[MatthewK]

As is unmissable in the current stage of Toronto's construction boom, we're now confronted with the facadectomy reaching a level that is surpassing trope and entering the sphere of cliche. I don't think the integration of old and new in general is necessarily such a bad thing - nothing inherent in such an integration is bad except its apparent invitation for unthought out architecture, the towers of which have so little to do with the original buildings that not only do the original buildings and the towers not enter any kind of aesthetic harmony or dialogue with each other, but nor do they clash in a provocative way-they do not even argue or spar in a lively, friendly, and intriguing manner. In many cases what we have is just an old woman and a young thing, who thinks he is much edgier and more vital than he really is, being put together on a stage in the public realm, the result being not a discourse on architectural historicity or rebellion, but rather just awkward silence. Or just as bad as the silence is an outright mutilation of the existing structure - this being the problematic facadectomy. This is not always the case, of course - L Tower, Five, and potentially Massey Tower are authentically dialogical architectural works. This applied aesthetic problem has more to do with architectural unimaginitiveness and the developer's fiscal agendas, and tied up with that a widespread aesthetic irresponsibility and thus violence on the developer's part, than what I want to bring up here. Really my question right now is not, 'why are there so many banal towers going up?' (that's an immense problem unto itself) but rather 'Why are there so many towers going up on lots that have architecturally valuable structures already in place, when Toronto has a plethora of empty lots and lots with nothing but architectural crap on them?'
Entangled with this question is a clarification I must make, regarding historical significance. Historical preservation should not be thought of as empty historical sentimentality, a quaint romance for anything old regardless of what it looks like; rather it should be thought of as necessary to a rich phenomenological experience of a metropolis. The old buildings are concretizations of ideas, often of dead people, and if still walking by them and entering their preserved interiors excites us in some undeniably real way, this is not superficial retro-romanticization - it is dwelling in and through a built dialogue that transcends way beyond each of our individual temporal existences - a dialogue between living and dead, between this "autonomous" age, the ages it descended from, and the unknown ages that will rise from out of it. And we are completely enthralled in the dialogue - so completely that most of us hardly notice it thematically.
Why is there such a pervasive inclination on the part of Toronto developers to destroy or mutilate the old building, often even if they claim to be respecting it, when they have many other options for development? Even if we can say there is no deep-dwelling psychological reason lying in the developers' minds for doing this, and we say it is just the developers irresponsibly and dogmatically following a trend, we still must ask why it is a trend in the first place. Even the emptiest things are rooted somewhere far down. I'm interested in the problem of the facadectomy, and more broadly irresponsible integration of old and new, on philosophical, psychological, practical-logistical, financial, architectural, and historical levels of enquiry. Anyone who has insight into this issue please discuss.

Added Note: "Facadectomy" is a term I never saw before going on this forum. But my sense of it is that the original building is destroyed except for the facade, which is then put on the face of the new structure. Below TOperson commented on how the term is misleading, as "ectomy" is a removal of something, whereas what I am talking about is the retaining of the facade. But if we want to defend the appropriateness of the term then just think that keeping only the facade is still a separation of facade from original building.

 

[TOperson]

I'm confused. "ectomy" means "act of cutting out", so are you asking why so many facades are being cut out? Elsewhere in your post it sounds like you are talking about that thing of combining old facades with new buildings, i.e. keeping the facades, not cutting them out.

 

[MatthewK]

I'm confused. "ectomy" means "act of cutting out", so are you asking why so many facades are being cut out? Elsewhere in your post it sounds like you are talking about that thing of combining old facades with new buildings, i.e. keeping the facades, not cutting them out.

I'm using the term that I have seen used quite frequently on this forum for keeping the facade but virtually nothing else of the original building. You're right - it can be a misleading term. But if you think about it even keeping a facade and nothing else of the building is still a separation of the facade from its original structure - it's essentially a removal of the facade and putting it in place on a totally new building. I guess a less misleading term should be thought of that implies the whole procedure. "Face transplant," perhaps, to stick with the medical metaphors.

 

[gristle]

I'm confused. "ectomy" means "act of cutting out", so are you asking why so many facades are being cut out?

Okay, how about "facadesized"?

 

[Hipster Duck]

Hey MatthewK,

Good questions! My "reasons" for why Toronto resorts to facadectomies more, beyond the obvious (i.e. we have way more new development under construction than any comparable city in pretty much the whole developed world), are the following:

1. Weak heritage laws - Toronto's heritage laws are, based on my understanding, quite toothless compared to those of other North American cities (at least the ones we look up to). I feel that heritage designation doesn't really offer very much, since I hear of heritage buildings being altered or even torn down on fairly regular basis. A facadectomy is a cheap way to pay lip service to "heritage preservation". Good heritage laws also ensure that buildings respect the scale (see point 3) and existing materials used in a historic area, and Toronto has no provisions for either. Toronto also is unique in that Ontario has a quasi-authoritarian appeals board (the OMB) that usually sides with the developer in most planning decisions.

2. Structural and architectural - Since most of Toronto's heritage buildings are wood framed, it's much easier to tear down the insides, erect a temporary load supporting structure to support the facade and build around it than you would in a European city where the buildings are mostly masonry. I also think that, historically, most North American pre-war buildings only applied exterior detailing to the facade, and everything behind it was more or less ordinary, so back when facadectomies were attempted you could argue that they were saving the most important bits. Certainly there are examples where we've saved the facade and gutted everything else and the city is no worse off for it. I'm thinking about the corner where "Marche" (or whatever it is called today) is.

3. Incongruous building scales between past and present - Toronto is a world city today with a huge downtown, but it had to grow atop a mid-size, second-tier prewar downtown. As much as we fawn over pre-war Toronto, its downtown was quite small and compact (pretty much below Queen street; early photos show Eatons College Park sticking out like a sore thumb amid semi-detached residential homes with yards) and only a handful of blocks had what we would call a "metropolitan" scale. For this reason, facadectomies look particularly ridiculous because the scale of the building we build today is considerably larger than the small-town buildings of yesteryear that they are replacing. The value of land is such that building a property the size of the previous building does not make much economic sense, so we tack two storey facades on to the bases of 30 storey towers. This is quite a bit different from tearing down the back of a 6 storey prewar commercial property and building, say, an 8 storey addition to the rear. In that case, the facadectomy would be hardly noticeable. There isn't much opportunity for this, however, because 6 storey prewar commercial buildings are in short supply and the economics of developing property in Toronto would not allow an 8 storey addition to make money.

 

[junctionist]

2. Structural and architectural - Since most of Toronto's heritage buildings are wood framed, it's much easier to tear down the insides, erect a temporary load supporting structure to support the facade and build around it than you would in a European city where the buildings are mostly masonry. I also think that, historically, most North American pre-war buildings only applied exterior detailing to the facade, and everything behind it was more or less ordinary, so back when facadectomies were attempted you could argue that they were saving the most important bits. Certainly there are examples where we've saved the facade and gutted everything else and the city is no worse off for it. I'm thinking about the corner where "Marche" (or whatever it is called today) is.

Hipster Duck, I think that your first and third points are good, but the second one doesn't seem entirely true. Brick structural walls are quite common among buildings built up to about the 1970s in Toronto, when building codes changed to require insulation and brick veneers on wood frames became the norm with houses. (I might be off by a decade or at most two decades since it's hard to find precise information on the history of our vernacular building techniques.) You can find different kinds of bonds in terms of brickwork in Toronto. Also, most North American pre-war buildings had interiors built to the style of their time; interiors were generally plain only for poorer buildings.