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...and if it were hung off the elevator core, we'd see some diagonals...

so I dunno. It'll be fun to find out more about this building if it goes ahead.

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And there's nothing "Ye Olde" about Modernism anyway, within the Toronto context. We've been mainlining it since the 1950's. Stand-alone point towers like Spire, KPMB's cultural additions, Freed's low-rise cluster at King and Bathurst - they're all informed by the same aesthetic.

I semi-beg to differ. At least insofar as it'd take a Kirkor or a G&C to coax out the "Ye Olde" in Modernism...
 
I think the sign, of all things, makes this project what it is. It just seems so emphatic with its modern font. If it had serifs it would probably ruin it.
 
When I look at that render, I see semi invisible columns on top of the brick building. I think they just made them somewhat transparent, to make the render more pleasing to the eye.

Still very cool though!
 
And there's nothing "Ye Olde" about Modernism anyway, within the Toronto context. We've been mainlining it since the 1950's. Stand-alone point towers like Spire, KPMB's cultural additions, Freed's low-rise cluster at King and Bathurst - they're all informed by the same aesthetic.

Those examples do not equate to modernism simply by virtue of the fact that they were not original to the modern period. They are a revival of the modern aesthetic or neo-modernism perhaps, but nostalgia (Ye Olde) nonetheless.
 
Perhaps Doug Henning bequeathed plans for this thing? Perhaps it's a giant hovercraft?

Perhaps they have located some ancient Luminians who will use their legendary powers of humming and sound vibration to help levitate the addition.
 
Tewder: There's an obvious connection between modernist architects working here today and those working in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The principals of KPMB, for instance, all started with Barton Myers - who worked here in the '60s with others from the immediate post-WW2 years. The torch is being passed by other firms too - from Jack Diamond for one, a former Myers associate, to people who have worked for him and have now set out on their own - like Adam Thom. There is plenty of good, clean, modern design going up, in smallish infill homes as well as condos and cultural buildings with nary a historicist flourish or pippypoo appended to any of them, all over town. Other than a city hall in Mississauga, and the deco-esque towers at Brookfield Place designed by Americans, PoMo held little sway hereabouts; the claims that its advocates made in the '80s that modernism was dead have proven unfounded - look around you at what is being built. The connection is both obvious and uninterrupted.
 
Looks Cool

Well, just my little opinion but this building looks very cool. I like the mix of old and new. There is just something that is different about it. It looks classy but this is just a rendering. Hopefully it will turn out as it looks here.
 
Tewder: There's an obvious connection between modernist architects working here today and those working in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

I see the connection, but it is a derivative one nonetheless, no matter how desired/preferred the connection may seem to be to us here and now, or no matter what the 'historical' precedent. I agree with you that modernism was an important moment in Toronto's development, but there have been other important ones too, that singling one out over others as somehow transcendentally significant seems myopic. All of that said, I would agree however that some buildings of the current retro-modern movement do manage to push the definitions of the original movement forward in unique ways, and these in fact are the ones I tend to be drawn too.
 
Well, everything is derived from something, but the genesis of what's being done now isn't the result of a process of "singling out" something on a whim from the styles of the past - a revival of Tudor or Classical or Gothic say - but an expression of where we are now. I like Marc Boutin's term, "Comfy Modernism" to describe that place.

I made the mistake of using the term, "neo-Modernist" when discussing Kuwabara's Bridgepoint design with one of his associates in the summer and was told that Bruce probably wouldn't describe himself as a neo-.
 

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