Recent content by NY99

This building looks like a prison. Something about the drab, grey, metallic interior just screams correctional facility to me. A fancy Danish prison, perhaps, but a prison nonetheless. We deserved better with this important public building.

The trip time itself is half the story in my opinion. Apps like Google pad transit time to account for variability. Very often my actual trip time diverges from the estimated one — in both directions! With improvements to surface route scheduling adherence (dedicated lanes, better TSP, queue...

A lot of the ingredients for Copenhagen-style success are there. Parking is very, very expensive in a North American context. We don’t have many city-centre highways to speak of — certainly not ones with any sort of sufficient capacity to meet current/future traffic demands. Both of these...

Interested in the analysis of 556 Sherbourne. They created a very significant setback on the west side of the “upper portion” (3.0m). Why wouldn’t they assume a 0.0 m setback (up to the lot line) with no windows all the way up? That’s allowed, as far as I understand.

Perhaps this is a gripe with "modern architecture" more broadly. I do believe this trend is particularly acute in Toronto, whether locally-designed or not.

I do wonder... could one factor for the extreme bunching we see on some streetcar lines be a high variability in adherence to the TTC's outrageous operating standards?

If we had to do it again, should the Finch LRT have been built as BRT? I think there's a very good case for yes, given the drastically lower capital costs, shorter construction timelines, etc. But objectively, what we have is an upgrade over BRT in capacity, speed, etc. Downgrading for bus lanes...

Looking forward to the ribbon-cutting in 2045.

The colour makes it way better IMO. To the point that I would take this over your average “mid-tier” grey tower. Purely because warm colours do nice things for your brain chemicals and grey does not-so-nice things.

Continuing my multi-thread diatribe against Toronto architects’ obsession with asymmetry (I’m clearly in a bad mood lol): I see a couple examples where they're substituting real design for asymmetry. They look, to my untrained eyes, totally needless. Presumably it’s to feel like they're...

I suppose I ought to share my contribution to this architectural debate, originally made in the Concord Sky thread: Thoughts? I’ll try to tone down the snarkiness, as I know some UT contributors are in the architectural field themselves — most of you do great work I’m sure! But the tower...

I think that's what gets me the most. It's such an ingrained habit that even well-designed developments like this will do it. Another, even worse example, is the proposed College Park completion. For absolutely zero reason, they decided to separate the beautiful masonry podium from the handsome...

I do hate it. Sterile, dark, sad. Could they not have made the massing red, for God’s sake?

Toronto architects, even the good ones, have this inexplicable obsession with asymmetry. So you get random cutouts like this breaking up what would otherwise be nice straightforward massing.

Looks like a prison. One of those swanky Norwegian prisons, but a prison nonetheless