I don't mind that, personally. Getting away from ordered grids can be a good thing - at least in my books. The tyranny of perfectly repeating patterns can be stultifying.
It seems like the 2010s was characterized by a tyranny of anti- ordered grid.
 
I've been following this discussion with great interest.

An hour ago I was driving along Kingston Road and I noticed the panels installed on this condo project. Are they similar?

I stopped to take some shots.

View attachment 523072


@Paclo has much better shots from last August.

I really like warm temperature pot lights on balconies, they do wonders to warm up otherwise desolate spaces, and 'extend' the living space outdoors.
 
It seems like the 2010s was characterized by a tyranny of anti- ordered grid.
Guess our mileage varies then. But it's true that architectural styles do swing in and out of favour, as if they were tethered at the end of a pendulum.
 
Guess our mileage varies then. But it's true that architectural styles do swing in and out of favour, as if they were tethered at the end of a pendulum.
Ive seen contemporary 'anti-grid' archiecture pulled off successfully when high quality materials are used. A good example is Integral House.

Then on the other end of the spectrum youve got funky shlock like 365 Church, YC Condos and Minto Bathurst.
 
This blockbuster development makes me miss projects like OneSixNine Lofts. The combination of exposed concrete, quality wood and simple orderly lines works quite nicely.

It's not just an afterthought of exposed concrete columns and balcony undersides, but the use of concrete is an actual thoughtful architectural feature in that project.
 
Last edited:
Crane is coming down.

qa-155.jpg
 
The more we see, the worse it gets. The cladding on this looks like complete junk. And it's two types of bad: the panels on their own look cheap and the construction of the panels looks shoddy.

qa-156.jpg


You know what the difference is between an office drop ceiling and Queen-Trashbridge? Drop ceilings are usually LEVEL. The panels on this are sometimes inset, sometimes pucker and are dimpled in places. It looks bad up close, but there's enough installed to see that it also looks bad from a distance. The panels aren't consistently level and they catch the light in different ways so it looks junky even from far away. But differently junky, compared to up close! If the whole project is done like this, it's going to be awful.

qa-158.jpg


These dorky overhanging things weren't on the early renders and maybe if they'd left them off they could have saved $5 and put it towards leveling the cladding.

qa-157.jpg


The commitment to quality is still up on the construction website. They should probably update it to read, "Sorry, we overextended ourselves on the design and the numbers didn't support a competent finish. We probably should have built something more modest."

qa-160.jpg


For an area that's been subjected to a series of stinkers (West Beach, The Poet, the R-Hauz prototypes and the bizarro Soviet gulag bunker on Connaught), by virtue of it's imposing size, this could be the biggest dump of them all. Zero stars.

qa-159.jpg
 
The more we see, the worse it gets. The cladding on this looks like complete junk. And it's two types of bad: the panels on their own look cheap and the construction of the panels looks shoddy.

You know what the difference is between an office drop ceiling and Queen-Trashbridge? Drop ceilings are usually LEVEL. The panels on this are sometimes inset, sometimes pucker and are dimpled in places. It looks bad up close, but there's enough installed to see that it also looks bad from a distance. The panels aren't consistently level and they catch the light in different ways so it looks junky even from far away. But differently junky, compared to up close! If the whole project is done like this, it's going to be awful.
I was at the McD's beside it the other day and noticed this too.

The pictures don't do the quality issues justice. In pics, it actually looks passable, except for extreme examples. In person, you can really see how cheap everything is.
It's the worst I've personally seen and I have a hard time imagining how it'll hold up through windy or extreme weather.
 

Back
Top