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Bay Adelaide Centre West Tower (Brookfield, 50s, WZMH)

Re: Photos 11/03/07

I walked past the site today..interesting to see the open space and the view of the Bay Street buildings. I forgot how much newer infill there is amongst the older buildings on Bay Street.

The site does indeed have an eerie 9/11 echo..especially with the roots of the stump in tatters... I wlll be glad to see some actual construction. This is moving along fast though.
 
Re: Photos 11/03/07

I was passing by the site last night, and kicked myself for not having my camera, because things are at a really interesting stage right now.

They've dug right down to the bottom of the stump along its western edge, where the older buildings used to be, and demolished most of the stump's western foundation wall and a portion of the flooring inside - but the've smoothed the edges, giving the impression that it was a clean cut.

The result is that you can now see the whole underground structure in cross-section, like someone neatly bisected it with a knife.

Go take a look, if you can. Very cool.
 
Re: Photos 11/03/07

About a week ago, I noticed a dumptruck either going in or coming out of the service ramp on Richmond--at the bottom, the door opens into open air now...
 
Re: Photos 11/03/07

^ Cool. They already have a ramp for excavation built.

From the other side.

IMG_1070.jpg
 
Re: Photos 11/03/07

I don't recall any trees on Bay Street, unless they are making a contribution to improving the streetscape which is BADLY needed.

Louroz
 
Re: Photos 11/03/07

Ugh what a tepid design effort this one is :\ I still can't get over what a squandered opportunity it is for that location. Oh well- thankfully we have some major condos underway that are more thoughtfully designed.
 
Re: Photos 11/03/07

Any simple elegance the design might have had is squandered with the stick-on heritage facade. Bleh.
 
Re: Photos 11/03/07

A box... with goofy facadism...

Not quite what I was hoping for.
 
Re: Photos 11/03/07

Pathetic. Not to mention boring, uninspirational, and characterless. Oh wait, I did mention those. My bad.
 
Re: Photos 11/03/07

I wish they had come up with an innovative design, but I can't really complain about this project. It should fit in nicely and we have some other nice projects going up around town.
 
The meat and potatoes of office design and a welcome if not inspirational addition to the core. I'm sure it makes the requisit environmnental gestures but frankly I stick with my original sentiment that this building could have been designed in the board room using excel.
 
Re: Photos 11/03/07

I had rather liked the previous design for this project, but this one evidently offered a greater profit margin, due to greater efficiency in materials. The most efficient design will almost always be a box.

I cannot say that this is a bad box -- in fact it is fairly elegant, for its type. It's just that there are so many boxes in the CBD already, no doubt due to the fact that they were mostly built in the 60s and 70s, when the International style was dominant. Most other cities did not really start building towers of this height until later, when PostModernism had become popular.

So Toronto, due to its construction timing, has a big legacy of International style towers, some of which are among the best of their type in the world (TD Centre and Commerce Court West come to mind). These buildings will fit in well with the existing buildings.

Bill
 
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