LOL my first year class in Con Hall was 1800 people. Astro 101 for the win!

500-1000 is about an average class size in your first year, then get significantly smaller as you progress into your 3rd and 4th years.

I'm very intrigued by the desks designed for collaborating with other students. Hopefully they'll be used for their intended purpose and not just having students setting up a feast with the larger desk space.
 
U of T has an outstanding record for architecture, so there's a lot of potential. The current faculty of engineering building looks like an ordinary GTA high school on the inside. The Sanford Fleming Building houses their library, but it was gutted on the inside and looks like a banal, circa 1960s institutional interior. They need this new building.
 
[video=youtube;rIdiN5TLUtw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIdiN5TLUtw[/video]
 
What a boring and staid building for a school / faculty whose motto is 'Boundless Creativity.' The kind of building about which Automation would claim 'no love loss' when faced with destruction 50 years from now.
 
ProjectEnd said:
What a boring and staid building for a school / faculty whose motto is 'Boundless Creativity.' The kind of building about which Automation would claim 'no love loss' when faced with destruction 50 years from now.
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That same argument could be made for almost every new building in this city. We're supposed to be such a creative city, yet our architecture is so hackneyed. When will neo-modernism die? I wish we could get out of our 1960s time capsule and get on with building more interesting, contemporary architecture.
 
This building means more forgettable architecture for the faculty of engineering. It conforms to that stereotype of engineers lacking a sense of style.
 
As a current student, I'm terribly dismayed by this. It looms over Simcoe and Con Halls as well as Front Campus. It is a box and pays no heed at all to the rotund shape of Con Hall next door. I'm sure UofT will use high quality materials as they have on their other recent buildings (Goldring Centre, all over Scarborough and Mississauga campuses) but this is so out of place and hulking.
 
Completely agree. Can you imagine the future convocation photos from front campus...'What's the big ugly building back there?' The architects should have looked at this very rendering and realized how their design essentially violates three of the most significant historical buildings on campus - Con Hall, Simcoe Hall and Knox College. Look at the Eaton Centre office tower next to Old City Hall to see how thoughtful massing and an unobtrusive cladding allow a huge modern building to complement its smaller historical neighbour.

savevp said:
As a current student, I'm terribly dismayed by this. It looms over Simcoe and Con Halls as well as Front Campus. It is a box and pays no heed at all to the rotund shape of Con Hall next door. I'm sure UofT will use high quality materials as they have on their other recent buildings (Goldring Centre, all over Scarborough and Mississauga campuses) but this is so out of place and hulking.
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Zzzzzzzz. Looks like one of UW's new Engineering buildings. Something you'd see in a suburban office park. (Like the Blackberry park)
 
savevp said:
As a current student, I'm terribly dismayed by this. It looms over Simcoe and Con Halls as well as Front Campus. It is a box and pays no heed at all to the rotund shape of Con Hall next door. I'm sure UofT will use high quality materials as they have on their other recent buildings (Goldring Centre, all over Scarborough and Mississauga campuses) but this is so out of place and hulking.
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It's supposed to be burned clay brick here
 
I don't really like the structure from the renderings but I will defend it in a couple of ways: Montgomery Sisam has a history in my opinion of good understated work. Also, the architectural style is actually very sensitive to the context, the existing campus of engineering buildings. If you don't like these existing contextual buildings than of course you won't like this structure. Lastly, engineering buildings and facilities are very internally focused. These aren't just study halls, they include laboratories that are more similar to industrial facilities than air and light filled spaces for contemplation.
 
Sure, room inside for innovation, but the look of the building is hardly innovative. The video posted above did include some of the more innovative structures to be found on the U of T campus.
 
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