- Thread starter ChesterCopperpot
- Start date
Light
Active Member
The black+silver stripes look so cool and really are increasingly rare representatives of design aesthetics from past decades and should be treated with some reverence. I am certain glass manufacturers can create identically tinted windows but with today's thermal-insulating properties. I am afraid a few decades hence there will be lamentations for the shortsightedness of today's decision makers in erasing a part of Toronto's mid-to-late 20th century office architectural heritage.
There are many buildings in Manhattan that still sport the same design schemes; Avenue of the Americas, for example. Like a city, a home becomes more interesting when its residents decorate with modern furniture, a few older pieces and even some antiques. Toronto is such a new city therefore there is already a dearth of "antiques" to start with; an effort to preserve representative pieces of bygone architectural decades really should be made.
wmedia
Senior Member
Adelaide street could end up looking like Singapore's Marina Bay Financial Centre. A cluster of similarly clad, similar coloured towers that can't be easily discerned. Yes it will look modern, but it will all blend together, losing all the variety and character. I'm at a loss why they can't at least keep them black.
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maestro
Senior Member
I was going by the photos of the test where they replaced the panels only. Normally, a full curtain wall replacement would have a full curtian wall test piece.
Gphorce
Active Member
This is a damn shame. There needs to be some heritage protection for buildings from this era, people are going to look back at the original cladding the way we look at demolished heritage buildings now.
jje1000
Senior Member
It's kind of interesting that are many buildings that the heritage committee has not granted protection over because they were so heavily renovated that what they no longer resembled what they once were (i.e. a old victorian block which might have its cornice stripped, bricks painted over and maybe even covered in aluminum.
I wonder if heritage preservation should take a closer look at a building's heritage potential, rather than what it is at the moment. I.e. a "Could we fix an old building that's been defaced rather than taking its heritage at face value" sort of thing.
I wonder if heritage preservation should take a closer look at a building's heritage potential, rather than what it is at the moment. I.e. a "Could we fix an old building that's been defaced rather than taking its heritage at face value" sort of thing.
Gphorce
Active Member
You're probably right, but it's still awful that the architectural styling is being compromised for no good reason. In a city with the slogan "Diversity Our Strength" there is surprisingly little architectural diversity in the core. It drives me nuts to see these beautifully clad buildings sterilized.
isaidso
Senior Member
And if your prediction is wrong it will be too late. One could also add that only an esoteric group of people care about buildings like Canada Life, TD Centre, or One Bloor. Just because only a small segment of the population cares doesn't mean it's not worth saving. If we left everything to the discretion of the masses a lot of our cultural heritage wouldn't survive a few decades.
maestro
Senior Member
Ever? Doubtful. I think people will come around to the notion that not everything pre-war is vastly superior to modern era designs.
120 has merit to be a consideration given its earlier age and slightly better quality. 130 is completely nondescript. Neither are exceptional among a core group of exceptional towers. It's just unfortunate, in the cast of 130, that blandness is being replacement with more blandness. To me, the planned blue green standard curtainwall is the only reason this is being discussed.
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adma
Superstar
Boy, your response is bass-ackwards. Sort of like, rather than people expanding their scope to include modern, people reducing their scope to winnow-down the prewar--or just plain "non-contemporary", I suppose.
You know, I've told you this before (and you've dismissed it before as irrelevant): if you want to witness that notion/mentality in present-day practice, just look to the McMansioning of nabes like Forest Hill.
maestro
Senior Member
I'm just being rational. Toronto is a growing city. It's not a museum piece in a climate controlled environment. Things will be lost. There is quality in everything however, some things are better than others. Right now there's such an appreciation for prewar architecture. You can deny it but, it does come at the cost of better quality modern era design. It's human nature to prop up one thing at the expense of another. I'm not in favour of reclads (in particular this one) but, they are a fact of life. Everything has a life span. I'd rather 120 be preserved if it means sacrificing 130. Good luck getting both.
The Mcmansioning neighbourhoods are a different story. Most of those facades are masonry that still have life in them or can be repaired with, tuckpointing, new/old brick or, flipping the brick around. It's unrelated to what is happening at 401 Bay. The facade there can't be repaired. The panels are so much larger and heavier that it can't be easily removed or replaced without completely blowing the bank.
I also get the impression that forumers aren't aware of all the previous reclads undertaken in Toronto and probably now mistake them as original. Urbantoronto was started around two large reclads in the Mackenzie Building (now State Street Financial Centre) and the DBRS Tower complex (originally two different looking towers). I just find it interesting.
The Mcmansioning neighbourhoods are a different story. Most of those facades are masonry that still have life in them or can be repaired with, tuckpointing, new/old brick or, flipping the brick around. It's unrelated to what is happening at 401 Bay. The facade there can't be repaired. The panels are so much larger and heavier that it can't be easily removed or replaced without completely blowing the bank.
