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I'm not sure I understand why so much of the north building along Spadina was demolished. Was it an addition and therefore not heritage? Are they rebuilding the facade like at Bathurst?

I just feel bad for the Structural EIT that had to detail those slab edges. Every time there's a vertical discontinuity, it would result in a unique detail. I'd love to see the drawing set for this thing.

They exist, there's CLT Shear Walls and Preserved Wood Foundation Walls and Footings - though they're not widely used (yet). However, they are much newer (and therefore less researched) compared to concrete or steel-plate counterparts. The wood design codes don't reflect predictable and safe...

A shame they didn't make functional use of the diagrid, they probably could have saved a decent amount of money on the structural system.

Re: Shear Walls, They're reducing the size of columns and walls as the tower goes up, because the amount of lateral force the building must resist at the top is much lower than at the bottom. However, it's not just to save money, the walls and columns have to slowly get smaller to avoid...

I understand your sentiment, and that investment in public transportation infrastructure usually provides solid returns, but I'm not sure a blank cheque is the best way to approach improving our infrastructure. I'm all for a King St. Subway. But instead of just funding it, I think could come...

Modern mix designs allow for early high strength, sometimes reaching design strength within 24 hours. Typically concrete is tested at 28 days. The rationale here was probably that it's designed for a rather large crane load (full building height), so with high early strength concrete they...

It's being used more often recently, there are some examples in North York. It's advantages are more pronounced in transportation infrastructure. As for why, mostly just cost. I generally agree, wind will dominate lateral load cases, however that doesn't mean tall buildings are immune from...

Unreinforced masonry is great for avoiding corrosion. It's not great because when an earthquake happens, basically everyone dies.

It's really hard to say how long our new skyscrapers will last, as modern reinforced concrete construction techniques haven't been around long enough. 100 year old concrete buildings today were designed and constructed much differently than buildings going up today. There's a number of things...

Good, the cost of parking enforcement is absurdly high for how small the tickets are.

The stop spacing is also ridiculous, many of them are less than 200 meters apart. Stopping that many times along a route is really slow.

The fees seem high considering how much more economically productive patios are than parking. The tax on restaurant sales alone would earn the city more than parking revenue.

For everyone's reference, a concrete truck carries about 8-10 cubic meters of concrete.

There was a (very small) skating rink in front of Union last winter. I agree that not having a rink here is a miss, I wonder what the cost difference would have been.

It's very possible to build a supertall that isn't on bedrock. As an example, the Burj Khalifa is built on sand using a pile supported raft slab. The same system was used for Stantec tower in Edmonton, the tallest building in Canada outside of Toronto. Good geotechnical engineers are very smart...

I say this as someone who hates real estate agents, but I don't think it's overused. I think that we've become desensitized to it in the Toronto market, and maybe we expect luxury to be more exclusive, but relative to so many other places in/out of Canada many of the new units provide excellent...

I've driven/trained past this site a few times, and of course see the great photos posted here - but I walked by yesterday and the structure is insane. It doesn't look that special in photos unless you notice the scale. Ceiling heights are massive. The concrete work here is huge, the beams are...

Just have some vision and optimism: Pretty much, here's what I'd do: Short-Term: Close King to personal vehicles entirely. It should be only streetcars, bicycles, trees, and large sidewalks & patios. You can enforce with cameras as the ROI is amazing. Model it after Stephen Avenue in Calgary...