AlbertC
Superstar
March 29, 2020
Apart from the thoughtful restoration on the Victorian, I really like the execution of the rear addition. I know this is for a healthcare facility, but it's structure and scale serves as a good model for gentle intensification on existing heritage properties in the city.
I don't see the present-day urban fabric of Toronto as sustainable in the long run as a collection of mainly detached houses and high-rise towers. Market pressures will likely result in the redevelopment of many tracts of detached and semi-detached houses from downtown to Scarborough. High-rise buildings become costly to maintain as they age, which is undesirable.
The missing middle means larger units in smaller multi-residential buildings with lower theoretical maintenance costs, which is really desirable from a livability standpoint. But it's only feasible if you open up "stable" neighbourhoods made up of detached houses to walkup apartment and midrise infill development. That raises the question of what to do with heritage houses and districts.
Razing Cabbagetown or the Annex would be tragic. I always regret that our oldest heritage districts in St. Lawrence and the old Financial District can't stand alongside Old Montreal as stately examples of how we used to build cities in Canada. Gentle infill like this project is an interesting option to resolve the dilemma of how to achieve consistent metropolitan density without losing heritage urban fabric. This sort of infill is still so rare that it seems new and innovative, but it has been around since Jack Diamond did it in the 1970s.