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Your posts are negative yet uninformative, Archie. Welcome to my world!

Jocularity aside, 'atrocity' is a ridiculously hyperbolic choice of word here. I'll grant you this is not the most gorgeous modern addition to an older building that KPMB are responsible for, but most of it will be hidden by the Goldring Athletic Centre, and at worst it could be labelled 'unfortunate', and only because of the middling precast. Atrocity? Not at all.
 
WiddleBittyKitty said:
Your posts are negative yet uninformative, Archie. Welcome to my world!

Jocularity aside, 'atrocity' is a ridiculously hyperbolic choice of word here. I'll grant you this is not the most gorgeous modern addition to an older building that KPMB are responsible for, but most of it will be hidden by the Goldring Athletic Centre, and at worst it could be labelled 'unfortunate', and only because of the middling precast. Atrocity? Not at all.
Click to expand...

There's the cladding, but also the inattentiveness to balance and symmetry. Even the actual glazed entrance to the addition as seen from the street looks messy and just tacked onto the heritage building. I only hope they saved every piece of stone that they cut from the facade for this addition so that when it's inevitably demolished, the old building will be completely restorable.
 
junctionist said:
There's the cladding, but also the inattentiveness to balance and symmetry. Even the actual glazed entrance to the addition as seen from the street looks messy and just tacked onto the heritage building. I only hope they saved every piece of stone that they cut from the facade for this addition so that when it's inevitably demolished, the old building will be completely restorable.
Click to expand...

The heritage building isn't symmetrical, however. It is picturesquely asymmetrical, and visually weighted to the eastern side of the site; the addition balances out the asymmetry:

MunkSchoolKPMB4.jpg
 
The building is almost symmetrical but quite balanced. The tower was well positioned, slightly distanced from the main part of the building not to disturb the balance. The addition blocks the nearly symmetrical facade awkwardly and does not seem to have any relationship to the old building.
 
It's not pretty, though, as mentioned, it's a functional addition that only blocks the largely unseen rear facade. "That said, "almost symmetrical" is not symmetrical, and US has a point that the addition balances the visual weight of the overall facility (on paper anyway). However, it's pretty clear that in execution the addition mostly fails. They got the colours right with the precast, but sadly the smooth and soulless finish fails to provide an engaging contrast to the beautifully textured stone. The overall result is a clunky mess of an addition that is merely "there". In the end though, considering how tucked away it is, I prefer the failed attempt at modern contrast than if they'd gone with the historicist match-the-original-building approach.
 
Application: Zoning Review Status: Not Started

Location: 315 BLOOR ST W
TORONTO ON M5S 1A3

Ward 20: Trinity-Spadina

Application#: 11 328031 ZPR 00 ZR Accepted Date: Dec 19, 2011

Project: Non-Residential Building Addition

Description: Review proposed 3-storey addition at the south side of existing UofT building, "Munk School of Global Affairs". See 10-187889.
 
egotrippin said:
It's not pretty, though, as mentioned, it's a functional addition that only blocks the largely unseen rear facade. "That said, "almost symmetrical" is not symmetrical, and US has a point that the addition balances the visual weight of the overall facility (on paper anyway). However, it's pretty clear that in execution the addition mostly fails. They got the colours right with the precast, but sadly the smooth and soulless finish fails to provide an engaging contrast to the beautifully textured stone. The overall result is a clunky mess of an addition that is merely "there". In the end though, considering how tucked away it is, I prefer the failed attempt at modern contrast than if they'd gone with the historicist match-the-original-building approach.
Click to expand...

Why is the "failed attempt at modern contrast" more preferable than the contextualist approach? Just down the street is KPMB's Munk School of International Studies (now also renamed Munk School of International Studies), where contextualism resulted in an addition that is in beautiful harmony with the old and adds a modern design lexicon to the old architecture and effectively enhances it through addition. The addition is modern in style when you look closely, but its design works so intricately with the heritage buildings that it seems to merge with the old and improve the building as a whole.
 
adma said:
Ah, but it's still not the "historicist match-the-original-building approach".
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It's contextualism, which is about as close as we've been to that approach. I'd take successful historicism over awkward Modernism any time.
 
I don't mind the contextualism of KPMB's project, though it's not quite historicism, more of a modern take on the original design to my eyes. I might be describing a bit of a fine line here, but I'm referring to additions that merely attempt to mimic the original structure and result in a cheap Disney-esque recreation.
 
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