Toronto Ontario Court of Justice Toronto | 95.7m | 17s | Infrastructure ON | Renzo Piano

From June 20th

20230620_132032.jpg
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
From the Globe, by @AlexBozikovic:

www.theglobeandmail.com

Toronto’s new courthouse reveals the limits of what architecture can do

The new Ontario Court of Justice is extraordinarily refined, but the design came with numerous physical accessibility problems, only some of which have been resolved
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com

AoD
Click to expand...

The attributes of the building, as shared by Alex here, have been well documented and discussed here; as such, it's the accessibility shortcomings I think we need to bring forward:

1690205981512.png


We certainly discuss wayfinding here from time to time, I'd like to hear from those who have been in the building, @ADRM on that subject.

I'm not sure what to make of 'confusing elevator system' without more detail. Depending on the details, I'd be interested to know how these issues might be mitigated.

****

@AlexBozikovic also raises the question of whether a single, centralized court, particularly one of this size, is desirable.

I'm inclined to think it is not.

While having departments, business units of government needlessly small, or overly divided into fiefdoms and silos is bad....
And economies of scale can be a thing......There are also diseconomies of scale.

One example of this:

311 in Toronto is far less efficient that its predecessor systems where one actually phoned or emailed the responsible parties to get something fixed.

Another, at the City level, both HR and Purchasing are far less efficient that they were at the departmental level. Today it can take six months to fill a funded position and equally long to get some tenders out the door.

Both of the above units are reviled by City agencies and departments that must go through them; both should be broken up with functions restored to the local level.

General efficiency aside, there is the matter of transport hassles and costs for staff and clients of assorted services. Asking someone to come from the far reaches of north-east Scarborough or northern Etobicoke all the way to downtown to
deal with a comparatively minor matter or something that can be disposed of with an hour or 1/2 day's proceeding does not seem reasonable.

A more sensible approach would have seen 4 centralized courts houses aligned with the four City Districts, with courts in NYCC, SCC and Etobicoke City Centre beside the respective/proposed Civic Centres.
This would have reduced many people's travel time, placed each site walking distance from a subway station, and achieved a more reasonable sized, less confusing building.
 
rdaner said:
Maybe someone can commit a crime to get inside the courtrooms for a few photos!
Click to expand...

I thought @ADRM already did that, without the committing the crime part - pages ago.

The most interesting part of the article was the photo of the space used by the judges - this tend not to be seen/covered due to security reasons. Love the shots of the courtrooms and the Indigenous court as well.

As mentioned previously, the one weak link of this project is the landscaping - it's so awfully cheap-looking, borderline criminal.

AoD
 

‘Tip of the iceberg’: Impaired driving case collapses over chronic staff shortages at new Toronto courthouse​

www.thestar.com

‘Tip of the iceberg’: Impaired driving case collapses over chronic staff shortages at new Toronto courthouse

Many court staff “simply cannot afford to work downtown,” the union says.
www.thestar.com www.thestar.com

In staying the charges, Ontario Court Justice David Porter delivered a blistering assessment of the current state of affairs at the $956-million courthouse on Armoury Street, which has been suffering from a lack of staff since it opened in March.
Click to expand...
“Staff shortages have continued on a daily basis, resulting in courts being closed almost daily, thus preventing cases scheduled to be tried from proceeding,” Porter said in his ruling released last week.
Click to expand...
OPSEU, the union representing a number of the workers, has said they are overworked and underpaid. The union said that many staff members in the former courthouses chose to quit or ask for accommodations due to the time and cost required to commute to the new building.
Click to expand...
“Many simply cannot afford to work downtown,” the union said in April. “Those with children and elder care responsibilities can’t manage working and commuting longer hours and therefore there has been a surge in accommodation requests.”
Click to expand...
 
ProjectEnd said:
Boy, isn't that funny. Turning most of downtown into a minimum-$1500/ft playground for profit-seeking investors and having governments at all three levels completely abandon the idea of building housing wasn't such a good idea after all? Color me shocked...
Click to expand...
Why do court staff members need to live downtown?
 
ProjectEnd said:
Why does anyone need to live anywhere?
Click to expand...
You bring up a good point. Nobody needs to live in any specific location. There are always more affordable and less affordable places. Hence the claim that we have an affordability crisis is a sham. You don't always get what you want.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top