[androiduk]

This is the handiwork of Transglobe Property Management. They manage a number of properties around the city and seem to delight in vandalising attractive buildings like the ones pictured. The 2 images are from Avenue Rd. south of St. Clair. Aren't there bylaws around that would control things like this, they have pretty well visually hijacked Avenue Rd.

 

[mastershake]

Transglobe are horrible. They buy up really old and run down buildings, put some new carpet in the halls and brand the buildings with their hideous blue logos. Their buildings often have leaks, bedbugs and other problems, and it takes forever for things to get fixed. Their management seems completely incompetent. I had a nightmarish year in a Transglobe apartment.

It would really be in their benefit not to make their buildings stand out, since they have a poor reputation, but I think the owners must like to see their logos on buildings all over the country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UT5zj7VvxE&eurl

 

[SunriseChampion]

I'm not sure if it's also Transglobe's doing but there's a section of Bathurst, just north of St Clair where the streetscape's also been raped by something similar.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

Also on St. Clair by Oakwood. Absolutely atrocious signage, but then if you've ever driven past their offices by Pearson at night, these seem very tame by comparison.

 

[taal]

It adds some colour no?

 

[GraphicMatt]

That building in the first picture looks seriously slanted -- is it safe for a building to do that? Having any kind of furniture with castors would be a nightmare.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Is the anger over the sinange "raping the building" more over the shitty way the company manages their properties or actual architectural interests?

 

[taal]

That building in the first picture looks seriously slanted -- is it safe for a building to do that? Having any kind of furniture with castors would be a nightmare.

It's not ... it's just on a hill

 

[junctionist]

There are actual leaning semidetached houses somewhere around Bloor and Christie if I recall correctly.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Is the anger over the sinange "raping the building" more over the shitty way the company manages their properties or actual architectural interests?

Architectural and aesthetic interests for me....I've never lived in one of their places so I wouldn't know how they manage their apartment blocks.

I mean, look at it! Those are some decently pretty buildings that are absolutely ruined by the signage. Blech

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

There are actual leaning semidetached houses somewhere around Bloor and Christie if I recall correctly.

I think they're on Clinton or Manning, IIRC. One set of semis looks as though it is going to fall into itself. I figure they've about at least 6" of change over 14', quite an angle.

 

[Hipster Duck]

I've hated those Transglobe awnings for years, but it seems like a case of Torontoitis - that is, adding just another visual distraction to assault the senses among the many, many, many that already plague this city.

Either this is a case of the "broken window" theory - where the sloppy maintenance of street aesthetics by the city encourage private property owners to transgress aesthetic sensibilities in other ways - or it's a case of trying to being seen in a landscape of visual pollution by adding an even louder, more offensive shock to our visual sensibilities. You certainly can't avoid those neon blue awnings, even if your eyes have to cut through the usual Toronto landscape of drunken hydro poles, "Think in Spanish" and Reg Hartt posters, illegal billboards, multicoloured newspaper boxes, stainless steel megabins, temporary asphalt sidewalk paving, spraypainted utility markings, dead street trees, giant backlit storefront signs and leftover construction sandbags.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Hey man, now that you bring up our krunken street aesthetic....I kinda think it has a certain charm.

Like our streets are the by-product of God puking out his dinner during a serious bender.

I mean there are two extremes, right?

Absolute sterility and conformity vs absolute chaos.

The question is: where on this scale should our streets be? And what does/would this look like?

 

[adma]

Yeah, and don't dis Reg Hartt posters.

 

[TKTKTK]

Isn't there one of these awnings over the Grange, too?