And to use the New York example, I don't know of anyone on this board who traveled to Manhattan to chain themselves to the Hearst Building to protect the so-called historic interiors there before the Right Hon. The Baron Foster of Thames Bank, O.M., plonked his addition down into it.
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However, consider the Right Hon. The Baron Foster of Thames Bank, O.M. as "Jack Kennedy" and WZMH as "Dan Quayle".

A belated RIP to Lloyd bentsen.
 
So what you're saying is that you don't care about the Concourse Building, you dislike the addition. You'd be happy to have it gutted, as the Hearst Building was, so long as the designer label on it is fancy and expensive enough for you.
 
ap:

Quite right! I certainly would be more favorable with facadism practiced at RA3 and BA if the product looks nearly as good as Hearst HQ.

AoD
 
So what you're saying is that you don't care about the Concourse Building, you dislike the addition. You'd be happy to have it gutted, as the Hearst Building was, so long as the designer label on it is fancy and expensive enough for you.
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This isn't about "like/dislike"; it's about spin. Put it this way; I'm taking more of a dispassionate meta-perspective on the situation, the broader context, rather than engaging in useless "oooh, I ADORE the Concourse Building!" judgment calls. (As far as those go, I'm content to defer to others within this thread. And they're doing a more than adequate job of highlighting your isolation.)

Maybe your situation viz. me is like a art conoisseur or conservatively style-based historian being confronted by one whose approach is a little more socio-cultural in thrust. (I know. The former can view the latter suspiciously, like the latter's playing mind games, like they've got a hidden philistine/Marxist agenda, etc etc.)
 
Also re BA: rather than gesticulating on the blue-spandrelled Bay/Adelaide building that's going, consider the 347 Bay 1920s office building that's "staying"--but in a similar demolish/reconstruction deal that was/is slated for the Concourse. Yet that hasn't generated the same furor. I mean, it's a decent design and all, a standard 20s Chapman & Oxley spec office building; but unlike the Concourse, it doesn't have the electrifying-cultural-symbolism factor of the Group of Seven. Therefore, that's easier to "live with", relatively speaking.

Ultimately, we can learn from history. Take a comparable case from 1970 nearby: the demolition of the Foresters Building on behalf of 390 Bay and the Thomson complex. And there's a fair case to be made that, *relative to our time*, the proposed gutting/WZMHing of the Concourse is equivalent to the Foresters' demolition relative to *its* time.

And what did Foresters fall for? Class A office space, 1970 style. From the office workers' perspective, up-to-date and a clear improvement on its overloaded-old-crock predecessor.

I'm playing a strategic devil's advocate here, but, and especially if we were to transpose your type of arguments back then, that may, according to some revisionist perspective, be argued as a *good* thing, rather than a bad thing.

And had Foresters survived to this day, you can be sure that some "Class A" advocates would view it as an obsolete anachronism that could use a little gutting/replacement--even today.

And let's look at what replaced it. As a pair of sawed-off Rockefeller Center West towers + bank pavilion on a plaza, constructed right when such stuff was falling into fashionable urban disfavour, and compounded by memories of what it replaced, the Thomson complex has always gotten an urban bad rap. Yet...*is* it so bad? There's a kind of 1970-glam and dignity here; in a way, we (and especially those of us who never knew Foresters) are "used to it". It's a fait accompli that we, basically, take for granted; too benign to be truly loathesome. Maybe now that it's half the age that Foresters was when it came down, it deserves reassessment--except to those who absolutely abhor Modernism, it certainly doesn't seem as "anti-urban" as the agitprop of yore presented it.

For the same reason, while I'm prone to pointing out the standard-spec-WZMH quality of the proposed Concourse replacement, I'm loathe toward *over*-judging it; perhaps because it's not that bad an urban-highrise vernacular, generally speaking (though I'd rather it be freestanding, a la Transamerica in N York, rather than with a historic facade attached a la Concourse or Maritime Life).

But then, we think back then, And there's still a "never again" message we must heed. Right?

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it--even if we never can tell what monkey business posterity will be up to...

I don't know, AP--how do you feel about the 35-year-ago replacement of Foresters by the Thomson complex? Good thing, or bad thing?

And if you plead ignorance/don't remember/don't care/who cares/I'm-only-three-and-a-half-years-old re Foresters, basically, you've peevishly shot your credibility re the Concourse and heritage issues in general all to heck...
 
