Search results

A city doesn't need size or stature to care about design, architecture, or beauty. You touched on the real reason. Toronto was a frontier town and historically not a place of refinement or sophistication. It bears mentioning that even today a public realm like shown above is still a rarity...

The invention of the term 'movie theatre' is cringey and pretentious though. 'Theatre' refers to live performance (South Pacific, Phantom of the Opera), not film. The term 'movie theatre'' was a marketing ploy by that industry to make cinema seem more high end. It's like calling your car a...

Agree. It's a welcomed change from the bland vapid designs we typically get. For the most part,1990-2020 has been excruciating from an architectural point of view. No personality.

All I'll add is that all this intensification of MCC will be for nought if the end goal isn't higher order PT and the re-working of all those stroads into pedestrian friendly city streets. Presently, it's dominated by asphalt and cars but it absolutely has the potential to urbanize and...

This has enhanced the street wall on the Esplanade, they've acceptably achieved a more fine grained effect by incorporating different facade treatments (feels like 3-4 buildings rather than 1), and I love the east-west pedestrian pass through half way down the block. Overall, one of Toronto's...

Heather Reisman (founder and CEO) and Gerry Schwartz (spouse) are extremely wealthy; Schwartz has a net worth of $1.4 Billion. Barnes & Noble may be 5 times larger than Indigo but it's the latter that may have deeper pockets. Barnes & Noble only has a market cap of $46 million. It's plausible...

I usually have a strong dislike of mint green cladding but the overall building manages to work as the podium is so pleasing; mint green pairs well with brown.

16 years and counting for me. I'm a member on 2 'city building' sites, a moderator on another. They all offer something a little different but where UT shines is the quality of information shared and enforcing its code of conduct. UT is my GO TO site for accurate information, insight, and...

Will be an impressive juxtaposition next to the Dominion Public Building too.

As long as the refresh respects the integrity of the 1940 Canada Post Delivery Building. Far too often, they're blind to the gem in front of them and simply try to make interiors look modern or current. The 1940s sections that survived are the last beautiful bits left. Instead of destroying...

Is that a polished concrete floor or tile?

That was how I've looked at it till very recently. I've visited the Bentway a few times but my last visit after midnight during Nuit Blanche tipped me squarely to the other side. The columns in this section have been repaired, the super-structures augmented with coloured uplighting, the...

The height difference is so negligible they will read as twins.

Most downtown folk I know don't go to Dundas Square or the Eaton Centre. Both are over run with loud obnoxious people who've commuted there from points many miles away. I don't hate either place, do enjoy the sensory overload of the square, but I'll only head there if I absolutely have to...

Stroads can always be narrowed, sidewalks widened, etc. I'd like to be optimistic but the existence of super-blocks makes it very difficult to make these stroads appealing vibrant pedestrian friendly city streets 15-20 years down the road. You need an intersection every 60-70m to slow traffic...

Unfortunately, people never learn from past mistakes. If it doesn't fit current aesthetics, it's deemed ugly, and must be destroyed. These same people will be livid 40 years from now when the new generations use the same arguments to tear down developments like Mirvish Village or replace One...

Q-bert, although Ms Pacman was always the Go To arcade game.

Agree 100% on all counts. One can modernize without stripping an interior of its historical integrity but that's not what's happened here. Far too often, those entrusted with these projects have little appreciation for the architecture/historical period no matter how vehemently they say that...

So many films pretending to be New York are filmed here that in the minds of some Toronto is starting to look more like New York than New York. Tourists who've never been here often quip how it all looks strangely familiar.

I've always found the aggressive vitriol aimed at Time & Space compared to the heaps of praise piled on Mirvish Village to be absurd and baffling. The latter addresses most things in a more successful way but not massively so. Time & Space isn't as finely grained as Mirvish but they did do...