the neighbourhoods and/or city and should be spared, or we build a great new building. These awkward attempts at reaching a middle point by preserving just the most superficial aspect of the old building are unsatisfactory.
 
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