Toronto Living Shangri-La Toronto | 214.57m | 66s | Westbank | James Cheng

Ric said:
I had a chance to tour both model suites (18th floor) on Saturday. Overall I think the quality of finishing is average. My biggest gripe was the low ceilings. For a product that's suppose to be high end; why in the world would they have 8' ceilings throughout most of the unit. The cheap carpeting in the bedroom was also a disappointment. Most of the other agents present had similar thoughts. Nice looking building though.....
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Ceilings are 9 foot for Residences (Floors 18-49) and 10 foot for Private Estates (Floors 50-66). The carpeting in the model suite is not the carpeting that will be used in the actual units...my understanding is that the units will actually use much better carpeting then the model suite. The person that gave the tour to me mentioned that point explicitly.
 
interested said:
I agree about the ceiling height. It is 9 feet throughout but there are areas over the kitchen and the bulkheads that do take it down to 8 feet.

I felt that was a design flaw.

The carpeting is actual wool. Hardly "cheap" but they should have continued the hardwood throughout probably. They offered it but at about $10K/bedroom.


They showed you pretty much what you get, as opposed to a showroom with $200K of upgrades buried in there though Ric and that should be credited and apples and apples compared.

I note the Ritz is selling a bit better now with only 22 for sale on MLS compared with about 32 just 1-2 months ago. Developer still has units and don't know the price.

Curious how Trump will do. I guess if SL is a disappointment too that only leaves 4S?

I have to say that I think they "did not do a very good job on the designer choices". And the dining room little table looks almost like plastic. I believe how a place is furnished plays alot and they missed the mark in my view. That said, the kitchens and bathrooms and the floor choice other than the bedroom are great in my view. Furnishings are personal.

Perhaps this should be moved to the real estate forum.
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Actually I quite liked the furniture used...I thought Anwar of the Designer Guys did quite a good job...but as you said furnishings are a personal so what works for one person may not work for another.
 
hesikia said:
Ceilings are 9 foot for Residences (Floors 18-49) and 10 foot for Private Estates (Floors 50-66). The carpeting in the model suite is not the carpeting that will be used in the actual units...my understanding is that the units will actually use much better carpeting then the model suite. The person that gave the tour to me mentioned that point explicitly.
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The entire kitchen is taken up by bulkhead that reduces the height to 8'. Most of the rest of unit also had bulkhead. As mentioned by Interested, this is a design flaw. I'm over 6 feet so low ceilings bother me. As for the carpet, that was not explained to me. Wierd though that they would put shitty carpet in the model and not the good stuff.

I dont want to dwell on that though, as I do think overall it's a very nice building.
 
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^^^
I'm short.....so no problem. LOL

Until recently condos were 8 feet with bulkheads down to 7+ feet. Houses were 8 feet. So it is a bit curious that we now consider 8 feet at the low point and 9 feet to be low.

I wish they would have made the whole think with 10 foot ceilings. I was actually first told that the 9 feet would be 9 feet clear when I bought in the residences so I am disappointed that this is not the case. In other words, I was actually under the impression that it would be 9 feet at the low point. I will clarify if this is unique to the 18th floor or if this carries all the way up to floor 50.
 
^^^
Called. It apparently varies as to where the ducting is on the floors? Not sure if the sales people actually know. But it is 9 feet clear in the principal areas but does drop to 8 feet where there are bulkheads (kitchen) but also along the windows.

I agree, that is a shame. I thought it would be 9 feet in the living room/bedroom/den and only dropped in the kitchen/bathrooms. Oh well.
 
condovo said:
Kind of disingenuous to put our Kapoor...

21oalfp.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hAr4UcNoCRM/TGGwPsFS0iI/AAAAAAAAAV0/POhzaxYOmdk/s1600/AluminumMountains.jpg

...in the same league as their Kapoor.