I also get the impression that forumers aren't aware of all the previous reclads undertaken in Toronto and probably now mistake them as original. Urbantoronto was started around two large reclads in the Mackenzie Building (now State Street Financial Centre) and the DBRS Tower complex (originally two different looking towers). I just find it interesting.
adma
Superstar
You're still not getting what I'm getting at.
And what I'm getting at is that the general tendency through history in terms of "recognition" has been that once one hitherto unfashionable style or period has been "rediscovered"--Victorian, Edwardian, Art Deco, et al--it has *not* been accompanied by a not-everything-previous-is-superior counter-reflex re preceding styles. In fact, in practice the scope has *continued* to expand re what's "worthy" in those previous styles, even as the overall timeframe of "heritage validity" moves forward--which of course, brings us to contentious Stollerys-type situations; but still, that, too, reflects the reality of that natural "expanding scope" condition. Likewise re the UT Miscellany/Evocative Images UT photo threads, or Vintage Toronto on Facebook; you'll find that the reactions and discussions hook more on "gee whiz that's interesting" than "good riddance to obsolete rubbish". Sometimes the laments over lost-past or inferior-present get overwrought; but that's the way it is--post something old, a "then" as opposed to a "now" (or alongside, for comparison purposes), and people engage. And the engagement's probably more in-depth than it might have been, say, 30 or 40 or 50 years ago. Look: even if the TD Centre is universally hailed now, it hasn't stopped even the Mies-sympathetic among us from continuing to regret the demolition of the old Bank of Toronto--and not only that, but our present-day expanded scope even allows us to "appreciate" a lot of the battered, begrimed, and then-ignored lesser urban elements that constituted the TD parcel (warehouses on Wellington, Georgian-style shops/townhouses along King). Likewise with the demolition of the entire W side of Yonge as well as the entire Eaton retail/warehouse ensemble for the Eaton Centre; somehow, through revisiting the photographic record, the enormity and the totality of destruction galls even more today than it did in the 70s--and yet this all exists alongside a conciliatory "heritage appreciation" of the Eaton Centre itself which regrets the removal or bowdlerization of the original 70s Zeidler aesthetic. Yeah, it's all a bag full of paradoxes; but hey, it's fun.
So in light of that, what's this business about "I think people will come around to the notion that not everything pre-war is vastly superior to modern era designs"?!? That's going the other direction from the tableau I'm describing--and it sounds to me less reflective of a trend than of a certain parallel/alternate vested-interest mindset that's *always* existed. Or if it *is* a trend, if anything *has* shifted, it might have more to do with fewer families these days choosing to have Toronto history on their coffee tables or bookshelves, and a younger geek/fanboy cohort conditioned by ooh-aah skyscraper/starchitecture websites and message boards which tend to be heavily fixated on the new at the expense of the old.
"You can deny it but, it does come at the cost of better quality modern era design."? Big. Freaking. Deal. (Though it does validate my past contention that there's a "mindset gap" btw/ those who arrived at UT from a new-construction-and-development end, and those who arrived from a preexisting-conditions end.)
Uh, actually, the core reasoning/mentality behind most McMansion rebuilds runs a little deeper than what a little token façade-retention can do--and is really not that much different from those poor poor landlords who *really* *really* have to do these unsympathetic reclads lest they completely blow the bank. And oftentime, I'll betcha, said landlords or the clients they're serving/hoping to serve/informed by are, well, themselves the McMansion-rebuild class, such is how things are in the Toronto of 2017. Myopia begets myopia, IOW.
Oh, I know those cases. Not suggesting what was done there ought to be models, though--lessons to be learned from, maybe. (Though the DBRS towers actually weren't as "different looking" as 120-130 Adelaide--it only seemed that way because the earlier one sat on a wraparound podium and the later one had a cutaway ground level entrance; but they were both mirrored cubes. And re your earlier-in-this-thread invocation of Prudential: that was a re-windowing, not a recladding. It's not the same with brick-clad Art Deco as it is with Modernist curtain walling/panelling.)
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Automation Gallery
Superstar
85 RICHMOND ST W
Ward 28 - Tor & E.York District
Site Plan Approval application for the renovation and enhancement of the existing building. Scope of work includes heritage restoration, re-cladding and the addition of floor area to certain portions of the building while maintaining the existing overall footprint.
Proposed Use --- # of Storeys --- # of Units ---
Applications:
Type Number Date Submitted Status
Site Plan Approval 17 224564 STE 28 SA Aug 29, 2017 Under Review
Ward 28 - Tor & E.York District
Site Plan Approval application for the renovation and enhancement of the existing building. Scope of work includes heritage restoration, re-cladding and the addition of floor area to certain portions of the building while maintaining the existing overall footprint.
Proposed Use --- # of Storeys --- # of Units ---
Applications:
Type Number Date Submitted Status
Site Plan Approval 17 224564 STE 28 SA Aug 29, 2017 Under Review
stjames2queenwest
Senior Member
I hate this.
ChesterCopperpot
Senior Member
85 Richmond is a different project.