The point is that I think it should (and you haven't stated your opinion or whether or not there is or should be room for improvement in the whole process). Who says I have no interest in the properties? It's my city, too. It even indirectly affects my finances.
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scarberiankhatru,

Yes I think there should be room for improvement in the process, and yes all of us in the city have an interest in urban form and heritage preservation - although we don't have millions of dollars tied up into the property, which obviously makes our interest very different from Oxford's interest. Perhaps if you had millions of dollars invested in the property your opinion might differ?

That said, I haven't been inside the building, so I can't really comment on that debate.
 
If I had millions of dollars, perhaps I'd buy First Canadian Place and re-clad it in mirrors.
 
Babel: "A number of things come into play when considering heritage value, surely? Not all of them would require the passage of time to become apparent."

^I agree Babel, but it seems that a building that is popular or fashionable or appreciated so to speak might stand a better chance at survival than one that is not, and sometimes this requires a little time or perspective. In other words, is there any real difference in us knocking down brutalist structures now with the clear cutting of Victorian buildings by the score in the 1950s and 1960s?
 
I remember, a year or so back, someone posted an item about how contemporary buildings are being singled out for preservation. I don't remember the context - which country it was happening in, or on what basis these buildings were being chosen - but it struck me as very good news. Inspirational even.

And what a huge challenge this selection process is bound to be - to avoid the fashionable, the trendy, the work of architects who pander to clients by feeding their vulgar fantasies, works where the ego of the designer takes precedence over the function of the building etc. etc. ...
 
... the point being, to recognize and preserve what is "heritage" early on while it is new. I think that in any city that has destroyed much interesting architecture over the years, and is belatedly concerned about losing touch with its past, there would be a temptation to preserve second rate structures simply because they are the only examples of their kind that have survived. The danger is that by doing so you debase standards of what is significant.

When I see a demure little facade incorporated into a hulking new building I sometimes wonder what the point was in doing it. Even if it is a handsome old structure, if nothing particularly important happened inside it why even keep it on site if it is dwarfed by the new building or clumsily incorporated?

Not perhaps a good example of what I mean, since it fits in quite nicely, but the facade where Harry Rosen used to be at Scotia Plaza was near King and Bay originally, and I don't think it was the location for any important historical event, so it could have been relocated to just about anywhere.

The bank at Yonge and Queen, and that building on the west side of York at Wellington, are both facades that lie in an uneasy limbo. They're there in form, but perhaps not in spirit. They're like unloved trophy wives, kept for appearances, or Victorian orphan children adopted by wealthy families to show how kind and moral they are.
 
The Mia Farrow of skyscrapers, in other words?

edit: six pages for what is, as far as we know, a hypothetical building?
 
Why not? One of the better discussions on the forum right now.
 
The bank at Yonge and Queen, and that building on the west side of York at Wellington, are both facades that lie in an uneasy limbo. They're there in form, but perhaps not in spirit. They're like unloved trophy wives, kept for appearances, or Victorian orphan children adopted by wealthy families to show how kind and moral they are.
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I couldn't have said it better.
Here's Adele Freedman in 1988:

"By design, a building can now have so many faces and parts that a viewer may be forgiven for coming away with two minds, maybe more: when architects start playing around with genetics, monsters are inevitable. It seems, too, that when the past comes to be viewed as a set of images to replicate, rather than a set of circumstances that are internalized, and reinterpreted, the world of possibility shrinks a little."


(from "Toronto Under Renovation," collected in her book Sight Lines)
 
I agree that it's very hard to incorporate a historical facade into a modern building in a way that respects both. Generally, both end up being weaker for it. The Maritime Life building at Yonge and Queen is definitely awkward, yet I think the entrance to the subway is quite pleasant. I would almost say that King's Court got it right, I actually think the varied massing of that building lets the little corner bank come to life, except instead of the bank building being commercial, it's just part of the lobby of the building, so I find it instead intensely disappointing.

The Raymond Chan building at Ryerson is one of the few that I think handles an existing old facade well.
 
The couple of old buildings I mentioned earlier are orphans. Their brothers and sisters - the block after block of sturdy and sometimes charming Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian structures that once filled downtown - have gone. They stand alone, or in small clusters. The city has changed around them, dwarfing them, moving on. They no longer form a cohesive unit that defines our downtown, stylistically.

My contention ( and some here hate it! ) is that they are literally "out of place". Hence, my not entirely flippant suggestion of a Facade District in the Portlands, where these old Grannies and Gramps can once more rub sholders, take tea together in the afternoon, and chatter merrily about the good old days.
 
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