Re: Innovative Design Competition - Visual Transformation!
From the Post:
One scheme stands out
Five finalists unveil their plans for reviving the waterfront
Robert Ouellette Toronto Unbuilt, National Post
Published: Friday, May 19, 2006
West 8 rids the city of the Gardiner Expressway, a tactic that does more to enhance the waterfront in the long term than perhaps any other element of its design. It also tackles such legacy issues as Toronto's single greatest tourist attraction, the CN Tower
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The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation is living up to its name, thanks in large part to outgoing Chair Robert Fung. Five finalists in the corporation's waterfront design competition unveiled their solutions at the BCE Place Atrium on Monday evening and Toronto may never be the same.
The scheme from WASAW (Stan Allen, Sarah Whiting and Ron Witte) is reminiscent of a 1960s super-graphic. Coloured ribbons snake their way along the waterfront turning into folded, ribbon-like buildings. While the proposal's graphic design is compelling, its singular design vision is ultimately tiresome. There are, after all, parts of the waterfront worth saving.
The Foster Architects scheme may have escaped from the computer of the designer who last worked on one of their Dubai projects. The three massive and seemingly identical piers, terminated by multi-storey iconic buildings, demote the rest of the waterfront to the level of background noise. There is not enough Toronto left in this scheme. Maybe the intent is to bring an international flavour to the city; however, in the end, it seems contrived.
Somewhere between these extremes is the Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Martinez Lapena-Torres concept. Unfortunately, the designers further reduce Toronto's shrinking harbour by dropping another island archipelago into it. While their tactic is a Venice-like solution, it devalues the existing harbour's edge and will almost certainly ensure that in the future (maybe one or two generations from now) some government agency will get the bright idea that they can make money by filling in the gaps and selling property.
In addition, Williams Tsien and Lapena-Torres bring the things disliked most about the waterfront -- elevated concrete structures -- down to the water's edge. Are massive concrete canopies needed near the waterfront even if they do generate electricity from attached solar panels? If solar generated power is essential, why not just add collectors to nearby, unused rooftops. The electricity generated can be sold for power credits. Still, it is easy to see how the designers wanted to offer a historical vision of the harbour. Their scheme is bold but somewhere along the way, it lost its focus.
Two schemes knit together existing waterfront elements in a way that enhances and unites them.
P.O.R.T. (Project On Revitalizing Toronto) was plagued by technical problems during their presentation, but if it can happen to Bill Gates it can happen to anyone. Their solution is probably the most sensitive to finer-grain conditions, although the point columns that terminate Toronto's major north-south axes are undeniably strong urban-scale gestures.
The tall point columns are located about 100 metres into the water. Depending on the temperature and wind conditions, they animate the harbour by swaying and changing colour. Some of the other elements, however, suggest the team was trying to be too diverse in its design thinking. The result lacks overall cohesiveness.
West 8 & du Toit Allsop Hillier's proposal is convincing possibly because of its unabashedly Canadian iconography. They seem to have the site-specific details right as well. The timber-frame bridges do offer a distinct Canadian design flavour. Their decision to shift car traffic north of the existing light-rail lines allows for a continuous, tree-lined boulevard from one end of Queen's Quay to the other. More importantly, they rid the city of the Gardiner Expressway, a tactic that does more to enhance the waterfront in the long term than perhaps any other element of their design.
West 8 also tackles such legacy issues as the base of Toronto's single greatest tourist attraction, the CN Tower. They also make Yonge Street the obvious terminus of many harbour related activities. The floating, biomass maple leaf in the centre of the harbour may stretch the Canadian identity a bit too far but, then again, it is probably a perfect way to attract foreign visitors to the city.
All of this work to enhance the waterfront may be lost if the Ontario government insists on building a power plant on the nearby port lands, though. Why ask five great design teams to imagine a waterfront that sustains the harbour, and then plant a symbol of our lack of a sustainable energy vision just metres away?
robert@forumbureau.com
Robert Ouellette publishes the daily blog
www.readingtoronto.com. He is the president of Forum Bureau, a strategic consulting and Internet firm in Toronto.
© National Post 2006
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Personally, I can't stand the themes of the West 8 scheme at all - it's crass and silly, playing to the tired cliches of "Canadianess" that frankly have little or nothing to do with Toronto. And why bother putting that Maple Leaf marsh in the centre of the Inner Harbour, when once should encourage intensified usage of *real* environments like the Islands?
I have to root for Foster - their scheme mirrors/meshes well with the dignified approach that aA used for the Harbourfront boardwalk. I don't necessarily buy all their design moves, but as a whole, it is calm and classy.
AoD