2iqj2tk.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3115/2731228451_327cfc22e1.jpg
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Ours is actually more significant, not just because it's one of his earliest public commissions, but because it translates the form of one of his early, historic works, As if To Celebrate I Discovered A Mountain Blooming With Red Flowers ( 1981 ), with it's vibrant colours, into metal ... and acts as a bridge to his later metal works such as the big shiny bean ( which is but one of many shiny metal forms that he has famously produced ). Our Kapoor is a rare, and unique, gem.
 
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks...d-a-mountain-blooming-with-red-flowers-t03675

"Anish Kapoor was born in Bombay and has lived in London since 1973 where he trained first at Hornsey and then at Chelsea School of Art. He explored the possibilities of Conceptual Art for a time. Then, in 1979 he made a visit to India which reacquainted him with early cultural memories which were to inform his subsequent work. He also began to take an interest in Jungian psychoanalysis and to employ a vocabulary of forms and images which appear largely symbolic of different aspects of the feminine principle. The art historian Jeremy Lewison has related Kapoor's imagery to the accounts of the female archetype given by the Jungian psychoanalyst Erich Neumann in his book The Great Mother. According to Neumann the creative aspect of man is feminine and is alluded to in various archetypal images among them that of a vessel and mountain. Both these archetypal images are central to Kapoor's art and are prominent in this work. The pair of vessels also suggest breasts and the openings in them evoke the vagina. Such voids are another recurrent image in Kapoor's work. The forms are covered in loose, pure pigment, a procedure inspired by the brightly coloured powders used in Hindu festivals and worship. This use of pigment gives Kapoor's sculptures an extraordinary character and presence and Kapoor has commented 'The act of putting pigment on these objects removes all traces of the hand. They are not made. they are just there.' The title comes from two sources. The first part 'As if to Celebrate ...' is taken from a haiku poem. The second part refers to the Hindu myth of the goddess Devi who was born out of a fiery mountain which was composed of the bodies of male gods. The myth makes mention of a 'blood red mountain' and a 'graceful forest full of flowers'. Kapoor's use of this myth here seems to point up his interest in the dominance of the female principle, as well as his finding of archetypal images in Indian mythology. Although Kapoor is concerned with the purely formal aspects of the arrangements of his works (the yellow element here, he says, acts as a point of punctuation in relation to the red ones) his main concern is with symbolic effect, the bringing together of objects imbued with significance as on an altar or shrine."

Published in:
Simon Wilson, Tate Gallery: An Illustrated Companion, Tate Gallery, London, revised edition 1991, p.293
.
 
I think that Zhang Huan's Rising, which suggests a life form that's part animal, part vegetable - part Jabberwock and part Beanstalk ( sans Jack ) if you like - and part East and part West as with his staging of Semele, is a similarly important large scale work to our Kapoor. And because it's done in metal rather than meat, or flies, or water, or any of the other natural materials he's worked with, it marks a similar point of transition from performance art to the very public, and non-gallery, sculptural realm.
 
The picture above reminds me how endlessly photographable and engaging the bean is. With some works of art you simply don't need a footnote to appreciate them.
 
the roof fins are make the top kinda look like a flower from certain angles like Urbandreamers first pic ^ ( the leaves at the top are like blossoming or something).... something about the way the fins are curved on the inside a bit with the supports. not to mention, i think they're gonna have a green roof too. sick.
 
Is that part of the sculpture disembodied on the glass at the top of the cube? This public art piece is such a sweet addition to an already sleek and glossy building
 
urbandreamer said:
The building and art are both very Vancouver, and at this very Toronto corner, don't jive.
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I really do appreciate all your photo updates, but please, spare us. The building and public art are both wonderful additions to this city. Sorry aA didn't get to throw up another straight-lined tower with as many balconies hanging off of it as possible on this particular plot. I'm confident most will find this project with it's variable street-scape, dynamic east and west facades as well as the unique roof line very refreshing.
Bravo to Hariri Pontarini on another great design with some originality!
 
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